Shall we dance …

Off-topic post:Saw this classic movie on tv last night – Richard Gere at his best. I should say that J-Lo (Jennifer Lopez for the uninitiated) has done a pretty good job too. The two dances their way to glory. The waltzes, the quick steps – wow. They really had done their homework right. I can understand that J-Lo probably learnt dancing – since she dances most times in her music videos – but I bet Richard Gere had to learn a lot of new stuff. Amazing. Ofcourse my fav piece of music was the spanish gypsy dance piece. We used to have this piece as a 45rpm vinyl record once upon a time (we still have the record I think, but we certainly dont have a player.

Hiatus

Howdy readers …

I apologize for the long hiatus in blogging. I just peeped in today and thought I would let you all know that I would be back at my blogging desk after mid may. I have some deadlines at work, and am busy having fun at home, which basically boils down to no time :).

Have fun. Fellow Indian bloggers, be wary of the heat, and stay safe.

Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year

Dear Readers

I will be off for a about 2 weeks. I am enjoying the last week of this
year at my home town – away from work. First week of the new year, I
will be attending a conference. I shall (hopefully) be back to
blogging around the 10th of January. Until then, have a great
holidays, and wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year.

mouli

Five Deadly Sins of Business

WSJ (free feature) has an article from the Late Peter Drucker on the five deadly sins of Business. Wow. Amazing. Read it to believe it. That guy was a genius. This article is a reprint of his article from 1993.

The five sins are:

  • worship of high profit margins and of “premium pricing”
  • mispricing a new product by charging “what the market will bear.
  • cost-driven pricing.
  • slaughtering tomorrow’s opportunity on the altar of yesterday.
  • feeding problems and starving opportunities.


Read the full article here.

Golden Quadrilateral Project features in a NY Times article

A nicely written by rather lengthy article (read 7 pages) in NY Times details how India is building its roads slowly. The British concentrated on building the Rail network in India (which I must admit, they did very well – seeing the extremely vast system that is present today – read the wiki page). The last time, roads were buit in such a grand scale was ages ago – when Sher Shah Suri built the Grand Trunk Road (GT Road). The previous goverment in India, led by Vajpayee of the BJP party had kick started this project of building a vast highway network. This project was to connect the 4 large metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), and Kolkata (Calcutta) by 4-lane and 6-lane super highways. Governments have changed, but thankfully, most of the projects are still going on. This was mainly because Vajpayee had established an autonomous body to oversee this project. I personally have been some stretches of this road network – and I should say, it is a pleasure to drive on these roads.

I do not totally agree to some of the points made in the article, but then it is written by an observer/reporter who spent one month in India and wrote the article. I would excuse and forgive him, for the reason, that, he only wrote what he observed.

Read the full article here.

On The Road to a 6-figure blogger

No, I am not talking about me. I write for the pleasure of it, and for archiving these nuggets that I find on the web. I am talking about Steve Pavlina and his personal development blog. He claims that it is not (at the moment) his primary source of income ; but maybe next year it will be. November alone brought about $4700 through earnings on his website. He says that it is a 33x increase than his January 2005 earnings. At this rate, extrapolating, he claims that ‘maybe’ his 2006 earnings through the website would be about $100,000.

Read about this and some more of his ideas (disclaimer: some of them wacky) at his blog post today.