Category Archives: social responsibility

Why take the time and pain to blog?

I started blogging about year 2006 and since then I take time to express my ideas, opinions and reviews in this blog and ultimately enjoy the experience. In 7+ years of my blogging experience, I learned several cultural, writing, technological and emotional aspects of blogging.

All blogs on internet are subjected to random viewers (strangers) looking at the content and reviewing it very critically. They probably do not care that you posted the content out of your passion and you spend time to create that content.

The beauty of the internet is you consume and contribute (mostly for free).

A different dimension of blogging is that it provides a way to structure my thoughts, express them to wider audience and in the worse case it is my journal.

Each blog on an average takes about 30-45 minutes of my time to structure the thoughts and then self-review the content and post. That’s a lot of my personal time per blog. While I love to contribute to the world with the little i know, I am also deeply saddened when people copy the content and don’t attribute the material. Recently my friend brought to my attention 2 different blogs that took the content and just changed the names. While I have no problem in people using my content, it dot not sound right to treat my content as YOUR content 🙁

Don_t-Copy-Paste

My request to everyone on the internet is “You can Copy but do Not Paste”! Content creators take enormous about of time to create the original thoughts, reviews and ideas. Copying them and using them as a owner is “not fair” (as my daughter says).

I love blogging and I will continue to do this. Most bloggers don’t do it for money, they do it because they love it.

Please be respectful and be responsible.

Image Credit : Google Image Search.

Integrity in everyday life

Integrity is adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty. Integrity is a very important value that you need to hold in the modern society. Integrity makes us build trust on people around us and helps you worry less about the negative effects of lack of integrity. I would like to emphasis what i said about Integrity with following example.

Ex. Five friends A, B, C, D and E got together to work on a wonderful idea. They are supposed to start the work in the next few days. A took all the details from B, C, D and E, so that all the communication can be done and they also exchanged ideas and plans. Two days later, X came and convinced C, D and E to join him. Now C, D, E and X are one group. Unfortunately X or C or D or E does not tell A or B about this split and pretend that nothing happened.

Even though these are very small things in life, they characterize people and their integrity of decisions. Lack of communication makes it more difficult to trust people from them on. If you want to be a good friend, neighbor or leader, remember the following in your life.

  • Once you take a decision, stick to it. No matter what happens.
  • If you need to break the contract, then communicate. Every one understands that contracts are not written in stone.
  • If you don’t intend to stand to your decision, then don’t make a decision.
  • Trust is earned very hard. Don’t loose it in the first place.
  • People are smart! Don’t fool around.

Paper based advertisement and promotions in mail

This is a small effort to make people realize how much of paper we waste in the name of Advertisement and Promotions in USA. Here is what i did — On On June 8th i decided that i will watch closely on all the mail i get by post. Most of the mail goes in the trash bin anyway. The idea of this experiment is to collect *ALL* mail i get between June 10th 2010 to July 9th 2010. I sorted all the mail and separated the junk and what i really look for. Following is the outcome.

Please see this video before you read on… Paper Garbage from Mail.

Some Statistics

Total Weight of the Mails (which correlates to paper weight that goes into junk) : 5.2 lbs (2.35 kgs)

Promotions & Ads addressed to Me : 21 mails

Promotions & Ads addressed to Previous Residents : 9 mails

Coupons addressed to Current Resident : 12 mails

Note 1: I have ALL my bank accounts, credit cards, utilities, mobile, cable bills as “paperless“.

Note 2 : Above mails are the ones that i personally never subscribed or wanted.

Whats does it mean

I can say that i get the least amount of mail and i still get 5 lbs of mail per months that i put into the trash. Lets do a simple math here. According to the latest Google public data the US population is 307,006,550 (307 million) as of July 2009.

Amount of Paper junk that comes by mail in 1 month = 307/4 mi X 5.2 lbs  = 399 million lbs

Amount of Paper junk that comes by mail in 1 year = 307/4 mi X 5.2 lbs X 12 months = 4788 million lbs = 4.7 billion lbs of paper

I am sure the above math is very (very) conservative as there may be s one who totally depend on the paper based billing and others.

Is there a way to reduce this paper waste  + printing chemicals + recycle costs + indirect costs and which yields NOTHING productive ?

Updated 13th July 7.00 pm PST : One of the reader pointed out that the multiplication factor is not 300 million people as these mails are per house hold. I agree! Taking that in to consideration, the new numbers would simply be 1/4 of original.

Again, these numbers are DEFINITELY not accurate. They only demonstrate the enormous paper waste.  So, i would suggest readers to be aware of the fact that these numbers are not based out of scientific formula :). Thanks for your understanding.

Family Friend 101 : All that matters is Family!

We have been closely watching and observing many families and friends. Very often we feel as though the world is filled with problems (of course, which is not true). We always had a keen eye on these problems, because we felt they could be solved (or at least an attempt) with some attitude change or by open communication or by proper education or by setting values and standards.

Ok, here is what we have seen. All the following are in the connotation of Indian Marriage and Family System. Many of these victims are living in India and abroad.
  1. Domestic Violence
    • Women are the victims
    • Women treated as commodities rather than human beings
    • Husband applies his corporate strategies on wife
    • Increase in the verbal abuse of women at home
    • No value for the Marriage System
    • Influence of western ideas on Marriage and Family System
    • No support system for women when they live abroad (or away from parents)
  2. Family System
    • Daughter-in-laws hate mother-in-laws
    • Mother-in-laws hate daughter-in-laws
    • Daughter-in-laws don’t like sister-in-laws
    • Sister-in-laws don’t like Daughter-in-laws
    • Once they get married, “some women” think husband as personal property
    • Husbands don’t interact with girl’s family
    • Family members don’t mix as they think “we think differently”
    • Old age parents are undergoing distress and restraining from life
  3. Marriage System (some husbands say…)
    • I love my wife not because of marriage but because she is a manager in reputed company
    • Just by getting married, you wont develop love on wife
    • Giving food, clothing and basic necessities for Wife and Children is a burden
    • My wife needs to prove me that she is of substance before i love her
    • You pay your phone bill and i pay mine
    • You go in your car and i go in my car
    • Your kids and My kids are playing with Our kids
    • I am the one who is earning and you have to listen to me
    • If you can’t listen to me, get out of my home
    • Because you are not earning, you have to listen to me
  4. and the list goes on and on…
That said, we are starting this BLOG and FACEBOOK to write storyboards on some of the stories that we know of. As a third person, we would like to give few suggestions and also see what other valued and experienced people have to say. We dont want to be bias and we dont want to be oriented.

Why Storyboarding :

We want to write the “REAL LIFE” stories in an “anonymous” tone so that people read the stories and know
  • How to combat a particular situation
  • What others say about a situation
  • Empathize with others
We believe this would help others to understand that they are not alone. We are also talking to few lawyers and see if there is some legal advise they can offer for this “CAUSE”. Many times it is very helpful to know the legal rights to boost confidence in others.

Your contribution:

We don’t have a future without your support. This is the truth :). We need your contributions of stories from your family and friends. The only thing that we need is to follow some rules on posting. Please help your fellow human being

What are the rules:

Following is what we believe in and follow.
  • All posts are strictly anonymous. We are sure that you dont want to be called by your names in the stories. So, please apply to others too.
  • Posts do not contain names and specific places. You can mention Country names.
  • All the Suggestions and Advise MUST reflect the Indian Family and Marriage Values. They should elicit the values but not degrade them.
  • Any posts and comments that degrade the values will be ruthlessly deleted.
  • For the sake of anonymity we have enabled the anonymous comments in blogspot.

So, what’s the future:

We want to work with someone who is Human Activist or Domestic Violence Activist or a strong supporter of Indian Family System. As we grow, we are ready to work with some social organizations and provide help for the needy. We want to provide the Moral Support and Confidence about their lives.

What should you do:

Please go to Blogspot/Facebook and start reading and spreading the word. Each and every blog can be forwarded from blogger to friends that you think would be interested in.
There are already couple of stories that may interest you. Please read, suggest your opinions and spread the news.

Social Responsibility in the Telugu Movie Industry

I have to write this in “reaction” to a movie release review that i saw in “Telugu Maa TV”. There is a new movie that is getting release shortly by name “9th class“. I have no idea if this would be a sequel to the “10th Class” movie. The story like goes between two “KIDS” in the school and they falling in so called “LOVE”.

What are all these Directors and Producers taking the people to ? What “message” do they want to spread across the people ? Once kids watch these movies they inherently have a kind of “Cool” feeling that it is normal to fall in love at that age and it is OK. Producers/Directors/Script Writers may say that they are only showing whats happening in some cities/towns. But by making a “small” incident a movie, we are basically trying to “Publicize” this event and unfortunately movies are “Colorful and Cool”. Unfortunately real life is no way near to what they show in movies. Kids don’t have the discretion power to know what is right and what is wrong, they only care about what is “Cool”.

In the last few years all the movies have a famous dialog “Lepukupota” by Hero. A trend has started that it is Heroism to oppose parents and flee to other places, get married. Everyone has their own reason and movies portray this as a big thing. Unconsciously movies are dragging adults/kids away from their natural lives and are creating a false pride and false confidence.

If you feel these kind of movies should be avoided, please do a negative publicity about these movies. Ask your friends and family not to watch them and spread this word. Discourage your kids to watch these kind of movies. What you think as “cool nice family entertainment movie is going to form a NEGATIVE impression in your kids mind”.

P.S. Of course, parents themselves should have some values before they talk to their kids about this.