Free accommodation to Mr.Stuart

When you hear a plastic-bag-crushing sound often, what is the conclusion you jump into? 

I did presume the same! HD was skeptical about it, and swayed me! 

2 days before, I spotted it near the washing machine!  Just the size of an index finger, I saw that black thing called mouse. 

Musophobia hit me!  

That was the end! End of any activity, any movement!

Noiselessly, I took a rapid direct flight and reached for the chair! Hours went by! 

From 5 till 7’ish, I unchanged my pose, never! Not even letting my legs touch the floor, until I heard the door bell.

HD was back, and I did not prepare anything for the dinner until then!   

I cribbed a little about what I saw, and jumped at his back like Vedhalam. 

Instructions here you go!

Put this.  pour water. Add little chilli powder.  Why are you dumping so much of salt?

I realized my butt was screaming in agony, so I came out of the kitchen, seized the chair and stood on top of it. Continued my instructions to deary!  

Cruel me!

Punishment to HD for being so skeptical about my thoughts!  

Now how do I prove him?   

Mokka (Useless) ideas hit me for the next hour until a Tenali Raman idea struck me!

I ran to the house entrance to wear my shoes (entering the terrorist area require all these stunts), scattered a few pieces of cucumber and chips in the kitchen, made sure rest of the rooms were closed, and went to bed. Better way to prove HD!  I even thought of fixing a handy cam on top of the shelf :)

Next morning, to HD’s surprise, there was no trace of chips and cucumber. 

HD calling me on top of his voice! “Yendi chips and cucumber sapta? Unakku pasinnu sonna, naan soru potturuppen la.  Adhukaaga, raathiri thiruttu thanama vandhu, ippadiya sapduva?? Che che che” (why did you eat those chips and cucumber? If you told me, I'd have fed you.  Why are you stealing them in the night like this?? Disgrace!)

“Shut up (in literal Tamil) Stop your Mokka joke!” “Now  ...Now you believe it!” I told.

And we are continuing to feed the mouse with cucumber and chips everyday now!

Right or Wrong??

Often elders state that a child should be trained as to what is right and what is wrong at the early stage itself. 

How many of us (I mean the adults), know what is right or wrong? 

How many times we have been tattered between two answers? 

How many times we define what is right and wrong, on a given situation? 

Have you had a mental conflict in taking some decision that involved what is right or wrong? 

How many times we have justified ourselves for doing something wrong, because the given situation demands? 

And how many of us have done something unethical just to save someone-just to help someone? 

All of us would have faced an ethical dilemma in our life at least once. Isn’t that true? All of us have! Indeed. And often, these ethical dilemmas are the underlying reasons for an individual to commit/not commit a crime like corruption, bribery, etc.

 

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According to Wikipedia,

Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality — that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, justice, virtue, etc.

Major branches of ethics include:

• Meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how their truth-values (if any) may be determined;

• Normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action;

• Applied ethics, about how moral outcomes can be achieved in specific situations;

• Moral psychology, about how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is; and

• Descriptive ethics, about what moral values people actually abide by. 

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 Ethics is a term which people take it as a freedom of perception. Every one has their own definition for Ethics. What is ethical to you might not / need not necessarily be ethical to me!  I am an enthusiast when it comes to debating about ethics. This is one topic I would never get tired of. Doesn’t it kindle one’s opinion and touch the subliminal thoughts??

Educating children on and about Ethics is rather done from elementary school, but not only restricted to classrooms and schools. We learn it everyday, all throughout the life, when we face the real life situations.

There were some fascinating ethical discussions during the Management lectures back while in my MBA. They stimulated every student to think, argue, discuss the outcomes, and always we saw arguments getting fueled in the classroom atmosphere. This is one such example :-

“You are attending an interview with ITC group of companies. You impress the hiring manager that he/she immediately offers you a post of Sales and Marketing Officer for Tobacco Products Division. Major parts of your role involve increasing the Cigarette Sales in and around your Sales area. Will you take this offer or not?” “Will you be happy/proud about taking this offer?”

What do you say??

Sanskrit & Etymology

I was so bored today and equally fascinated to do some research on Etymology.  I restricted my research only to finding the origin of names of the countries, and that are related to Sanskrit.   And I was awe-struck at some of the findings and could feel the universality of Sanskrit too. 

These are some of the interesting facts you would love to hear to! You could be familiar with some of them

> Argentina is generally told to have derived from the word "argentum" which means silver. In sanskrit, Arjuna means “one who has charm like silver”.

> Afghanistan - The word Afghan arrived from Sanskrit tribal name “Askava” means horsemen. You must be aware that Afgan is famous for finest horse breeds.Or there is also a possibility that it arrived from 'Upa-Ghana-Stan' meaning "land of the allied tribes"

> Cambodia – is derived from the Sanskrit work “Kambuja” or “Kamboja” referring to early Indo – Iranian tribe- the Kambojas, named after the founder of that tribe, Kambu Svayambhuva

> China – again from Sanskrit word Ciñas that has appeared in the olden epic.

> Pakisthan, Kazakasthan, ....“Stan” is a persian name which means “Land or country”. So is sthāna in sanskrit.

> Maldives, arrived from Sanskrit work “Maladvipa” meaning “garland of islands”. It could also have derived from the Tamil word “Malai”

> Burma, could have arrived from the Sanskrit word “Brahmadesh” – the land of Brahmas.

> Some claim that Nepal is arrived from the sanskrit word “Nipalaya” which means “at the foot of the mountains”

> Singapore, derived from the sanskrit word “Singapura” or “Simhapura” which means "the land of lions"

> Again Srilanka from the word “Sinhala”, meaning land of lions.

> Thailand, earlier Siam, was derived from “Suvarnabhoomi” which means the land of gold.

Hijacked from real life

Alright! Now the happy news is that I have stopped playing Farmville for almost 2 weeks now! And I feel great :) (although I miss it little)

You know right? I had been residing too long into the virtual world (of farming, café’ing, and blogging), and sadly have paid no attention to the real world. I had become a slave to this world should I say – each week thinking that I should take charge of my time and change it. It was a bit like my diet planning which never happened :)

But now, I made efforts to change it! Hurray!!

 

Image Courtesy: Google

I got a dream sometime back that a plane in which I was travelling was being hijacked, and how I, along with other passengers struggle and plan to get way out of that.Yes..such an adventurous dream it was! 

The word hijack is rather very strong but true - that I have been hijacked from my real life. I have written enough about my idleness quotient in this space (although more optimistically, and humorously), but I know the pain! I couldn’t come out of the ordeal. And so took the virtual world as my sword, a hope to get back enlightenment into life. Of course, it did. But caused other side-effect...made me a little less to what you call Addiction!

I know how important a WORK-LIFE Balance should be. While so many long for personal time and keep saying “I need space”, I had enough of that. Over this last few weeks, I have been strictly restricting my internet activities to only 1 hour or max 1.5 hours. And I am still struggling to catch up with old mails, status messages, blog posts, comments etc!  Weekend is here, and I thought I can relax a bit on this!  Lad..that isn't a bad idea!

Take the pledge

How many of you make sure to drop the litter only on a trash, and not anywhere on the road?

How many of you strictly follow to the traffic rules?

How many of you pay regular tax, without evading it? (Tricky Question!!)

How many of you travel by public transport to office?

How many of you pay at least a small portion of your salary to charity REGULARLY?

Have you planted at least one plant/sapling in your lifetime?

Have you used any eco-friendly products?

All these have some or little things in common. The ways to improve your city, and your way of living. "First of all, are you following this??" should be the question many would ask me! (I heard your mind voice lad!!).  There is a saying "Change yourself if you wish to change the world".  So, I don't want to write them unless I follow each and every one of them!!  Understood?? Better!!

I’ve always seen people behaving as if Traffic rules are meant to be broken. Are we educated illiterates to put the Banana skins,chewing gums and cigars on the road? And that remains me of spitting and public urination in India...Man..it sucks!!  And altogether it needs a separate post!!

Aren’t we under the hot seat with a huge responsibility to transform society? We always point out that the society is bad, people are always like this-that. But aren’t "WE" the Society we are talking about. Unless we - the people change, how can we expect the society (that is a conglomerate of all WE people) to change?

I understand that there are wide areas to improve, but to start, why not we at least do the above???

When are we going to realize that it’s a high time, and start contributing towards the improvement of your society??