Oneplus One - The best Smart Phone!

Oneplus - The flagship killer

After using an iPhone for 6 years I moved to Android.
Moving from Apple to Android was a very big and a bold decision. This could have been possible only with a killer of a phone. Oneplus is exactly that. I guess I have made one brilliant decision and can't be more happy than this.

Thank you Amazon and Oneplus

A guide to shopping, shopping and more shopping.

Shopping, a ladies delight and a gentleman's nightmare. Well, that is the truth most of the times.

Shopping in the 80's, 90's or in some households even in the early 2000's was limited to festivals, birthdays, marriages or any other significant ceremony in the family. Families would often shop only during these times and not venture out otherwise. But with the IT and BT revolution, not only did the landscape of the average Indian consumer change, but also along with it changed his outlook towards shopping.

Thanks to the influx of global culture and frequent visits to foreign countries one could see a paradigm shift in the way an Urban Indian looked at shopping. From technological advancements, to newer fashions every season, to different tastes, the Indian shopper had taken a quantum leap. However, one thing remained unchanged- the hunger for sales, discounts, offers etc continued to be the hallmark of an Indian shopper. With the advent of online shopping sites this need was somewhere addressed as these sites started to offer huge discounts and offers that the average consumer was looking for. But one can still witness huge queues at the billing counters in shopping malls and premium retail outlets like Shoppers stop, Lifestyle and Central. The caveat here though is, this is limited to end of season sale, festival offers etc. as the offers during these times are communicated via email or announced via radio/hoardings. These big brands and hundreds of other merchants in the market place run promotions, sale, discounts most times of the year, however these go unnoticed as there is no communication between the merchant and the end consumer.

This scenario is a reality in the great Indian shopping story. The average consumer is probably looking for deals to shop offline but is tired chasing them. The 'I got the best deal in town' bragger is hungry for more discounts but does not really know where to find them. The plain Jane in lot of consumers is probably not confident to shop online and hesitant to scout for deals in shops. The 'ever so organized' homemaker wants the satisfaction of 'seeing and buying' but is also concerned about getting the best deal. The college going dude is probably trying to get the best from what his wallet has to offer but probably can get better than the best if he has the right guides.

There are a dozen more stories like these which are true in every aspect when we talk of an average Indian shopper. There is an itch to shop better, to be an intelligent shopper. There is an eternal desire to know of the deals through the year and not wait for those few elusive bargain days. A need for a guide, a friend who can redefine convenience in shopping, is felt.

Madzz is well poised to be that friend and guide. The way an average Indian shops is likely to witness a significant change. Deals/promotions of offline retail stores or in malls around him is now pushed as a notification to his phone in real time. The mobile phone of an average Indian consumer is now set to be his key to convenient shopping, through a unique deal finder mobile app- madzz! Indian shopping is all set to get redefined when it comes to convenience and madzz will be its harbinger.

Life, beyond the 9 to 5 job

If I were to say something about life in mathematical sense and set theory in particular I would say that life is an universal set and everything else is a subset of it. Similar to set theory, even in life there is a combination of union, intersection, subset and the rest.

Most of us work in one job or the other. Thanks to the IT-BPO revolution we now work at all shifts on all days, simply put 24x7, 365 days a year. Though we have different shifts and timings of work, commonly people refer working as a "9 to 5" job, guess due to majority of the population working in this shift. 9 to 5, 8 hours i.e. 1/3 of our day, that transforms to 1/3rd of life, working.

Agreed our job earns us bread and butter, but life is not all about slogging for few hours more than required and impressing someone sitting ten thousand miles away for a few dollars. What's the point in impressing someone whom we haven’t seen, haven’t known personally and probably has no relevance in our life versus neglecting the near and dear ones who matter the most? As a result of our efforts in life we might get promoted, get increments but are these more important than yourself? For instance one might become a Vice president or even the CEO at an age of 35, but can he become a successful son, parent, husband/wife? The possibilities look remote.

I recollect one famous saying of Prof. S. Radhakrishna who once quoted "Do not lose your foothold on earth while trying to sweep the skies". In chasing professional success we often tend to forget the basic things in life.

When we split our day into three parts, one third would comprise of sleep, one third of our work and the remaining is what is left for US (our use).

And even in this one-third (which comprises of OUR one-third) we will have to account for a lot of other smaller things like taking bath, travelling to office and other miscellaneous things. And when if we were to look back, we will find that we have done very little or probably nothing for yourself and your family. It is time we change this equation and make a winner of yourself in the maths of life.

Work is a subset of life and life is not a subset of work

Expectations in Life!!

The universal truth about life, to the best of my knowledge is, We are born alone and we die alone and what we see, do in between is just a temporary phase, if i can say so
Most of us weather educated or not are aware of this fact. Though, we tend to get carried away by a lot of things, people, situations etc around us. We have a tendency to expect in everything that we do. From the time we wake up in the morning and until we go to bed in the night, we expect almost every minute as to what should happen the next moment. For example before we sip our first coffee of the day, don't we expect the taste of the coffee to be good and that it should give us a good start for the day, and if the coffee is bad or not upto the mark we tend to lose our calm and allow it to disrupt our day. When a thing as small as a coffee can take control of your daily life and deal with your emotions, what would happen if the people around you or people who matter the most or the near and dear ones don't match your expectations? I feel its quite human to feel bad/disappointed when things do not match our expectations.
When i talk about expectations here, i refer to the small things in life. It may be, expecting a dear friend to call you for a smoke or a cup of coffee. When even in such smallest things if we do not get what we expect i guess it is quite obvious to feel disappointed and you begin to question about the entire concept of expectations.
On the hindsight i recall one kannada saying "Aaseye Dukhakke Moola" meaning desires are the sole reason for disappointment
Lastly,it is important to expect in life as there is no life wihout expectation. Having said that it is also important to draw a line somewhere just to avoid any disappointments in life. While it is important to expect, at the same time it is equally important to learn how to manage expectations.
Well! i have not learnt the art of managing expectations, i hope to learn it very soon, Thanks to my growing list of situations of expectations mismatch!!

Satisfaction in life

In our daily scheme of things we tend to keep rushing in on a lot of things and seldom do we sit back and watch what we have done or doing.
We have multiple roles to play in life. From being an employee of a company to being a son, Parent, friend and the list goes on. As part of these roles, we keep performing various activities. How often, would we look back or pause to see if we are really performing these tasks well or if we are satisfying/ doing justice to these roles that we play.
Even when we have given our best in whatever we have done and we feel that we have done best or probably more than what we thought could have been done, people would still have something or the other to point out at what you do.
It is very important for one individual to satisfy himself on whatever he does satisfies him. Because, one cannot satisfy every other person that is present around him. Even in one of the smallest things in life there can be disagreement in what you do from many present around you. What is important in life is what you do and whether is satisfies you or not. Only our conscience knows whether what we have done is good/bad or best/better.
I feel like sharing one experience in this regard. I was extremely busy with a lot of things over the past couple of weeks, however i made sure that i give in my best in whatever i did, like i usually do and completed all the tasks to my satisfaction (very satisfied). Still, people took a couple of chances (though there wasn't one!) in pointing out few so called faults at me. This really demotivated me to a great extent and i really started thinking on it. Then, i realised that i cannot satisfy everybody present around me with what i do. There will be people who like what i do and at the same time some who do not like it at all. I don't want to live my life for the second category of people, because no matter what you do, they will never be satisfied with you. After all, we all live for ourselves and not for somebody else (exceptions in case of family)
Having said that i don't mean to say that i am the most perfect man on earth and i do not make mistakes at all. Even i am a human being and it is human to make mistakes. But, when people start pointing out at whatever you do then it is time to put your foot down and start thinking about yourself and not what others say about it and satisfying yourself that the whole world in front of you.
Only when we think about ourselves on aspects of life like these will we be doing justice to ourselves, hence we are loosing out on most important thing in life. YOU!

Is it time India implemented an emergency lifeline similar to 911?

Very often, we come across lot of reports on domestic violence in newspapers, magazines, TV channels etc, but only on a few occasions (probably not) do we realize the intensity of these incidents with respect to what has happened or why it has happened? And why should we after all? We have got our own lives to live and our own problems to bother about.

However, when domestic violence of any nature happens in our neighborhood or to people whom we know, we tend to get concerned and raise questions.

I am writing this piece to share my concerns on an incident that happened on the Thursday the 11th of June 2009. It is about an incident that happened in a well educated; well to do family and not the kind of family set up with which one usually associates domestic violence with. This family was very well known to my wife's family and my wife shared a very intimate relationship with the lady who died in the incident. She was married for more than 40 years. Her husband abusing her physically or verbally was a daily ritual and every neighbor around them acknowledges this fact. She lived all her life getting abused by her husband and probably had even got habited to that. However, this incident was not like the hundreds that had happened earlier. Like any other day they had a small argument, over the family visiting Kerala and it turned uglier when the husband hit her with a iron rod at the back of her head. She fell down along with her 10 month old grandson and started bleeding profusely. She died on the spot.
I was there for the funeral along with my wife and I cannot say how sorry I felt for that lady who led a painful life all through and died a painful death.
Like I mentioned earlier, incidents like these keep happening very often but we tend to get bothered only if it happens in our immediate neighborhood or to our people whom we know.
I guess these incidents occur because people have taken our system for granted. Our legal system takes ages to deliver a judgment and at times the culprit might walk away free.
On the backdrop of this incident and many similar to these I personally feel that there needs to be a 911 sort of emergency helpdesk to deal with such situations. Probably we cannot rewrite the fate of these people, but if we can at least hope for a system which can instill fear, then people resorting to a spineless act of domestic violence will think twice