The Value of Cooperation

SUCCESS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN ISOLATION (Courtesy Maj Gen Surjit Singh)

There was a farmer who grew superior quality and award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won honour and prizes.

One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learnt something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbours'.

"How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbours when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" the reporter asked.

"Why sir, "said the farmer, "didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbours grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn.

If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbours grow good corn."

The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbour's corn also improves. So it is in the other dimensions!
Those who choose to be at harmony must help their neighbours and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well. The value of a life is measured by the lives it touches.

SUCCESS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN ISOLATION. IT IS VERY OFTEN A PARTICIPATIVE AND
COLLECTIVE PROCESS.

So share the good practices, ideas, new learning with your family, team members, neighbours.

Retreat Ceremony at Wagah

Here are a few clippings of the retreat ceremony (courtesy youtube). The ceremony at Hussainiwalla (near Faridkot) is actually a lot better, though much lesser known.






Here is another clip :-

Chanakya's Quotes

Image via Wikipedia

Chanakya's Quotes - Worth Learning

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"A person should not be too honest.
Straight trees are cut first
and Honest people are screwed first."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC 75 BC)  
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"Even if a snake is not poisonous,
it should pretend to be venomous."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)  
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"The biggest guru-mantra is: Never share your secrets with anybody. ! It will destroy you."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)  
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"There is some self-interest behind every friendship.
There is no Friendship without self-interests.
This is a bitter truth."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)  
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"Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply
and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)  
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"As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)  
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"Once you start a working on something,
don't be afra id of failure and
don't abandon it.
People who work sincerely are the happiest."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)  
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"The fragrance of flowers spreads
only in the direction of the wind.
But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)  
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"A man is great by deeds, not by birth."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)  
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"Treat your k id like a darling for the first five years.
For the next five years, scold them.
By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend.
Your grown up children are your best friends."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)  
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"Education is the best friend.
An educated person is respected everywhere.
Education beats the beauty and the youth."
Chanakya quotes  (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)  

The Art of Wellness

 

Origin of Names of Great Companies............

Origin of Names of Great Companies

Mercedes:

This was actually financier's daughter's name.

Adobe:

This came from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apple Computers:

It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobbs.He was three months late for filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

CISCO:

It is not an acronym as popularly believed. Its short for San Francisco.

Compaq:

This name was formed by using COMp, for computer and PAQ to denote asmall integral object.

Corel:

The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland Research Laboratory.

Google:

The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol',a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor; they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.

Hotmail:

Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters"html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

Hewlett Packard :

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel:

Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'MooreNoyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes) :

Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or'Padmasana' . Kapor used to be a teacher of transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft:

Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Motorola:

Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

ORACLE:

Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.

Sony:

It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN:

Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer; Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.

Apache:

It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon.. The result was 'A PAtCHy'server --thus, the name ApacheJakarta (project from Apache):A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a web server handling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room at SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.

Tomcat:

The servlet part of the Jakarta project. Tomcat was the code name for the JSDK 2.1 project inside SUN.

C:

Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it 'NewB'.He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie).

C++:

Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then 'newC'. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti suggested the name C++ as a successor to C.

GNU:

A species of African antelope. Founder of the GNU project Richard Stallman liked the name because of the humor associated with its pronunciation and was also influenced by the children's song 'The GnuSong' which is a song sung by a gnu. Also it fitted into the recursive acronym culture with 'GNU's Not Unix'.

Java:

Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute as there was no other language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.

LG:

Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.

Linux:

Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which he     replaced by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax(free+ freak + x).His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name Freax.(Linus' parents named him after two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling) .

Mozilla:

When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) .The marketing guys didn't like the name however and it wasre-christened Netscape Navigator.

Red Hat:

Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (withred and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

SAP:

"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applicatio ns/Projects' group of IBM.

SCO (UNIX):

From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz.

UNIX:

When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, KenThompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS.They needed the OS to run the game Space War which was compiled underMULTICS. It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.

Xerox:

The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry' (asit was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.

Yahoo!:

The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver'sTravels' . It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

3M:

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the material 'corundum' used to make sandpaper.

Amazing Aviation Pictures

FW: Fw: [DB64] FW: When a Soldier Comes Home...must look at this one

WHEN A SOLDIER COMES HOME ...

When a soldier comes home, he finds it hard....

...to listen to his son whine about being bored.

....to keep a straight face when people complain about potholes.

to be tolerant of people who complain about the hassle of getting ready for work.

...to be understanding when a co-worker complains about a bad night's sleep.

..to be silent when people pray to God for a new car.

...to control his panic when his wife tells him he needs to drive slower.

..to be compassionate when a businessman expresses a fear of flying.


...to keep from laughing when anxious parents say they're afraid to send their kids off to summer camp.


...to keep from ridiculing someone who complains about hot weather.


...to control his frustration when a colleague gripes about his coffee being cold.


...to remain calm when his daughter complains about having to walk the dog.



...to be civil to people who complain about their jobs.


...to just walk away when someone says they only get two weeks of vacation a year.


...to be forgiving when someone says how hard it is t o have a new baby in the house.



The only thing harder than being a Soldier..


Is loving one.