novel Thinking

kick off sedentary and welcome dynamic - entertainment!!!
Friday, March 31, 2006

The kind of entertainment one engages oneself with, plays a huge role in shaping ones thinking and ability. The role of entertainment and other activities that one does outside of one’s academic pursuit could not be discounted. Having said that, the main entertainment most of India engages are movies and television. That explains why Indian movie industry makes more movies than anywhere else and how television channels are able to sustain the eyeballs higher than anywhere else in the world. As a growing up kid, I was also brought up engaging my free time with ever senti tele serials, movies with the only theme that we can think of, “Love”. Although these content are welcome and needs some amount of creativity to sustain the eye balls and engage the grey cells, but what we actually have is a dearth of other kind of entertainment. I can’t stop but compare the content here in German television with that of India TV channels. In main television channel like Prosieben in Germany we see satirical comedy, new technological developments, scientific tidbits, who is germany’s next top model, of course movies and more. Look at the variety in the content. A kid who grows up following scientific tidbits may get interested in that and may actually realize his/her real calling and a girl who looks at who is Germany’s next top model may actually get into modeling or fashion technology. Even here in a country where television is not the main entertainment and they have more dynamic entertainment like dance, fitness center’s, summer sports, winter sports, tennis, football, racing, cycling apart from the usual skin show stuff, they expose people to various possibilities and development opportunities the world offers. To put it short, the content makes people think and may even change their career path. But, why in India where television and movies plays a huge role in influencing the societal trends aren’t having enough dynamic content that could actually influence people in a better way by exposing to various possibilities. More than anywhere else, television should play a responsible role as they got more influence in India more than any westernized nation. If we have to think of any content outside of usual Love theme and family sentiments that we see in Indian movies and soap operas we invariably borrow the others from the successful programs abroad like KBC and Indianize them. Where is all our creativity? Where are all our creative thinkers and informed scholars? Don’t tell me about dedicated channels for sports like ESPN or other good content channels like Discovery. For one they don’t cater to the masses because the they are not played in vernacular languages and the next thing being that most Indian homes doesn’t have more than one television screen at home and have to be shared by the whole family. So the dynamic kind of content should be inserted into channels that most of the family agrees with. May be my mom would not agree with Discovery or ESPN, but may be with Sun TV our whole family might agree. So inserting dynamic and variety content in the main stream channel like Sun TV in tamilnadu can ultimately benefit people and influence society positively. So, my point is this. The main stream television channels, mainly in vernacular languages, should bring in content that may influence the society positively and break the sedentary entertainment tradition and show the kick of dynamically entertaining oneself.

Do you agree?

Posted byPraveen J at 9:20 AM 0 comments  

Structuring thought process
Thursday, March 30, 2006

Writing is the expression of thought process in words. Expressing oneself with the right words require right vocabulary. The nuances of the words used in a writing, makes the main difference between good writing and not so good writing. Words form a sentence. A well structured flow of sentences makes it a good reading. A good reading is again a process of assimilating what you read. So again, assimilation is a thought process.

So a thought process written in words as sentences are read and assimilated and transferred as another thought process into an another soul.

I think this thorough understanding of, the purpose of writing is to communicate your thought process to your intended audience, makes your thought process more structured. A more structured thought process brings out a good writing. So boyz and girlz, the first step is to structure the thought process by answering the following questions:

1. What do you want to communicate? - content
2. To whom do you want to communicate? - intended audience
3. Why do you want to communicate? - purpose

did I get it right ???

Posted byPraveen J at 2:22 PM 1 comments  

Bangalore to Bengaluru?
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Living in Germany, not a day passes without mainly china and most times India being talked about. Roaring economy and discussions about the distinctions in weather, culture and language invariably takes the front seat when it comes to India. China with its amazingly fast infrastructure development and an attractive market cannot be compared evenly to India, a country with its all well known bureaucracy and crumbling infrastructure even in the best of our branded city like Bangalore. Bangalore is a brand and brand means value. It's too far away for my understanding, how people even think of killing this fat brand by thinking of renaming Bangalore to Bengaluru.

Rechristening Madras to Chennai and Bombay to Mumbai, our politicians have been killing the brands as a regular endeavor. But, should renaming Bangalore be perceived as just another renaming endeavor? Or it means more, not just to the city but to the nation as a whole?

When I got a chance to meet the chancellor of the University where I did my Bachelors just after his short term course at Harvard, he was surprised that Bangalore is so well known among his fellow participants than even Delhi and Mumbai. This was more than a year before and lots changed since then. Obviously, since then many more countries and many more people have been exposed to the brand that’s Bangalore. Imagine, New York and London is not called so anymore. Would you recognize them? Would you have the same passion for the renamed cities that you feel for them now? How many years of tireless brand building took these majestic names to be established as a brand in many hearts of this world? If renaming New York or London sounds a distant possibility, how renaming Bangalore could just be a reality. How do we even dare to kill our golden goose that’s Bangalore and surprisingly there is not much of an uproar in a land where a German woman being apparently raped makes the main headline in the largest selling Indian news paper, TOI. Where are all the journalists and where are all the business tycoons who should be more concerned than anyone else.

The brand Bangalore was not built by the politicians. Many software engineers added thousands of lines of code from the city which ultimately made it valuable and these engineers have flocked Bangalore from all over the nation. The best thing the politicians did, they were off the scene. Also, the contribution of the various Indian and multi national companies for building this brand cannot be belittled. The politicians of Karnataka could not even keep pace of the infrastructure development with the city's growth. If you cant help don’t hinder. Hopefully before it’s too late, the private companies, people and the government rescues Bangalore’s from its infrastructure woes. The politicians would also do a lot well if they keep their hands off anything that’s detrimental to the development of the city. This issue should be immediately sorted out at the highest levels, so as not to create any confusion in the minds of investors and hundreds of hearts thats being exposed to this brand that's Bangalore.

Posted byPraveen J at 8:18 PM 0 comments  

Snow's melting, Spring's coming!!!
Saturday, March 25, 2006

I moved to Munich in one of Munich's worst winter, in years . As I see spring coming and Sun showing and more people on the roads and sometimes too little on them....yea it's spring that's coming. At Marien Platz, the city center, its tribal fashion. You know what, so it's translated to Indian fashion. Some still bet, India is a tribal country, yet. And at Neuperlach zentrum, slim and tall, elegant and graceful girls walking the ramp, presenting the fashion of this Spring. It wasn't tribal, so it wasn't Indian :). Amazing it was, what a display by the girls...Kudos!!! Mesmerized meeee !!! oops, there were some guys thrown in too !!! :) Did I mention that, they were simply amazing in the closing session....Let me give them their due......am a guy too :)

So, everyone here in Munich is welcoming the Spring and snow's melting away, paving the way for, perhaps what could be my last spring here in Germany.....

Posted byPraveen J at 11:17 AM 0 comments  

US residents of Irish ancestry, 9 times Ireland population
Friday, March 17, 2006

Do you know the number of US residents who claim Irish ancestry(34.3 mn) are almost 9 times the population of Ireland itself (3.9 mn)?

Real interesting stat!!!!

Posted byPraveen J at 8:00 PM 0 comments  

Will Globalization ever happen?
Sunday, March 12, 2006

The recent acquisition of Dubai Ports World of Britain based ports giant P&O, inturn getting control of six main US ports, the subsequent opposition from the US congressmen and a final "give up" by DP-World, was an important episode that should not be missed to understand the larger picture. This should also be seen in the context of Spanish government's opposition to German based E.ON energy, the energy giant, taking over Endesa, citing Energy security and French government's opposition as a stake holder of Mittal Steel attempt's to take over Arcelor, a fellow steel giant citing job losses.

What does this mean to globalization? How would these developments help develop a conceptual understanding of what could future have in store for globalization. Globalization, as I understand, is any time any access to any market. But in a true sense could this ever be a reality, as long as there are geo-political obligations and aspirations. America, would never give up its super power status and all its strategies, be it the Nuclear deal with India floating NPT or its unilateral action on Iraq citing WMD, shows America's vision to control the world. No other country is going to give up any of its strategic infrastructure that could seriously alter the geo-political leverage the country has. So globalization will only be possible to the extent , exempting the Nation's security based infrastructure and businesses like Energy, power, transportation, Telecommunications to a certain extent the stock market. So there will never be an uncontrolled globalization happening and there will always be concerns expressed, if any other Nation's company attempt's to take over the above said strategic infrastructure. So, this explains why the US opposes the ports deal and why Spain opposes the Energy deal. But, this still leaves us into oblivion, why France opposes the steel deal, which does not directly come under the purview of any strategic need of the countries concerned. Its business ! so, why does France and Luxembourg happens to be opposing the deal and what are the reasons cited, its job losses as I said !

Hmm, sure it is. Western companies want access to the ever expanding Asian markets, want to take a slice of the pie of the growing Asian middle class and want to satisfy its ever hungry share holders. But why is that not one single Asian company truly leveraging the benefits of globaliation and getting access to Western markets. If am not wrong, Mittal steel, although not an Asian company, is the only private (forget about Chinese government owned giants) Asian owned company that is scaling up such huge heights. Asian giants like Samsung, LG have its own sphere of influence but none has scaled up to become the World giant, as Mittal steel's acquistion of Arcelor will make it.

Clearly it shows the double standars of Western nations, which always "encourages" developing nations to open up its market, as they themselves are increasingly, closing their markets. So this means "Globalization" is nothing but a strategic weapon to make the developing countries open its market but increasingly making the developed countries closing up their markets.

Will this be the future of globalization ? leave your comments !!!

Posted byPraveen J at 10:50 AM 0 comments  

US plans "stealth shark spies"
Saturday, March 04, 2006

check out: Now shark's can be spies !!! How good is that ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4767428.stm

Posted byPraveen J at 9:50 AM 0 comments