One Good Thing is...

All of us know that a coin has two sides. At one point in time, you can see one side of a coin only. If you had to look at the other side of the coin, unless you flip the coin, you will not be able to see it. Likewise, in life, you have most of the ingredients in pairs like happy-sad, tall-short and such pairs.

Why I am telling this is, most of the times, many of us, including me, will look at things happened to us - looking at one side of a coin. And we forget one important thing - not flipping the coin to see the other side. In not flipping we are unaware of what is there on the other side. And there is
always "One Good Thing" in what ever has happened which you might discover when you find time to flip. I am sure this does really excite you, but I am sure that when you flip, you will appreciate and accept that it is a fact that One Good Thing exists in anything, more importantly anytime!!!

Let us have a look at a few of the happenings that occur either once in a while or in our daily walks of the life, which had atleast One Good Thing in it.

One Good Thing

* when any of your closest person, be it a friend or relative or your love, ditches you under some circumstances, is that it is really good that you learnt that you cannot count on them anymore.

* when you have failed in any of your attempts towards a particular goal, see that it in turn makes you think much better to achieve what you wanted thus honing your ability.

* when you miss the train / bus to your work place from your family / friends on a weekend night, is that, you can spend with your closed ones some more time.

* when you feel sorry / bad on seeing few folks who slog a lot to earn very little, is that, you can relax as they have got something to take care of them

* when you cross a Volvo bus, is that, you can rest assure that you will not be the chosen one for those idiots who spit out on the street from a bus.

* about this post is that you have been reminded that always there is atleast one good thing in everything and has brought a smiling curve, rather than a frowning curve, on your lips for a moment atleast.

Though at moments, you will not be in a position to look for the good things in whatever has happened, it would be good to flip the coin to discover and recover from that soon to see for the good thing in that. Now that you know that there is a good thing in everything, appreciate life for letting you know through an incident or happening.
This content is published here: http://authspot.com/thoughts/one-good-thing-is

Grand 'SLAM' Time

Hey its the month of April - time for an exclusive hunt - and every year this hunt will be on with mixed feelings. The hunt I am referring to is about getting your autograph book or slam books slammed by the buddies whom you think you dont want to miss, atleast for that moment, at a later stage of your life. Though the word SLAM sounds a bit harsh, I look at it a perfect framing. The words in the book will find the depth of your heart as though it is slammed inside your soul.

This exercise of getting your slam books slammed by your friends, teachers, non-teaching staffs (though I have not got one...hmm) will look more important than completing your final exams as you don't want to lose anyone before you move (in most of the cases). And this slamming happens right from the school days, it continues to your high school, then to college days. I am not sure if anyone has got their slam books before they leave from one company to other and maybe when they retire:)

What are the times which will make the guys pick a slam book? The situations could vary from moving from one school to other in case of elementary to high school or high school to higher secondary or school to college or in case of the person's parents getting transfered to a different place and the list can go on. What finally needs to be looked at is the guys coming up with a book in their hand in mixed feelings to get their book filled in by most of them around.

So, why this becomes so special in your life? I should say it is a very special phase that you would love to read what every one has slammed in your book about them - their birthdays, address, photo and most importantly about you :) Sometimes, even this would get rid of the enmity between a few in your schooldays which is really good, right? And for some, it could be an ambition to get it filled from the ones they like/love and the word from them will mean everything for them :) It gives you a lovely feeling at that moment and a great feeling when you happen to look at that book after several years. It works like a time machine that you make a special trip to that older moments virtually, live there for a moment with the happenings around that period and so on. And, reading it again after years makes you feel very happy for sure :)

The other day on the road, I saw two guys going thru the slam book and could see a smile on their face. Looking at them, unknowingly I was smiling and feeling happy since it reminded me of my good old days where I got autograph of so many great people who shared their times with me in some walk or the other in my life. Guys if you missed it during your school/college days, even now its not too late. If you are going to move to a different company from the one you are working now or if you are going to retire, make sure you get slammed by your people around and I can guarantee that you will love to read it after a few years.

So, get slammed and have fun!!!!!!

This content is published here: http://quazen.com/shopping/grand-slam-time/

Relationships!!

Have you, at times wondered like - "what's happening to me?", "few years back it was not like this", "what happened all of a sudden?", etc...?

Few years back you would have been talking to your closed ones (siblings, relations, friends...) without any hassles but now the scenario might be different that you try to avoid each other and you are feeling uneasy. You are like an isolated island with respect to that person(s) though you are very close physically.

If you look back at it, spending some time for that, you will realize that it could have been avoided by talking open heartedly. So talking the issues and thrashing it out before it's too late is a good thing to maintain relations is what I feel. It's not that we don't know this but we DON'T DO it. How sad :(

What's happening is that we are not ready to accept the uniqueness of each personality. Each person is unique in his own way. But when it comes to being together with others, we, somehow, expect others to behave like how we expect. So, we DON'T ACCEPT THE DIFFERENCES. On the other hand, we are not ready to listen to what others tell. That is, if your closed ones tell you something or wants to comment about your act, you are not OK with that and DON'T WANT TO LISTEN.

When such things happen and you don't talk about that, the gap becomes large that you start to feel some discomfort with the respective person. If the talking had happened somehow, you would not have moved into the so called discomfort zone. So start talking to your closed ones open heartedly, now atleast so that such petty things dont destroy the relation between two good people. These talkings are good in any kind of a relationship - be it between your siblings, between your family members, between parents and their children, husband and wife or between friends.

Aren't these things very simple and can be shoo-ed away just like that without any issues? It CAN be done provided, you - both the ends - are open to accepting the differences and listen to what others say. I know it is very difficult though easily said but when it comes to maintain relationships, which atleast I feel, is very important in all walks of our life.

This content is published here: http://socyberty.com/relationships/relationships-9/

Live in others!!!

We have heard of "Live and let others live". I would like to modify this a bit as "Live in others and let them live". Yes, when we have a chance to live in others by donating blood when we are alive and other organs like eye, kidney etc after our death, the modified statement makes sense right?

I thought of sharing my experience I had last weekend as it was a very satisfying one for me as I was chosen by The Almighty to help a person in need . To be specific, the person, suffering from blood cancer, was in need of blood platelets.

I know many of you who read this would have donated blood atleast once or would be thinking of doing it in the future. I am not sure how many of you have heard of donating blood platelets, a component in our blood.

Last weekend, I got a call from some group, which assist in arranging blood for the people in need, to check if I am interested to donate platelets. They have traced me through the site www.indianblooddonors.com where I have registered very recently. I checked with our family doctor if it is safe to donate blood platelets and confirmed them I can donate.

Platelet separation process
This particular platelet donation takes 1 to 2 hrs of time based on the platelet count of the donor. Normally the range is 3 to 4.5 lakh platelets per cubic liter of blood (the person I donated had a count 8000 only). They have an instrument to separate the platelet from our blood. This is how the process goes.

Before the process starts, they check if the donor has good platelet count. Once it is fine, they ask us to get refreshed and come as we will have to lie down for a max of 2 hours without any disturbance. Once we are ready, they inject in our hand and pull blood to a container in that instrument. And when the blood is pulled out of our body, you will feel numb around your lips as the Calcium content gets dropped. The lab technician gives you a tablet to chew so to compensate that.

Once 400 ml of blood is collected, the platelet separation process starts. Don’t get panic on what will happen to the 400 ml of our blood. The blood is collected by the instrument into a container with a solution that keeps the blood safe from clotting. Once the platelet separation process is over, the blood with out the platelet will be injected back into our body.

This process of pulling out and injecting blood into our body happens 4 to 5 times. In this process platelet collected was around 210 ml and the platelet count will be around 2 lakh it seems. And they call the platelet donation "online" because the life span of the collected platelet is 2 days it seems. So ideally, once the platelet is collected from a donor, it should be immediately injected to the patient. Since it is the component alone that is injected, it is good than the whole blood being injected. Also, you can donate blood in the next 2 days :) Cool right!!!!

The patient's people called us the next morning to say that now the count has increased from 8000 to around 90000 and that he was a bit stable. What more one can ask than things like this in your life? My wife & I were very much satisfied.

I would like you all to visit the website "www.indianblooddonors.com" and have yourself registered as you can not only look for the needy people, you can also look for the people who donate. Also, the details may not be the exact one. Check with your doctor for more details or google to know more.

And get a chance to live in others to make them live!!!!

This content is published here: http://healthmad.com/medicine/live-in-others/

School Hunt

Come October and it is happening time for the schools and a nightmare for many parents who are on the look-out for schools for their kids from pre-kg or pre-nursery to any grade.

A short intro on where we are and for what we are hunting for schools. Right now we are in Bangalore and we planned to put our daughter in Pre-kg for the academic year 2010-11. Most of us, our peers, would have studied in some normal / government schools except a few. And as any normal parent we thought of looking out for a good school where our daughter could get some more exposure than we have got during our school days.

And I never thought checking out for a school would be such a big challenge/learning experience. Yes, in deed it was a great experience for us before we zeroed in on a school which, at least we felt would be better than the rest.

Initially, somewhere around August, we started googling for CBSE board schools in the city and prepared a list of schools and took a print out of the same with the address and numbers. Then, we enquired our colleagues about the schools they feel is good. October came and we started our hunt for schools. We went to an area and searched for schools in and around that area with the list we had. We called up the phone numbers and found most of them were outdated. And we got the numbers of few schools through the JustDial service.

This way we went to 3/4 different areas and enquired in schools about the details like - fees, donation, whether they have some extra-curricular activities apart from academics, teacher to student ratio, if the school has playground and things like that. And our daughter got admission in a school in the first week of November.

In this process, we came to know one thing - admission in schools is a very big business. The reason why I say this is, we came to know through some of our colleagues that there are brokers to get a seat for pre-kg (not for BE and MBBS as it was during our days) and the cost for that is few lakhs it seems.

I just wanted to quote an incident happened to us in one of the schools. When we enquired for the direction over phone, we were told that they don’t have Pre-kg and they admit kids from LKG only. But we just wanted to look at the school and asked for the direction again. The response was "Why do you want to come when we do not admit kids for pre-kg?" and they just hung the phone. The school is one of the so called "good" schools. I was totally taken aback by this and I just told to myself, is this the one or similar one my kid is going to study in? But I had no choice and I had to choose the best among the worst
available. And we got admission for our kid in a good school.

Here, by good school, what I mean is that, we felt the school was good. With that assumption, we have given our kid a channel to start her academic / career / life. And we could do nothing more as finally it is the kids who, with the parent’s guidance, in future will show us if we chose him/her really a good school.

So, my take is, do not worry much about which school to seek for. All are good and bad. We can just go by our knowledge about the schools and expect for good things to happen. I am sure, good things will happen to all of us - the parents whose job of hunting for schools have become a terrific task these days!!!!

This content is published here: http://socyberty.com/education/school-hunt/