Happy Employee - 11 ways to be a happy employee

Can you recollect a day where you woke up at 5:00 am, got ready quickly and waited to do something exciting? Was it your college annual day function? Or a competitive exam? Or maybe a first date? Maybe it was your wedding day. Is it Monday morning to work? If the answer is the last, surely you are a happy employee.
Though the above occasions may not have a lot in common, excitement and motivation can be attributed to almost all of them. However, at the workplace, it is almost impossible to find both or any one of these attributes daily. But, being happy or unhappy is always in our hands. That's the choice we make and we are the creators of the outcome by our actions. Let's look at what might make an employee unhappy.
-Unfair rewards and recognition
-Office politics
-Un-cooperative team
-Unreasonable boss
-Insufficient compensation
-Constant threat to job security
-Lack of responsibility in the current job
-No clear career path
-Seating location
-Lack of basic facilities at workplace
And the list goes on and on. Some of these things may not really propel an employee to quit, but it might lead to negative energy which leads to low productivity. When an employee is under-productive he or she will be the first target when companies look for opportunities to give pink slips.

As mentioned earlier, being happy is always in your hands. A happy employee is more productive and gives more than an unhappy employee. So let's look at some ways to up the happiness factor.

1. Plan your week on Sunday night

Look at your work calendar and plan your week on Sunday night or Monday morning. This would include important meetings, deliverables, a brief summary of things that are pending from last week and any tasks to be achieved during the week. Though this might look like a time management tip, at the end of the week, on Friday night when you re-visit what you have achieved over the last five days, the satisfaction is immense.

2. Undertake activities that you are passionate about even though it might not be in your job profile

Start an initiative that you would love to do irrespective of whether it is required for you to do or not.
Send a daily newsletter to your team on the topics that most of them will be interested.
Do a presentation on the topic that you are passionate about.
Organize a small sports event for your team.
Call everyone in your team for a team coffee, breakfast or lunch break
Appreciate colleagues in your team or in a cross-functional team who did a great job
Write a poem on your team's achievements
Arrange a potluck lunch

3. Do not indulge in the blame game

If something goes wrong do not blame others blindly. If you commit a mistake, do not hesitate to accept it. As Gautham Buddha said, there are three things we can't hide for long: the sun, earth and the truth. Accepting your mistake gracefully will only make you look like a true professional and also give you the satisfaction of not cheating.

4. Communicate more often in person

Utilize all the opportunities where you can speak to an individual in person rather than e-mail or phone. But be aware of the other person's time and availability. Listening to a positive answer from a person will give you more happiness than if it is done over the phone or via e-mail.

5. Know what is happening at your workplace

Will this make a person happy? Truly, yes! Imagine a cricket team that doesn't know how many runs to score to win a match? More than losing the game, the player will never be interested or motivated to play well.
Attend all meetings that are addressed by the CEO to your immediate manager to know what is going to happen around you. It could be the company's growth plan or your department's next big project. Jack Welch mentions in his book Winning "every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing."
You will also get an extra edge if you are in a position to answer queries raised by your peers or juniors. This is not just for the good reasons, but bad reasons as well. You do not want to be the last employee to know if your company is laying off employees (in the worst case, if you are the one who is on that list).

6. Participate in organization-level activities

This could be as simple as spending one weekend for a corporate social responsibility activity or attending a recruitment drive to help your HR team or arranging a technical/sports event at the organizational level. Most of these events will be successful as people do come on their own to contribute.

7. Have a hobby that keeps you busy and happy

Many people say their hobby is watching TV or listening to music or reading the newspaper. These aren't hobbies, they are just ways of passing the time. Some hobbies are evergreen and will keep you evergreen as well: dancing, painting, writing short stories, poems, blogs and sharing your experiences.

8. Take up a sport

While choosing a sport make sure that there is physical activity. There is the danger of becoming addicted to sports where there is less physical activity (like computer games, chess, cards etc). Physical activity keeps a person healthy and happy. If you pick up one sport well, you can represent your organization in corporate sports event too.

9. Keep yourself away from office politics

Politics, as a practice, whatever its profession, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. -- Henry Brooks Adams
Politics is everywhere and the office is no exception. Playing politics might be beneficial but only for the short term. So the best thing to do is play fair.

10. Wish and smile

More often than not, there are fair chances that the other person will smile back. This could be your security guard at the gate, your receptionist, your office boy, your CEO or your manager -- never forget to wish them and smile.

11. Volunteer for some activity
"The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving." Albert Einstein

Do at least one activity without expecting anything in return. There is no set frequency for this. This could be once in a day or once in a week or thrice in a week. It could be as simple as making tea at the office for your colleague, helping a colleague who is working in another department by using your skills, dropping your colleague at his door step in your car, going to your manager or colleague to ask if there is any help you can extend, contributing to technical or knowledge management communities in your organization etc.

Appeasement is never good for a nation- by Lalit Koul

10,000 forest trees are chopped down to build the Mughal road in Kashmir. No one makes a noise.

Acres of land in the Kashmir valley are given to install mobile phone towers. No one screams.

Acres and acres of land in the Kashmir valley are allotted to lay sewage and drinking water pipes. No one objects.

But when 40 hectares of uninhabitable land is handed over to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board to provide better facilities to the Amarnath Yatra pilgrims, all hell breaks loose.

Why? Because the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board caters to Hindu pilgrims who want to visit the Amarnath shrine in the valley of Kashmir. It is as simple as that.

Politically correct politicians, policy-makers and administrators might try to tell you that it is not about religion, but the fact of the matter is that it is all about religion. It is a design by communal forces within the valley to completely Islamicise the valley by removing every symbol of Hinduism and other faiths from the valley.

Today, these communal forces are preventing the setting up of facilities for the yatra, tomorrow they will even go to the extent of banning the yatra altogether.

The land transfer fiasco has already consumed the Ghulam Nabi Azad-led Congress government and is on its way to now adversely damage the state's economy. The fear psychosis has already resulted in a sharp decline of tourists to the valley. Counter-strikes and bandhs announced by the pro-land-transfer parties within the Jammu province have paralysed the life in that part of the state as well.

So far it has been a win-lose situation in favour of communal forces in the valley.

Let us take a hard look at the arguments presented by the locals who opposed the transfer of land:

1. The allotment would have adversely affected the environment around the area. One wonders where these tree-hugging environmentalists were when the same government allowed the felling of 10,000 forest trees to build the 89 km-long Mughal road.

40 hectares of land that was going to be used to provide temporary shelters and night-time facilities to pilgrims was in fact going to help in proper maintenance of the current day waste that actually pollutes the environment. But who can argue with senseless politicians who instigate people to come out on the streets?

2. The allotment is the government's ploy to settle Hindus from outside the state to change the demographics of the valley. Look, who is talking! One has to only go back 18 years in the history and check who changed the demographics of the valley.

Islamic terrorists changed the demographics of the valley by ethnically cleansing Kashmiri Hindus from the valley. I wonder where these we-do-not-want-to-change-demographics-folks were when Kashmiri Hindus were slaughtered and the valley's demographics were altered.

One would like to ask a few questions: a. Is 40 hectares of land enough to settle so many Hindus that it would change the demographics of the valley?

b. By putting this argument of demographic change, are the valley's Muslims implying that Hindus are not welcome in the valley anymore? And I do not mean the Hindus from outside Kashmir. I mean the Hindus from the state of Jammu & Kashmir itself.

What if the Hindus, who hold the state subject certificate of J&K state and are legally allowed to purchase land in any part of the state want to purchase land in the area around the Holy Amarnath? Are the valley's Muslims saying that those Hindus cannot buy the land there and settle down? Is that what they are implying? Are they trying to protect the environment by preventing the Hindus from settling in the valley?

Another argument Kashmiri Muslims present is that the land cannot be allotted to the Shrine Board because Article 370 does not allow anyone outside of J&K to own land. Their argument is that since the J&K governor is the chairman of the board and he is an outsider, this transfer of land is illegal.

How dumb does one have to be to understand that the land is transferred to the Shrine Board which is an institution based in the state of J&K and created by the J&K government. The land is not transferred to the chairman or the CEO of the board per se.

Having touched upon the outlandish arguments of those who oppose the allotment of land, let us look at some facts and the real story:

It was during the first three years of the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed-Ghulam Nabi Azad coalition government that the original proposal of land transfer was initiated and cleared. It was under Mufti Sayeed's leadership that his forest minister Qazi Mohammad Afzal and law minister Muzzafar Hussain Baig originally cleared the proposal. It just so happened that due to red tape, the proposal was finally approved by the cabinet when Azad had taken over as chief minister during the second three-year part of the six-year term.

The same PDP led by Mufti Sayeed was originally okay with this proposal. But as soon as the PDP smelt that terrorist outfits like the Hizbul Mujahideen were not in favour of the allotment of land and realised that it could become a polarising issue to whip up sentiments to garner votes in the upcoming assembly election, it backtracked.

Since it is an election year, the National Conference and other smaller political parties would not let the PDP cash in on this opportunity alone. They jumped into the fray and whipped up sentiments by fooling the local Kashmiri Muslims. And that leaves the Congress. How could the Congress not try to cash in on this polarising issue in an election year?

Azad did not waste any time and revoked his cabinet's decision to appease the Kashmiri Muslim vote bank. He did not just stop there. In addition to revoking his own order, he also effectively disbanded the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. Now that is some level of appeasement! That is the real story behind the story.

It is an issue created by Mufti Sayeed to polarise the vote banks. It is his design of playing politics with the religious sentiments of lakhs of Hindus from all over the country.

Now that we know the real story behind the story, how about the Hindu pilgrims who want to visit the shrine and what about their fundamental rights to practice their religion with complete security, dignity and honour?

Isn't it a shame that Hindus living in India, where 80 per cent of population is Hindu, cannot freely visit the shrine and expect better facilities? It is only in India that the majority community has to make all the sacrifices in favour of minorities because our politicians believe in appeasing Muslims at the cost of Hindus.

National Conference leader Omar Abdullah on a television debate on this issue asked why there is a need for land and new facilities when the pilgrimage has been going on for many years.

Does Omar Abdullah mean to say that there is no need to improve the facilities provided during the treacherous pilgrimage? Is he implying that if the yatris were okay for so many hundred years, then why change and improve the facilities?

I have never heard him say such things with regards to the Haj pilgrimage. Every year Muslims from Kashmir and the rest of the country want better facilities and subsidies for Haj pilgrims. But when it comes to providing better facilities to Shri Amarnath pilgrims, it becomes a sore point for Kashmiri Muslims and their leaders.

Heavy rains, snowstorms, landslides and hostile environment took away 256 lives during the yatra in 1996. And Omar Abdullah has the audacity to promote the status quo!

Some of you might argue that it was not the valley's Muslims, but the political parties and terrorists who opposed the land transfer order and forced people to come out on the streets.

I can buy that argument, but that does not absolve the valley's people from their responsibility? They cannot always support these fundamentalist forces and then at the same time claim innocence.

They did the same in 1989 and in the early 1990s when they either stood as mute spectators or as vocal supporters while Kashmiri Hindus were ethnically cleansed. As a good citizen, it is incumbent upon them to raise their voice against these dreaded forces and stop this madness.

If they sincerely believe in peace, then they need to stand up and reject these terrorist outfits and their masters. Conversely, if they don't, then they are as much party to the madness as the principals and thus need to be held accountable.

Appeasement policies are never good for a nation, particularly for a nation like India that is so diverse in ethnicity and culture. Whether it is amending the Constitution during the Shah Bano case, releasing terrorists during the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case, freeing dreaded terrorists during the IC-814 hijacking or continuing the temporary Constitutional provision of Article 370, all such policies will one day result in the nation's doom.

It is incumbent upon the leaders of the nation as well as the citizenry to be on guard and not allow such appeasement policies to take effect in a nation that is based on the concept of secularism, democracy and fairness to one and all.

Lalit Koul is the President, Indo-American Kashmir Forum, a US-based advocacy group. He can be reached at editor@kashmirherald.com

Mumbai's Altamount Road among world's most expensive streets

A Mumbai lane, where India's richest person Mukesh Ambani is building a $2-billion home, has joined the league of the world's 10 most expensive streets, but is outranked by over three-times costlier London's Billionaires Row where steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal owns three houses.

Altamount Road in India's financial capital Mumbai has been named as the 10th costliest in a survey of the world's top 10 most expensive streets in the world, while London's Kensington Palace Gardens has been ranked at the fourth place.

While the tree-lined street in south of Mumbai is a favourite of India's 'very rich,' Kensington Palace Gardens area in West London is popularly known as Billionaires Row. It has been home to Late Princess Diana and NRI-billionaire Mittal owns three houses on this street.

#	Street	Cost per sq mt
1	Avenue Princess Grace, Monaco	$190,000
2	Severn Road, Hong Kong	$121,000
3	Fifth Avenue, New York City	$80,000
4	Kensington Palace Gardens, London	$77,000
5	Avenue Montaigne, Paris	$54,000
6	Ostozhenka, Moscow	$40,000
7	Via Suvretta, St Moritz	$38,000
8	Carolwood Drive, Los Angeles	$30,000
9	Wolseley Road, Sydney	$28,000
10	Altamount Road, Mumbai	$25,000

In the survey conducted by Wealth-Bulletin, a United Kingdom-based online news and analysis provider for global wealth management industry, Avenue Princess Grace in Monaco has been named at the top with a price tag of $190,000 per square metre.

It is followed by Hong Kong's Severn Road with a price of $121,000 per square metre (sq mt) at second and New York City's Fifth Avenue at third place ($80,000 per sq mt).

Kensington Palace Gardens has made to the fourth place with a price tag of $77,000 per sq mt, while the same for the last-ranked Mumbai's Altamount Road is $25,000 per sq mt.

Noting that the Mumbai lane has always been a popular choice for homes of India's very rich, Wealth-Bulletin said that the street was 'catapulted into the ranks of the world's most expensive when India's wealthiest individual Mukesh Ambani unveiled plans last year to build a residential apartment block on the street at a cost of around $2 billion.'

'The extraordinary, 27-floor building, called Antilia, will be as high as a normal 60-floor skyscraper, have elevated gardens and three helicopter pads,' it said, adding that the prices in Antilia were likely to be at least 25,000 per sq mt or even more.

Other streets ranked costlier than Mumbai's Altamount Road in the list include Avenue Montaigne in Paris, ranked fifth at $54,000 per sq mt, Moscow's Ostozhenka (sixth at $40,000 per sq mt), Via Suvretta in St Moritz (seventh at $38,000 per sq mt) and Carolwood Drive in Los Angeles (eighth ranked at $30,000 per sq mt).

The survey revealed that the prices for the top homes in the best locations appear to have decoupled from the gloom and doom being felt in the wider property market.

'The bursting of the housing market bubble is growing louder, causing increasing concern among a widening spectrum of the population, but for the really wealthy the downturn might have little or no impact on the prices they are paying, or selling for homes,' it said.

Noting one needs to be a billionaire, or not far behind, to live in these streets, Wealth-Bulletin said Moscow's Ostozhenka Street and Mumbai's Altamount Road 'would not have even been considered for the list a decade ago, but their inclusion today shows just how important these cities have become for burgeoning billionaire class in India and Russia.

World Famous Personalities in One Single Artwork

How Many of them u can recognize!! :)

Why they are named so!!

Yahoo!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels.. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos ie.. it stands for Y et A nother H ierarchical O fficious O racle


Xerox
The Greek root "xer" means dry. The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product Xerox as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying.


Sun Microsystems
Founded by four Stanford University buddies, Sun is the acronym for Stanford University Network.


Sony
From the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.


SAP
"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by four ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM..


Red Hat
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!


Oracle
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such).


Motorola
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.


Microsoft
It was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.


Lotus
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from the lotus position or 'padmasana.' Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.


Intel
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ' Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.


Hewlett-Packard
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.


Hotmail
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casings.


Google
The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google


Cisco
The name is not an acronym but an abbreviation of San Francisco . The company's logo reflects its San Francisco name heritage. It represents a stylized Golden Gate Bridge ..


Apple Computers
Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened his employees to suggest a name for his company by 5 o'clock . as noone came forward with a name & clock ticks 5, he was having apple in his hand & hence he named it as APPLE


Apache
It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server - thus, the name Apache.

Cool way of publicity

Create Fake Magazine Covers with your own picture at MagMyPic.com

Poetry in its true sense - the ability to control a crowd

The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes

Finally, a car that runs on water !!!

 

Skyrocketting fuel prices, adulterated fuel, long queues at petrol stations, often unscrupulous attendants out to fleece you — your cup of woes spills over everytime you need to fill the tank of of your car.

But all this could be history if Genepax — a Japanese company — is successful in commercialising its latest innovation: the ‘water car.’

Genepax unveiled the car in Osaka, Japan on June 12, saying that a litre of any kind of water would get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 kmph, or 50 mph.

Genepax president Kiyoshi Hirasawa, in a mission statement published on the company’s official web site, said, “Our mission is to develop technology and products for efficient production and use of energy. By ‘efficient,’ we mean ecologically and economically efficient. Ecological and economical energy is our business. Our goal is to create energy that is not taxing on our natural environment.”

The water needed to run the car could be tap, rain or sea water, the company clarified.

Once the tank (which is at the rear) of the Genepax car is filled with water, a generator would extract hydrogen from the water using, what the comapny calls, its Water Energy System, or WES, to produce electricity that the car runs on. As opposed to the hybrid cars which emit water, Genepax’s invention consumes water.

Whether the car is a commercial success or not remains to be seen, but Genepaxsaid it had applied for a patent and is planning to collaborate with Japanese auto manufacturers.

“Energy made from water,” as Hirasawa says, “is not a dream story anymore We hope many people will join us in our challenge to promote the use of our WES, for the better future of the earth,” he added in a statement.

Most Dedicated Employee of the Year