3rd season of Singapore

Haze season currently since past 2 weeks because of forest fires in the sumatra region of Indonesia. More info here.

Transformation.......

Gillette Presto- 0.5 SGD
Dettol Shaving Cream- 0.66 SGD

Gillette Mach3 Turbo- 16 SGD
Gillette Mach3 Nitrogel- 9.50 SGD

Being Cool.....

Something to ponder on, How to deal with difficult people ?.....some always tend to behave like that and some having a roller coaster ride sometimes.....what to do in such scenario? .....I tend to remain calm and let the other person speak till he/she has oogled out whatever is bothering him/her or try my very best that he/she does that. Sometimes this can be really stressful but I try to be cool as nothing will be achieved if I also get defensive and replicate the same behaviour. This approach lets the other person cool off rapidly also :) and here I found proof of my belief --aaah cool.
(......ahh but I am not perfect as well and sometimes land up in argument but usually retrieve back to coolness pretty soon)

Vikram & Betal

Looking out for something light and fast to read after all those case readings which always leaves one perplexed...thought of Vikram & Betal triggered in...so just googled across to read some stories of one of my most liked telelvision series of short stories-- Vikram Aur Baital (Vikram and the Vampire) ....those good old days :).....anxiously waiting for the program on television with an uncertainity of whether electricity would be there or not.

Google did not gave any link to full list of stories so turned to Project Gutenberg which helped...justed keyed in Vikram in title word search and bingo.

Here is a very brief introduction to the book: King Vikram is entrusted with the task of fetching a vampire that hangs from a tamarind tree. Having brought down the vampire and slung it onto his back, Vikram is on his way, when the treacherous creature begins to speak. He tells Vikram a story (25 stories in all, eleven of which appear in Burton's book) and asks him a question at the end of each. The conditions are that if the king opens his mouth to answer either from vanity, or conceit, or from the vampire's treachery or from a moral duty, the vampire would leave him and go back to hang upside down from his tree. Only if the king remained silent out of humility or ignorance would the vampire accompany him to his destination. And so the tales begin. Time after time, Vikramaditya cannot help but answer the vampire's mischieviously designed queries. Time after time, the vampire, in an explosion of triumphant laughter, gives him the slip. Time after time, Vikramaditya pulls him down again and sets off on another journey, on another story. More here.

Origins of V&B :
Brihat-katha, written in the 5th cent BC in the Paishachi dialect.

full version of 11 stories in pdf.

I always love knowledge imparted in the form of a story telling......though MBA also does that in form of case studies but the complexities are much higher and without the solution part....only the problem part stated mostly....solution can vary as there are always many possibilities of next action and thats where you got to apply whatever you have learned in that particular MBA module. Sometimes interesting but sometimes huuf damm confusing....

Draft version of POHA

Aah with all good chefs living along(Prajit , Balu and Pramod).....I also got hooked to some cooking today. First try at POHA and decent enough to eat :).

Crossdocking

Some gyan after a long time.....hardcore knowledge. While going through the first chapter of the supply chain management book came across the term crossdocking....though heard a lot of times but had not got a clear idea of what exactly it is. So spent an hour researching on the same. So what exactly is cross docking..... huum before that
Traditional method of goods management :
goods from vendors----warehouse----retail outlets/customer
Here generally warehouse has 4 activities--receiving, storage, order picking and shipping.

CrossDocking helps in removing the storage and order picking activity from the above activities of warehouse. Crossdocks are essentially transshipment facilities to which shipments arrive in carriers(usually trucks) with goods that are loaded onto outbound carriers mostly within 24 hours.

In the traditional model warehouse maintains stock until a customer orders, then the product is picked , packed and shipped.When replacements arrive at the warehouse they are stored until the customer is identified. In crossdocking, the customer is known before the product gets to the warehouse and there is no need to move it to storage. Inventory holding costs also get minimized, space required is also less (warehouse Vs crossdock).

RETAILERS

VENDORS

Wallmart has executed it successfully and almost 85% of its products are crossdocked.One of its major competitive advantages against its competitors.

But implementing crossdocking has its own challenges. First coordination among all members, vendors and retailers/customers. Also establishment of system information system requirements is a major barrier in implementing crossdocking successfully. Hence still its not that famous but the trends are positive as the global competition increases and efforts to reduce down costs on all fronts increase.

Crossdocks generally have rectangular shape with some in L, H or T shapes.

Links Crossdocking Keeps A Knocking , Crossdocking

Runners Up at SYNERGY 2006

Had been working on the business plan for Synergy 2006 (a patent commercialization business plan competition ) organized by NTU with 6 of my other group members since June. Finally the efforts paid of well with our team PLASMA CORP. winning the 2nd Prize in the competition with cash reward of 3000 SGD on 23rd Sept. It has been a great experience working with the team. Synergy effect was definately there among all, which made such outcome possible. Excellent team, though too much perfectionism , including myself :) . Really amazes me of people with such diverse backgrounds and nationalities( Indian, Singaporean, Chinese, French and American) can form such a strong team. Truly global yet highly synergized. I personally had to struggle a bit over my fear of public speaking before final presentation...too much nervousness ...I feel very jittery whenever I am supposed to speak in front of a big crowd. Team members helped a lot in boosting up my confidence,thanks to their efforts, hoof finally somehow I managed to deliver decently. Now next time its going to be much easier.I wonder why as I use to easily give training sessions to 30 people with much ease in my last job. May be the comfortability factor I had made the difference earlier. Only the speaking part is troublesome when its like a monologue......Q&A after the presentation , all that jitter goes away...strange. May be I should practice more of speaking in public to overcome this phobia. Just typed in google on same (fear of public speaking) and wooooh 21,300,000 search results, no wonder there are many out there like me :) . Found some interesting articles : 1, 2 .