Ways to improve your office etiquette

Ways to improve your office etiquette
(and avoid being the annoying co-worker)

# Watch the volume of your voice

Keep your voice at a reasonable level. Other people are trying to work, and your voice may distract them.

# Don’t peep into your co-worker’s computer

No matter the urge to see what other people are up to, you must save yourself the embarrassment of being labelled the office’s peeping tom.

# Don’t join conversations uninvited – it’s called being a “Buttinsky”/ “Nosy Parker”

Because you're most likely in a cubicle or other open office area, you inevitably will overhear snippets of conversations other people are having. Whatever might be the urge, don’t impose upon them - it only annoys people when you simply stand next to them – uninvited and it also reflects poorly on you. When you are needed – people will ASK for you

# Admit mistakes; don’t lie or blame others

When you find yourself in a soup or in tough situations you will be inclined to lie or shift the blame of your wrong doing on someone else. If you do this, you are putting not only your reputation at stake but your job too. Always stick to the honesty policy and play fair.

# Be punctual for meetings

If you're an attendee, be on time. If you can't make a meeting or you're going to be late, let someone know. Don't arrive late and ask for a recap.
If you're the one who's running the meeting, start it on time and resume it on time after a break.

# Email etiquette 

Not every email is to be tagged as high priority. Uppercase, red fonts typically denote anger…

Best Quote from Craig Ferguson - Effect of Email

 

I vividly remember watching and thoroughly enjoying this episode of "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" where he was talking about Philately and how the word sounded like some dirty sex thing...

"What are you doing?"

"Uh?... Philateling...."


He went on to talk about how Philately is the nerdiest thing that one could do sticking their tongue to bits of paper called stamps and stick them around...

His banter continued and he started to talk about the effects of eMail... While I do not remember exactly word by word of what he said, this is roughly about it:

"
Email has totally ruined the Art of Licking...  People now do not know what to do with all the extra saliva and now have to start licking something else instead
"

I was a "Philatelist" while I was in school and I did feel offended the whole time he was making fun of stamp collectors - but its Craig Ferguson... He is funny.

What is going wrong with Kamal Hassan

I am a big fan of Kamal's. He is one of the best world famous actor who is gifted with great looks and amazing acting talents. I am sure it would be wrong to call it all gifted because it is all his hard work that has brought him through all these years to such stardom.

 

 

From his open statements on many different things through all these years he has time and again proved how solid and strong willed he is. Needless to say he has the best sense of humor and can swim through any tide with ease.

 

He is a living legend most people in his industry would be jealous of and admired by one and all. Besides acting he is a great dancer and a fabulous singer too.

 

But the past decade or so I noticed something going completely wrong in many of his movies...

I hate to say this but I disliked many of his movies. Its tough to accept to the fact but I just did. Actually I am a big fan of Ilayaraaja but that does not mean I will simply say all of his compositions or albums were the best. There are good ones, there are bad ones (more good though). I just will say I did not like it if I did not like it.

 

Back to Kamal Hassan,

 

Some of the movies I really disliked:
Dasavatharam
Vishwaroopam
Hey Ram (music was world class!)
Aalavandhan

 

Movies that I enjoyed:
Virumandi
Vasool Raja MBBS
Unnaippol Oruvan

 

Movies that were good and I am not surprised of their hits: PKS
Panchathanthiram

 

Almost all movies I disliked from Kamal where movies that he had directed. I think these are the key points that are pulling his movies down:

 

1. Kamal reads a lot and is very informative. He is trying to stuff all that into a movie and often times it glaringly shows out unable to blend with the script.

 

2. He is an atheist and is creating opportunities in the script to slip through a quirky comment and doing that over and over and over again creates a cliché.

 

3. Kamal is taking heavy global subjects that are extremely difficult to relate with by regional languages. His scripts are based for Hollywood movies and he is trying to present it to the Indian audience. Kelloggs could NEVER beat the South Indian Idly sambhar breakfast regime. What Kamal is trying to give is Kelloggs in a Sambhar sauce and it tastes horrible.

 

4. Language barriers - off late not just Kamal, due to budget constraints,  almost all top level directors attempt multi lingual ventures (mainly Hindi). The nativity is compromised in that process. I still think that Devar Maghan was Kamal's best script and movie... So was Virumandi. These fared well in South Indian languages too.

 

5. Overdoing of technology which is not yet fully settled. While I agree that someone should bring in a trend change, still doing it badly is a major blemish in ones career. For instance the DTH issue or to shoot a movie in a handicam was all in good intention but the output from the handicam was not that good. And the overdoing of make up get over through Indian, Avvai Shanmughi and then Dasavatharam was too much to fathom as one among the audience.

 

6. Kamal is caught and torn between the disparity among the divided audience and is desperately trying to make everyone happy but ending disappointing everyone. I personally feel that the tamil audience is very dumb (sorry if it is harsh). There is one section of the younger generation who have access to all foreign cinema and are trained to see movies with lesser hand holding and explaining. But the other section of the audience would get confused even when a flash back sequence is shown.

 

Kamal is fantastic with comedy and anything he attempts as an out and out comedy is  sure shot success. Only when he tries to stuff in too many things as part of a single movie he seems to lose track.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am wishing and hoping Kamal would be back to his original form and do movies like Devar Maghan, Guna, Naayagan, Aboorva Sagothirargal, Mahanathi...

World's best Dad

I distinctly remember this. I was in my 3rd standard in school. There was this big advertisement on TV about a bunch of fun and adventure board games that were available for you to get IF you collected and gave 10 or 20 wrappers of Maggi noodles.

 

There were sign boards about the same in almost every departmental store at that time. And to my eyes those games were like the biggest thing to attain in my life.

It was not a custom at my home to buy food outside and maybe noodles would be prepared twice or thrice in a year!

 

I started to plead with my Mom to make me more Maggi noodles... I kept telling her how I love to eat Maggi for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But since I had a reputation of eating almost anything, my mother would have only cared to listen if I said I DON'T want to eat something... as it would have been a big surprise.

 

With my effort in luring my mom going futile I had to device another plan.

 

Idea #1
I thought I will stand outside the department store and see if people drop the wrapper... but then it hit my morbid brain that it is not some chocoloate or ice cream for people to eat and throw the wrapper around.

 

Idea #2
Check the garbage of neighbors to see if there could be any wrappers... but my dignity and societal status prevented me from treading that route. Also, there was HEAVY competition for this and neighbors had kids too!

 

Idea #3
I calculated putting to use all the math that was taught in school to know how much money it would cost to buy 20 of those noodles by myself and it was a HUGE investment for someone who could only get to SEE currency notes and never even get the pleasure of touching them. Besides I couldn't care less about the noodles... what would I do with so much noodles?

 

With no plan plausible and nothing that could be hatched out I automatically resorted to what every other 10 year old would do... REVOLT, CRY, TORTURE YOUR PARENTS, EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL.

 

Time was running out and the offer was closing really soon... my torture techniques weren't taking effect either... hiw easily a kid's sentiment gets ignored in a family! I wish I would grow old on the very next second... I had dreams of playing those board games... that was how obsessed I was on them.

 

At the point where I was in the verge of giving up there came a mail... a courier package... a BIG

parcel that had the logo of Maggi on it... I teared it open and inside were ALL 4 games that I was craving for. My father was smiling at me and told me then that he had actually written to the Maggi company attaching some money explaining about all the tantrums I have raised requesting them to send the games to us treating this as a special consideration. This was the greatest surprise for me and that moment I knew I had the world's best Dad.

Musicals and Me

Just realized this stupid habit of mine... Any article or news or blog I read AFTER watching a musical, I try to read it in the tune of songs from that movie itself...however non-rhyming it would be.

This happened in the past with Chicago and then Sweeney Todd and now with Les Miserables. I know it is stupid and I dont know if this happens for others too but I just keep doing this for a few days until I am over with the movie

My newest lessons learnt from watching a TV show

I was watching the newest Super Kitchen/Super Chef show on Star Vijay today and saw some nice vegetarian cooking. Though not so inclined towards cooking, it is the drama and politics that I was looking out for - the one that fuels such competition and reality shows.

There was this girl who claimed she is terrible in cooking, super nervous about the show and she knows nothing that could impress the judges and I admit she did seem like she was ovedoing it a bit. Some people tend to do that - show themeslves to be below par and then when they actually deliver - voila they look like a super hero. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it would fail... I remember actor Adrien Brody in a promo for one of his movies, asked people NOT to watch his movie (hoping it would create a spur and people would flock in). But then, he never expected the people to be so odedient - actualy no one ever went to the movie after all! Ok, I am degressing...

Getting back to the kitchen show, there was this other guy who was super confident and very very experienced in cooking. And in one of the cut scenes (in-betweeners) he started ranting about this girl and called her for playing dumb. He made remarks like he has seen so many such kids before yada yada yada...

Finally he went on to become the winner of the episode and the girl came runner up.

Looking at this all, I was telling my sister who was with me watching this show that it would have been SO MUCH more better if this guy had kept quite about the girl. He won it finally, that is big enough. But if he had not made such comments it would have shown him to be more mature.

I agree that the girl was a bit too noisy and nosy and extremely talkative. Maybe this guy was irritated. Maybe she was trying to play the dark horse and come out winning - she really came close too! But STILL it would have been really really better if the guy had just not made such comments.

I try to take some management concept out of this - In my work place too, I encounter similar people with different types of attitude and intent. So given below is my personal lesson taken from this:

"If someone is irritating or frustrating you but you know that they are not worthy of your time or skills, just completely ignore them. They will make enough noise to show themselves to be stupid or not... But remember to just focus on your work and no one can prevent the inevitable success"

A nice song from 1996 tamil movie - Andha Naal

I got reminded of a song from a 1996 tamil movie called Andha Naal.

Nicely rendered by K.J.Yesudas and quite a melodious one.

When I tried hunting it down on the internet, could not find a downloadable version anywhere. So I now have it uploaded in cooltoad. The link is given below for all the music lovers:

Andha Naal Unmai Yaavume - Andha Naal (1996)

Cheers!