Tag: BBC

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?

Sculpted Tree.

My friend Ramesh sent this message and image via WhatsApp which is worth sharing with my readers.

The tallest tree in Wales had been damaged by a storm and was supposed to be cut down, but a better solution was found. Natural Resource Wales, which was in charge of the site, ordered artist O ‘ Rourke to cut down the tree. He came up with the concept of carving what the tree stump and trunk into a giant hand – to symbolise the tree’s last attempt to reach the sky.
Once completed, the sculpture was coated with tung oil, a natural vegetable oil safe for the closeness of the riverways.

It’s called THE GIANT HAND OF VYRNWY.

Height: 15.25 met

Sculptor Simon O’ Rourke.

Which Mythical Lost Treasure Do You Think Is Real? Why?


My fellow 2 on 1 blogger Shackman has suggested this intriguing topic for this Friday post. I bet that he will come up with some great myth but I have to simply share with my readers this article in the Forbes Magazine to say that I don’t think that it is real. I know that it is real.  It was not lost either.  It was just hidden away and faith kept it that way for centuries safe from marauding invaders and colonists.

From childhood, I had been hearing stories about the treasures in the temple and it has taken over seven decades for all that to be proved right.

There are any number of stories like this in indeed but, I doubt that anything can come close to this one for the sheer wealth kept away in vaults. You simply have to google for Indian lost treasures and you will see what I mean.

Another not quite lost treasure but a very interesting clip on one of India’s greatest kingdoms.  Not much known outside a small community of Sikhs and their admirers like me.

And, before you see the clip, please remember to go over to Shackman’s blog to see what he has to say on the topic.

BS In A Travelogue.

I came across  this article in the BBC news letter by accident. The lead to it had no reference to any numbers.

This pointer is what lead me to the article.

I cannot understand why the author is dumbing herself down. Does she seriously believe that it is difficult to remember a series of ten digit number code?

If I ask her for her mobile phone number, will she find it difficult to tell me the number? And from her name, she appears to be either Indian or of Indian, my part of the country, origin, all the more reason to disbelieve her self doubt.

Can you not remember your ten digit mobile telephone number, or for that matter, your landline phone number with country and area code numbers?

Packed Lunch.

I am sure that my friend Megh expected me to write a blog post when he sent me this link to a fascinating story about the Norwegian packed lunch and here I go obliging him.

I have not been to a work place where I had to have lunch for the last sixteen years. So, I do not know quite what the scene now a days is but I do see hoards of young people having lunch during lunch hour at either way side food stalls or restaurants near blocks of offices in my neighbourhood. Perhaps the system of taking packed lunch to work or schools/colleges has gone out of fashion at least in Pune or it is just that there are too many singles working in Pune who have come here to work from distant places and staying in paying guest accommodation or hostels.

I distinctlty remember taking a single lunch box of stainless steel to school till I finished high school at the age of a little over fifteen.

My mother would pack curd rice with a piece of dry pickle on one side and a piece of jaggery on the opposite and during lunch break, I would sit with other classmates who would have also brought the same for lunch from their homes.


After that, till I started to work in Mumbai in January of 1970 I had lunch at convenient places. In Mumbai, my wife would pack and send lunch through the iconic Mumbai dabbawalas just like almost all my colleagues in the office got theirs. Those packed lunches would come in carriers like this kind of thermos flask inside which would be a three tier case containing three different dishes. It was quite usual to share among colleagues whatever was brought.

Fast forward to the late eighties when I became part of a management team to which lunch was served in a lunch room as part of the perks during times of socialism in India! So, the practice of taking packed lunch stopped till the middle of 1990 when I shifted to Pune where I started taking packed lunch from home in a electric thermos/thermos tiffin box which would heat up food if plugged in half an hour before lunch time. Here too, I would share the food with other colleagues who too would have brought lunch in similar boxes. Till I retired in late 1998, I continnued to use this device to take packed lunch to my places of work.

I also remember packing sandwich lunches for my son who was going to work after I retired and while I was the house husband due to the illness of my late wife.

I am sure that most of my readers will identify with the days when they took packed lunches to school or places of work unless of course they were provided with lunch like many places now do.   Do you have similar experiences?