Time for those mouth H2Oring sweets

The festival season is in the offing and before this year comes to an end, it is fiesta time for Indians living in India and across the whole wide world. The celebrations commences from this month with the festival of Lord Ganesha, Ganesh Chaturthi, celebrated with great fanfare and faith, across India. This is followed by the nine day festival, the Navratri, followed by the festival of lights, Diwali, and then to finish of with Christmas.

In India, especially in Mumbai, all these festivals are celebrated with zest and with deep faith in the almighty. Mumbai is a cosmopolitan city and no matter which faith or religion the person comes from, all festivities are celebrated with the same enthusiasm and fervor. That’s what makes Mumbai different from the rest of India!!

All these festivities also bring in loads of mouth watering home-made mithai (sweets) on the food platter…so its time to also sweeten your sweet-tooth. At the same time, making sure you increase your workout schedule so that you can keep tab on weighty issues arising due to over eating ;-)

All in all, an auspicious period…..assuring you good times!!!

The non-benefactors
It’s also that time of the year when animals and birds fret for their lives. They literally go in hibernation!! Ask me, because I have a pet cat (Spotty is her name) at home and she like goes missing for long extended hours of the day. Even right now while I am writing this article, she is glued onto the ground like a leech, hoping that all this was over and she gets back to the real world. The sound of crackers and gun shots is something birds and animals can never tolerate, since the sound that they hear is 3 times louder than the human ear transmits.

So a message to the pandal administrators & organizers is to be kind to animals and birds…..which can be done by celebrating these festivals with more lights and less crackers.

Wishing each one of you Happy Fiesta for now and for all those festivals soon to come!!!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Do write to me with your reactions, opinions or critical comments at simplymearl@live.com or leave your inputs in the comments tab below.

Before I sign out, as I always say take very good care of yourself and God Bless!

Swine’s now acquitted from charges of swine flu (H1N1)

Today’s Times brings out an interesting experiment carried out by the Health Ministry in India to check whether swine’s (pigs) in India are H1N1 virus infected…..and surprisingly all those 230 pigs sampled across India were tested negative. Look at the irony!

Yeah, I know that the disease originated from swine’s but why defame these sweet little pig heads in the first place. The poor things have always been outcasts!!

The blame game
The media has propagated the Swine flu like fire. Name it…and all newspapers, television channels, websites, magazines, etc. are spinning out information newsletters along with do’s and don’t on Swine flu. In addition, media does a fantastic job government-bashing, showcasing the government’s unpreparedness to tackle swine flu. The media is out there to make some quick bucks by criticising the government and the government keeps making promises they can never really fulfill. Eventually, nobody benefits….and the common man is left to die at the face of it.

Keeping the disease under control… is still a dogfight
Like I had mentioned it earlier….900 people in India have already been affected by swine flu until today and the number is increasing. The whole nation is going berserk with this news, leading to partial shut-down of schools, colleges, multiplexes, and other public places across India. Corporate India has not shut-down as yet but yeah…they show their so-called solidarity by distributing face masks to their employees or maybe cut down on travel to affected areas.

No-one has no idea about the legal distribution of the vaccine which is still in the testing phase. The whole world is waiting for this miracle vaccine to fight the harmful effects of H1N1 virus. I simply wish that very soon, medical experts who work so hard also find a remedy to life threatening killer diseases like AIDS and Cancer.

In India, over 20 million people are HIV positive…..but people refrain or are careless towards taking precautionary measures to prevent from contracting the virus….while simply ask them to wear a mask as a precaution to flu…..and the whole world is running helter-skelter to get one for themselves. An irony again!!!

Right, so remember to take first-hand precautions always….because "Prevention is better than cure.”

It’s been a while since I have written in my blog. Infact, this article is posted after a long gap of about 10 days and I’m not really very happy with this kind of delay. But yeah…I’ll try to keep up with this…without giving any more reasons of being busy.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Do write to me with your reactions, opinions or critical comments at simplymearl@live.com or leave your inputs in the comments tab below.

Before I sign out, as I always say take very good care of yourself and God Bless!

Come let’s dance…..

I have always been awed by people who can shake a leg with that level of ease and comfort…. and all that done so damn gracefully. Even more by those who can move their body like as if it is some sort of a spring-board or like it is made of some kind of elastic composition. Looking at them dance, I begin to ask myself a question of whether…these dancers have a different spine and bone framework unlike ours. They simply do it so simply!

Who can forget a Michael Jakcson, who introduced his signature dance move- the moon walk. MJ was so passionate about dancing that he wanted to be the first one to actually do the moon walking on the moon. But I believe, his health conditions did not permit him to fulfill his dream. It’s all about being passionate and loving what you do, that makes you successful.

Gracing up
Coming to think of dance styles that brings with it grace, poise, sensuality, and rhythm, it has to be the Latino dance style formats such as, merengue, salsa, hip-hop, jazz, cha-cha, rumba, tango, samba, paso doble…to name a few.

I happened to be a part of this annual dance Latino festival this year and got to see the different dance styles actually being spun-off live on stage. It was amazing to watch 13 different Latino dance technique presented one after the other. For me it was a bigger task, since it was not only the dance name that I had to memorise but I had to kind of understand and actually mug-up a piece of history and evolution of each dance method, to be able to compere the event (for a friend) with the same ease and comfort that the dance artists performed with.

All-in-all it was an amazing and an educating event set of with panache. Learning the rumba and the tango are on my agenda and I will make time very soon to boogie on these dance techniques.

Frankly, I can’t shake a leg to save my life….even if I was instigated by Gabbar cracking those oh-so-famous dialogues, “bohot yarana lagta hain,” “Jab tak tere pair chalenge iski saans chalegi,” (pun intended)…I just can’t dance!!

A sort of self expression and recreation
Dance is all about recreation and self-expression. Besides fun and entertainment, dancing has some real useful health benefits to go with it. It is indeed a way to stay fit for people of all ages, shapes and sizes. Moreover, it can improve your muscle tone, strength, endurance, and fitness all the way.

So remember to always keep it shaken and stirred!!!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Do write to me with your reactions, opinions or critical comments at simplymearl@live.com or leave your inputs in the comments tab below.

Before I sign out, as I always say take very good care of yourself and God Bless!

It’s raining discounts and sale….

Open the newspaper these days….more than news content or must I say, content that educates the readers about the current business scenario, the political system, or about what’s happening in the entertainment industry…..you’ll find huge brightly colored advertisements occupying prime space in the newspapers. And these advertisements do not only talk about brands or products, but they talk about discounts and sale, to lure readers to jump off their couch and head straight towards the stores offering those whopping discounts.

These adverts do look good and truly enticing and kind of makes one go wow. I must admit…..it makes me go wow too!! Name the big brands and all of them are offering discounts, some spinning off a flat 50% discount and there are those smart big-wigs who say they are offering a discount of upto 50%....only to rush there and realize that the real good stuff only comes at a discount of 5-10% on an eye-popping mark-up price. Marketers’ truly think we are a whole lot of bimbos.

Do I actually need this?
This clearly illustrates how the economic downturn is playing in everybody’s mind, how people are controlled when it comes to spending on luxury products. The first question you would ask yourself is, “Do I actually need this”. The circulation of money in the market has reduced tremendously and to better the economy this trend needs to change…the purchase power of the buyer has to increase. And marketers’ are pretty optimistic that, this is possible by luring the masses through take-off prices.

If you ask me, shopping is something I never really like doing….I love having things but only wish the shop came to me or maybe I could get what I like without making that effort of standing in snake queues right before the trial room or walking down the buzzing mall. It is so damn boring or am I lazy?? ….I have no idea.

Consumer spending linked to nations GDP
Let me conclude this, corporations think that they are playing the gorilla warfare by offering discounts at already high mark-up prices,……consumers feel that they shouldn’t buy now because they don’t really think that they need the luxury stuff during the pounding economic weather. In the end, there are no gainers.

Besides, the government should work real hard to improve the consumer spending power by stamping out unemployment; by making sure that each child goes to school and completes (atleast) her/his basic education; support families who are below the poverty line to sustain by offering sponsorships; encouraging willing senior citizens to take up some kind of assignment which will keep them busy and happy and simultaneously will be contributing to the country’s GDP; Encouraging educated house-wives to come out of their homes and contribute to society and the nation’s GDP by making flexi-time compulsory everywhere; improving the infrastructure of town and villages, thus encouraging investments and penetration of industries and organizations there.

These are a few of my wishes and the wish of every citizen of this country. And we are ready to get our hands soiled to make this happen. Hope these simply don’t remain wishful-thinking!!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Hope you enjoying every bit of it.

Do write to me with your reactions, opinions or critical comments at simplymearl@live.com or leave your inputs in the comments tab below.

Before I sign out, as I always say take very good care of yourself and God Bless!

Stick around, because life is beautiful!

The picture speaks louder than words!

Look at this picture right here….doesn’t it say it all? Yes indeed!! My caption to this picture would be: “A woman taking centre stage, while corporate honchos keenly and attentively listen to her.” Perhaps, my caption would look different, if this was something that occurred like almost everyday in the business world….Sad but true, it isn’t this way always.

I picked-up the newspaper this Sunday morning, to hit upon an article on the front page, carrying details of US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s visit to Mumbai. Before actually getting into reading those details, the picture which supported the article was quite impressive and was the first thing that caught my attention.

Woman on Top

Let me clear the air first, I am no Feminist and not a member of any Mahila Sangh (a group which fights for the right of women), but yes I believe, that women can reach for the stars, if the corporate world gives the talented “her” to lead from the front.

Its not that there are no women in India or in the world, who have proved their metal. Yes, we see that in practice too. But the sad thing is only a small percentage of women are actually holding those top and aspiring positions in the corporate world today. What is the reason for this tiny estimate…..is the big question mark? I don’t want to get into my judgment on this or what I thing about it…..it’s really not important!!

I simply believe in equality of all humankind. Man or Woman, you need to have a set of common rules and regulations for both the sexes…and this is not something I say because I am a woman. It is because we are human first.

An ambitious her

Ask a young girl in school, what she wants to do when she grows-up and you’ll get an instinctive reply, saying I want to fly aircrafts, I want to become an Astronaut, I want to become an Architect, I want to become a Journalist, I want to become the no. 1 tennis player in the world, I want to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, I want to become a civil servant, and there are some who are even passionate about doing social service. She is very very ambitious!

What happens next is not destiny, but it is the opportunities that she grabs and the support that she gets during her journey in life. It is good to see, how organisations are encouraging women to take-up top positions and supporting them all through their journey. It is a positive sign for sure.

Social Responsibility

It is also our social responsibility to build on awareness, of the need of education for children, both the boy and the girl. In the rural areas of India, there is a lot of differentiation between the sexes, even today. The notion is still primitive. Besides, it is still believed that the girl child doesn’t need to be educated, because ultimately, she is not going to earn bread for the family. We need to change this mindset completely. Education is not about preparing oneself to make money; it is about developing the right attitude, personality, perspective towards life, approach, and being- aware of your surroundings, that education carries with it.

So, Do what you want to do, Be what you want to be. And remember, if need arise, bend the rules…but don’t break it;-)

Thanks for visiting my blog. Do write to me with your reactions, opinions or critical comments at simplymearl@live.com or leave your inputs in the comments tab below.

Before I sign out, as I always say take very good care of yourself and God Bless!

Stick around, because life is beautiful!

Mumbai Marathon 2010 – Get yourself registered now!!!

It all happened that very busy Monday morning, when one of my friends called to tell me that registrations to the Mumbai Marathon 2010 had began. That was it!! I left everything and visited the site to do an online registration, since I didn’t want to miss the marathon, like I did in Jan 2009 – a late-latif, like always.

Group registrations
A group of maybe three of my friends had already registered and then it was my turn. Bingo!! I successfully registered to the Dream run, a 6kms sprint, and was like on top of the world at that instant. Simultaneously, I was thinking, it would indeed be a good opportunity to use the Mumbai Marathon 2010 as a corporate branding event. This was like trailing in my mind and then….it was a spin-off! I shot an email to the top management, and not surprised at all, the deal was passed by them.

Though, I was stressing upon us participating in the “Corporate Challenge” – an event where a corporate support a cause and then contribute towards the cause through pledges. I didn’t get an okay for this one, because the entry fee was about INR 2.5lakhs, and with the economic downturn playing in everybody’s mind, this was bound not to go through.

Team building
The next stride-out was to intimate all colleagues in Mumbai, by motivating them a little. But believe me, in 2 days flat, the allotment for the Dream Run was full and no-one could make it for that particular event. But no worries, ten of them successfully registered to the half marathon, a 21kms run across the city of Mumbai.

When I heard this from them, my first reaction was like - you guys ditched me big time. But then yeah…its kinda okay!! All I had to do was simply upgrade myself to the half marathon. Frankly, I couldn’t actually see myself completing that long trail of 21kms, but… as long as we are successful in carrying the corporate message - all geared up wearing the corporate gear, what more should I ask for hah!!

How do you register
Quickly, let me tell you how you go about making your registration to the Mumbai Marathon. You could do so online at www.scmm.indiatimes.com. Alternately, you could collect the registration form, from any Standard Chartered Bank branch, the sponsors of this event. You could also contact the helpline at +91 22 42020200 for details.

No matter how much we crib about our city Mumbai, we still miss her when we are away…..we still love her the way she is……there is some kind of addiction in this city, isn’t it?…….Infact, I have still not figured out the thing that makes us love her so much!!

Remember 17th Jan 2010 is THE DAY….so see ya there!!

Thanks for visiting my blog. Do write to me with your reactions, opinions or critical comments at simplymearl@live.com or leave your inputs in the comments tab below.

Before I sign out, as I always say take very good care of yourself and God Bless!

Stick around, because life is beautiful!

Achieving milestones through sheer determination

I know you must be thinking that here is another business guru, come to give us her gyan fundas. Let me clear the air first, I am a real idiot when it comes to business communication…infact communication of any form is not my cup of tea. Wow…It actually feels nice to let out this truth through this blog….you see I cannot admit this when I appear for an interview ;-)

Through this article of mine, I am basically trying to impress upon the fact of some people who go down to any extent to achieve their goal- may it be giving up a bad habit of smoking or to attaining a size zero figure or maybe to simply become the richest person on this planet and own all the luxuries that life can offer.

It is good indeed to be ambitious in life and go that extra mile to achieve what you have set for yourself and make it a winnable one. But its worthy if the ambition is positive…..a dream which is good for you and the society that surrounds you. Running behind your objective through bootlicking, corruption, conspiracy, giving people wrong promises, et al, is no way of attaining success. Off course this is my perspective and I don’t think any sane person would think differently….until otherwise.

The Metamorphosis……

Through this article of mine, I want to share with you real life instances of people who have achieved their ambition through sheer determination and will power to fight. Memories galore!!!

There is this person who I have known for years together and he is still my very close buddy. Yeah, he had this bad smoking habit…a kind of a chain smoker. He tried everything under the sun to quit smoking completely. It’s like you do something, not once but many times throughout the day, 365 days a year, and you also know that all that you are puffing, is real bad for you. But you still continue to do it because you simply cannot resist the temptation. Can’t blame anyone though with this kind of a habit, a bad one!

Then came a day, when he tried to quit smoking and was determined to do so for his parents and then the second time for his girlfriend. Tried hard..maybe successful for 1 month or so and then got addicted to it again. Now here is the catch! If you actually plan to achieve something, you need to first DO IT FOR YOURSELF. You simply love yourself so much, that you become worried if something goes wrong..then what? This is when he made this dream to quit smoking a reality. Yeah and now, Cigarettes….what are those? is the answer you’ll get from the man.

Recently, I have got to know from a colleague on how he went from fat to fab! Initially, I didn’t actually believe it, until I saw some real transformational pics. I was actually dumbstruck and kind of lost of words, because that looked like a true metamorphosis…quite literally! Off course, I have now assured myself some free off-the- shelf exercise routine and diet maintaining tips, by making a mention of this in this article for sure. I know, I know….I must be selfish na!!

So surely, there is a way out from a bad habit/ fad. And to achieve your moto in life, you need sheer determination and sustainability. I think I need to learn from it!!

I too have a so called ambition to achieve, and I am working hard on it to make it achievable. But yeah, it’s a secret right now and I’ll share it with you as soon as I make it happen;-)

While I still say that I will wakeup at 5 a.m everyday and start my morning workout, sad but true, this hasn’t happened till date.

Thanks for visiting my blog. I am sure, you must be finding some articles real crazy and offbeat, but that’s what makes life interesting and adventurous… Isn’t it!

Do write to me with your reactions, opinions or critical comments at simplymearl@live.com or leave your inputs in the comments tab below.

Before I sign out, as I always say take very good care of yourself and God Bless!

Stick around, because life is beautiful!