Category: Language

Temperature!

I am old enough to understand the joke as well as the system used in the past for measuring temperature. India went metric in 1956 and since then we have used only the celsius for measuring temperature. I distinctly remember the struggle that we had in converting the measures to understand distances, weight, currncy etc.

The first sentence refers to the score of top scoring students in our public examinations.  Since I was mostly a back bencher, I was more often than not in the bottom set of scores.

The joke here takes me to another peculiar development in the last few decades.  In our time we were comfortable with percentages.  Now we keep reading about percentiles.  This I think, is a significant change in preparing our young to be super competitive.  Quite whether this is the right thing to do to them or not, I do not know.

What do you think?

 

Rains.


I was woken up from my siesta by the sound of thunder, rain and heavenly petrichor.

As usual, and setting at rest doubts for this year, our monsoon has arrived on time. The image above is rain in our garden just five minutes ago. As I write this, there is thunder rolling over head and rain falling in torrents.

I shall now listen to some Malhar. My readers will remember my post last year on the same date my post on the subject.

The pluviophile in me is delighted.

Support.


Besides these two, I also have Email, Uncle Google,  two Resident Geeks and Kindle to get through my days.

Oddly enough, because I am better versed in handling these modern supports, I am the support and go-to person, for some friends who are not as blessed as I am, with Resident Geeks.

There are some who use me to fact check ‘forwards’ received by them. This is usually a terse “True?” either followed or preceded by the forward message, usually controversial or out of the ordinary. I inevitably oblige and find out the veracity about the message as if untrue, further forwarding can land people in trouble.

There are others who use me as their online buying agent, usually for books after some online research as well but, on the odd occasion, for other things from say Amazon or other online merchants. I haven’t yet fixed an Agency Commission but, am seriously considering doing so.

And finally, there are a couple of friends who use me as the conduit for making donations as they do not want their identities to be known to the recipients lest they be harassed for further donations. I happily oblige and am now considered to be a serious donor for some very deserving causes.

So, my supports have enabled me to become a support for others.

What about you dear reader? Are you satisfied with just being supported or, are you a support too?

Picker Upper.

Some readers have commented on my blog post Precious Gifts about another very useful gadget that they use to pick things up from the floor without bending down.

I too have one which however was not gifted to me. I had bought it when some years ago I had pulled a back muscle and had difficulty bending down while I was recovering.

It just hangs on a hook behind my chest of drawers as I don’t use it anymore. I call it my “picker upper”!  I don’t know what else to call it.

Can someone tell me the correct name for it?

Communication.

A recent corporate fiasco highlights the importance of proper communication in Management. Here is an article in the BBC that explains what happened. This matter received a lot of attention in India as the new CEO is a person of Indian origin and that alone raised many eyebrows.

In my working life, I have had to dismiss employees or take other unpleasant actions and I have faced many agonising moments on deciding quite how to communicate my decision. It never was easy and I have always felt in retrospect, that I could have handled it differently.

I am glad that I don’t have to any more but, I can sympathise with others who have to.

On a lighter note, here is a cartoon that resonates with me. Apart from the humour, the language is quite impressive. Don’t you think so?