Month: October 2007
How bad can a good thing be?
How bad can a good thing be?
28 Sep, 2007, 0000 hrs IST
My bank’s relationship manager emails weekly parables – simple stories with a moral lesson – to his customers.
This week he sent this:
A father wanted to inculcate a sense of responsibility in his careless son. So he told him that for every careless act of his he would hammer a nail into a wooden pillar in their house, and for every positive act he would pull out one nail.
The boy saw that the pillar was getting crowded with nails, so he resolved to change his behaviour and soon the nails started coming out, till there were none left. The father was very proud. He said, “Son, you have done a great job, there are no more nails left on the pillar.” The boy, however, started crying and replied, “The nails are gone but the holes remain.”
The fable’s obviously been made up to teach a few pithy lessons such as that some mistakes are part of the learning process and may be unavoidable; or, mistakes even when corrected, leave marks forever. Also, that some mistakes are just not correctable and the price paid is very heavy – for example, carelessness while crossing the street can cost a life. etc.
However, if we leave out the boy’s last comment and halt the story at him just crying after there were no more nails left, we can discover an altogether different kind of message running through the story.
For instance, could he have begun crying because it might suddenly have dawned on him that there were no more mistakes left to be corrected? Because in that case he must have also realised his good behaviour and deeds were not as spontaneous as he believed they were.
Instead, the positive acts were those of redemption goaded by his earlier irresponsible behaviour that had nailed him to the wooden pillar in the first place. (The reason for crying could also have been due to the fact that once he knew his impetus for doing good arose from un-good acts, it turned out to be not a great feeling to live with.)
Something similar had happened to Emperor Ashok too, the man they used to call murderous and heartless. On the battlefield of Kalinga when he saw the scattered corpses – basically his own set of nails – he is supposed to have cried out, “What have I done?” Indeed, what had he? And so he spent the rest of his life pulling out one nail after another till there were none.
Could Ashok have been greater if he had been virtuous to begin with and had not required gutted soldiers to remind him he was doing something wrong? He could. That’s another moral of the relationship manager’s parable.
Air Arabia: Service To Coimbatore
Air Arabia: Service To Coimbatore
Air Arabia yesterday announced a new service to the Indian city of Coimbatore twice weekly beginning on October 1, increasing to three flights a week from November.
Kyle Haywood, Commercial Director of Air Arabia, said: “We are pleased to introduce our eighth destination in India, strengthening our ongoing commitment to offering passengers the widest choice of destinations in India at the best value for money.
“Such expansion provides our many customers in India with the added convenience of more destinations throughout MENA and South Asia.”
Coimbatore, also known as Koneyammanputhhur, is Air Arabia’s eighth destination in India. It is one of the largest cities in the state of Tamil Nadu.
The flights will leave Sharjah International Airport at 8.05am local time and arrive in Coimbatore at 1.35pm local time every Monday and Friday. Return flights will depart at 2.20pm local time and arrive in Sharjah at 4.40pm local time on the same days.
Haywood added: “The addition of this destination for Air Arabia provides even greater opportunities for travelers between the MENA region and India for both holiday and business travel. We look forward to further enhancing our destination network in India in the future.”
UAE to issue temporary work permits
In order to meet the shortage of expatriate workers, the UAE will issue temporary work permits for a six-month period, from today.
All companies in the country can now seek temporary work permits to facilitate the process of recruiting foreign manpower, said Obaid Rashid Al Zahmi, Assistant Under-secretary in the Ministry of Labour.
In the past, such permits were issued only to oil and energy firms.
The three-month temporary permit or ‘mission visa’ will cost Dh500. For a three-month extension of the permit, companies would have to pay an additional Dh500 along with a Dh3,000 bank guarantee, said Al Zahmi.
He says the permit is not expensive, and, according to him, it is, in fact, beneficial to all, as firms can check the credentials and the performance of the workers they have recruited. He added that workers’ rights would also be protected.
Some sectors are reeling under staff shortages after more than 200,000 illegal workers left the country under a recent amnesty programme.
The mission visa will allow people to live and work in the UAE for up to six months.
Dubai Cares
Dubai Cares:
What is the Dubai Cares campaign?
“Dubai Cares” is a charitable campaign, lead by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum that serves to focus the multicultural community of Dubai on raising money to support a global cause.
What are the main goals of Dubai Cares?
The two main goals of the campaign are: To bring the multicultural community of Dubai together during the traditional time of giving – the Holy Month of Ramadan – and to focus their collective attention on raising funds for a global cause. This year, Children’s Primary Education globally. To proactively address Dubai’s role as a Global Citizen by delivering unrealized opportunities to the children in our beneficiary countries through providing them access to Children’s Primary Education.
Who are the beneficiaries of the campaign?
We are currently targeting the following regions to receive funds collected from the campaign. They include the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Do you need volunteers for the campaign?
This year’s campaign was put together in 12 weeks which made it difficult to focus on securing and training volunteers to help us. However, we will definitely need volunteers for next year’s campaign. Once the campaign is complete we will add a section for volunteer registration.
What projects are you currently targeting to raise funds for in the campaign?
We will fund the value chain of education including:
* Building and renovation of schools
* Teacher training programs
* Teaching materials
* School scholarships
* School feeding programs
* School physicals including vaccinations
* School supplies
* School sports and recreation equipment
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Corporate Social Responsibility:
What is Corporate Social Responsibility Program?
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the commitment of businesses to contribute to sustainable economic development by working with employees, the local community and the global society at large to improve their lives in ways that are good for business and for development.
The Dubai Cares campaign has designed a CSR program that offers corporations the opportunity to play a significant role in the success of this campaign to provide education to children in Asia, Africa and Middle East.
14-year-old boy gets admission to MCA
14-year-old boy gets admission to MCA
(PTI) 1 October 2007
NEW DELHI — In perhaps a first of its kind achievement, a 14-year-old boy, the son of a labourer, has secured admission to the Master’s in Computer Application course.
Despite living in abject poverty, Shailendra Kumar Verma, whose parents are illiterate, has proved to be a genius, completing his Bachelor in Computer Application this year from Lucknow University with 66 per cent marks.
The child prodigy is now pursuing MCA at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). The varsity has exempted the entire course fee for the boy, IGNOU’s Registrar (SRE) Srikant Mohapatra told PTI. “He is now the youngest student in IGNOU. The academic council of the university has taken his case as a special one and allowed waiver of fee during the three-year programme amounting to over Rs40,000,” Mohapatra said. Shailendra had passed Class XII examination from National Open School at the age of 11. Astonishingly, prior to that, he had never entered any formal education system. He has also cleared the Scholarship Aptitude Test (SAT). Shailendra later took admission in the Bachelor of Computer Science course in an American university, but could not pursue it due to financial constraints.
He has taken admission into the MCA programme at the Lucknow centre of IGNOU. In view of his poor financial condition, the regional head of the centre had sought waiver of fee for the student. “Whatever support the university can provide will be given to the student. We wish him all the best for the future,” Mohapatra said.
IGNOU will set up university for NRIs
IGNOU will set up university for NRIs
(IANS) 1 October 2007
WASHINGTON — India plans to set up a ‘knowledge bank’ to share the expertise of NRI doctors, engineers and other professionals to provide world-class education back home, Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi said here.
To this end, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) is preparing a project to set up an NRI university, Ravi said during an interaction with the Indian American community at the Indian embassy here Saturday.
An independent trust was also being set up in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to help Indians abroad do what they want back home.
A legislation has been introduced in the Indian parliament to encourage more collaboration with credible foreign universities to bring about the needed changes in the Indian system of education, Ravi said.
The proposal he said had run into political problems with some supporting parties having certain objections to it. But he personally felt that collaboration with foreign institutions would be good.
Ravi agreed that India’s healthcare system needed an overhaul, but in order to provide access to basic healthcare down to the district level, government and the private sector needed to work together.
There was, he said, great demand for Indian manpower abroad, particularly in the Gulf region. To facilitate and regulate this, memoranda of understanding (MOUs) have been signed with Kuwait and the UAE. Similar MOUs were in the offing with Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, Ravi said.
Count your exchange rate losses
Count your exchange rate losses
By Babu Das Augustine, Banking Editor Published: October 01, 2007, 00:41
Dubai: Did your employer recently give you a 10-15 per cent salary raise and a bit of motivational talk on your performance?
You might be surprised to find that your increment doesn’t mean much. And if your employer didn’t consider you for a raise in the last 18 months, you have a serious problem as your earnings have depreciated in the range of 23 to 31 per cent, depending on the currency in which you are saving and spending your money.
UAE residents already reeling under the rising cost of living are also losing heavily due to exchange rate losses.
Last year, the UAE’s inflation hit a 19-year high of 9.3 per cent and the inflation this year is estimated around the same level by Standard Chartered Bank.
The exchange rate data for the last 19 months suggest that various groups of expatriates living in the UAE lost in the range of 12 to 21 per cent in exchange rate losses along (see table).
In simple terms it means, your earnings in purchasing power in your home currency is down about 12 per cent if you are earning in rupee, 15 per cent down in the peso and 20 per cent and 18.7 per cent in the euro and the sterling, respectively.
With the exchange rates of dirham falling against their home currencies, expatriate salary earners who have fixed commitments such as mortgages, bank loans and college fees are forced to dip into their savings or borrow to send money home.
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