min-myinnersoul

What is man's greatest weakness. No, its not sex. No, its not even gambling.  It is his uncanny ability to fall for every "get rich quick" scheme. Take the case of the collapse of the Saradha   (and probably numerous other such schemes) in West Bengal. This was a classic Ponzi scheme. Investors were attracted by fantastic returns (15-50% !!!). The early investors were paid off with money collected from subsequent idiots. Bingo. An avalanche started. Two years on, it has collapsed leading to much hand wringing and vociferous shouts of indignation. What attracted my attention was not the scheme per se. They are dime a dozen. Remember the Emu farm scheme a little while ago in Tamil Nadu. Emu farming I believe - never mind that not one soul who put money into it had seen an emu in his life. But what has really got my attention is the response to the affair after it broke news. There has been much clamour for regulation of such funds and criticism of governments for not regula...

Which is the biggest ecommerce company in the world ? Take a guess. Amazon ? E Bay ? You would be wrong if you guessed either of them. The biggest e commerce company in the world is Alibaba. Its portals handled a sales volume of some $ 170 bn. That is more than the volumes handled by Amazon and E Bay combined. No, this is not some elaborate hoax dreamed up from 1001 Nights. Alibaba is indeed the largest e commerce company in the world. The reason you may have never heard about it is that it operates almost exclusively in China. It started life as simply Alibaba.com , a business to business portal. It then added Taobao - a consumer to consumer portal, whose similarity to E Bay is, of course, entirely coincidental. Now it has started Tmall , a business to consumer portal, which again, bears a completely coincidental similarity to Amazon. All this in just fourteen years. The last two, if you click on the link, you will see are entirely in Chinese. And therein lies the issue. Can Alibaba...

So says Huawei. Really ?? No, not really. They are very interested in the US. Its just that they have realised that the doors to the US are simply shut for them. There has been a spat going on between the US politicians and Huawei for some time. It looks like the politicians have won.  And it begs the bigger question - can any company in the world be exclusively in one country or region (however big that might be) and hope to be a major player in the world. Huawei is a telecoms company. They sell networking equipment significantly cheaper than say Cisco. They used to be crappy ( Cisco would snigger at the mention of their name). Not any longer. Same quality, half the price. In an uncomplicated world, companies  should be falling over themselves to buy from them.  But then, the world is not an uncomplicated place. Huawei is a Chinese company. So what, you might ask ? Huawei's founder and leader was formerly in the Chinese army. Still so what ? Well, the ties with the Chine...

Ravi, who wrote this piece on  various forms of gramophone records is a certifiable music nut. He can wax lyrical (pun intended) on most matters musical. But when he does so about women 100 years old , well ........ you form your own conclusions. T he bloke writes beautifully, writes with passion and his words have magic.  If, at the end, you too fall for big black women who are 100 years old, don't blame me ! Read on. There is something wonderful about the black American songstress of the days gone by.   They were usually big, with voices to match.   I can always tell a black singer from her voice, because of a certain something, a je ne sais quoi in their voices, in particular, in the voices of the great jazz singers of the 50s and later.    I venture an extreme opinion here when I say that singers of that era invariably were less schooled and less adept in the use of technology than their soul sisters of later decades.   For one – they had to gr...

This past weekend, I had the honor of helping put together an engagement party for a very sweet friend's nephew. It wasn't supposed to be at her house originally, so when I got the call, we had to put all crafty gears into over drive. I had her email me a few pictures of things she wanted to see at the party and ran with it. I'll provide some of the details, but I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking. This little sign was at the base of the stairs as you walked up to the front porch. It's made of balsa wood. The sign was stained and hand painted with their names and the date of their wedding.  In the front entrance, there was an heirloom Bible for guests to sign or highlight their favorite verse along with photos of the bride and groom when they were children. The gift table Aren't the flower arrangements beautiful? I love hydrangeas and blue mason jars...you can never go wrong with either of those:o) There was additional seating outside.  Here are...

Here are the bathroom printables I promised. I have wanted to use the old phrase from the back of a shampoo bottle "wash, rinse, repeat" for quite some time now, but I was waiting for the right fonts to come along. I have fallen in love with all of the chalkboard fonts available. I think they are so fun, and they look really cool.  I found exactly what I was looking for at  A Nest of Posies , and played around with the fonts until I got the prints just right. I am so excited with the results, and happy to share. They are set to print as a 5x7.  To download each print, just click on the names below. Wash Rinse Repeat Enjoy:o) To see the full bathroom reveal, click here Partying Here: Six Sister's Stuff

Infosys was , is , and will be a great company. Unarguably. But even great organisations suffer from malaise. Surprisingly, Infosys suffers from the malaise that you would not normally attribute to it - the Lala problem. Yes, I know, I am throwing mud at a great company, but you have to expect it if you lose 20% of your market value in one day. Wait a minute. Isn't Infosys one of the most professional of companies ? A company that sets the standard for corporate governance. The company that raised the bar on ethical business. The company with the middle class values ? All true. But Infosys suffers from the same problem that family run companies have - the company is handed down from one  "family" man to another. Only in Infosys' case, the "family" is not blood related, but the group of founders who set up Infosys. The peerless Narayana Murthy established it. The relentless Nandan Nilekani drove it to the status of a world leader. Kris Gopalakrishnan then too...

Murderous rage is exactly what I am feeling for all "coders" at the moment. Noticing that a good rant has been somewhat long overdue on this blog and given that I think I have solved the answer to the famous question - why this kolaveri di  , I think this post is justified ! You see, a couple of days ago, Samsung released the new Android OS (cutely named Jelly Bean) for its smartphones in India. Yes I know, Jelly Bean is ancient news, but that's how long it takes for things to come to India. Yours truly's phone duly got updated.  And promptly lost all its screens, settings, etc etc. Having been a veteran of software upgrades from MS DOS (anybody remember) and having been burned a few zillion times, "kolaveri" had long given way to stoic resignation . But this one takes the cake. Remember the prompt when you are trying to delete and move something - it asks you - are you sure and gives you the option of OK or Cancel ? Notice it next time when that comes - its...

Last Saturday, while the hubs was hard at work in the backyard, I was wasting the day away indoors. It dawned on me that I have started SEVERAL projects over the last few months, and haven't finished ANY of them.  I decided that since hubs was working so hard, I probably should get with it, and do something myself:o) So, I finally finished the kids' bathroom. Our kids' wipe their little paws all over the walls, and leave the paw prints behind. We needed a solution where we wouldn't be using a Magic Eraser on our walls every other day. I had noticed a lot of magazines using horizontal boards as a wall treatment, and I knew that would be the perfect solution to our dilemma.  I happened to be in Lowes one day, and these boards were marked down significantly...and in my van they went!  I have gotten the hubs do so many wood working projects over the last 10 years, that he has gotten really proficient at it;o) Mad skills I tell ya. He's not a fan of miter cuts, but he di...

Since we are on this health kick, I have been using whole wheat flour instead of white flour. It wasn't easy at first, but there are actually some really tasty recipes out there using whole wheat. S.R. calls it the "brown flour," and turns her nose up at it every time I use it. The funny thing is, she gobbles it right up:o) I was looking for something different to do with hamburger meat over the weekend, and remembered a recipe off of the Bisquick box, Cheeseburger Pie. I wondered to myself if it would be as good using whole wheat.  I felt it was worth a try, and put my math skills to the test...trying to figure out the correct ratios and ingredients, and came up with a recipe that was a crowd pleaser :o) Cheeseburger Pie with Bacon Adapted from the Bisquick Recipe 1 lb of ground beef 1 small onion, chopped finely 2 T butter 1/2 ts salt 1/8 ts ground black pepper 1 c shredded cheddar cheese 2 eggs 1 c milk 1/2 c whole wheat flour 3/4 ts baking powder 1/4 ts salt 2 T cold ...

We have made a conscious effort to be healthier this year. We have jumped on the "whole foods" bandwagon and have been buying more organic and sticking to what we call "God foods." Foods that come from the earth and not from a manufacturing plant loaded with nasty, bad-for-you chemicals. We haven't completely knocked out all the junk, but I would say we are 85% there. I'm so glad that we decided to do this before the kids were older. They are completely on board with the change in our diet.  It makes my heart swell with pride when they ask for an apple or grapes for an afternoon snack instead of fruit snacks or some other form of junk food. Their school lunches have had a makeover as well, and I have been sharing them on Facebook. Since everyone isn't on Facebook...shocking, I know;o)... I thought I would share what the kids have been taking in their lunch boxes. Shredded Chicken, Organic Crackers, Celery with Peanut Butter, Strawberries, Grapes, and Hom...

In my previous post on His Master's Voice, I speculated that "the LP nut", Ravi, would have an interesting comment. Instead I got a full post from him, written in his inimitable style. A classic, a collector's item and a passionate and wonderfully written piece. Here it is, as he wrote it. The LP was not invented in 1902.   At that time, the most common form of recorded sound was the shellac record that ran for 3 ½ minutes on each side. Shellac was easy to   mould but could break very easily.   It was spun at 78rpm on mechanical players. You turned a spindle to wind up the plate on which the record rested, and a little speaker connected to the pick up converted the markings on the record to sound using mechanical conversion.   The first medium for recorded sound was the wax cylinder, which was invented by Edison in the late 19 th century. There was no plate, but a spindle on which a wax cylinder was fixed.   Reproduction was mechanical.   Electrical reco...