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Archive for the ‘lighter topics’ Category

Angry Birds – 10 Lessons I Learned

Posted by Lakshminarayanan on August 3, 2011

As I sat to write a post in my blog after a really long time, a compendium of thoughts and ideas flowed through my mind. I contemplated for a long time and decided on this. After all, if I am not writing a post on the activity that I am spending most of my time with these days, if I am not writing a post on something that’s keeping me motivated even during this lull, I am doing a serious injustice to this game. Unlike many other games, Angry Birds offers a whole lot of lessons which can be applied in your career and life in general. While many of us may overlook these, fortunately I had the time and energy to ruminate through and come up with this list. This post is dedicated to all those awesome fans of the awesome game of Angry Birds :) Angry BirdsNow, let’s get to the lessons.

    1. Keep Learning – Change is the only constant thing in this ever changing world. If you thought you can just deal all those bloody pigs with just the red bird alone, sorry my friend, you are wrong. You need to learn when to tap to speed up the yellow bird and when to split the blue bird. And when time demands, you need to know when to drop the egg of the white bird and when to boomerang the green one. There are always new birds and new demands. Like they always say, it’s an ongoing process, be it Angry Birds or life :)
    2. Perseverance is key – It’s quite easy to withdraw from a challenge with a lame excuse that you can’t do it. But if you keep trying with perseverance, you will realize that all it takes is time and some serious application of thoughts. You will also realize that there’s nothing called a problem that can’t be solved – a serious message for those who are demotivated with life and career.
    3. A solution worked in the past is not necessarily the best solution – This is an important lesson taught in many B-Schools for a hefty fee which is offered for FREE by Rovio. The solution you used last time isn’t necessarily going to work every time. While your previous experience can help to some extent, it entails creativity and pragmatic approach from you to solve the current problem, every single time.
    4. There’s more than one solution to a problem – this is a classic statement told by professors with multiple Ph.Ds during their business strategy classes or during a case study. This applies to Angry Birds and of course life in general as well. Not many games offer you the luxury of finishing a level through multiple ways but Angry Birds does. Lesson to be learned – there could be multiple ways to reach your goal, consider the options and choose wisely :)
    5. Every step is critical while solving a problem– Killing as many pigs possible in the first step doesn’t necessarily achieve anything. Every step is as critical as the previous one to make sure you kill all those culprits and destroy their safe havens. Similarly, just completing a significant portion of what you wanted to do in life may not produce any fruitful results anything until you finish it completely.
    6. You don’t always get what you want when you want it – If only Angry Birds allow us to shuffle birds as we like, I bet we all can beat our best scores easily in many levels. But that’s not the point. You’ve got what you got and you’ll get the next one only when you’ve used what you’ve got. Life is even better for the suspense it keeps where you might not even know what’s in store until you complete what you’ve got in hand now. So put your best effort forward with what you’ve got now and you will be rewarded accordingly :)
    7. Improve resource utilization – Sometimes, you may not need all the birds to finish a level. If you don’t have to use it, just don’t use it, it’s as simple as that. This is an important lesson in any walk of like be it your utilities or a project you are leading to remind you to conserve resources.
    8. If it’s not perfect, it’s not perfect – While killing all the pigs alone will complete a level, it isn’t really enough to get 3 stars. You have to think about all possible strategies to maximize efficiency, improve resource utilization, and destroy as much property as possible to get the best score to earn 3 stars. This will make you someone who tries to go that extra mile every time to achieve the perfect result. There cannot be a better motivation for one to achieve the best possible result!
    9. Keep ‘Optimizing’ – Being complacent about what you have achieved is not going to help you in anyway. While you can be proud of finishing all levels with 3 stars, there are numerous people who have performed better than you, if you look at the official Angry Birds scoreboard. This will motivate you to beat your own achievement every single time, making you a CMM level-5 player in both Angry Birds and in life. Yes, it is ‘optimizing’- a present continuous which reminds you that there’s always scope for further improvement.
    10. It ain’t over until it is over – Just by finishing all levels with 3 stars and finding all golden eggs in Angry Birds, it’s not over. You and I now have the challenge of finishing Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio. Most likely you and I will have much more in front of us while we finish these two. So never ever think that you are done with all the challenges in life. Always take the next challenge as a new one and start with #1 from above :)

PS: While I thought this topic would be very innovative and creative of me, when I searched the internet I found few similar thinking minds around the globe so I had to remove some of my best points to save myself from accusations of plagiarism (as if anyone is going to read and accuse me :P ). But it’s my duty to share the best one I came across  (of course, apart from the one I’ve written ;) )- http://www.cio.com/article/678656/10_Lessons_from_Angry_Birds_That_Can_Make_You_a_Better_CIO?page=2&taxonomyId=3172; Read both of them and enjoy your Angry Birds even more :)

Posted in blethers, IT matters, life, lighter topics | 4 Comments »

25 random things about me…

Posted by Lakshminarayanan on March 16, 2009

Somebody tagged me with this nasty thing in Facebook because of which I had to write 25 random things about me…

1) Good things first, I am extremely hard working. Somehow I don’t lose energy till the task is completed. But, when I do not have much to do, I procrastinate things to the very last minute and waste time on useless things…so, I always like to have loads of pending things left…

2) I am an ardent believer of Almighty and destiny. Even after putting our best, if we don’t get right opportunities at right time, the efforts go waste…so, I attribute all my success to Almighty first before thinking about my hardwork…

3) In my childhood my favorite color was Red…but somehow changed it to blue in past few years…you can see a blue shade in everything i do..my shirts, my blog, my presentation backgrounds, my project report backgrounds…my mind doesn’t think out of blue…

4) Though I watch movies from all languages, I only listen to Tamil songs…somehow couldn’t change this habit…

5) My memory is content specific…I remember lyrics of several hundreds of Tamil songs…I could still remember the lyrics after several years…but I forget subjects immediately after exams :)

6) The only thing I am afraid of is DOG…once a dog chased me for nearly half a mile and I luckily escaped :)

7) I had an aversion towards Curd (Yogurt), Butter Milk and Butter till my age of 22…I even leave the place if someone is eating any of these…but, now these are integral part of my life…in fact, its a huge transformation in my food habits since I came out of my house for work

8) I am extremely bold towards incidents…I never lose hope and courage till the very end…my policy is simple – ‘except for death, nothing is end of life’

9) Having said that, I cried for almost every exam till 12th standard because of ‘exam fear’…I study at the very last moment and get afraid of the portion left to be read…till my mom says ‘don’t cry…just get (score) whatever you can’, I keep crying and reading… I didn’t write my quarterly and half yearly exams in my 12th standard as I fell sick because of ‘exam fear’…on the day of last exam of half yearly, my uncle slapped me and dragged me to the exam hall…i scored 97% without reading anything…thats the last day I cried for an exam :)

10) My mind is very ‘relative’…I automatically remember all things I heard, read or seen related to a topic as soon as that topic is being discussed…

11) I plan for far off things but do not plan for immediate things…for instance, I do not have a plan for next week but I have a plan for what I should do after my age of 40

12) I started reading things in English and conversing in English only 8 years back :)

13) The only thing I feel bad about myself is my weight…the maximum I have been is 61 kgs (134 lbs) 4.5 years back…I constantly try to improve on that but never did :( …I also feel bad for not having developed reading habit…I seldom read books…

14) I didn’t talk to my brother for 4 years since he didn’t listen to my advice…I didn’t talk to my neighbors for 6 years since they scolded me for a mistake I didn’t do…I am serious about things like these :P

15) I have been myself irrespective of the place…everywhere I try to follow all the rituals and practices I do at home

16) I wanted to learn several things in my childhood which I am yet to learn (like Mridhangam, Sanskrit, etc)

17) I take bath everyday without fail ( yey! thats an achievement) and I always take bath only in hot water (even in extreme hot temperatures)

18) I get excited very easily and quickly recover from that…

19) I was short-tempered a while ago…now, I am more matured and better…once I beaten my brother with a club black and blue for cheating in a game…he didn’t go to school for a week after that…

20) I am a pure vegetarian except for chocolates (snickers to be specific)…I am somewhat addicted to it…

21) I don’t like people who don’t follow their rituals and become rebels…I never had a friendship with such a person…

22) I am an ardent fan of Ajith (Tamil actor)…if I am in India, I watch all his movies on the opening day…when I was not earning, I even stood in queues for 5-6 hours to watch his movies…(still don’t know why)…

23) I love cooking…thats one of my stress busters…another stress buster is shopping (only window shopping :P )

24) I was a good painter in my childhood…probably, the last painting I done was the day before we
bought a PC…

25) I think and write very fast (even if it doesn’t make any sense ;) )…during my undergrad, for one of the exams I wrote 65 pages (ruled sheet) in 3 hours….you can see it here, I didn’t have any problems in thinking 25 random things about me…you will feel the difficulty when you start writing :)

Posted in blethers, lighter topics, Misc, my life | 5 Comments »

Fools’ day losing its charm….

Posted by Lakshminarayanan on April 2, 2008

Whether we are astute or not, it gives an immense feeling of proud to prove that some one else is a fool. And April1st is meant for doing that.

April 1st was like a Holi for most of the school students of Tamilnadu a few years back. A state which doesn’t celebrate Holi was celebrating (so-called) fools’ day in full swing, especially in villages. In my Elementary and High School, the preparation for fools’ day used to take almost a week.

Camlin blue and red ink, the milk like liquid from the madar plant (erukkam ilai in Tamil), finely pulverized powder of Black Myrobalan (kadukkai in Tamil), little bit of Turmeric powder and few other ingredients (company secret, cannot be revealed :) ). If all these are mixed in proper proportions which is only known to the experts*, gives you a liquid which once sprayed on the dress, the stain created cannot be removed by any popular detergent powder available today. Even the laundry person cannot do any magic!

Another way to make others fools is by putting a permanent ‘AF’ mark on their back (AF stands for April Fool). This is achieved by etching the inverse of AF in a big potato, dipping the potato in the same liquid prepared earlier and stamping on the person who deserves it :) . These celebrations were slowly losing their appeal in front of my eyes for many reasons. The school teachers were totally against these kind of jubilations , examinations were preponed to the first week of April by the state government, and the interest level of the students was coming down rapidly.

After I moved to Madurai, I was hardly able to see any such celebrations. But in my vicinity every one would try to tell some lie and make me a fool. But since from my childhood I have seen a lot like that, I never fallen into their traps (thank God for that). Even in newspapers they used to put some unbelievable news on the first page and in the last page we will realise that they have made us fools. For the past few years I am not seeing any interesting thing happening on 1st April except for some forward mails (especially ‘I am getting married’ mail, God, I am bored of it).

This year, even that was missing. No one tried to fool me from the morning. No forward emails. No ‘Happy Birthday to U Fool’ SMSs. No traps in news papers. No fictitious news on Internet. Man! It was the most boring April 1st I have ever had in my life. When February 14 is becoming widely popular, the blurring fame of April 1st puts me off. Or is it because every one thinks that ‘When I myself* is a big fool why should I try to prove that some one else is a fool?’.

P.S: You can share your fools’ day experiences here…

* – That includes me too baby…

Posted in blethers, comedy, lighter topics, my views | 2 Comments »

Fools’ day losing its charm….

Posted by Lakshminarayanan on April 2, 2008

Whether we are astute or not, it gives an immense feeling of proud to prove that some one else is a fool. And April1st is meant for doing that.

April 1st was like a Holi for most of the school students of Tamilnadu a few years back. A state which doesn’t celebrate Holi was celebrating (so-called) fools’ day in full swing, especially in villages. In my Elementary and High School, the preparation for fools’ day used to take almost a week.

Camlin blue and red ink, the milk like liquid from the madar plant (erukkam ilai in Tamil), finely pulverized powder of Black Myrobalan (kadukkai in Tamil), little bit of Turmeric powder and few other ingredients (company secret, cannot be revealed :) ). If all these are mixed in proper proportions which is only known to the experts*, gives you a liquid which once sprayed on the dress, the stain created cannot be removed by any popular detergent powder available today. Even the laundry person cannot do any magic!

Another way to make others fools is by putting a permanent ‘AF’ mark on their back (AF stands for April Fool). This is achieved by etching the inverse of AF in a big potato, dipping the potato in the same liquid prepared earlier and stamping on the person who deserves it :) . These celebrations were slowly losing their appeal in front of my eyes for many reasons. The school teachers were totally against these kind of jubilations , examinations were preponed to the first week of April by the state government, and the interest level of the students was coming down rapidly.

After I moved to Madurai, I was hardly able to see any such celebrations. But in my vicinity every one would try to tell some lie and make me a fool. But since from my childhood I have seen a lot like that, I never fallen into their traps (thank God for that). Even in newspapers they used to put some unbelievable news on the first page and in the last page we will realise that they have made us fools. For the past few years I am not seeing any interesting thing happening on 1st April except for some forward mails (especially ‘I am getting married’ mail, God, I am bored of it).

This year, even that was missing. No one tried to fool me from the morning. No forward emails. No ‘Happy Birthday to U Fool’ SMSs. No traps in news papers. No fictitious news on Internet. Man! It was the most boring April 1st I have ever had in my life. When February 14 is becoming widely popular, the blurring fame of April 1st puts me off. Or is it because every one thinks that ‘When I myself* is a big fool why should I try to prove that some one else is a fool?’.

P.S: You can share your fools’ day experiences here…

* – That includes me too baby…

Posted in blethers, comedy, lighter topics, my views | Leave a Comment »

This is how a trip shouldn’t be – Part I

Posted by Lakshminarayanan on March 4, 2008

For a change, a lighter topic. This is about our Italy Trip. We have visited Italy during the Easter holidays of 2007 from UK.

My Italy trip photos

I always draft a plan for any trip that I make (never made a plan for my work in office till date :) )…before Italy, we made a trip to Paris for which I made a plan which had the complete list of activities for all 4 days listing even the train and station details and maps…but for Italy some how I missed out on the planning part…might be because I was not very sure of making it to Italy as my Onsite tenure was at the verge of being over…I left the task of booking the flight tickets from London to Italy to one of my friends…thats one of the biggest mistakes I have committed for which I still regret…Italy had quite a few places to see unlike France where we visited only Paris…some of the places were at the north end of Italy and some were at the south most…my clever friend, for saving few pounds has booked both the to and fro tickets from Milan which was at the northern part of Italy…the most beautiful thing is before booking the tickets we never had Milan in the itinerary as there are no interesting places to see in Milan :)

So, our journey started from London’s Luton airport through Ryan Air, one of the cheapest operators in Europe…The flight reached Milan on time but we found that the Milan airport is more than 45 minutes of travel from the city from where we were supposed to take a train to Pisa…we were able to get the bus ticket but then when we reached Milan station, we were astonished by the crowd waiting for the train tickets (mostly desis out on holidays)…we cursed ourselves for not booking the tickets through Internet and started standing in the queue…Did I tell that we didn’t book the train tickets through Internet in order to save some Euros…but our ultimate objective was not met as we got only the EuroStar Italia tickets which are the costliest amongst all…after getting into the train only we realized that the tickets for only for the journey and do not assure any seat…but luckily, Italian trains are pretty neat unlike Indian trains…so, somehow we were able to manage near the Toilet :)

We had to get down at one of the stations to catch another train which will take us to Pisa…this time we got seats but we ended up paying penalty of 25 Euros for not punching our tickets on the station before getting into the train (as they were open trains)…we tried to explain to the TTR (whatever be his designation), but went in vain as he doesn’t understand English…he should have told us in the beginning itself…he quietly watched us explaining the reasons for 10 minutes and told that he doesn’t know English (Italy Kusumbu)…some how we managed to reach Pisa by 4′O clock in the evening (out of 4 days one full day almost over without seeing anything)…Since I had already taken print-outs of the bus names and train timings we were able to locate the bus which will take us to Pisa tower…

After spending 2 hours at the leaning tower of Pisa, Cathedral and the Museum we felt hungry…I suggested my friends that we can have Pizza (my fault) as Italy is the origin of Pizza…we entered a shop where it was written as ‘Pizzeria’…but to confirm we asked the shopwala ‘Pizza’, he told ‘Yeah…Pizza’…so we were confident that we will get Pizza there and ordered for Margherita (the only Veggie pizza that we were able to make out from the names)…we ordered for 3 Margheritas and 3 Latte Cafes (Italy is famous for coffee as well)…when one of our friends (who was very hungry) immediately got into action and tried to bite the Pizza…’taka taka taka tatttt’..sound of his tooth getting broken…it was very late when we realized that Italian Pizzerias are not the Pizzas that we get in Pizza Hut and Domino’s…whatever we eat is the customized version made by Americans…but we were not having any
options left but to eat them…it was very late and the last train from Pisa to Florence was at 7:30 PM…

we finished the Pizzerias, had the coffee (wow…awesome taste…even my mom’s filter coffee cannot compete with this) and went to the bus stop…no bus came for 15 minutes…we were trembled and clueless on what to do…no Taxis were there…we were already under big confusion on the traffic system as it is totally opposite to Indian and UK and similar to what is there in US…so we didn’t want to take the risk of walking to the train station as within 1 days time we escaped from 3 accidents while crossing the roads as we were unable to figure out from which side the vehicles will come…we held our breath and prayed the almighty for sending some special bus…there it was, an empty bus with destination written in ‘Italian’…who bothers about where it is going, we immediately got into the bus and asked the driver ‘Train station’…we wanted him to say yes and indeed he said ‘yes’…we had a sigh of relief…just on time we got into the station and caught the train to Florence, our next destination on the plan….

Our adventures and unforgettable experiences in Florence and Rome will be shared in Part II soon…

Posted in blethers, lighter topics, my life, places | 2 Comments »

This is how a trip shouldn’t be – Part I

Posted by Lakshminarayanan on March 4, 2008

For a change, a lighter topic. This is about our Italy Trip. We have visited Italy during the Easter holidays of 2007 from UK.

My Italy trip photos

I always draft a plan for any trip that I make (never made a plan for my work in office till date :) )…before Italy, we made a trip to Paris for which I made a plan which had the complete list of activities for all 4 days listing even the train and station details and maps…but for Italy some how I missed out on the planning part…might be because I was not very sure of making it to Italy as my Onsite tenure was at the verge of being over…I left the task of booking the flight tickets from London to Italy to one of my friends…thats one of the biggest mistakes I have committed for which I still regret…Italy had quite a few places to see unlike France where we visited only Paris…some of the places were at the north end of Italy and some were at the south most…my clever friend, for saving few pounds has booked both the to and fro tickets from Milan which was at the northern part of Italy…the most beautiful thing is before booking the tickets we never had Milan in the itinerary as there are no interesting places to see in Milan :)

So, our journey started from London’s Luton airport through Ryan Air, one of the cheapest operators in Europe…The flight reached Milan on time but we found that the Milan airport is more than 45 minutes of travel from the city from where we were supposed to take a train to Pisa…we were able to get the bus ticket but then when we reached Milan station, we were astonished by the crowd waiting for the train tickets (mostly desis out on holidays)…we cursed ourselves for not booking the tickets through Internet and started standing in the queue…Did I tell that we didn’t book the train tickets through Internet in order to save some Euros…but our ultimate objective was not met as we got only the EuroStar Italia tickets which are the costliest amongst all…after getting into the train only we realized that the tickets for only for the journey and do not assure any seat…but luckily, Italian trains are pretty neat unlike Indian trains…so, somehow we were able to manage near the Toilet :)

We had to get down at one of the stations to catch another train which will take us to Pisa…this time we got seats but we ended up paying penalty of 25 Euros for not punching our tickets on the station before getting into the train (as they were open trains)…we tried to explain to the TTR (whatever be his designation), but went in vain as he doesn’t understand English…he should have told us in the beginning itself…he quietly watched us explaining the reasons for 10 minutes and told that he doesn’t know English (Italy Kusumbu)…some how we managed to reach Pisa by 4′O clock in the evening (out of 4 days one full day almost over without seeing anything)…Since I had already taken print-outs of the bus names and train timings we were able to locate the bus which will take us to Pisa tower…

After spending 2 hours at the leaning tower of Pisa, Cathedral and the Museum we felt hungry…I suggested my friends that we can have Pizza (my fault) as Italy is the origin of Pizza…we entered a shop where it was written as ‘Pizzeria’…but to confirm we asked the shopwala ‘Pizza’, he told ‘Yeah…Pizza’…so we were confident that we will get Pizza there and ordered for Margherita (the only Veggie pizza that we were able to make out from the names)…we ordered for 3 Margheritas and 3 Latte Cafes (Italy is famous for coffee as well)…when one of our friends (who was very hungry) immediately got into action and tried to bite the Pizza…’taka taka taka tatttt’..sound of his tooth getting broken…it was very late when we realized that Italian Pizzerias are not the Pizzas that we get in Pizza Hut and Domino’s…whatever we eat is the customized version made by Americans…but we were not having any
options left but to eat them…it was very late and the last train from Pisa to Florence was at 7:30 PM…

we finished the Pizzerias, had the coffee (wow…awesome taste…even my mom’s filter coffee cannot compete with this) and went to the bus stop…no bus came for 15 minutes…we were trembled and clueless on what to do…no Taxis were there…we were already under big confusion on the traffic system as it is totally opposite to Indian and UK and similar to what is there in US…so we didn’t want to take the risk of walking to the train station as within 1 days time we escaped from 3 accidents while crossing the roads as we were unable to figure out from which side the vehicles will come…we held our breath and prayed the almighty for sending some special bus…there it was, an empty bus with destination written in ‘Italian’…who bothers about where it is going, we immediately got into the bus and asked the driver ‘Train station’…we wanted him to say yes and indeed he said ‘yes’…we had a sigh of relief…just on time we got into the station and caught the train to Florence, our next destination on the plan….

Our adventures and unforgettable experiences in Florence and Rome will be shared in Part II soon…

Posted in blethers, lighter topics, my life, places | Leave a Comment »

 
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