Milestones Remembered

When we were in Parkway Plaza at Penn we came up with a list of milestones that we could aspire to reach and measure our lives as successful or otherwise. We put this up on our refrigerator and well its probably out there still:)

next 6 months - find an assistantship (funding was everything then)
age 22 - finish off the master's
age 23 - get a job..one that pays
age 25 - yell at your boss, quit the job and start your own company
age 27 - loose all your money on your company
age 27.5 - put your tail between your legs and go back to your previous boss and beg for your old job back
age 28 - get married...preferably to a woman
age 30 - eurotrip
age 31 - get married to another woman in some other part of the world
age 32 - experience bankruptcy
age 35 - get a phd
age 40 - get divorced from both the wives and marry a chick half your age
age 45 - move to a country where you can be called a millionaire with the few bucks that you have left
age 50 - good luck staying alive

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Anyone willing to pay for Constructive Criticism?

All of us know the importance of good and constructive criticism in any aspect of our life, most importantly our work. Now we usually also know for a fact that criticism and the heated discussions that follow are probably the best moments of learning for most receptive individuals. However after all this it is really rare to find individuals who can digest criticism face on without pride getting in the way.

I have this uncanny and probably unwanted ability of speaking my mind out straight up without any hesitation. However on most occasions the receiving side usually doesnt want to hear anything that deviates from their current line of thought.

Come on the best way to learn, teach and improve on your ideas is by direct confrontation with people that oppose your idea. And if you can go ahead and manage to convince these same people that your ideas are much more better than theirs and these are the reasons why then you are bound to be more confident about your approach. And of course if you do not manage to convince these non believers then the fact is that either your idea is not based on a solid foundation or it is simply junk. Yes, you sometimes need to accept the fact that your idea may be not worth its weight at the scrapyard either.

Now while there are very few people who manage to accept criticisms there seem to be fewer who are willing to stick out their necks and blast out their criticisms to their peers and superiors with true confidence. Frankly I dont seem to have any trouble saying "Hey this sounds like crap!"

Corporates are willing to pay people to blog for them, to spy for them and/or do anything that would improve their organisation. What I am wondering is whether they are ready to pay individuals like myself to come out in their house and spell out exactly what I feel is crap in there and what are the things that bug me the most. Now remember this is what most of your employees think about them too but they are just too scared to say it out loud. Any takers? Though I haven't heard of any CEO's reading my blog just in case there are any interested in this prospect get in touch with me at allen.mathias@gmail.com

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Google is improving - proof

Theorem:
Google is constantly innovating on search and is actually innovating

Proof:
2 years ago my webpage at Penn featured as the "I'm feeling lucky match" for the search "allen mathias"
1 year ago Google featured something relevant to me as the 4th entry in its search results while MSN's beta search engine had me as the top search result.
1 minute ago Google features my blogger profile as the top search result for my name.

Therefore PROVED Google is innovating as we type:)

Hurray!

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Manipulations of the Media

The recent uproar of Muslims throughout the world against Pope Benedict's remarks had me thinking that the new Pope is quite orthodox and even more confrontational than what I assumed him to be from previous literature. I, like many of the people around the world, fell in for what the media flashed out all over the place.

As it turns out the quotes of Pope Benedict though absolutely spoken by him were in fact within a context of reference to a passage from some medieval text. He simply quoted the text and was having a dialogue based on the same. There was no malice or ill intention from the Pope at all.

The media has been well known to "make news" out of basically anything, however demeaning and unprofessional it may be. Most of the headlines in the papers have similar sources. They simply take the few words from an entire article that would turn out to be eye-catching or a double meaning and print it out in bold as the topic of the article.

For decades now the church has been a non confrontational leader in the new world. At many a occasion the church has even apologised for mistakes of the past. There is no reason to believe that the church holds such views at all. Unfortunately the reaction to such concocted media statements from the Muslim community has been far from encouraging. If it were the reactions from a few uneducated people I would'nt have been surprised however we have national leaders who are reacting with such childlike tantrums that I fear that dialogue is not something in their minds at all. At least world leaders and the educated masses should have confirmed the sources of such an article and found out the entire text of the speech given by Pope Benedict before reacting in any way. Especially considering that other people of the community do not overreact.

It is truly shameful that Middle East leaders have not come out to calm the extremists. And ofcourse regardless of what their intentions are I am sure that Pope Benedict will come out with a an apology of any sort or form that the Muslim community demands so that the world is a more peaceful place for all of us.

For those who care to read the speech. This is the link here

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Lagge Raho Vidyaji

I dunno what it is with me and smiles. But for me a beautiful smile is well worth making a fool of myself. And man does Vidya Balan take the cake for actresses with a genuinely breathtaking smile.. Well Sushmita Sen is also right up there with her but since I just saw the new flick Lage Raho Munnabhai, Vidya has the queen of all smiles.

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TOI's only interesting piece

For me Times of India is probably the worst newspaper there every is. Not a shred of journalism in the tons of pages that it burdens itself with. Even the basic spell checker seems to be missing in the software used to write their columns. Most of the news is either stale or copied from the internet with little or no intention of giving credit where due nor is an attempt made to provide a different perspective. And yeah I buy it because of the adverts thats all. But the quote for the day this thursday was worth the paper and ink used to print it.

It irritates me to be told how things have always been done
... I defy the tryanny of precedent

- Clara Barton

Made my day especially with the BS that was being fired towards me for the most of the week. Cheers.