I Learnt Today…

2008-11-30

I have been postponing things since I don’t know when…

I consider this as a major mistake that we all make and the most unfortunate thing is that we don’t feel we are going down because postponing takes us down slowly. In other words, you will not even notice that you have not checked your eyes until it’s been a year since when it was initially planned.

Yes it is that bad and even worse…

The main reason for many people to end up with postponing is the busy life most of us are living today.

Most of us are very good at work and never postpone a single office work. Then the important things in personal life get piled almost kissing the sun.

Most of us only have the weekend for all our personal life work. And the worst of all is it’s the weekend that we can sit and get a rest.

So what ever the important thing that should be done in this weekend gets LESS URGENT and easily gets postponed to the next. Of course, hoping there won’t be any new movies next week!

Let me discuss some experience of mine:

• Lat December (2007) I brought my coffee cup to home thinking I should clean it thoroughly before start using the next year. My mother washed it and returned it to me so that I could take it back to office the day after. But every morning when I get ready to go, I did not get the cup which was lying on my table because I had to rearrange my backpack to accommodate a round shape thing. Believe me it’s been a year for now and the cup still lies on my table … !
• I checked my eyes last March and I forgot to bring my old specs or any details of my previous checking of eyes and unfortunately I had to go to a new doctor from whom I had last checked when I was a kid. So he checked my eyes without any clue of previous checks. But he certainly did not do a good job and my eyes rejected the new specs. Even though he told that it was natural and would be all right in some time, my eyes kept rejecting new specs. Then I decided to recheck the specs with my usual doctor. If I go to him I have to take a leave on a weekday or have to go Saturday night. Trust me I am still wearing the same specs and my eyes are still rejecting it and I am working 9-12 hours everyday in front of computer with this pair of specs making my eyes double tired.

I can write hundreds of such experience here but rather I would like to discuss how I feel about this situation.

You may think I am a so ignorant stupid. Actually I am not (at least I don’t think so) I loved my coffee cup but I lived without it for a year… How? If anyone told me not to use my coffee cup for a year, I would fight with him. But I, by myself didn’t use it for a year…!

If someone asked me to use wrong specs for more than 8 months 10 hours a day, I would kill him because I love my eyes. But I just did that by myself…!

How did I do this?

Yes, I found how I did it, I never painted the big picture nor had even an idea of what I was drawing, I always drew a tiny pixel at a time.

I never wanted to lose my cup for a year; I only wanted to take the cup on the next day. Everyday I thought that I would only lose it for a day and I could live with it.

I never wanted to hurt my eyes without which I don’t even want to try living. But I could live with it for a single week. Every time I was postponing my checking only for a week.

So as we can clearly see we always have calm and quiet reason to justify the single unit level postpones which alone does not make any visible impact on us. But together, as the time go, it’s those tiny pixels that makes the big picture which is once drawn can never be re-painted.

So how could we get rid of this?

Well, I would like to get the lesson from my first great teacher, yes my mother.

She does a job and also does all house work without a servant.

Every night she prepares the need to make tomorrows cooking which she start doing in the early morning around 4.00 am.

If I was her, I would postpone the preparation for tomorrow morning. But she never does that because she knows that she would never get enough time to finish cooking with quality and dress-up for the office before 7.00 am.

Even if she is sick, she never postpones a single task…

Yes she has the will that I don’t have. She has the power in her heart which I need to develop within my heart.

I think one should make his/her heart strong to stand against those tiny evils which suggests to postpone tiny things to make it comfortable for a small span of time but make the life worse long term.

Cassian Menol Razeek

2008-11-29

When we talk about animal camouflage, the first creature that hits our minds is lizard. If we leave the earth surface  and swim deeper we can find octopus a master of disguise.

Octopus can alter its color and skin texture to blend into its surroundings to fool away predators such as sharks which are keen to taste octopuses’ soft boneless bodies.

Octopuses are gifted with sacs of yellow, red, brown and black pigment called chromatophores which covers their bodies. They can control these pigments by contracting their muscles. In other words, Tightening certain muscles can also transform the texture of their skin to look like the smooth ocean floor or a craggy reef.

Mimic Octopus – The master of disguise

As we discussed, ordinary octopuses can change their colors to match their skin texture to match their surroundings but the Mimic Octopus is capable of systematically copying multiple species’ appearances which is a skill that mystifies sea scientists around the globe.

Mimic Octopus takes the form of venomous creatures in the sea such as lionfish, flatfish and sea snake.

How can an eight armed octopus look like a snake? This master hides six arms and shows only two to make its trick look very real.

This is a picture taken when mimicking a sea snake :

Mimicing a sea star:

It’s amazing, Isn’t it?

Was this post helpful to you? How can I improve? - Your comment is highly appreciated!

Cassian Menol Razeek

2008-11-24

Among various helpful functions provided by Oracle, Trunc function took my attention today because I had to fix a defect where some one has misunderstood and misused this function.

As the name itself suggests, the trunc function is capable of truncating a value. This function can be used either on a date type value or a numeric value.

Using trunc for numeric values

When it comes to numbers, trunc function can return a number truncated to a certain number of decimal places.

syntax:

trunc( number, [ decimal_places ] )

Example usage:

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Note: The trunc function does not round the values like in round function. It simply truncates the number as instructed.

Using trunc for date values

The trunc function is capable to truncate a date value to a specific unit of measure.

Syntax:

trunc ( date, [ format ] )

Possible values for format parameter:

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Example Usage:

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Was this post helpful to you? How can I improve? – Your comment is highly appreciated!

Cassian Menol Razeek

2008-11-23

Yesterday I bought this new book “How to get what you want from almost anybody” today I could read the introduction of the book and thought to put what I learnt from that as today’s post.

The author explains one of his experiences at air port. The guy who was before him in the queue to get the plane booked after a flight got cancelled. The guy was a straight guy or in other words who simply says what he feels to the face.

The guy had asked for a well placed seat from the first class. Since he was a frequent flyer, he was well respected and recognized from the airline.

When the author went to the counter, after a gentle chat, he asked the person in the counter how hard his job was and he found that the bags of that tough guy has been put in a different (wrong) plane by the person in the counter willingly.

The author has approached the scenario in a different method. He was very gentle with the guy in the counter. When the counter guy asked him what seat he wants, he told the guy he would take any seat from any section of the flight and asked guy to keep the good seats to deal with tough guys.

However, when he got into the plane, surprisingly he was asked to sit in a very good window seat in the first class (the author himself also was a frequent flyer and well recognized).

The first guy is not wrong, he was upset because his flight was cancelled and he had lost his booked nice seat and had to settle for any available seat. So his anger would be justifiable in certain angles.

What he specifies at the end is…

” What do you want most? Is it the thrill of knowing that you are absolutely right, or would you be willing to sacrifice a bit of righteousness in exchange for pleasant, hassle-free service? “

I would not agree with what the author says because it’s not easy to stand silence and be calm when you lose something for some others mistake or problem.

I also have many experiences where I have acted the role of both the tough guy and the nice guy. I also believe that the nice guy approach makes people happy but yes, you may not feel comfortable leaving without talking against the wrong…

But at least it gets the work done which is considered as most important by most of the people of this era …

Cassian Menol Razeek

2008-11-22

Today I went to a party at my dad’s office. There I met this wonderful person who is 57 years old now.

Let me tell something that I found about him:

He’s 57 years old now and married. His wife still works abroad as a house maid and his all sisters are abroad in Australia.

Even though he’s married since a long time ago, he was not blessed with children. His father has already passed away and his mom is healthy but she lives in Australia with his sisters.

His sisters have tried many times to take him to Australia but at all those times authorities had rejected him due to his age.

Once he was even rejected to visit his sisters EVEN for a short period!

From this smal job he gets a very small salary about 100 US $ and his sisters sends him 200 Australian dollars once a month by which he manages to pay his bills and get other needs.

Even though he’s getting a very low salary, he bears a great deal fo responsibilities. Once, as he explained me, he had to go and buy things for few Indians who were hired to assemble a automatic plant.

When he was going to attend that, the waste removal truck has appeared which is also his responsibility. So he has waited for that to finish before go for the other work. But a manager has told him to go and get things while the truck was doin its job.

While he was away, the truck have accidently dumped a large amount of trash on a pipe which then made a huge leak in the glue storage tank making a loss of 40,000 Sri Lankan Rupees (Like 400 US$). Since the manager did not accept he instructed my friend to go, my friend had to pay the loss! 400 US $ may be not a huge some for you but for his salary this was huge.

And I forgot to mention that he once have also had a heart attack….!

So ….

When he was talking like this, you may think that he was a poor guy with a very unhappy life, just the way I thought.

But for my surprice, he was the most happy guy there and there was a genuine smile in his face all the time and it was very pleasent to talk with him.

The best thing is….

He told me that he beleives a lot in God and told me that he has a secret prayer which keeps him so happy and makes lord give him a very successful life and told me that since we are friends, he’d send that prayer to me through my father.

This reminded me a lesson on PARADIGMS….

It’s all about the way we see things that keeps us and people around us happy. He did not complain about those countless problems he had. He told those as challenges that he has faced and he told those things to me in a way as giving a lecture to a younger person.

He did not say God let him get an heart attack, He said, God saved me from that heart attack while many people die from their first heart attack…!

He did not worry because he had to pay a large sum of money for another guys fault eventhough he was upset for that guy’s dishonest behaviour. He was happy because his prayers had been answered and God has tought a lesson to the management though a huge loss on the company (in millions of rupees) due to another irresponsible decision work of the same manager.

What I learnt…

We should not see the worst side of anything that happens to us. Doing that does not solve that problem but only puts us to a even worse level.

We should change our lenses and try through different angles and I do think that we certainly can win the main objective of our life…

which is … HAPPINESS!!!

Cassian Menol Razeek

2008-11-21

As an IT professional, I go through many problems, challenges and new stuff everyday.

Every challenge I face teaches me a new lesson. Every problem shows me a new path.

Also I come across new stuff daily through various methods.

The interesting thing is that someday somehow we meet the same problem again and I have experienced it. In many times, I have remembered that I have faced a similar situation in the past.

The problem is that I don’t remember how I faced it!

So I thought to start a blog and write down everything I learn in a day.

I expect several things from this:

1. To keep a reference to things that I learn on a daily basis
2. To help the world; If anyone faces the same problem after I did and searches the Internet for a solution, I would be pleased if my past experience could help that person.
3. Someday, use this as a way to turn back and see the challenges I have faced in the past.

God, help me to keep the enthusiasm and continue this endeavor !

Cassian Menol Razeek