Linch Pins

We're Brothers!

aa rahee hai chah-e-Yousuf say sada
dost yahan thoray hain bhai bohat hain

posted by Whiz Kid @ 9:31 PM 1 comments

I love Gmail!

I have totally moved all my email to Gmail now so I'm kind-of totally dependent on Google for email. I wonder if somebody should make an email client application which would work just like Gmail. Gtalk is great and so is Gearth. Let the Goodies come!

posted by Whiz Kid @ 11:17 PM 1 comments

"I was awfully curious to find out why I didn't go insane"

URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/bhmasl.html

Excerpt:

Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the first of seven children born to his parents, who themselves were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia. His parents, hoping for the best for their children in the new world, pushed him hard for academic success. Not surprisingly, he became very lonely as a boy, and found his refuge in books.


He gave a very interesting theory on the heirarchy of needs. Here it is:



He proposed that the triangle is traversed bottom up and humans can only move up the rung by fulfiling each of the steps. If the physiological needs aren't fulfilled, he won't move ahead the stage of say esteem needs.

For complete details, I suggest you go through the entire article.

posted by Whiz Kid @ 11:08 PM 1 comments

Sir Irshad Hadi

I think Sir Irshad Hadi is a wonderful teacher. There aren't many teachers who would talk about conscience, existence, reality and philosophy! Like others, I do agree that he hasn't been teaching exactly what he should be but considering the fact that the students aren't even OKAY at communication, there is no point of teaching business communication in a context I believe it should be taught. None of the students are happy with him! I met a mechanical guy today and he said that his entire class gave him poor in the evaluations.

I think the problem lies in the fact that he tries to keep everybody in discussion by asking basic questions like What is Engineering? or What is communication? and sometimes very simple meanings of words like conscience etcetera to random people. The reason the students don't like him much is probably because they are actually scared of him that he might ask the simplest questions and they'd feel embarrassed if they didn't know the answer, of course nobody would admit it perhaps not even internally but I think if they think deep about it, they would feel a certain tinge. I have always noticed that there is never absolute silence in the class! Somebody is moving his/her bag, making noise with the pen, chairs or hums, moving their heads; in other words, there are always distractions. If you sit in the back you can see it all happening and there's always restlessness in the mind as a brain thread is dedicated to notice what is happening around. What I've noticed is that we're actually scared of a good two-way intellectual conversation. Everytime we converse, one of the two would always try to sound smarter as if listening is a disgrace to their pride and speaking makes them look smarter. As a friend would say: When speech fades... the intellect awakes.

I understand Sir Irshad Hadi's psyche a little and I admire his style and his way of delivering knowledge a lot. I don't like the fact that he's always trying to clarify his position by saying I know you are good engineers! The cream, the best!; I believe that when he says that, most of the minds would be so aroused by the praise that they wouldn't want to interpret the message that follows it (as Sir Noman would say: maqsad hi faut hogaya). I think he probably needs to work on that a little. He's much older and way more experienced than me so I sometimes wonder if he does the right thing and that I need to reevaluate my position. I also really admire the fact that he is always ready to learn from anybody and everybody. If I were to select three BEST teachers from third year, I think he'd be one of them. I've learnt a great deal about listening and communication from him and I do believe that listening is much more rewarding than speaking.

Normally the students would complain that he didn't teach us to write CV, Memos, professional business letters etcetera. I'd sometimes smile when they say that because if they can understand the real essence of the language and communication, adapting a pattern will not be difficult at all! They can pick up any good book and provided that they are good readers, they will not have any trouble understanding simple procedures. We are not going to take any evaluations this year but I'd like to give him a 10/10 here, all the way!

posted by Whiz Kid @ 10:44 PM 4 comments

First Post

yada yada

posted by Unknown @ 10:35 PM 0 comments