Make your apples taboo to keep them

It is a known fact that many of the employers face a challenge to keep the talented workforce with them and control the attrition, especially during the times of the company's disability to reward their employees as per the industry standards. Today I would like to share and idea while i was surfing online and talking to friends from different organizations. I gained this knowledge with some constant interaction with some HRs of different companies on social networking sites such as facebook, linkedin and also through a live discussion with them.
The first thing you should do is during their annual review identify those whom you think can be convinced to stay if you give them a counter offer after they got an offer letter from another company and pay them the minimal hike or rewards for that year. This is true regarding almost all the employees so if you cant identify them then assume that all can be convinced with a counter offer since people often would like to stay with a long term well known devil than an unknown entity. When you pay the minimal hike to all, then you can be sure that not more than 40% of the people will try out irrespective of the amount of hike that you have given that year, may it even be 0%. Most of them would like to stay with the false notion and hope that their loyalty might be counted next year and since this year they are rewarded less, then the next year they will be compensated or may be when others go they will be the most tenured and senior and they can grab the opportunities in the company but they fail to consider the other possibility that it it is less likely that they will respect someone who doesnt have the courage or capability to get a job outside even with such blatant negligence of their talent is done to them and their colleagues.
Counter them with counter : Let us say an employee is getting 4k p.a. as his salary and you give him a raise and his salary now becomes 5k p.a. and then he will get a job outside and based on his salary the new company offers him atleast 6k p.a. and he resigns from your organization then you will be at a double loss since you gave him a hike of 1k (from 4k to 5k) and instead you might have given that to another employee who is bound to stay. If you want to retain him now you have to give him 6k or more p.a. (per annum) then you (Boss or organization) will be spending 2k to 3k extra on him now. Many companies are countering this with a counter offer tactic. Instead of giving any annual hike to their employees, you don't give them any hike or give them a minimal hike of 1% or 2% of their current salary. So, as discussed in the above example an employee of 4k with 1% hike will still have an approximate p.a. salary of 4k and with disappointment and frustration he will go out and get a job but now since his salary is 4k and based on that he will get a raise of 1k so he will get a 5k p.a. salary in the new organization and when he resigns you can tell him how great, awesome and efficient contributor he is and how you want him to stay in the same company and for that you are willing to do anything. You will tell him that you will try to get the same salary to him in the present company by talking to the upper management since you like him very much. After this when you offer him the same salary as the new company he is more likely to stay with you than the new company because
a) he now believes that his boss likes him a lot and thinks so highly of him
b) he has his friends, colleagues with whom he has a comfort zone.
c)its natural human tendency for anyone to choose to be with something or someone whom they know for a long time than someone or something new.
When the management uses the same technique on many of its employees the recruiting team of other companies stop considering the job applications from the employees of your company or they will consider them only at the last since now you have branded your employees as unreliable and made them taboo to the recruiting teams of other companies by deceitfully creating a negative impression about your employees in their eyes.
One of the many other advantages of keeping your employee's salary low is the fact that if they now go out no company will give them industry standard pay but they will only give them a % of hike based on their existing salary. Job or employment may depend on a person's talent and skills but his salary always and only depends mostly on his current salary. If you increase an employee's salary who is underpaid then it is most likely that you will lose him instead of retaining him since now he has a new higher pay check on which he can bargain more in the market. If your engineer's pay is 6 lakhs and if you make it 7 lakhs then another company gives him 10lakhs (30% hike) but if you dont raise his salary then he is most likely to wait till it is raised to a level where he can have a good bargain, meaning he will wait and stay in the same organization till it becomes 7 or 8 lakhs because out side for the same skills as his others are getting around 13 or 14 lakhs. He do not want to go out for a pay which is less than the industry standard (most likely) but by the time you make his salary from 6 to 7 or 8 lakhs p.a. the market might have moved to 16 or 17 lakhs p.a. so the cycle of him staying in the same company will continue. you may keep doing this till the demand for his skills in the market reduces or you have enough lesser paid manpower with you to replace him.
These are my personal views based on my readings, experiences of my friends working in many different companies, online articles, HR forums and it has nothing to do with any one particular place of work of which i might be a part of. I like where i work and this post isn't related to that.

Best ways to check out an employee !!!

"Make sure you tell them how great they are, how great their work is but how and why you can't and don't reward them for their greatness or contribution"
you can always tell a person to go out of a company if you are the boss, at-least that is how it was few years ago in almost all the companies and now that situation is still there in many companies if not not in all the organizations.
Over a period of time people have realized that it is messy to tell someone to go and you don't need them anymore. It can be because of their low performance or low efficiency or they have become a luxury or a white elephant. A white elephant is someone whose is an overkill for your need. A white elephant is someone who is very good at what he or she does but also have become and expensive and luxurious commodity. If you have job that can only by done by an elephant then you can get any elephant but a white elephant is rare and super expensive and it does not make sense to hire or keep it for its color or rarity. If you have a task which has to be achieved with with X amount of efficiency and someone over a period of time becomes an expert in it to achieve it at 2X or 3X amount of efficiency even though that is not your requirement. His achievement of course comes with some cost, you might have to pay him a lot more than others where as, as per your requirement of only X amount of efficiency you can always replace this white elephant with some regular elephant who can do the same task at same required or a little better efficiency but less than half of the cost to the company in terms of salary.

1. The best way to tell someone go is not telling them go but to tell them how important you are to them and you do not wish them to go but in the mean time do nothing about it. 
2. You can stop giving him raise, bonus. Make sure for the first few months or year or the terms he appears on the top of the list but let him know that how much the company appreciates his effort and how much you value his work but make sure you don't value it with rewards in terms of money or hike in his pay. This is the first and most important discouragement that as a member of the management you can do to let him know that it is time for him to go elsewhere. If you tell him to go out instead he will fight back with all the statistics about his performance, how he is better than others and it will take a long time and at the end you might lose since he knows his work and contribution better than you as a manager would do since you have to know your entire team members performance where as he has to be worried about just his.
3. make him ask or fight for something which others might get it easily, almost as easily as something which is granted. If you have to approve his business trip travel allowance then take time to do so where as for others you take less time to do it and also make sure you show your sincere regret for the delay that is being caused.
4. Rig his stats if you can to make sure he is not highlighted as the topper and also at the same time let one of his juniors or sub ordinates shine but always make sure to let him know that how highly you think of him as a senior and a performer. If he comes to you about his statistics about his performance being incorrect or not shown correctly and show your sincere sympathy and regret but do it again after some time. If he finds again then you will get a chance to tell him how you regret it and tell them how the other department or someone else is responsible for it and how much you value his work and performance and make him aware of your good intentions where as in actuality you are trying to discourage him since there is always some or the other time they will get tired of trying to find errors in your reports or they will miss and they will start believing that their actual performance is what the card or the rigged stats show.
5. Always have a small talk with them and make sure all your discouragement towards them is channeled indirectly and discreetly. It is also very important for you to believe and know that you will actually be doing him a favor to him by making him go (usually said as letting him go) since for his talent he is sure to get a job outside for a much better pay and perks.
6. If the above are not that effective enough, even though they are effective then find a way and time to tell him that how much you wonder why you are not venturing outside and see the world or work abroad or not exploring the excellent opportunities which are thrice as rewarding as his current role or job can offer since he is way too talented and  more worthy than for his current role and designation and the rewards that come with it.
   
   
   continued.......

Plan your Flu

So now it is obvious to all of us that flu, common cold, cough, throat infection are the things which are inter-related and anyone of them if neglected will bring the others along with it and you can't prevent them but yes you can avoid them.

I have had flu twice in this last 6 weeks and both of the times it started off with a throat infection. I have seen that throat infection initiates cold>running>nose>blocked nose>fever+cough. Since there is no immediate cure for these I will be ready the next time it comes and I want you to know successful plan to combat it and damn I am gonna defeat it from now on.
It is better to take medicine as your food than take medicine after you get sick. So, take honey everyday. Ancient well to do Hindus used honey as a sweetener in their food and jaggery was used by those who couldnt afford to use honey everyday in everything. Honey in ayurveda playes a very important role in medicine where almost medicine is suggested to be taken with (wild honey if possible) honey to increase the effectiveness of the medicine. Among many uses of honey the main and most useful are its potential to hep in the following
increase the immunity,
sore throats & coughs,
increase metabolism & cause weight loss,
wounds, burns and cuts,
help with hay fever,
digestion,
hangover,
healthy skin,
athletic performance and many more...
If you are a tea or a coffee drinker then everyday use honey instead of sugar if you do not like the taste of it or do not know how to use it daily. It is a win win situation. About that tea again I will touch that subject again in a while.

You might have heard the famous saying 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away', well I cant verify that but a Vitamin C tablet a day keeps the cold away for sure. Vitamin C helps us in
fights cold,
immunity,
antibiotic, antioxident,
cholesterol,
maintain blood sugar level,

Warm cloth isnt warm enough. Most of the people wear clothes to keep them warm when they have flu but that isnt enough. The whole idea of curing fever/flu as per the british/english medicine is to make you sweat. So you must wear (so many or so warm) clothes which will make you sweat and you must feel hot instead of feeling cold. A banyan, t shirt and a shirt were enough to keep me warm during an attack of flu but i went ahead and added a jacket and a hoodie pull over. Now I was feeling hot instead of cold.

Let us also look at my grandma's, her grandma's traditional way of doing some things.

• If at night for some reason if you have a heavy cough and cant get to a doctor or the cough syrup isnt helping then the best instant kicker is a glass of water with 15%-25% turmeric powder.
• Garlics+jaggery in equal quantity will also help you to stop it
• During sleeping at night, sleep to the side where your heart is (usually left side but some people have their heart right side too)
• Gargle with salt water twice or thrice a day.
• Keep a wet sponge or cloth on your forehead if you are hit with a heavy flu at night with no access to doc. It will sure control it and you might have to wet the sponge again and again since it dries up quickly based on your temperature and this was usually done by mom or grand ma when I was a kid and dammit it works.
• Eat something spicy but easy to digest (no fast/junk food please) to kick off your blocked nose for many hours.
• Drink tea made out only from dry ginger powder. I strongly advice you to get some dry ginger (It will be white and powdery) and make some powder out of it and use it to make tea (just think of it as a tea powder but made out of ginger) instead of getting the powdered ginger since they will be low quality and low potency. If I could I would rather drink dry ginger tea every day since it just tastes so good and opens you up to a whole new stimuli.
• Drink lemon tea if you can't have the ginger tea.

Use turmeric in your daily food as a spice because it just enhances the taste and moreover in ayurveda there are many benefits of turmeric mentioned that you might want to take it everyday. One of the most recent finding is it will help you avoid Alzheimer's disease.
So in short to avoid flu & related side effects

• 1 Vitamin C tablet a day whether you have cold or not.
•  Honey everyday
• turmeric in your food
• replace your morning or evening tea with med teas like dry ginger tea or lemon tea

If you already have flu then along with the above please try

• gargling with salt water
• sleep towards the side of your heart to reduce heavy cough at night
• turmeric+water to instantly reduce cough
• garlic+Jaggery to instantly reduce cough

and of course you will go see a doctor. If I have missed something please do not hesitate to give your input via comments below. share if you care  because these are all tested by me and followed by mine and other families of our relatives from ages.

Blame yourself not your Boss

I more often see hear people blaming their bosses for their low pay, current position, present grade and the hike that they got. Some are even mature to blame the system or the company for this. I on the other hand blame none but instead praise the bosses for it whole heartedly and I even defend them.
Let us look at Ganesh Garage Inc., and the owner has two mechanics. One of them repairs the cars properly and keep them nice and clean so that the customer and the owner are happy. The 2nd one also does the same but he also makes sure that he tunes the cars to get the maximum mileage out of them. It is clear that the owner and the customers will love the mechanic who makes their car give more mileage that the 1st mechanic who just does his job. The 2nd mechanic increase the efficiency by increasing the mileage. Now, re-imagine the same with your bosses as the mechanics, cars as the employees and the owner as the investors and shareholders. If you were an investor/shareholder then don't you love the guy who gives you more income and profit from your investment ? Don't you love that CEO who promises more profit in the quarterly results. If you would love and prefer a guy
who will make more profit for you,
who is more efficient and if you love a car which gives more mileage to you and still costs the same or less than the other car then you have no right to blame your boss and if you do then you are hypocrite.
A manager has to compete with his colleague and prove that he is much efficient that the other, if he wants to grow and prosper in his career. If you manager gives you lesser pay, lesser hike but still manages to take proper output and work from you with his nice manners, sweet talks and other tactics then obviously you manager is better than the other manager who pays his employees as per the industry standard and gets a similar output. Your manager's manager will obviously promote your manager than the other manager since your manager saved him a lot of money. Your manager's manager can then show to his manager that how efficient he was and how efficient and productive he was compared to the other competitors in the same organization. It is a chain of competition. It is the corporate world reality. If being efficient is unethical then go ahead and call yourself unethical for wanting a car with more mileage, wanting a nutritious food which can keep your energetic for the entire day, wanting a clothes or gadgets, phones etc., which cost less and perform more.
If you were so good then you should have not hesitated to fight for yours and get it. If you were so good at what you do then you would have explored your opportunities outside the organization too and people outside would be waiting to hire you. If you were so better than the rest of the lot then you wouldnt be there wherever you are. It is the bitter truth and the more time you spend in being denial the more years of your life will go wasted. If you go to a shop and ask for a pack of bread and if there are 2 such packs with the same quality then it is obvious that you will buy the one which is cheaper. If you go to a showroom and want to buy a car then you will obviously buy a car which fits your budget and gives a good mileage too. The same way a manager would do everything to increase the efficiency of his team by getting more work done with the least possible pay that he can spare for an employee. The lesser you get paid and the more you work, the better it is for your manager since his team's efficiency has increased in comparison to his colleague's team's efficiency. If you are smart, If you want to paid properly for what you do and if you know that you do things properly and you are better than many others then you should not hesitate to find a place where your efforts are valued as per your expectations; this place can be inside or outside the company or the organization. Nobody loves a coward who is afraid of change, nobody loves a faint-hearted who is afraid of new challenges. Please do remember, still water becomes the source of filth or drainage where as the flowing water always remains fresh and healthy. Go check out all the profiles of all the top bosses that you can find within or outside your organization and all have changed companies, all have switched careers and jobs. If tomorrow I want to hire a manager for my team I will definitely prefer someone who has been in at-least 3 to 4 companies because he has faced at-least 3 to 4 different work cultures, 3 to 4 different types of challenges that come with 3 to 4 different companies and that adds to the variety of expertise and skillset one has compared to someone who stayed like a steady water in one place and never moved from there. This person who thinks stability is valued, he forgets to realize that one's stability can also be counted as that person's inability to get a job outside, his cowardliness to go outside, his fear towards change. It also makes his management takes him for granted since nobody wants to waste their resources on someone who will not leave the company anyway but instead they can spend the same resources on others who have the skillset, ability and courage to go outside and earn what they want.
If you have 2 babies and one is crying for food and the other one happily playing and doing its work then whom will you feed ? of course crying baby gets the milk. If you have 2 daughters and if one of them starts taking money from guys outside your house if you don't give her pocket money then won't you pay her to retain her?. It is only you who is the reason for your failure, not them, not me and definitely not your boss or the organization.

Disclaimer : -These are my personal views based on some online articles, HR forums, experiences of others from other organizations across the globe whom i may not know personally. These views or thoughts are not connected with the people I know or the places I have worked or currently working.

What future holds for us

Who would have thought that there would be HD video, self driving cars and wi fi ? well some people predicted it with quite certainty and many like me just wished for it. I may not ray kurzweil in this matter but i do think the future is interesting in terms of technology and it will keep getting interesting and of course more messy.
1. By 2050 we may not be needing any input output devices like keyboard, mouse, touchscreen or touch pads. Your thoughts are enough to type, search or do any task on your computer which you normally do with your I/O devices. It also means that you will have to mask yourself from TTs or Thought Tress-passers who will try to steal your thought and try to read your mind without your knowledge and try to know your secrets. This will also lead to a new type of mind-hacking where hackers will try to gain access to your personal and financial details over the web with the help of some social hacking. Companies like google who search keywords from your emails to judge what ads might interest you, may start browsing your mind and see what you really need and what you really want. Future matchmaking will be much easier with automated soft-wares with access to your minds may find a proper match for you on your favorite matrimonial or dating site. The product you may want to watch out in this segment is NeuroSky Mindset with its future variations. We will be able to do most of the daily tasks such as changing the temperature of the refrigerator, changing tv channels, send mails typing, browsing etc., with just our thoughts. People with bionic limbs will be able to control them with their thoughts without having to rely on dumb prosthetic limbs.
2. Our vehicles are auto-piloted, our body parts can be replaced with mechanized/digitized versions which can be controlled, shutdown or damaged remotely by people with vested interest and of course we know people who tried to warn us about it got a mysterious death like the hacker barnaby jack.
3. The biggest invention any civilization can make is communicating with itself back in time. We all have thought at some point in our life that I wish I knew this earlier, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself about this to a younger version of me so that I could avoid certain things. Assuming that human kind has survived and thrived in future, this method already exists. So future us is communicating, educating us to speed up our civilization's progress. So if this communication happens with someone who predates the existence of any long distance real time communication like today then they will for surely think that it was the voice of god or an angel and may be start a religion based on that. What if all the knowledge in all the holy texts was just the future us trying to make the past and present us wiser than what we are and we only were able to digest the higher level of context of the text!!!???

---more such nonsense for later... :P

The myth surrounding the working and non working women

Recently I read an article by a popular indian writer named chetan bhagat on times of india . I would like to agree with all of his points on how a working women is better than a homemaker. he makes some really good points for today's men to consider a working women as their choice while i think he displays a narrowed mind with a side opposite to the men that he is addressing and i think both are equally wrong.

The view and definition of a working women of today's western minded and western educated ideology is very wrong and misleading when it is applied to an indian women. A typical indian women works atleast twice as much as a stereotypical working man who goes out and does a desk job or something similar to that. A mother for example use to start working from morning 4am to 11pm and sometimes till 1am with an allowance of 2 or 3 breads a meal with some chilli powder + edible oil everyday. She use to work for handlooms in the day time and do tailoring at night to earn some money while taking care of her 3 kids while her husband goes out and tries to find some work to feed his family. This mother had studied till 5th standard but all her 3 children are graduates today with one working in a fortune 500 company as a consultant, another working for the government and the 3rd one works in a local factory as a foreman. Today at their hometown they have 2 houses and all 3 children have a better life because of this huge contribution to the family by this housemaker and and her mother in law. Both these ladies worked hard day in and out together to provide for the family and to secure a good future for them.
The building of a nation begins with the woman. Because, the mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, the child gives to the world, but what if the woman is not around to give that message or to teach the child of the values of life and sanity?! but instead she is too busy competing with men, trying to be like a man where as she is supposed to be much better than them. Many of our indian women in the rural area, go out and fetch water for the family, take care of the children, cook, wash clothes, take care of their man, take care of their in laws and this amounts to a work far greater than the work done by a so called working class women of  today's definition who works all day long in an AC room, probably with an excel sheet. In our indian culture women plays a bigger role since she is the one who takes care of the children, their education and gives them a good culture. Bringing up good children and giving them a good culture and teaching them good behavior is not easy and it is a mammoth task which only our women can do. Western ideology which doesnt fit to the indian society has made many think that taking care of the children is a lower, unimportant and an ugly job which should be the work of those women who are losers in their life while going out and working under someone, for someone and earning some money in competition with men is considered as superior. It is no secret that in today's world working in shifts is a reality and especially in an industry where I work working in shifts is almost mandatory.

I know some married couples where a husband works in day shift, wife works in night shift and both of them have different week offs. Husband might have a tuesday and wednesday week off where as his wife might have a saturday and sunday off while their children will only have a sunday off from school. So, when the husband comes home after his shift, his wife leaves home for work and when she comes back home, he leaves to work. Both of them hardly get any time to sleep with each other since their weekends are different too. If at all they find some time to sleep with each other and have children then they can hardly find some time in a month to spend together with their children since their work times are different, their week offs are different, their children's week offs are different. How in the hell will they be able to offer a good culture and education to these children with these kind of mismatch of times. As per chetan bhagat taking care of the children and house should be outsourced since that is what they have done and this makes the children to be more independent which might seem sensible in the beginning but the real life examples suggest otherwise. Gandhi, bhagat singh, guru gobind singh, Nehru and almost all of our great leader's mothers were all housewives. You think of any great leaders of our history including abraham lincoln of the west, obama of today or nelson mandela or the prophet mohammad of islam they all had one thing in common; their mothers were all housewives.
Especially in an indian society where the majority are hindus festivals form a big part of society. Even in muslims too their festivals are women oriented. Whether it is deepavali, durga puja, shivrathri, ugadi, moharram, christmas or other sikh, jain, budhist festivals it is the women whose participation and requirement is 90%. Perhaps the only festival in india which is driven by men is holi, the festival of color but other than that almost all are driven by women since most of them are about women. I do not think there is anything wrong when a women wants to go out, work in an office, earn and i think it should be respected too but I and many in the indian society who know the value of women in our culture to be a lot more than men, will always respect a women a little more, who remains a housewife for the sake of the children, for the sake of the family while keeping the family intact than a women who goes out to build her own career at the cost of her family and children.

How to set an album cover in your google+ or picasa albums

Whenever i uploaded pictures in an album i never had an option to change the album cover. Even if you try to edit the album or its settings it doesnt give you that option. The organize option of the google+ gives the option to organize the photos in the first page but not all the pictures of the album. The only way you can do this is by uploading via google picasa application installed in your computer. You have to first drag the pictures around and arrange the in an order that you want and keep the picture that you want as the album cover in the beginning of this order and then click on share on google+. You can initiate this by right clicking on a bunch of pictures that you have selected and then click on add to album>new album and publish it as an album in picasa and then click on share on google+.

HOW TO MAKE SYMBOLS WITH KEYBOARD

Alt + 0153..... ™... trademark symbol
Alt + 0169.... ©.... copyright symbol
Alt + 0174..... ®....registered ­ trademark symbol
Alt + 0176 ...°......degre ­e symbol
Alt + 0177 ...±....plus-or ­-minus sign
Alt + 0182 ...¶.....paragr ­aph mark
Alt + 0190 ...¾....fractio ­n, three-fourths
Alt + 0215 ....×.....multi ­plication sign
Alt + 0162...¢....the ­ cent sign
Alt + 0161.....¡..... ­.upside down exclamation point
Alt + 0191.....¿..... ­upside down question mark
Alt + 1.......☺....sm ­iley face
Alt + 2 ......☻.....bla ­ck smiley face
Alt + 15.....☼.....su ­n
Alt + 12......♀.....f ­emale sign
Alt + 11.....♂......m ­ale sign
Alt + 6.......♠.....s ­pade
Alt + 5.......♣...... ­Club
Alt + 3.......♥...... ­Heart
Alt + 4.......♦...... ­Diamond
Alt + 13......♪.....e ­ighth note
Alt + 14......♫...... ­beamed eighth note
Alt + 8721.... ∑.... N-ary summation (auto sum)
Alt + 251.....√.....s ­quare root check mark
Alt + 8236.....∞..... ­infinity
Alt + 24.......↑..... ­up arrow
Alt + 25......↓...... ­down arrow
Alt + 26.....→.....ri ­ght arrow
Alt + 27......←.....l ­eft arrow
Alt + 18.....↕......u ­p/down arrow
Alt + 29......↔...lef ­t right arrow
lifted from a post on facebook

The use of pubic (and armpit) hair

This article was a tough one to write  for me since i did not want any of my friends to false accuse and tease of me of having what i describe here for the safety of the next-gen but i think the thought of helping some people to avoid a life long health maintenance and fear of an outbreak is worth that simple tease by few.
The other day i was wondering why haven't we had any major technological innovation or invention for trimming our body hair. It is the same age old procedure but now it runs on battery. I wish there was just an oil or laser treatment which can permanently do away with the unwanted hair and women would have had their one time eye brow or upperlip hair removal process and it would have been so easy on their husband's pocket. I often use to wonder, what is the purpose of pubic hair and most of the websites (medical) claim that it is just an evolutionary process and they dont have any particular purpose. They say Pheromones get trapped in the pubic hair and its scent might attract the opposite sex and in modern days it might not be useful since many of us dont like the body odor of others while only few or none can be attracted to someone's body odor, where as most of us use perfumes and other deodorants to mask our body odors. However in the same context i stumbled upon a very interesting article and i wonder how all the medical science missed it or did they just neglected it. It was a story about a women who had shaved her pubic hair on the same day before her boyfriend was  orally intimate with her on her reproductive organs. Her boyfriend at that time did not have any herpes symptoms, but later they found out that he had oral herpes (HSV 1) and it usually takes a few weeks to 4 months to have its first outbreak or symptoms. She caught the disease too and she got her blood tested and she indeed had hsv 1. hsv 1 is a kind of herpes which is not actually an std but it can spread through a simple touch of the infected area  or by coming in contact with any material which has been in contact with that infected area. ex:- a friend of you had a hsv1 herpes on her arm and she was wearing a nice dress on that day of the symptoms. you borrow that dress and wear it and now you might have that infection too. If your friend has been infected with hsv1 herpes, orally and he/she has not yet shown any symptoms but you exchange a kiss with that person and now you might just have herpes. you bite the same fruit as the other person with the hsv1 and that person with the hsv1 has transferred few hsv1 viruses on that fruit via his bleeding gums and they cant be seen through naked eyes. So anyway that women who got this disease via his boyfriend was implying that if only she had not shaved her reproductive organ fully but instead she should have trimmed it and then she might not have had the hsv1 infection. since she had cleanshaved on that day and all the pores of the hair follicle were open and some might just be bleeding or there might have been a cut which makes a nice area for the hsv1 virus to sit and get transmitted into the new host. If she hadnt shaved completely but instead had it trimmed then the hsv1 would be sitting on the hair and probably it would have been gone after a nice bath. Even if your partner with hsv1/hsv2 is wearing a barrier you might still get infected with an std which is around his penal shaft, genitalia or his thighs but if you have pubic hair (even better if both of you have trimmed/untrimmed pubic hair) then it might create a barrier between your skin and the virus. Since you are not clean shaved and there are no pores of hair or blade cuts exposed you will reduce your chances of contraction with an std. The best solution however is to stay faithful to your partner. I have no medical degree but i am a former science student and hence this is my suggestion to trim your pubic hair but not to do away with them completely. I am open for suggestions and please correct me if i am wrong but I am sure I have made a logical argument here and one more thing, by trimming and not shaving, you will have lower chances of folliculitis too.
embedded links: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081122051609AAI9eI0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_contraception
http://www.medhelp.org/posts/STDs/HSV-1-transfer-from-mouth-to-pubic-area/show/1249005
http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/whats-point-pubic-hair

Why did Shiva cut his own son's head

Gajasua (an asura or demon who has taken the form of gaja or elephant) when started misuing the boons of shiva to cause harm to the world shiva takes his head off but gajasura being a staunch devotee of shiva asks one last favor to be remembered forever and stay near him all the time. Shiva thus removes him from the cycle of birth and death.
Here in kailash parvathi has created a boy named vinayak who was standing outside as a guard when shiva's wife parvathi is bathing and when shiva tries to get inside vinayak prevents him. Shiva was also cursed by one of his own devoted rishis to be responsible for his own son's demise and shiva himself has given the rishi the power to curse anyone and thus by not fullfulling his curse he wouldnt want to go back on his word. So shiva cuts vinayak's head and replaces it with the gajasura's elephant head.
source: http://www.harekrsna.com/philosophy/associates/demons/siva/gajasura.htm

RAM NAVAMI - The Birth Anniversary of Ram [January 10, 5114 BC]

According to Ramayana 1.18.8,9
Rama was born on the 'Navami Tithi' of 'Shukla Paksha' of 'Chaitra Masa' (9th day of the increasing phase of the moon in the loonar month of 'Chaitra'). At the time the naxatra was 'Punarvasu' and Sun, Mars, Saturn, Jupitar and Venus were in Aries, Capricorn, Libra, Cancer and Pisces respectively. Lagna was cancer and Jupiter and moon were shining together.
[and many say this repeats every 10,000 years]
So the conditions summarized are as follows

Valmiki has recorded in Bal Kaand Sarga 19 and shloka 8 and 9 (1/18/8,9) that Shri Ram was born on the ninth tithi of Chaitra month when the position of different planets vis-a-vis zodiac constellations and nakshatras (visible stars) was as under :- 1 Sun in Aries ii) Saturn in Libra iii) Jupiter in Cancer iv) Venus in Pisces v) Mars in Capricorn vi) Lunar month of Chaitra vii) Ninth day after no moon viii) Lagna as Cancer (Cancer was rising in the east) ix) Moon on the Punarvasu (Gemini constellation & Pollux star) x) Day time (around noon)

This data was fed into the Planetarium software. The results indicated that this was exactly the location of planets/stars vis-a-vis zodiac constellations on January10, noon time in the year 5114 BC. As per the Indian calendar, it was the ninth day of Shukla Paksha in Chaitra month and the time was around 12 to 1 noontime. This is exactly the time and date when Ram Navmi is celebrated all over India till date.

source : http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20031012/spectrum/main6.htm

"Obama Experiment" Results in Professor Failing the Entire Economics Class ??!!

copied from : http://www.reboilroom.com/2012/01/obama-experiment-results-in-professor.html

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. 

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A.... (substituting grades for dollars - something closer to home and more readily understood by all).

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.. 
The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed. It could not be any simpler than that. 
Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:


1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Kidney Stones and homeopathy !?

Why is it a sin to pay beggars in india ?

 There is a small house which is being constructed right in front of the 1bhk where i am staying as a tenant. The construction workers are paid 500Rs/day as on 5/2/2013. These workers work from 9am to 1pm and then from 2pm to 5pm or 6pm. So that is 8 to 9 hours. This money is untaxed of course and they earn about 15,000 INR a month. My neighbor is an MBA graduate and his rent is almost the same as mine and he pays around 7.5k per month as rent and his pay per month is 12k to 14k as on 5/2/2013 and he pays taxes.
Let us consider another indian who too earns money by threatening to show off his genitals if you don't give him or her, your money. Meet 'lalbagh' the pride garden of bengaluru. Here you can find some cross dressers and transsexuals who will approach the couples who are sitting cozily in a park and ask for money. If you do not pay they just lift their saree and skirt and expose their unshaved genitals and fearing this the guy will pay the ransom, otherwise you will be embarrassed in front of your date and that might be your last date with her. These 'hijdas' (eunuch) don't even leave those families who have come there for a time out and they just want the money.These cons are not just in gardens but they are almost in every circle where you have a signal which stops vehicles. I have seen such pinheads making as low as 8,000 to 10,000 in 2 to 3 hours and once such amount is made they give this money to their money handler in the park whose sole job is to transport that money to a safe place and come back for more.
There was a report of an incident which supposedly happened in chennai, a young boy was kidnapped from a neighboring state and his sex was changed to a girl and was made to beg and used for prostitution by gangs who specialize in all this. Today indian government provides free food at government schools but still you see kids on the streets asking for money to eat and they say they are starving?! These are those kids employed by such gangs using some or the other kind of illegal force and method to make them beg in the day and use them for sexual purposes at night. There have been various reports of people abroad coming to india for some pedophilic activities who usually have contacts of those who lend such (forcefully orphaned sometimes by kidnapping at a very young age) orphaned kids for such activities.

My friend tells me about the lady near his house who is a professional beggar. this old lady goes to a different area in her normal clothes and begs, she is begging in that area from 30 years and now she has her own house, she has given the other 2 houses for rent, her 2 kids have property in dubai. I am not saying all beggars are the same, but i am saying that if you really want to help them then direct them to a nearest NGO, school or orphanage or to a place where they have some work but do not pay them and be a reason for their demise which will essentially and eventually cause the society's demise. There are many who have enough self respect to work for money, inspite of being physically challenged. I have stopped paying any beggar no matter what, even a begging lady with a crying baby with her won't get a penny from me since most probably as always the baby is a hired toddler from a fellow beggar whose mother lend's her kid to others who will pinch them in public to make it cry so that we see the kid and pay some money.
My uncles are farmers and many of the times they have had a big shortage of workers in their farm that they are not getting workers for even triple the regular pay, if only all these beggars, cross dressers, snake charmers and other fraudsters go and find some work.....but it seems their current profession to these people is more profitable due to our ignorance than working at a construction site for 15,000 a month or working at a farm for similar money + free grains or vegetables from the farm. Just imagine if a tea shop owner behind our office who also sells some indian fast foods like bajji, vade and idli, makes a profit of nearly 20k to 25k; the mini moving cart hotel which only makes rotis and 2 curries, makes a profit of 20k to 25k but these people do not want to do that, either because they are completely satisfied begging on the streets under the harsh sunlight for money or its way too profitable or anti social elements are forcing them to beg. None of these 3 reasons are valid enough for me to pay them money. Sorry it is just my opinion and if yours is different then let's agree to disagree, shall we?!

SelfKill of government sectors in india

Government knows that government sectors are a burden to the government and may not be a good idea for progress in india. Unlike private sectors government sectors like BSNL (Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited), BEML and HAL etc., have the responsibility to satisfy all religions, castes and subcastes when they are hiring employees for their sector based on reservation quota set by government. They also have to pay pension to the retired employee. Many of the sectors also provide houses for stay till you are employed like HTM, HAL etc., Today if an employee of HTM has to rent the house that has been offered for free to him by the govt. sector then it would cost him more than his salary in a town like bengaluru. There is a saying in India which goes somewhat like this 'govt. job is like a god's job, only god should come and do it'. Govt. sector employees are known to be rude especially 10 years ago where there were no private banks, the bank employees use to behave with you as if they are doing us a favor by keeping our money but now after the entry of private sectors a lot has changed.

Private sectors offer you a job based on your qualification where as govt. sectors offer you jobs based on your birth, politicos recommendations, bribe and influence and thus the quality of the workforce at govt. sector is low with high maintenance where as with private sectors it is the opposite. If you go to govt. sector bank today you will see that the dress sense, the behavior and the way these 50+ year old employees work are rude and unprofessional where as a private bank will have young employees whose pay might be tagged to the way they work, their courteousness and their achievements unlike govt. employees. When a private sector and a govt. sector in the telecom industry (ex: BSNL Vs Airtel) are competing with each other then Airtel will obviously have an advantage since their customer care executives were hired because they have good communication skills where as in BSNL you will be hired because you have some political affiliation or your religion/caste is under reservation quota. If you ever call BSNL and report a problem you will know that apart from their opening statement they cannot speak a word of english and they want you to speak in a language which they speak rather than the language of your preference. Even If i speak to them in Kannada (regional language of Karnataka) or Hindi (unofficial national language of India) they cannot speak these language fluently too and most of them will be outright rude to you as if they are doing you a favor by giving you a mobile phone connection and they will never even ask you to stay with them if you say that you will leave their network and move to Airtel. This all happens because there is a very unfair high level of job security which has given to these govt. employees for granted and they are allowed to literally take their jobs for granted. It is almost impossible or highly unlikely for a govt. employee to fired for non performance because almost none of the govt. sectors have parameters to measure performance. Almost all govt. sectors in india have been trend followers at the verge of extinction rather than taking a step forward and do what is necessary. It was private sectors like Citibank which forced the govt. sectors like SBI to open up ATMs since citibank started taking away their customers with their superior facilities like same day account opening, credit card, debit card, check book facility where as in a SBI bank we still have to get a referral from an existing SBI account holder, then apply for an account, open account after standing in queue for hours and taking your application through multiple tables you will have an account. Then your debit card will be shipped to your address a week after, your ipin will be shipped a week after that, then you need to apply for a check book separately so that you can write cheques. You can only apply for e-banking separately after maintaining a minimum balance of some amount of money for some defined period of time.
Bottom line is, there is no need for the private sectors to compete with the govt. sectors since they have already poisoned by the govt. policies such as reservation which pushes unqualified candidates into the govt. sector and where performance is not a parameter. In private sectors your career depends on your performance and qualification not your age, religion or political affiliation thus the quality of service will always be better than the govt. sectors and in the long run these govt. sectors will be closed. Currently there is a monopoly of government in the transport sectors like railway department and may be thats why indian railways are known as the worlds longest toilets.

Beware with online shops like flipkart and its rigged reviews.

Apart from online shopping being eco-friendly and a whole lot beneficial it has some cons too. literally!!!. Today I was checking out some organic soaps and accidentally noticed a strange thing. Some soaps from some company called soulflower are all rated 5 stars and mostly by some users repeatedly on the same day. Well if it was amazon then i would have thought for a second and felt that, well may be the promoters of this product are trying to con buyers with rigged reviews  by writing review about their own product but it is flipkart where not anyone can create an account and sell like ebay, amazon etc., but you create an account to buy. Flipakart is its own seller where it partners with vendors to sell products thus it becomes equally responsible for what it sells.
It's about the reviewer named shilpa bindhish
http://www.flipkart.com/user-profiles/shilpa.bindlish-7775

http://www.flipkart.com/user-profiles/kavitarameshya-8747

probably another hired reviewer who has no other reviews but for this company's soaps and that too all on the same day. I wonder how one can use 6-7 soaps a day from the same company at the same time and write the reviews for them at the same time and has no reviews about any other products of any other brand.

Of course, i will never buy any products from that soulflower company which i never heard of anyway but what bothers is how can they get away with it? how could the a no.1 online shop in india let them get away with it? unless there is a close nexus between them or flipkart is trying to tell us that they are not that sophisticated to check the rigged user reviews....lol.
When I complained about it to flipkart with a review this is what they had to say apart from removing my review.

Thank you for posting your review for "Soulflower A for Anti-ageing Soap", dated 25th January 2013.

Your feedback regarding the review has been shared with the concerned team and we are investigating on it,  however all the reviews are checked for accuracy and moderated accordingly.

However, as per our review policy (www.Flipkart.com/s/help), we solicit only product-specific reviews on the product page and hence your review on other review has been removed.

Could we please request that you repost the product review excluding mention of service?

We are in the process of rolling out a customer-centric forum welcoming your experiences and feedback on our services and products. In the meanwhile, please feel free to share your concerns or queries with us at cs@flipkart.com.

Yours Sincerely,
Keerthi Kumar .R
Customer Review Team
Flipkart.com

Why do we keep going back to get hurt

Have you ever wondered why someone keeps getting cheated by the same person, keeps getting hurt by the same people but still they go back to them even after swearing never to go back to those who make them miserable?!

It is natural in humans to want to be accepted. If you like someone and they do not feel the same for you and sometimes even they hurt you but you might still go back to them. I do not know what is the psychological term to define it but this condition is there in all in varied quantity.
Suma (imaginary names) is a girl who is in college now and excited to meet new friends who are in the same dorm or same class. There are some cool class mates with whom she would like to be around. Those classmates are sometime mean to others and they are sometimes mean to her too, probably because she doesnt have a tatto as them, she doesnt have a cool boyfriend with a sportsbike or may be because of her economic status but this girl after few days of deciding not to go back to them after how they treated her, goes back to them voluntarily or with the receivel of a slightest friendly gesture from them and right in the bottom of her heart she knows that it might not last long. Just like everyone she too expects things to be right, when she sees them wrong she hopes them to be right and this special urge in humans drives them to such hurt-magnets; here hurt-magnets are those who or which can hurt or harm you but since you hoped and wished it might or should have been a source of some joy, you will go towards it upon the slightest of your version of that hurt-magnet. Suma thought this group would give a good company to her through out her college life but her mind is not ready to completely accept that it was wrong about it and thus when a false hope shows up that her mind could have been right then it will forces her to go and give herself a chance in the hope of the false hope might be the fact.
There have been some people who sometimes have started campaigning for those whose actions are completely against their ideals, There have been persons who believed in peace but they end up supporting and campaigning for a group which is anything but not peaceful. This happens because of our human nature, a nature drives which makes us want to be accepted, a nature which makes us create this false hope about something or someone so that based on that false comforting hope we drive ourselves and crash into that someone or something which stands there just to hurt us. Life is not just joy or misery but it is mystery too.