Jack on Leaders

1) Relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opp to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence
2) Make sure people not only see the vision, but live and breathe it
3) Get under peoples' skin, exuding positive energy and optimism
4) Establish trust and candour, transparency and credit
5) Have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls
6) Probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism making sure their questions are answered with action
7) Inspire risk taking and learning by setting an example
8) Celebrate

Curent Reading - Winning - Jack Welch

Audio book by playaway. Nice.

Mission statement is important. Must come from those who are ultimately responsible.

Focus on the behaviours that will complement your mission. Values is a bit vague. Behaviours is understandable.

"People development should be a daily event integrated into every aspect of your goings on"

Book Reviews

Managed to get through a couple during this 2 week vacation. The best part of the vacation was the early morning walk through the Theosophical society in Adyar - all the way to the beach.

Now, Discover your Strengths - Cunningham and someone else. Okay book. Might pick up one or two things. You want to focus on using and developing your strengths and find ways to manage around your weaknesses. Do not dwell on your weaknesses. Analysts are good at finding patterns in data.

How to Work a Room - Susan Roane - good tips - read one newspaper a day - there's nothing small about small talk - it's essential. Be approachable. Practise host behaviour instead of guest behaviour. Common sense + kindness = manners. Use business cards only after a rapport has been established. To join a conversation, if it's two people, use caution - they might want privacy. If it's more, they'll probably be inclusive - get to the edge and give facial feedback and see if they open up to you, etc.

Making Work Work - Julie Morgenstern - still finishing this one - but, some good points - multitasking doesn't work - it takes 20 minutes to get back to the level of concentration needed - use bread-crumb trails to help you get back faster.

How Do You Know If You Have It?

You're happy for who you are
You take on challenges
You accept mistakes and learn from them
You don't need to prove yourself to others
You don't feel happy when others fail

How to get it:

See the beauty in yourself
Learn to let go
Learn to stop comparing
Teach your inner voice (see - the design of the system - based off of one molecule that contains all the required information means that there are parts of the system that serve a greater purpose or something bigger than the individuals. That's what leads to the different centres of the brain. In the case of sociopaths and psychopaths, some of these vital neuro-centres have been suppressed during the growth-phase of the brain by the environment. No animal can commit suicide but man. That alone marks man out as a non-animal - notwithstanding the anatomical similarities with other life-forms - we just happen to use the same modules)

Know your strengths
Acknowledge areas for improvement
Don't take it personally. Avoid negative people and people with poor self-esteem.
Cultivate a logical view of things.
Control the controllable
Set goals (what I've learned personally over the last week of an intense work-life is that the brain's structure enables it to find paths from problems to solutions. A problem and a solution are just two points on a graph. The power of the neural networks of the brain enable the subconscious to chug away and find a route from the problem to the solution. For that to work, you must clearly visualize both the problem and the solution. Also, the path must exist - thus, in the case (my case) of an electronic-circuit problem, the elements of the problem and the solution - components and their characteristics need to be internalized - equations are useless at this point. Visualizations are very valuable here. When you have the components internalized and the solution does exist, as Einstein said, a problem cannot be solved at the level of consciousness in which it occurred - so you must sleep over the problem. That's why physicists wake up in the middle of the night and write down their new theories. Charles Townes, once he became a dad, used to wake up early so he could get ready before the kids started making a racket. The solution to the maser problem occurred to him one such early morning - because his brain had been chugging away all night - without his knowing it of course. Your own experience will be no different. That is what the brain does - and that is why the human species has evolved so much. Why not other animals? Good question. I really wish I could go back in time as an observer and see things being done for the first time. My guess is that none of the great things happened until people had the time to sit and think - well into the stone age or the bronze age - the first time someone prayed, or described his symptoms to someone else, or hoarded seeds and planted them, or celebrated an anniversary, or buried someone. Self-esteem is that internal entity that refines the human genome. Self-esteem serves the bigger cause - of perfecting the human race. If you have poor SE, your internal regulator cut you out of the flow. So find a way to defeat it)

If you need to adjust, do so.
Laugh!

Never apologize for a job well done!
Don't be a perfectionist.
Don't procrastinate!

SE is about attitude. Hence, your attitude determines your altitude!



Accept and ack compliments
Trust your instincts.

Retired Investor, Living on a Pension

Old age begets senility. Buffet let his investments cook for 30 years and he did good. Now that he has nothing to lose, he's decided to bow out spectacularly. Who buys into the left side of a base? Only a madcap who wants to lose everything. This is not a correction, this is a full-fledged crash. If no trendlines had been violated, then you could call it a correction. In future, when you're down 10 or even 20%, stop and think and re-assess. Would you rather be down 50%?

Should you sell now? You bet! When someone goes public and says "Don't Bail on Mutual Funds Now as Market RAllies in Aging Bear", THAT's THE time to sell. For the way the market fell last week, if it was a true bottom, you would expect a strong - really strong rally. What have we seen? A fizzle - worse even.

According to Lipper, investors pulled $100b from mutual funds in Sept.

People have heard reports the Buffet has been buying. Really? Question is - did he sell in time or not. If not, then where did he get money to buy from? If he had money, why didn't he buy out all of Wall St?

Can you regret not staying in the market now? Absolutely! Remember, some of the biggest up days the Nasdaq ever saw were during the bear market. When stocks fall really low to become good bargains, they will be bought. But, the people who buy are not going to stay in the market and take risk. They will sell pretty soon - and you need to beat them.

Have we seen that after this historic down week? No. What does that mean? More drops!

Who has been right so far? The Royal Bank of Scotland is down 85%. But, about 5 months ago they asked their private clients to move into cash warning of a full-fledged crash in the worldwide equities markets. That's what we're seeing now. Don't buy a damn thing until the 50 day and 200 day moving averages show inflexion. Once they do, you will know that the bear market is nearing an end. That, unfortunately, can take about two years because of the recession.

There was a movie I saw in which a matronly woman doing housekeeping sort of work talked about being a secretary at GM and being able to tell that the crash was coming - because she saw General Motors going to the toilet 20 times a day. Working for a bit outfit myself and seeing the stress take its toll on my CEO, I can warn of the same. Will GM go bankrupt? You bet! Just look at Wagoner's face on that YouTube gig and compare him with what he was 3 years ago in the MIT World video. You simply cannot be successful today trying to build TVs - or VCRs, or, even, personal computers. That is not what this country does. What we do here is shape new technology. Cars are old technology. They need to be built by people willing to do science and perfect mature technology. That is why America would never dare to make TVs. Can we make great TVs? You bet! Can we make great TVs and sell them competitively while offering our employees competitive benefits packages? No sir!

Should you consider stocks? Yes - start building a watch list. In about 6 months to a year - you can pick stocks with good fundamentals and technicals and start averaging up. Cut your losses!

If you're in the market now because "I can't sell now! I'm already down XX%", forget it - make sure you have 2 years cash on the sidelines - never mind how much you lost. It's just going to get worse and worse for another 6 months. 20% is considered a full-fledged bear market. 10% is considered a correction. This is already more than 40%. Will there be a near-term rally? Likely. Should you try to profit from it? Be your own judge - do you have what it takes? In a year or two - when you can look at the chart and see for yourself that all the selling is over and volume has dropped and people have lost interest, you can think about getting back - and, like IBD says, don't go in for the beaten-down past leaders - go for the new leaders.

Take the article I'm referring to on bailing out of mutual funds. On the same page - IBD's Katzeff says "Fleeing the market deep in a downturn is usually precisely the wrong move. You can make a lot more money by sticking with a diversified stock fund. If everyone else's panic has got you thinking of throwing in the towel, consider this: you've already proven you're not a skilled market timer by not selling at the top. Don't turn inexperience into error by selling now near the bottom."

What a bitch! How the hell does he know it's the bottom? Later, on the same page:

The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, skyrocketed to its highest point in history on Oct 10. That day marked Wall St's worst weekly drubbing ever. Late in the day the government said ... banks. On Thursday, the VIX set another gut-wrenching peak before stocks vaulted higher.

The VIX has been a mixed predictor of market bottoms. (Specify mate!) But taken with Thursday's follow-through, it is another key sign that this is not the time to leave the market.

Also on your side, : time. Since 1929 there have been 15 bear markets, according to Standard & Poor's. They have averaged 19 months in length. That includes 1990's July-October plunge, which fell 0.1 percentage point short of being a full-fledged bear, a sell-off of 20% or more.

This current bear is already a shade more than 12 months old. If history is an accurate guide, that puts us much closer to the end of the current swoon than its start."

Really - that means we've got another 7 months to go. What a bitch! He's contradicted himself already. Goner.

What the hell are they not telling us? When did the VIX peak during the dot-com bust? Have you heard anything about that? (if you get nothing else out of this, take atleast that much away - and ask that question the next-time someone mentions the VIX) I'll bet it was nowhere near the bottom. No sir - there was a massive downturn and volatility, and then, people just resigned themselves to either waiting it out or pulling out completely with big losses and stocks just petered out - a lingering death.

You have to wonder about how stocks fall during the "resigned to falling" phase. What's going on? When someone sells - someone else has to buy. To entice a buyer, you have to lower the price if noone is willing to buy at the prevailing price. So, really what's going on during this second post-VIX-peak phase of the bust is that the professionals are getting back in and getting ready to sell when the second round of bargain-hunting fuelled volatility comes. Indeed - if they dumped all their shares at once - then the first, highly-volatile phase would not have ended yet.

When you're told to buy now - look closely at the person who's advising you. When you're in a confirmed downtrend is not the right time. After you plateau out (a phrase I learnt from my CEO in a round-table), and after a couple false starts, you can start getting in at the dips - but, like someone pointed out - for the confidence to return (so you can see returns on your investment because greater-fools exist), will take a few years.

With absolutely no formal training, when the DOW was still above 11k, I was able to predict correctly that we could see 9000 or 8000 - which seemed deadly at that time - but, now that it's over, it doesn't seem so bad after all. Can we see 12000 before the market bottoms out completely? Sure - a 50% rebound is easier on a smaller principal - that's basic arithmetic.

Is this different from 1987? Ho ho ho. You bet! Did people make the same mistakes they are making now? You bet! Were they punished then? Absolutely not. Reason? That crash was a pure correction - it was purely technical - even now, people don't know the exact reason. The real reason was that due to the prevailing force in the market at that time, a positive feedback situation resulted - which only ended when the market closed - and time was then available for correction. In those days, computers couldn't keep things moving like they can now - so human intervention could actually do something. Nope - we're all screwed - for another 6 months anyway? After that? What - think about the national debt crossing 10 trillion, think about China owning a lot of that debt, about the fact that the houses have already been built - so if you need a new house - you buy one that is new because no one has lived in it - but is already 4 years old. About the fact that GE is to reinvent itself froma diversified operation back to a focussed technology company. Think about all that and you'll see that you're better of waiting a few months. Trust me - in the stock market - no one lost out from waiting out 6 months. Even in the greatest bull market - unless you got in at the top - you could wait out 6 months. If you get in now, you're going to be taken for a ride.

That being said - I do want the market to go down because I've pulled out and need to get back in lower:) So, treat my advice with caution. I'm looking out for myself not for you:)

20 Moves

How I spent last evening.

And 5 minutes of this evening. (Not without blemishes, unfortunately)

BTW, today was the first time I saw (I think) a repo man - a big, white guy in a tow-truck with Recovery Solutions somewhere on it going all around the complex looking for a certain car.

Celebrity Jeopardy - Good Ones

Barack: Pleased to be here Jay. I want to thank every one of these lovely people who have paid $28k to be here tonight.

Sarah: I'm so excited to be in a foreign country! (This is LA). What? How come no one speaks English?

Question: Burn After Reading; Bush: What do I do with the Constitution? (Right) I'm kidding Jay. I never actually read the c.

Question: Oil of Olay; Bush: What were we looking for when we invaded Olay?

Question: 700 billion; Bush: How many ppl knew Clay Aiken was g before that ppl mag article?

More from Jay

Jury selection started in the OJ Simpson robbery trial yesterday. I just hope this trial isn't going to be divisive. Remember, the last time white people thought one thing, black people thought another thing and Michael Jackson - he didn't know what to think.

OJ was furious. He told the judge flat out - "Your H, I'm a murderer not a thief."

Let's talk to Kim Jong Il. Kim are you there? I'm here Jay. Let me ask you this - are there any benefits to dying? Well, I was finally able to get out of my cellphone contract. Son of a b!

Obama campaign is having trouble meeting its fundraising goals. In fact, Obama now says he will take change. He's willing to accept change.

Kim Jong Il hasn't been seen for 6 months. There are two possibilities - he's either in poor health or he's got a show on NBC.

Live Longer with Pancreatic Cancer

This is a true "time-saver" post - even though it's not tech-savvy. Heard today about someone who was given 6 months to live with pancreatic cancer and lived about seven years. He did it by taking hot baths every day. If one didn't ease the pain, he would take another one. Apparently, it worked like an artificial fever and stimulated his immune system. He got the idea from a time when he felt the flu coming and fell asleep - next to the fire. Next morning, he was fine - no flu - and he put two and two together. 

Long life!

Celebrities who succumbed to pancreatic cancer : 

Alex Trebek, Steve Jobs, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Aretha Franklin, John Hurt, Luciano Pavarotti, Sharon Jones, Alan Rickman, Paul Kalanithi

Tom J, J Kennedy, B Clinton, E Spitzer, J Edwards,...

The dems haven't learnt their lesson yet.

Some good ones I heard on Jay:

John Mccain announced his choice for VP - Sara Palin. What do we know about her? Her name is Sara Palin. That's it.

The young lady who was Elliot Spitzer's call girl has been identified as Ashlee Dupree. She said she doesn't want to be thought of as a monster. She can also play a Catholic Schoolgirl, a nurse, a dominatrix, a number of things.

John Edwards now admits he had an affair. How do you like that? A personal injury lawyer who turns out to be a sleazeball. Who could have seen that one coming?

The escort service that put Spitzer's hooker on the train from NY to Washington told her that he might ask for something that wasn't safe. Yah! He put her on Amtrak - right there is something not safe!

And Bill Clinton was upset that Spitzer went to a hotel. He said, 'Come on! Get a desk!'

Geraldine F has quit the Hillary campaign after remarks she made that Barack was where he was because he was black. I think her new job is sidekick for Don Imus. I wonder if people can be more popular because they're black. Think about it - remember how popular MJ was when he was black? He was the biggest star in the world. The day he turned white, nothing - can't give it away.

Lest We Forget

Finished Elaine Landau's book. Wasn't very long - actually, it was a children's book: In Dec 1943, I was shipped from Plashow to a camp which supplied workers for an ammunition factory. Conditions were somewhat better there, as inmates were not generally killed unless they disobeyed. We worked from early morning until late afternoon. For sustenance, we were given a small bowl of clear soup and a cup of something that resembled coffee. Some of the men were so hungry that they'd lick drops of spilled soup from off the ground. We slept on the floor of a barracks that teemed with lice and rodents. One girl was badly bitten by a rat on her nose. (I remember Vladek Spiegelman in Maus - "if anyone spilled him even a drop, they fought until there was blood") 

The living conditions were abominable. Inmates slept so tightly packed together that you were forced to lie on your side. Every few hours, at the guard's command, we had to turn over, but it wasn't always easy to do so. If the person next to you died during the night, you had to turn his body over before turning yours. If you didn't act immediately on command, you might be beaten to death or taken outside and shot. (Basically, killing was only a means - it seems like they really wanted to strike terror into these people and humiliate them. My question - what lessons did the two sides learn after this experience. Germany today is the third most ethnically heterogenous country in the world (or second?). Is that through a deliberately enforced policy?

Atonement? Was it that there were no other scapegoats for hitler to pick on? The whole world was in a recession? Why should the Germans feel bad any more than the others?) At Auschwitz, I was assigned to work outside digging ditches. We dug in the freezing cold and rain, wearing only the thin striped dresses issued to us. The ditches werern't to be used for any particular purpose; the Nazis were merely trying to work us to death. And many did die of sickness, cold, exhaustion, and starvation. I wandered alone in the woods for several days. I had to eat grass and other forest vegetation to stay alive. But I knew liberation was near, and I was determined to survive. Yet I was still extremely aware of being an escaped Jew in enemy territory. I didn't dare allow any of the local people to see me. Now I had to live by my wits, and miscalculation could cost me my life. (Really? Grass and vegetation? Sounds like salad. I remember a Chaplin movie where he pulls out a handfull of grass and munches on the fresh stems) However, not everyone was immediately gassed. I was sent to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. There I spent five weeks on an outdoor work detail chopping down forest trees from six o'clock in the morning until dark. We couldn't stop to rest even for a moment as we were surrounded by armed guards and German shepherd dogs that were trained to kill. Those trees weren't being cut for any particular use. If I'd remained on that detail for another week, I don't think I'd have survived. (That's a common theme - gruelling physical labour that was not serving any purpose. This bit about trees is crazy. Why would the Germans want to spoil their own country?) We showered with cold water, and since we had no soap it was difficult to become really clean. After a few weeks, the guards realized that we were unable to function this way so they gave us soap. But when we saw what the soap was made of, we couldn't use it. 

It had been manufactured from the remains of Jewish bodies and bore a stamp which read, MADE FROM PURE JEWISH FAT. I had no way of knowing if the fat used in the soap was my father's, my brother's, or whose. We later learned that when Jews were gassed at some extermination camps such as Auschwitz, their bodies weren't always taken directly to the crematorium to be burned. Too many corpses were frequently produced to fuel the ovens simultaneously. Depending on the circumstances, one to three hundred people might die at once. Their freshly gassed bodies would be laid outside the ground and used as raw materials for German products. Their hair was stuffed into pillows and mattresses, their fat was used to make soap and their bones sent to German glue factories. The gold from their tooth fillings was extracted and used to help support the Nazi cause. (BTW, watching Connections a few months ago - I saw something similar. During the industrial revolution, England faced a food crisis - they needed fertilizer. Guess where the potash came from - they imported bones from cemetaries in Italy. Neat? Dead Italians go into living Brits - through the plants of course)

Pushed to the Edge

Any holocaust book has its share of hard-to-believe stuff. Landau's is no exception: 

We were shocked as we watched both storm troopers and local residents burning books by Jewish authors. We couldn't believe that this was happening in Germany, a country known for its advanced culture and outstanding achievements in music, art, and science. (I have to contrast that with what a professor once said about Germany - Germany has no culture - in the office the boss will definitely try to take advantage of his secretary. You have to pity the secretaries. Of their salary, they have to spend so much on lippenschtift and such. I'm not making this up. Of course, he's talking about a specific aspect of culture. If they hadn't any kultur at all, he wouldn't have dedicated his whole life to studying them.) The Nazis also forced my mother to work in an electronics factory. Something hideous must have happened to her there. She was crying when she returned from her first day of work. She looked at me and said that she was tired and needed to rest. She went into the bedroom to lie down and said that she didn't want to be disturbed. When my father came home later, he was unable to wake her. It was then that we realized she'd taken an overdose of sleeping pills and committed suicide.

'This is your last opportunity to give us whatever you have. If you don't, and it's found on you, you'll be immediately shot.' I knew my father had taken both money and diamonds along, so I begged him to go to the rest room and flush it all down the toilet. He did so, because even throwing our money away was preferable to giving it to the Nazis. (Man, who do you suppose got those diamonds. Are they still lying in the dust of Berlin station?) 

There were four hundred young women at the camp and we were given nearly nothing to eat. We were starving and desperate. One day, a horse dropped dead in the yard behind our factory building. We were so famished that we cut ourselves pieces of the animal, which we ate raw. (Horse sushi. When they got here, they opened Sizzler's) This may sound strange, but in a way Kristallnacht was like a godsend because it warned us of things to come. (I guess so. There was international outrage and the Nazis calmed down a bit. Most people who were able to, left. But, the whole world was already in an economic recession, so it was hard to emigrate) To my amazement, I saw some parents actually push their own children away. I guess they knew they couldn't save them, so they tried to save themselves. It was hard for me to believe that a mother would run from her child, but evidently the fear of death can be overwhelming. Our train ride ended at Theresienstadt. After being there only a week, I came down with scarlet fever. I was quarantined for six weeks, but no medication was available. After I began to recover, I did farm work in the fields with a group of other young people. We'd get up early in the morning and stand on line for roll call. On one occasion, the entire camp was made to stand for forty-eight hours for roll call. We weren't permitted to eat or sleep during those days. (Two days I can understand. Was it Elie Wiesel or Vladek Spiegelman who said about being transported in the cattle car? It stopped at one place for weeks. For weeks!! Can you imagine people being trapped in that kind of space for weeks? No food, no bowel movement? It's a miracle anyone survived at all)

Deutsche Disziplin

From Elaine Landau's book: After a while I, along with a number of others, was taken from Theresienstadt to a site near Berlin where we worked on a construction crew building lodgings for Gestapo officers. I remained on the project for about a year. We did hard physical labour daily for at least fifteen-hour shifts. At night we slept on a wooden board. At times, the guards' treatment of us was extremely harsh. Once when a guard felt I wasn't working fast enough, he hit me in the mouth with a large steel pipe, knocking out all my teeth. I also acquired a number of scars from the frequent beatings.

Special Mention Jorg Seyfferth

Considering how many idiots there are online who waste your time, this guy deserves some praise for giving me what I want in 2 seconds. To be fair, this *t had a link to Jorg's page. This is so simple to do, yet so many guys get it all wrong - either it don't work or it's as user-unfriendly as the Indian subcontinent.

Here's a really crappy implementation:

http://basicer.com/figlet.php

And, as promised (even though he hasn't provided a custom service or help on-demand,..

Pass the MIc (Montreal)

A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken rolls over and lights a cigarette and say "Well, I guess that answers that question."

Why do Canadians always do it doggie style? So they can both watch the ice-hockey game.

A man walks into a doc's office with a huge piece of carrot coming out of one ear and a huge chunk of broccoli sticking out of another ear and a potato on his nose and says "Doc I don't feel well." Doc says "You haven't been eating right."

Why do seagulls fly over the sea? Coz if they flow over the bay, they'd be bagels.

The First Seven Years

July 11 was the day I landed on this continent - seven years ago. Before arriving, I had corresponded with a friend who had done a stint at Tech and was in NY at the time. "Which you must visit". Who would guess that I would have exactly two months before the skyline would change forever? Anyhow, I've met more than one Rachel and Leah - not an important fact, but I just mention that because of my choice of title.

Would I have done anything differently? Plenty. First, my approach was wrong. When I got here, I expected a wholehearted reception into something I felt deprived off in India - wireless systems. I felt I could leave the analog stuff behind. What I've since learned - you enjoy what you you're good at. I should have built on my knowledge and kept my eyes open for opportunities. Then, don't gamble. When I had saved up $10k of my own money in 2003, I went into stocks and lost a whole bunch. At that time I realized how well spent it would have been on trying to acquire hard to find knowledge by attending specialized courses. And, what about the vacations I could have taken. No, what I should have done was immediately sharpen my saws and practise what I already knew. In my profession, numbers are everything - knowing how to extract the numbers that matter is a big deal. That's the "tools" part. You can be a great architect, but, without someone who knows the tools - to do the building, you're never leaving the desk. In my profession, architect and mason are one. I should have set up my tool suite as soon as I could, and the ideas would have come for the designs. Then, I could have published my way to greener pastures in no time.

And the hardest one, planning is everything - one hour of planning is worth three hours of execution. EXPECT THE BEST ALWAYS - because that decides your attitude. BUT, always plan for the worst. And, you'll be the more confident knowing that you have every scenario covered. Offer to work for free - with the intention of learning. When you're scouting new opportunities, don't make the approach looking for what they can give you - first think about what you can offer. YOu're obviously doing it to learn something new. If you're in the university trying to earn income - you better have a serious talk with someone. If you play your cards right, you have a chance to meet great people in a laid back setting, have a great gym, look at cute girls all the time and learn. Do it wrong and you'll be running from pillar to post wondering why it's all happening to you.

Plan, plan, plan. Know that you have a hard time getting to an 8 O'clock class and plan for that. SAving is important. But, if you can get extra value from an extra $100 a month invested smartly, consider that money well spent. If you start off $5k extra when you leave school, who's going to dispute the couple of grand you invested in being more productive?

Plan, plan, plan. Visualize scenarios ahead of time - that way, you will be able to seize opportunities when they arise. If you don't, you'll realize hours or days later what the person actually had in mind. For example, if you have a meeting with a professor whose research interests you, spend some time the evening before thinking about what you plan to ask and what his responses might be.

Make use of your mentors and advisors. I just realize now that it's not a pleasant prospect for me to sit down and think about how the next couple of years might turn out. But, that's what I must do. And, quite honestly, I've never done that before in my life. But, if I had done that 7 years ago.... foooh.

Use tools! Who said laptops are for geeks? Maybe you don't need one. Maybe you can keep your data online in your email account or on your blog. But, find out what's available and how it can benefit you. The return I've got from the $1k I invested in my desktop has been atleast 10x if not more. Same for my car which cost me $3.4k. One tool that I didn't know about was dashboarding - which I've recently started using. Know how comforting it is to have vital information available readily on the dashboard of your car? Likewise, you should use tools - wall planner, Excel spreadsheet, whatever works for you to keep an eye on the important goings-on in your life. Is there going to be an important meeting on Wednesday? How about you try to get ready on Monday and, while trying to get ready find the ten key questions that you can try to get answered on Tuesday? I used to be a huge fan of text-journaling, but now I'm into spreadsheets.

Summing up very quickly my advice to the next generation of grad students : manage your energy religiously - spend what you need to - if you need a parking permit, think about it, good food, energy drinks, carry a bottle of cold water always,...
Start looking for jobs and internships from day one! Things happen in cycles and it's a good idea to be ready when the tide turns. There are easily 30 companies out there, each one doing something that you'll find interesting. Keep your eyes open, read Yahoo and watch for press releases. When you see a name, try first.last@company.com and say you like what they're doing; are they looking for people? I once got an all-expenses paid trip to California this way. They later said I wasn't a close enough match, but they folded up a year later anyway:)

Above all, be grateful. You live in a time of unbelievable opportunity. This has come about because of the organized effort of great people, and great vision. Realize that and resolve to always play by the rules. You count on other people. Make sure that you will always be someone who can be counted on. Volunteer your time and skills - think of it as sacred. Appreciate the love and help you give and receive. The best to you all and god bless all of you.

A Fireside Chat

Maj. Gen. Mary L. Saunders

Incredible wit and pace that delivers a knockout punch. Here's a true leader. Ambition, mental toughness, priorities, all there. She started off talking about obstacles in her early life - why couldn't I have been born rich instead of just beautiful. Because if you're only beautiful, then you have to think about how to use it. And the thing about beauty is that it fades. Now, looking at her at 60, I don't know if she was beautiful as a young woman or not, but let's give her the benefit of doubt:)

Life is not fair. It just is.

Learn about culture. That helps working effectively.

Have goals. If you want a certain lifestyle, know what you're going to have to do to get it.

• Mentors are important in helping you achieve your goals. 
• Your mentor doesn't have to love you. 
• It's important to be in a job with metrics - that way, when you meet expectations, you can expect a reward - promotion, raise, etc. Otherwise, disappointment awaits.

I am an introvert - INTJ. I had to learn to succeed in spite of that. Someone told me - this is the USofA. You can't be a black female and be an introvert.

I can't not read. My teacher gave me 100 books to read in the summer. I did that and more.

Recommended reading

• Shifting
• Power of Focus
• The Alpha Male Syndrome
• Blue Ocean Strategy

Inspired by the life of Bessie Coleman. Black girl born to sharecroppers in the south. Wants to be a figher pilot. Good luck. But, learns just enough French to move to Europe and train in Europe. Now!

If she had to do it over - she would still have gone into the military, but she would have gotten out earlier and gone into the stock market. (that part, I confess, did come across as shallow)

Live and Let Live

Not done with wasting enough time, I watched Live and Let Die again yesterday. The only bond movie with some real romance. Why? Because it has the number one Bond girl of all time - Jane Seymour. I only wanted to see that one shot of her wince when Kanaga nicks Bond's arm before feeding him to the shark. There are tonnes of deadly shots of her of course. I'll leave you with what I consider the best. And of course, you never can tell about people in real life can you?:) Check this out. Also reading Wiki's page on her might dispell some notions.

Genius - by Rabinow

"I promised earlier in the story to give my definition of a genius. A genius is a person I meet at a cocktail party who asks me what I'm doing. I say that I build reading machines. The next question is, "What are reading machines?" I start to tell. Ten minutes after I start, my listener knows more about reading machines than I do. I have met such people. 

That's genius." Oversimple?

Rabinow poses this problem in his book (inventing for fun and profit) :

Two men are on a desert island and haven't drunk water for a while. After a rain, they find a glass bottle upright in the sand and full to the brim. It's irregular, so that there is no symmetry at all. How can they divider the water equally. No implements of any kind are needed. They could be stark naked, though that has nothing to do with it. It is important to know that it can be done.

He says it took him about one hour. How long did it take me? About 5 minutes - atleast - I think I've got it:) Let's see ... :)

Yup, it was right. And, my proposed solution to the case of the bottle being only partially full but the same problem being posed was also right. According to him, he would have offered me a job:)

A Taste of China

from the National Enquirer. Didn't believe it when I saw it waiting in line at the Kroger. So I went online and searched and, as everyone knows, you have to be careful what you search for. You may find it. Seems ridiculous that people can actually do such stuff, but, ... the white man came up with "asiatic" to describe things that didn't exist in his vocab before.

Here's something that may or may not be true :

Tigers, bears and monkeys perform in a degrading "entertainment". Bears wear dresses, balance on balls and not only ride bicycles but mount horses too.

The showpiece is a bear riding a bike on a high wire above a parade of tigers, monkeys and trumpet-playing bears.

And don't ask me why I find this one funny :

Although it is illegal, the zoo is quite open about its activities. In fact, it boasts of having 140 dead tigers in freezers ready for the plate.

Something about "boasts about having... " just cracks me up. I'm actually laughing about that as I type this.

I guess there are two Chinas - the one in China and the one made up of people outside China, who one hopes are decent. And we'll just have to wait for the China outside China to become more powerful than the China in China to do something.

Can you believe Badaling has 1300 tigers in one location? Phew - I'd think they'd start eating each other if there were that many.

92 and Counting

Met the second oldest person I've ever met in my life today. I could never have guessed he was 92. Ironically, the oldest people I've met in my life upto this point were in India - a 95 year old Australian woman in 2001 and a relative who's going to be 90 in February. I say ironically because India is orders of magnitude below the US in quality of life, etc. But, make no mistake - America still has the oldest people around. For all you know, the guy who actually killed Lincoln could still be out there trying to kill another Republican president.

What's the secret? Mr. Miller spent 37 years in the coal mines - the hard physical labour.