Coffee or Cup!!!

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor .

Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee .

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it." Don't let the cups drive you... Enjoy the coffee instead..HAVE FUN !

Aussie definition of aggression

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has at least one more attribute to go with his "strong physical and mental abilities of a small town player," that of being brutally frank even if his remarks are made with a benign smile. If his pleasant public demeanor is a mere façade then he has to be a brilliant actor.

When a captain says his team’s fielding in Nagpur was the best the team could muster, he was either saying that their best is not enough to challenge a team like Australia or asking fans to accept his team as it is and not build castles in the air about their invincibility just because they have won the world Twenty20 championship.

He, however, didn’t look all that chirpy after his bowlers also batted for the side to win the seventh and last One-Dayer in Mumbai. All he could reiterate was that his gut feeling about the ability of Murali Kartik as a match-winner was vindicated.

Then the blinder, his first as captain: "I want players who, if I ask them to, will stand in front of a truck," he was quoted as saying. Does it mean his truck will run over those who do not fall in line!

What he, however, did not say or should have said was that even with their failings and inadequacies in the field the team had done reasonably well, both in England and against the Australians at home. With a little luck and with energetic push, backed by better stratagems, they could have put it across their opponents.

In England, the Indians should have won the Test series two-one if not two-nil considering that they were outplayed in the first Test at Lord’s, the rain saving them when they were on the brink of defeat, and they could have won the One-Day series three-two if not four-one.

If they had not messed up after winning the toss at Vadodara they would have been two-two and three-two at Nagpur had they seized the excellent opportunity to win the high-scoring match to arrive in Mumbai as favourites to clinch the series. It is not to suggest that it was all hunky dory for the Indians. The fact is that they were not as bad as the 2-4 score line makes them out to be, it could have been the other way round as one look at the way the Indians lost the matches from a position of strength would show.

In the series opener in Bangalore, Australia were allowed to wriggle out from a precarious 90 for 4 to post 307. In Kochi, the visitors were 66 for 3 and they still managed 306 and in the third match at Hyderabad they had a healthy 290 after losing three wickets for 100-odd. India won in Chandigarh batting first.

Your Internet habits could stress you out totally

The headline – ’Man commits suicide while being watched in chat room’ – sent shock waves across the world last month.

It also reminded one of the dangerous games Internet can play with the human mind. And the lurking threat in seemingly harmless chat rooms.

Many virtual encounters can catch the mind unawares and stress it beyond limits.

“People could use vulgar language, remarks. They could exploit your sexual urge. They could emotionally abuse you and utilize those vulnerabilities,” says Psychiatrist, Fortis, Dr Sameer Malhotra.

Many chat rooms are unmonitored and draw in all kinds of people. Here a simple conversation can take an ugly turn for both parties.

“Life with them at times becomes a roller coaster ride for the other person who unknowingly got involved with them over a chat. But then gets drifted too far off from where he finds it very difficult to even get back” says Malhotra.

Despite potential health hazards, the addiction is tremendous. Some people actually live on their keyboards day and night.

“This kind of compulsive behaviour is often seen amongst people. At times it is a part of procrastination. The second could be a feeling to get revenge,” says Malhotra.

Now chat rooms have started taking steps but the huge number people and rooms is impossible to monitor at once. Experts suggest better and healthier alternatives.

“They can’t replace the kind of feel and empathy which is shared in a human relationship,” says Malhotra.

With Internet crime and violence on rise, its time we probe into what the Internet does to your mental health.

Ulip schemes: strong growth, but long way to go..!

While insurance firms have been pushing unit-linked income plan (Ulip) schemes for some time now, and with some success, only one in seven among the 105 million existing life insurance customers even know Ulip product option exists. Of those who do, fewer than 5% have bought them.

The Invest India 2007 Survey shows that the big buyers of Ulips are the same people who buy mutual funds and equities: salaried workers, businessmen and self-employed professionals.

So the insurance industry is getting it right to that extent, as they can compete with mutual funds and brokers in attracting these securities investors.

THE COMPELLING REASONS FOR MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES TO GET INTO MICROCREDIT

"Hey, mister, what are you looking for under that light?"

"My keys."

"Why, did you lose them there?"

"No, I lost them across the street."

"Then why don't you look for them across the street?"

"Because the light's better over here."

It's an old joke, but it aptly illustrates the current state of the practice related to microcredit and its impact on rural economy. The microcredit to alleviate poverty. Yet the downside of the story is even worse. They don't tell us whether people become less poor due to the services we provide of microcredit, even though performance indicators of the real economy shows great contribution from the same.

Why do we solely rely on these financial performance measures if they don't tell us if we're achieving our objective? Because they are much easier to calculate reliably. We spend our time investigating the well-lit areas, while the object we're searching for remains in the dark.

I am here to tell the story of people who started with great dreams and have been struggling thereafter. This thesis has taken in to consideration the SME in India, who form a huge part of the business population. I have tried to analyze the factors, which inhibit the growth of SME in India and also tried to figure out the reasons for the failure of the SME

The first part of the thesis describes what is microcredit. It also analyzes the present conditions and the growth of Microcredit in India.

Having analyzed the drawbacks of Microcredit in India, I have developed a model, which aims to predict reason behind this saga.

Popping pill with your morning coffee can be risky

Food and drug interactions are not uncommon, especially when your schedule is packed and you pop in a pill whenever you remember.

The pill actually gets dissolved in your stomach and then reaches your blood.

But what about when you swallow your pill along with your morning cup of coffee?

And the times you have remembered to take your medicine, swigging it down with a drink?

That is the time you need to be very careful.

“You have certain enzymes that basically hampers the absorption of drugs which are secreted at the time of digestion. So there are certain drugs which may be prematurely metabolised, degraded or may be destroyed inside the intestine,” says Internal Medicine, Max, Dr Mukesh Mehra.

Here are the most common combinations that you should avoid:

Coffee and paracetamol

Your morning cup of coffee may help perk you up, but reaching out for a paracetamol at the same time is bad for your liver. Researchers have recently found that after studying the damage done in rats. However, more studies are needed to back the discovery.

Bronchodilators vs fat meals

If you have asthma and are on bronchodilators of the theophylline group avoid high-fat meals. The combination can cause side effects including nausea, vomiting, headache and irritability. And if you are on oral bronchodilators, then you also need to cut out the caffeine.

BP medicines vs Vitamin K

“Hypertensive people who are on BP drugs should be careful. They should be avoid high fibre diets like oatmeal, cereals, sprouts and high roughage fruits,” says Dr Mehra.

Warfarins vs Vitamin K

And the same goes for blood thinning drugs called warfarins or the diurectics, both used to treat heart patients. Avoid foods that contain Vitamin K because they can hamper the absorption of the medicine.

And the one thing that hampers with the absorption of all the drugs is alcohol.

So the thumb rule for you is to take your doctor's advice on what would work the best for you.

Skipping sleep makes your heart skip a beat

For Mohini time is of the essence. Her days are packed with meetings, deadlines, and a lot of travel. It's not easy being the Vice-president of a company. Mohini's promotion a month and a half ago has been a giant leap professionally, but it's come at a cost. What Mohini misses most is a good night's sleep.

“I get to sleep only four hours on a week day. Because of all the travel involved in my work, my sleep pattern has taken a beating,” says Mohini.

And what's more, there is a link with heart problem. A recent study by the University of Warwick and University College, London found that change in a person's sleeping pattern doubles a person's risk of dying of a heart attack.

“If you need seven hours of sleep but you sleep for only five means increased cardiovascular risk,” says Cardiologist, Max Hospital, Dr Ashok Seth.

And contrary to popular opinion - less sleep is not better. An earlier study had found that people who slept about five hours a night had about a 40 percent higher rate of heart attacks than people who slept eight hours a night.

And doctors in India say the worst hit, are young working Indians.

“BPOs, Media persons, lawyers are among the worst hit,” says Seth.

The leading cause for sleep deprivation is stress. And it is this stress that triggers the release of chemicals called catecholemines. These chemicals have been found to be bad for the heart.

That may sound scary, but let's face it, your work hours are not going to change all that much. Deadlines will need to be met and, then with the time left, there are friends and family, so many demands on your time. So how do you squeeze in those requisite hours of sleep?

Well you don't need to sleep all eight hours. Experts say, an effective way to counter the ill effects of sleep deprivation is to include at least 40 minutes of moderate exercise and 20 minutes of yoga or meditation in your daily routine.