The Year That Was

One more year has ended. One more year of precious Life
bestowed on us.It's time to sit back and introspect awhile,
how we have used it.... and then decide how we can use it better
in 2012.

I take this opportunity of wishing all of you, some known well and some less
known to me

May all your wishes come true in 2012 (including mine). Come around
2013 and I wish that I am there to wish you all once again ....and you
be there to collect my wishes.

Be happy, always.

A C T !

http://www.avaaz.org/en/hours_to_save_jan_lokpal_callin/?tta

Marriage - The Lighter View (Caution: trifle sexist|

I've been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me. (Henny Youngman)


A professor of mathematics sent a fax to his wife. It read: "Dear wife, You must realize that you are 54 years old and I have certain needs which you are no longer able to satisfy. I am otherwise happy with you as a wife, and I sincerely hope you will not be hurt or offended to learn that by the time you receive this letter, I will be at the Grand Hotel with my 18-year-old teaching assistant. I'll be home before midnight. - Your Husband." When he arrived at the hotel, there was a faxed letter waiting for him that read as follows: "Dear Husband. You too are 54 years old, and by the time you receive this, I will be at the Breakwater Hotel with the 18-year-old pool boy. Being the brilliant mathematician that you are, you can easily appreciate the fact that 18 goes into 54 a lot more times than 54 goes into 18. Don't wait up."


Before we got engaged he never farted. Now it's a second language. (Caroline Rhea)


Two engaged couples die and go to heaven. They asks St. Peter, "Is there such thing as marriage in heaven?" Peter tells them he'll get back to them! 10 years later they finally get married but realize they weren't meant for each other. So they ask St. Peter if there is such a thing as divorce in heaven? Peter responds, "It took us 10 years to get a priest up here how long do you think it will take us to get a lawyer!"

I come from a big family... 14 kids. I didn't sleep alone until I got married.

My wedding day... that was a beauty. I went to put the ring on... she gave me the wrong finger. (Rodney Dangerfield)

Never tell your wife she's lousy in bed. She'll go out and get a second opinion. (Rodney Dangerfield)

They say marriage is a contract. No it's not. Contracts come with warranties. When something goes wrong, you can take it back to the manufacturer. If your husband starts acting up, you can't take him back to his mama's house. "I don't know... he just stopped working. He's just laying around making a funny noise." (Wanda Sykes)


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A guy knows he's in love when he loses interest in his car for a couple of days. (Tim Allen)


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I love being married. I was single for a long time and I just got so sick of finishing my own sentences. (Brian Kiley)


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What’s the punishment for bigamy? Two mothers-in-law.


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I haven't spoken to my wife for 18 months -- I don't like to interrupt her.


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Losing a wife can be hard. In some cases it’s almost impossible.


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Marriage is a 3-ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring and suffering.


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My ex-wife and I have our alimony set up on the easy payment plan. I make the payment and she takes it easy.


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Marriage is not a word, it is a sentence - a life sentence!


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Why do men die before their wives? They want to.


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I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was Always.


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It's not true that married men live longer than single men. It only seems longer.


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A guy tells his psychiatrist, "It was terrible. I was away on business, and I wired my wife that I'd be back a day early. I rushed home from the airport and found her in bed with my best friend. I don't get it. How could she do this to me?" "Well," says the psychiatrist. "Maybe she didn't get your telegram." (Unknown)


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My wife and I took out life insurance policies on each other -- so now it's just a waiting game. (Bill Dwyer)


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A Jewish man is walking on the beach when he discovers a bottle containing a genie. He rubs it and a genie comes out, promises to grant him one wish. He says, "Peace in the Middle East, that's my wish." The genie looks concerned, then says, "No, I'm sorry, that's just not possible. Some things just can't be changed. Do you have another wish?" The guy says, “Well, for my whole life I've never received oral sex from my wife. That would be my wish." The genie pauses for another moment and then says, "How would you define peace?" (Unknown)


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Two guys were staring into their drinks when one said, "Hey, Harry, have you ever suspected your wife of leading a double life?"

"Yeah, all the time," Harry said. "Hers and mine." (Playboy's Party Jokes)


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A man complained to his therapist about having two unhappy marriages. "Tell me about them," the therapist said.

"Well," the man said, "my first wife divorced me and my second wife won't."


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This guy approached his wife every night and has had the same reply for months: "Sweetie, not tonight, I've got a headache!" One night though, as she was asleep, he tossed two aspirins down her throat... she wakes up in panic, and asks what´s going on.

"Baby, it's just a couple of aspirins," he replies...

"What?! But I haven´t got a headache!"

He stares at her calmly and says: "That's excellent! In that case we're getting down to business."
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A great thing about marriage is it's one of the only times you can walk up to your future wife's parents and tell them "I'm about to sleep with your daughter." (Jerry Seinfeld)

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A married man gets 3 wishes from a genie. The man only requests one: a way out.

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You want to know what engagement is for? A final way out.

Mar-haba!

The first thing that struck me as I landed at Tripoli airport was the difference in size, utilities, decor, and facilities. Remember, I had just seen Dubai airport a few hours ago. Tripoli airport reminded me of a bygone era. I felt almost convinced that the airport had not undergone any kind of changes or improvements since its inception.

After an inordinate delay in collecting my luggage from the conveyor belt, I set about the task of locating the driver who was to pick me up from the airport. I kept on saying GSHL (Global Steel Holdings Limited) to the small group of receivors who had come to pick up passengers. I must have passed the man who had come to pick me up, at least thrice before we finally 'connected'! GSHL was an unknown entity in Libya. ISPAT was the well known name! But how was I to know?

"Mar-haba!" Ali, the driver welcomed me warmly. I spoke to my office and was given the details of how I was to proceed. Misurata was at least a three hour drive. Fortunately, an Irish engineer (John Smith by name) who was a co-passenger enlivened the journey alongwith Ali who was also quite talkative and jovial. We passed the ancient Roman city of Al-Khums I had read about it being the best preserved ancient Roman site/city and made a mental note of visiting it at the very first available opportunity.

We reached Camp Krupp and after checking in at company's residential complex,I had dinner, met some of my neighbours/colleaugues and turned in early. I was tired and had been asked to report to office the next day.

Accordingly, the next morning, I took the company bus to my office after partaking a sumptuous breakfast at the company mess. After meeting the HR staff Mr.Muralitharan Variar and Mr. Nair, I reported to Mr.Subash Jadhav, General Manager HR at GSHL, Misurata, Libya. I entered his cabin after knocking. Unlike Ali, the driver, Mr.Jadhav's first words to me were not "Welcome..... to GSHL or Libya" but:

You have to go back!

I felt as if the ground below my feet was removed. I had just arrived and had not even started my work and I was being told that I was to go back?! But his explanation, which followed a little later, eased my shock a little. He said that he too had come like me on a visit visa which was valid for a limited time and which required going back to India for revalidation. I heaved a sigh of relief.

I was, after all, welcome in Libya, even though for a short while!

Destination (relatively) Unknown or Nafis(h)a

On October 17, 2010, I set out for Libya from Mumbai, I did not have any substantial knowledge about the country, its people and their culture. I did not even have any idea of its weather patterns or climate! (Though I had done some research on my employers Global Steel Holdings Limited! But more about them later)


It was an early morning flight from the airport. My brother-in-law had come to drop me off at the airport. After bidding adieu I checked in. I was very tired, but could not sleep as I waited in the airport lounge. I decided to get some coffee to help me keep awake.


Just about then, a young little lady in her early twenties approached me with a problem. She was travelling to London (probably her first flight) but had to meet her relatives who had come to see her off. The only difficulty was that we had cleared Customs/Immigration and from here it was not possible to go out. Even so, I suggested she request the security personnel to grant her permission to go out and meet her family members. She tried but it was a futile attempt.


She was saddened. Dejection was written all over her face as she told me that it was not possible to go out. We sat down and I tried to cheer her up and started talking to her to divert her mind.


We conversed and exchanged information about each other for some time. She wanted to use the cloak and I directed her to it. I took a small tour of the shops at the airport. When I came back to the lounge, she had already arrived before me. Once again she seemed quite distraught about not being able to speak to her family-members waiting outside, so I suggested she speak to them on the phone. She told me she wasn't carrying her mobile. I offered her my cell phone. At first, the number would not connect. She lapsed into her 'dejection-mode' once again. But my repeated attempts to connect her number bore fruit! When I told her that I had succeeded in connecting to her (uncle's?) number, she was quite overjoyed! At least, she was able to speak to everyone, especially her mother. She thanked me profusely and I assured her it was nothing great or extraordinary. Anyone in my place could have willingly done the same.


Soon it was time to board the plane. As luck would have it, we shared seats on the plane next to each other. We dozed, we ate, we chatted a little and reached Dubai. At the airport, I noticed she kept a distance. We were in transit for three hours, so I was looking forward to her company. But she had befriended another young fellow traveller......and in any case, she was to catch a plane to London and I to Tripoli. I mused about the fickle-mindedness of women! I set about being my own companion, window-shopped a little and sought information about a audio-visual language learning program/software being sold at one of the shops.


As I boarded the plane for Tripoli, I smiled as I remembered her name and that cute little lisp she had when saying it...... Nafis(h)a!

The Libyan Odyssey - 1

"All of us are great now....." The Libyan experience is something which has had some of the most profound and far-reaching influences in my life. I reached Tripoli on October 17, 2010 and was picked up by the company car. More than 200 kilometres off Tripoli was Misurata my destination, my workplace. I started work in earnest at LISCO's Misurata Training Centre, but it was not until the first week of November that I started class with my first batch of Libyan-Arabic speaking students from the Libyan Iron & Steel Company at Misurata. These were the pre revolution days and there was little to indicate of the people's movement to come. In the days to come I shall write in detail of my Libyan experience in flashback mode. Nothing heroic or dramatic, Just some plain observations which I made in my short stay in Misurata. After more than nine months, devoid of any contact with anyone from Libya, I was overjoyed to see one of my students online. I learnt from him that all the students and the teachers (my Libyan colleagues) at the Misurata Training Centre were safe and well. I felt relieved. I had made some good friends not only at the Training Centre but also some in and around Misurata city. I asked him about the situation in Misurata, in particular and Libya, in general. He said everything was coming back to normal. The people were joyous (their tyrant leader of 42 years had been killed a week ago) and anyone who still supported him or his policies would be dealt with sternly. This statement showed the anger seething still amongst the people of not only Misurata but also, Libya. What he said next conveys in a microcosm the 42 year history of the Libyan jamharriya. He said: "Historically we (the people of Libya) stand at a very crucial period in the history of our republic.Earlier there was only one great man (Colonel Qaddafi) in the whole of Libya. Today we all (Libyans) are equally important. All of us are great." L

20 Great Ways to Find More Free Time

“The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours.” - Arthur Lacey

Are there a hundred different things you wish you could do with your life someday — anything from exercising to meditation or yoga to writing that novel you always wished you could write to reading more to relaxing and watching the sunrise? But perhaps you never have the time, like most people.

The truth is, we all have the same amount of time, and it’s finite and in great demand. But some of us have made the time for doing the things we love doing, and others have allowed the constant demands and pressures and responsibilities of life to dictate their days.

It’s time to move from the second group back into the first. Reclaim your time. Create the life you want and make the most of the free time you lay claim to. It’s not hard, though it does take a little bit of effort and diligence.
Not all of these will be applicable to your life — choose the ones you can apply and give them a try:

Take a time out. Freeing up your time starts with taking a step back to take a good look at your life. You need to block off at least an hour. Several hours or half a day is better. A whole day would be awesome. A weekend would be even more ideal, though not necessary practical for many folks. With this block of time, take a look at your life with some perspective. Is it what you’ve always wanted? How would you get to where you’ve always wanted to be? What do you enjoy doing, but don’t have enough time to do? What things actually fill up your day? Are there things you could drop or minimize to make more time? We’ll look at some of these things in the following items, but it starts with taking a time out to think and plan.

Find your essentials. What is it that you love to do? Make a short list of 4-5 things. These are the things you want to make room for.

Find your time-wasters. What do you spend a lot of your time on that isn’t on your essential list? Take a close look at these things and really think about whether they’re necessary, or if there are ways to reduce, minimize or eliminate these things. Sometimes you do things because you assume they’re necessary, but if you give it some thought you can find ways to drop them from your life. Figure out what you do simply to waste time — maybe surfing certain sites, watching TV, talking a lot at the water cooler, etc. You’re going to want to minimize these time-wasters to make room for the more important stuff, the stuff that makes you happy and that you love to do.

Schedule the time. As you sit down and think about your life and what you want to do, versus what you actually do, you will be looking at ways to free up time. It’s crucial that you take a blank weekly schedule (you can just write it out on a piece of paper, or use your calendar) and assign blocks for the things you love — the stuff on your essentials list. If you want to exercise, for example, when will you do it? Put the blocks of time on your schedule, and make these blocks the most important appointments of your week. Schedule the rest of your life around these blocks.

Consolidate. There are many things you do, scattered throughout your day or your week, that you might be able to consolidate in order to save time. A good example is errands — instead of running one or two a day, do them all in one day to save time and gas. Another example is email, or any kind of communication — batch process your email instead of checking and reading and responding throughout the day. Same thing with meetings, paperwork, anything that you do regularly.

Cut out meetings. This isn’t possible for everyone, but in my experience meetings take up a lot of time to get across a little information, or to make easy decisions that could be made via email or phone. As much as you can, minimize the number of meetings you hold and attend. In some cases this might mean talking to your boss and telling her that you have other priorities, and asking to be excused. In other cases this might mean asking the people holding the meeting if you can get the info in other ways. If so, you’ve saved yourself an hour or so per meeting (sometimes more).

De clutter your schedule. If you have a heavily packed schedule, full of meetings and errands and tasks and projects and appointments, you’re going to want to weed it out so that it’s not so jam-packed. Find the stuff that’s not so essential and cancel them. Postpone other stuff. Leave big blank spaces in your schedule.

Re-think your routine. Often we get stuck in a routine that’s anything but what we really want our days to be like. Is there a better way of doing things? You’re the creator of your life — make a new routine that’s more pleasant, more optimal, more filled with things you love.

Cut back on email. I mentioned email in an earlier point above, regarding consolidating, but it’s such a major part of most people’s lives that it deserves special attention. How often do you check email? How much time do you spend composing emails? If you spend a major part of your work day on email, as many people do (and as I once did), you can free up a lot of time by reducing the time you spend in email. Now, this won’t work for everyone, but it can work for many people: choose 2-3 key times during the day to process your inbox to empty, and keep your responses to 5 sentences.

Learn to say no. If you say “yes” to every request, you will never have any free time. Get super protective about your time, and say “no” to everything but the essential requests.

Keep your list to 3. When you make out your daily to-do list, just list the three Most Important Tasks you want to accomplish today. Don’t make a laundry list of tasks, or you’ll fill up all your free time. By keeping your task list small, but populated only by important tasks, you ensure that you are getting the important stuff done but not overloading yourself.
Do your Biggest Rock first. Of the three Most Important Tasks you choose for the day, pick the biggest one, or the one you’re dreading most, and do that first. Otherwise you’ll put that off as much as possible and fill your day with less important things. Don’t allow yourself to check email until that Big Rock is taken care of. It starts your day with a sense of major accomplishment, and leaves you with a lot of free time the rest of the day, because the most important thing is already done.

Delegate. If you have subordinates or coworkers who can do a task or project, try to delegate it. Don’t feel like you need to do everything yourself. If necessary, spend a little time training the person to whom you’re delegating the task, but that little time spent training will pay off in a lot of time saved later. Delegating allows you to focus on the core tasks and projects you should be focusing on.

Cut out distractions. What is there around your workspace that distracts you from the task at hand? Sometimes it’s visual clutter, or papers lying around that call for your attention and action, or email or IM notifiers on your computer that pop up at the wrong time, or the phone, or coworkers. See if you can eliminate as many of these as possible — the more you can focus, the more effective you’ll be and the less time you’ll waste. That equals time saved for the good stuff.

Disconnect. The biggest of distractions, for most people, is the Internet. My most productive times are when I’m disconnected from the grid. Now, I’m not saying you need to be disconnected all the time, but if you really want to be able to effectively complete tasks, disconnect your Internet so you can really focus. Set certain times of the day for connectivity, and only connect during those periods.

Outsource. If you can’t delegate, see if you can outsource. With the Internet, we can connect with people from all over the world. I’ve outsourced many things, from small tasks to checking email to legal work to design and editing work and more. That allows me to focus on the things I’m best at, the things I love doing, and saves me a lot of time.

Make use of your mornings. I find that mornings are the absolute best times to schedule the things I really want to do. I run, read and write in the mornings — three of the four things on my Essentials List (spending time with family is the other thing on the list). Mornings are great because your day hasn’t been filled with a bunch of unscheduled, demanding, last-minute tasks that will push back those

Essentials. For example, if you schedule something for late afternoon, by the time late afternoon rolls around, you might have a dozen other things newly added to your to-do list, and you’ll put off that late-afternoon Essential. Instead, schedule it for the morning, and it’ll rarely (if ever) get pushed back.
The Golden Right-after-work Time. Other than mornings, I find the time just after work to be an incredible time for doing Essential things. Exercise, for example, is great in the 5-o’clock hour, as is spending time with family, or doing anything else relaxing.

Your evenings. The time before you go to bed is also golden, as it exists every single day, and it’s usually completely yours to schedule. What do you want to do with this time? Read? Spend time with your kids? Work on a hobby you’re passionate about? Take advantage of this time.

Lunch breaks. If the three golden times mentioned above don’t work for you, lunch breaks are another good opportunity to schedule things. Some people like to exercise, or to take quiet times, during their lunch breaks. Others use this time to work on an important personal goal or project.