Let me tell you a story and my views which i came across during my trip to Bombay – India.

I dont know if population in india is a boon or a curse. A loss or profit. An asset or liability? I think its a loss. Read below to know why

This happened about a week ago…

There is a busy MObile and accessories shop in middle of Mahim Suburbs. Being on the main road this shop is flooded like greedy property investors.

Now this is a shop where like everywhere else, demand is more than supply. Customers are more but the service providers are less.. educated.
The concept of customer service? You will be lucky if you get any service at all.

This is what happened when i went there to buy something..

This mobile shop sells everything from mobile accessories to recharge cards and unfriendly smiles on the face of the salesman.

2 youths in their early twenties were sitting on their tall chairs in the shop which was already 3 feet above the road level. So you can imagine customers looking up to buy things and then looking down upon what they purchased

The sellers were least interested in their customers and i guess they were a hindrance to them. This is a place where sellers wont sell and buyers wont budge. It is a sellers market and ignorant and innocent customers are at mercy at whatever is thrown at them.

Rude, careless, bored, distracted, out of place, irrtated are just few good adjectives i can use for the sellers of this mobile shop. Looked like they are not sitting in the shop to sell but waiting for day to end so they can go home. Really cant blame them. There is no ownershiip. If you look at many, arent most like this? Personal comfort overrides everything else.

Any ways..

I noticed this female customer who tries to push through the windowshopping male crowd to enquire about a mobile recharge. The salesman is least bothered and continues to listen to his fav songs on headphone. Customer tries to raise her voice and asks again and no reply. After 3 attempts the bugged salesman with no eye contact says, “whatever your looking for is not available”. check other stores”. I am sure the salesman didnt bother to listen what the customer wanted.

Dissapointed and angry customer fumes out of the shop where her bf / husband i dont know, pushes her from behind asking where she had been in middle of the road and every one watches and moves on.. The lady goes and approach other shops. I dont know what happened as i obvoiusly didnt followed her

Now this is bad. No respect to a person at home means no respect and consideration for the person outside. Unfortunately our our society lacks education and hasnt moved on with changed times. What about innovation and refinement of old thinking and values?

Our morale is so low that we have stopped expecting. And if some one does what he or she should, we suspect. This discourages goodness and another one bites the dust. I dont know where all these differences and behavior pattern is leading us to.. But the future to me does not look good.

A mass movement and education is needed for younger folks so they can know their rights and law and what is right and wrong. This not only empowers them to be more confident, sensible and respectful citizens but also spread the good word around.

I envision a change at grassroot level. Like a bottom up approach vs the topdown approach which is how india works currently.

The road to this change is not easy but with persistence and attitude similar like minded people this can be achieved.!

Until then Retail has a long way to go..

Do share your thoughts on what you would do to make situations better.
Thanks for reading..
Please share..

17 Motivational Quotes to Honor Zig Ziglar

1) ”Every choice you make has an end result.” (Tweet This Quote)

2) ”Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” (Tweet This Quote)

3) ”Your business is never really good or bad ‘out there.’ Your business is either good or bad right between your own two ears.” (Tweet This Quote)

4) ”People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” (Tweet This Quote)

5) ”A goal properly set is halfway reached.” (Tweet This Quote)

6) ”If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.” (Tweet This Quote)

7) ”Remember that failure is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.” (Tweet This Quote)

8) ”If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.” (Tweet This Quote)

9) ”If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” (Tweet This Quote)

10) ”If you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.” (Tweet This Quote)

11) ”Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.” (Tweet This Quote)

12) ”When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.” (Tweet This Quote)

13) ”You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” (Tweet This Quote)

14) ”Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.” (Tweet This Quote)

15) ”Timid salesmen have skinny kids.” (Tweet This Quote)

16) ”For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.” (Tweet This Quote)

17) ”Stop selling. Start helping.” (Tweet This Quote)

Zig Ziglar will be greatly missed, but we can still all learn a lot from his motivational wisdom. Thank you, Zig.

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33889/17-Inspirational-Sales-Marketing-Quotes-to-Honor-Zig-Ziglar.aspx#ixzz2DZjLc3kh

Am sorry to greet you on this page with this tragic photo. Neither did i like it. I was disturbed when i first saw it. Woke up at 2 am right now, disturbed by above image i saw in 1 of newspapers last afternoon. This post is about my feelings which i want to share.

What goes on to your mind when you see it.? Dont know about you but it leaves me worried and depressed about the future of this world and what lies ahead.

These 4 kids, barely knew their names. They dont even know what the world is and what lies ahead until their future was wiped out by the war / bomb attack.

Attack? who does all this? What do people want? who are these people? are they getting it?  what are they doing if they are getting it? These are some of the many questions that comes to mind if you try to find out the root cause of this hatred and enmity.

My theory of life is simple, This world is like a log of wood, which is floating on rough waters. We dont know how deep is the water, when will the next wave of disaster come. or which direction we are going. At macro level, these things are beyond our control and we leave it to science or the creators of this life to deal with.

The second part is the log of wood which is like earth. We are on it! We  7+ billion humans are on it, and the way it looks right now is that we are not a happy bunch of people. We are fighting, what for? i dont know the full picture, there is little i or you can do as long as it doesnt bothers our daily existence. Even for the ones to whom it matters, its beyond our controls.

In todays normal world, i am expected to look at this picture, get to know the news and then move on with my business. that’s it! its meant to be a news item to me and nothing else. Media is doing a good job of spreading the news. Just like school book chapter, we need to keep on turning the pages and move to the next chapter. Something doesn’t seem right here.

How small we are.. I have never felt so powerless and disabled. Imagine you are 1 of the 7+ person on the wood and everyone is trying to push and kick the other one out of the woods.  on this tiny log of wood which is in the middle of the mighty sea. I want to know the root cause of this.

I believe there are few people who see the world as a different place. A world where everything should be like the way they want. Right or wrong i dont know. If it is wrong, there is a problem. These are determined bunch of people, they will do all possible things to get it. So what they do? They sell their idea and people buy it. So if the fire started from 1 person, it spreads and others who are not covered get burnt. They dont even know why this fire? and how why it started in first place. They don’t have any dog in this fight. So you see the cause and relation here.? Thats an unfair balance.

I guess through this post i am trying to tell you to not be that person to spread the fire. You need to know we are in this world together for love and peace. Life is a wonderful gift. Lets cherish and enjoy this precious gift. The kids who died in this fight didnt deserve this. It becomes our responsibility to stop this through dialogues. Killing people is no solution?! Hell not!.

These kids must be so wonderful. So full of life one moment and lifeless the next moment. This is alarming and i worry for the future and my kids. I hope the future is better than mine. Hope is all i live on. Hope is also a factor of what we do today which will change the tomorrow

I pray to almighty to give courage and strength to the survivors of tragedy in this world. I hope they get a fair chance to live a happy life.

Suddenly this life looks like a burden isnt it? to carry on year after year. Wish someone Happy New Year and at the same time, some go back to your old dirty tricky ways. Strange! I hope people come back to their senses and the world is cool again.

If we all act responsibly we can make this world a better place. You be the judge

….

Its 3 am now and already 1 hour in this post. I hope i am able to express my point. This was an instantaneous post where i let my thoughts rule the grammar so please excuse me also for spelling mistakes. I am in no mood to curate it at this hour.

Please add your comments and share if you agree. Thanks.

*************** Lets Make this world Cool Again**************************

Quotes by Julian Treasure

• “[Ocean surf] has the frequency of roughly 12 cycles per minute. And … 12 cycles per minute is [also] roughly the frequency of the breathing of a sleeping human. There is a deep resonance with being at rest.”
• “Birdsong is a sound which most people find reassuring. There is a reason for that. Over hundreds of thousands of years we’ve learned that when the birds are singing, things are safe. It’s when they stop you need to be worried.”
• “You are one-third as productive in open-plan offices as in quiet rooms.”
• “Sound is complex. There are many countervailing influences. It can be a bit like a bowl of spaghetti: sometimes you just have to eat it and see what happens.”
• “The world is now so noisy with this cacophony going on visually and auditorily, it’s just hard to listen; it’s tiring to listen.”
• “We spend roughly 60 percent of our communication time listening, but we’re not very good at it. We retain just 25 percent of what we hear.”

Below is the transcript for the video

It’s time to start designing for our ears. Architects and designers tend to focus exclusively on these. They use these to design with and they design for them, which is why we end up sitting in restaurants that look like this — (loud crowd noise) — and sound like this,shouting from a foot away to try and be heard by our dinner companion, or why we get on airplanes — (flight attendant announcements) — which cost 200 million pounds, with somebody talking through an old-fashioned telephone handset on a cheap stereo system,making us jump out of our skins.

We’re designing environments that make us crazy. (Laughter) And it’s not just our quality of life which suffers. It’s our health, our social behavior, and our productivity as well.

How does this work? Well, two ways. First of all, ambience. I have a whole TEDTalk about this. Sound affects us physiologically, psychologically, cognitively and behaviorally all the time. The sound around us is affecting us even though we’re not conscious of it. There’s a second way though, as well. That’s interference. Communication requires sending and receiving, and I have another whole TEDTalk about the importance of conscious listening,but I can send as well as I like, and you can be brilliant conscious listeners. If the space I’m sending it in is not effective, that communication can’t happen.

Spaces tend to include noise and acoustics. A room like this has acoustics, this one very good acoustics. Many rooms are not so good. Let me give you some examples from a couple of areas which I think we all care about: health and education. (Hospital noises) When I was visiting my terminally ill father in a hospital, I was asking myself, how does anybody get well in a place that sounds like this? Hospital sound is getting worse all the time. Noise levels in hospitals have doubled in the last few years, and it affects not just the patients but also the people working there. I think we would like for dispensing errors to be zero, wouldn’t we? And yet, as noise levels go up, so do the errors in dispensing made by the staff in hospitals. Most of all, though, it affects the patients, and that could be you, it could be me. Sleep is absolutely crucial for recovery. It’s when we regenerate, when we rebuild ourselves, and with threatening noise like this going on, your body, even if you are able to sleep, your body is telling you, “I’m under threat. This is dangerous.” And the quality of sleep is degraded, and so is our recovery. There are just huge benefits to come from designing for the ears in our health care. This is an area I intend to take on this year.

Education. When I see a classroom that looks like this, can you imagine how this sounds?I am forced to ask myself a question. (“Do architects have ears?”) (Laughter) Now, that’s a little unfair. Some of my best friends are architects. (Laughter) And they definitely do have ears. But I think sometimes they don’t use them when they’re designing buildings. Here’s a case in point. This is a 32-million-pound flagship academy school which was built quite recently in the U.K. and designed by one of Britain’s top architects. Unfortunately, it was designed like a corporate headquarters, with a vast central atrium and classrooms leading off it with no back walls at all. The children couldn’t hear their teachers. They had to go back in and spend 600,000 pounds putting the walls in. Let’s stop this madness of open plan classrooms right now, please.

It’s not just these modern buildings which suffer. Old-fashioned classrooms suffer too. A study in Florida just a few years ago found that if you’re sitting where this photograph was taken in the classroom, row four, speech intelligibility is just 50 percent. Children are losing one word in two. Now that doesn’t mean they only get half their education, but it does mean they have to work very hard to join the dots and understand what’s going on.

This is affected massively by reverberation time, how reverberant a room is. In a classroom with a reverberation time of 1.2 seconds, which is pretty common, this is what it sounds like.

Not so good, is it? If you take that 1.2 seconds down to 0.4 seconds by installing acoustic treatments, sound absorbing materials and so forth, this is what you get.

Voice: In language, infinitely many words can be written with a small set of letters. In arithmetic, infinitely many numbers can be composed from just a few digits with the help of the simple zero.

Julian Treasure: What a difference. Now that education you would receive, and thanks to the British acoustician Adrian James for those simulations. The signal was the same, the background noise was the same. All that changed was the acoustics of the classroom in those two examples.

If education can be likened to watering a garden, which is a fair metaphor, sadly, much of the water is evaporating before it reaches the flowers, especially for some groups, for example, those with hearing impairment. Now that’s not just deaf children. That could be any child who’s got a cold, glue ear, an ear infection, even hay fever. On a given day, one in eight children fall into that group, on any given day. Then you have children for whom English is a second language, or whatever they’re being taught in is a second language. In the U.K., that’s more than 10 percent of the school population. And finally, after Susan Cain’s wonderful TEDTalk in February, we know that introverts find it very difficult to relatewhen they’re in a noisy environment doing group work. Add those up. That is a lot of childrenwho are not receiving their education properly.

It’s not just the children who are affected, though. (Noisy conversation) This study in Germany found the average noise level in classrooms is 65 decibels. I have to really raise my voice to talk over 65 decibels of sound, and teachers are not just raising their voices.This chart maps the teacher’s heart rate against the noise level. Noise goes up, heart rate goes up. That is not good for you. In fact, 65 decibels is the very level at which this big survey of all the evidence on noise and health found that, that is the threshold for the danger of myocardial infarction. To you and me, that’s a heart attack. It may not be pushing the boat out too far to suggest that many teachers are losing significant life expectancy by teaching in environments like that day after day.

What does it cost to treat a classroom down to that 0.4-second reverberation time? Two and a half thousand pounds. And the Essex study which has just been done in the U.K., which incidentally showed that when you do this, you do not just make a room that’s suitable for hearing-impaired children, you make a room where behavior improves, and results improve significantly, this found that sending a child out of area to a school that does have such a room, if you don’t have one, costs 90,000 pounds a year. I think the economics are pretty clear on this.

I’m glad that debate is happening on this. I just moderated a major conference in London a few weeks ago called Sound Education, which brought together top acousticians,government people, teachers, and so forth. We’re at last starting to debate this issue, and the benefits that are available for designing for the ears in education, unbelievable. Out of that conference, incidentally, also came a free app which is designed to help children studyif they’re having to work at home, for example, in a noisy kitchen. And that’s free out of that conference.

Let’s broaden the perspective a little bit and look at cities. We have urban planners. Where are the urban sound planners? I don’t know of one in the world, and the opportunity is thereto transform our experience in our cities. The World Health Organization estimates that a quarter of Europe’s population is having its sleep degraded by noise in cities. We can do better than that.

And in our offices, we spend a lot of time at work. Where are the office sound planners?People who say, don’t sit that team next to this team, because they like noise and they need quiet. Or who say, don’t spend all your budget on a huge screen in the conference room, and then place one tiny microphone in the middle of a table for 30 people. (Laughter)If you can hear me, you can understand me without seeing me. If you can see me without hearing me, that does not work. So office sound is a huge area, and incidentally, noise in offices has been shown to make people less helpful, less enjoy their teamwork, and less productive at work.

Finally, we have homes. We use interior designers. Where are the interior sound designers?Hey, let’s all be interior sound designers, take on listening to our rooms and designing sound that’s effective and appropriate.

My friend Richard Mazuch, an architect in London, coined the phrase “invisible architecture.” I love that phrase. It’s about designing, not appearance, but experience, so that we have spaces that sound as good as they look, that are fit for purpose, that improve our quality of life, our health and well being, our social behavior and our productivity.

Are you reading this while in your office? Are you reading this at home? Pause right at this moment and see the image again…

Does it tell you anything? It sure made me think. Time is limited yet we live like there will always be tomorrow for us to do the same thing we are doing today.

Whatever it is that you are doing. Are you happy with it? Could it be any better?

For me the answer is YES. It can be wayyy better than it is right now.

Now this is wishful thinking. Every one wants the moon but only a few get it. Even the journey to the moon started in a basement when Gemini 8 was built for Niel Armstrong. It all started with a seed of thought that lead to action.

Through this post i want to challenge you to think harder about where you are right now and where you want to be. Once that is clear the next most important step is to take action.

What are you doing about getting there? After all its your life. No one else cares. World is too busy figuring out what they want to become. The only person to make it happen for you is YOU. YOU have tremendous power within. Try finding it for your good.

I want to end this post with 2 questions.

1. WHAT YOU WANT?
2. WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO GET IT?

PS: Written this post while in office My journey to where i want to be has already begun. has yours?

What is life. meaning of life

All birds find shelter during rain.
But Eagle avoids rain by flying above the Clouds.
Problems are common, but attitude makes the difference!

Carbon credits are a financial instrument derived from the international commitment to reduce greenhouse gases which have been polluting our atmosphere since the industrial revolution.

One carbon credit is equivalent to one metric tonne of harmful CO2 that has been absorbed, sequestered or avoided in one location and can be purchased by a polluting entity to offset their CO2 emissions in another location.

There are two sectors within the carbon markets – compliance and voluntary.  The compliance market is for those businesses and organisations mandated to reduce or offset emissions under the terms of the Kyoto protocol.  This market has proven to be more volatile than the voluntary market due to its connection with mandatory emissions offsetting which in effect, is a compulsory carbon tax.

The voluntary market, which has achieved significantly more growth than the compliance market, concentrates on businesses and organisations wishing to align themselves with the positive message of good ecological practice by including low carbon strategies in their corporate governance.

Voluntary carbon credits also appeal to individual investors wishing to make an investment in our environment whilst enjoying impressive returns. 

Essentially, corporate entities will need to purchase carbon to meet their emission limits.  There are only a limited number of carbon credits available on the market.  These corporate entities will need to purchase carbon credits, because if they don’t they will face a large fine, and it makes sense for them to purchase carbon credits instead of the fine, as quite simply the carbon credits are cheaper to buy and better for the planet, then paying for the fine.

This will obviously increase the demand, and since you as an investor in carbon credits your are holding the supply.  Simple market economics suggest that your investment will boom.  More about cost and price of carbon Emission credits

‘Carbon will become the currency of the new world’ – Bloomberg

This is a poem from Devesh ( my 9 year old son)

God know what was on his mind when he wrote this but i am happy he made the attempt!

Here goes the poem..

Once i was sleeping in my house,

Then i spotted a mouse.

I was frightned like a rat,

and then came my cat.

my cat was very fat

it had a red color hat

the next day we went to shop

my mother wanted a mop

a news came on our radio on our way

cause he wanted to fool us on the april fools day!

You can Applause in your comments

Jindagi, Kaisi hai paheli hai.. Kabhi ye rulaye kabhi ye hasaaye ( Life is a riddle, Sometimes it makes you Laugh and Cry)

I have grown up watching his movies in 90′s and they have made a great impact on me. He had the personality and charishma which only a few had. The chemistry between him and his actresses in the songs was intense.

I remember him more for the melodious songs and the rhythm. The songs were meant for him. Some of great songs from Kishore Kumar filmed on him were a perfect match.

Some of his film Aradhana which is immortal in my mind. I was in school then and i associate those scenes with the feelings i then had. Somewhere i relate to his dialogues and my state of mind then.

The movie Anand is my all time favorite. I think Amitabh Bacchan owes a lot to him. This movie is a master piece and his death news today is like revisiting the movie where he dies.

He is one of the few actors other than Rajendra Kumar and sanjeev kumar who were simple yet carried amazing personalities.

The song. Woh Sham kuch ajeeb thi.. is my all time favorite. He made a big impact on my father who said he used to bunk college to see his films.

To end, i’d like to quote from one of his songs

‘Maut aani hai ayegi ek din, jaan jaani hai jayegi ek din,…..( something something ) kya ghabrana  yaha kal kya ho kisne jana’

Today his death news bought a sudden sadness to me. It came when i was deeply involved in my work. The dead of a legend paused me to think that world is no more without him.

Not that his existence mattered a great deal to me as i was unknown to him, but a loss of someone who was very known to my mind, someone who i always imagine when i sang his songs made me realize the loss. So is the case with Dev Anand, Shammi Kapoor.

Their time had come. Our time is yet to come. So before it comes. Let us enjoy this wonderful gift called life

Smile. Make a difference. Help Someone. Surprise them