Economics of Ergonomics

I work at a large conglomerate, a so-called MNC and my desktop offers me least physical comfort. “Ergonomics? What’s that?”, was the response of the person in charge of PCs and accessories at the office. Unfortunately, the way things work over here is that the IT guy does
not get to hand out the furniture that accompanies the PCs. As a result, for most of the people in the office the PCs have become a pain issue in more than one sense. The other sense is of course Websense. Go to websense.com to find out why I am bitching about it!

Anyway, have not been up to much other than getting bank guarantees for clients. You should read some of the clauses that are present in the tomes that these bank guys hand out. One of these days, you chaps are going to make the mistake of actually reading one of the bank loan forms and then you will realize that other than your genitals, you have mortgaged about almost everything else to the bank in lieu for the pittance that they have given you. Actually, if you are taking a loan from xxxxx bank, you will have mortgaged your genitals also. See page 23 of their instructions to loan applicants document. I know what your response is going to be: what the heck is a instructions to loan applicants document? Followed by: how the heck can websense classify Radgovin’s blog as tasteless?

Anyway, coming back to ergonomics at the work place. One of my colleagues recently had a painful introduction to the reality of ergonomics [or lack thereof] at the workplace. He had been complaining of back pain for a long time and one day out of pure frustration he hit out at his chair. The reason for his frustration of course was not his back pain but an anatomical activity that the client was carrying out with him, which in polite circles may be described as “screwing”

Anyway, imagine his surprise when out of the portion of the chair that was supposed to be supporting the small of his back, came out a mouse! Not the one connected to the PCs, you dummies! A real, live mouse. I began to wonder: is this a corporate strategy to keep control over employee activity? Has the mouse been programmed only to give back pain to employees being “screwtinized” by the client? Or has it been programmed to bite off essential body parts of rambunctious workers? Of course, people with bank loans have nothing to worry about because their genitals are already in the safe deposit box. But what about us average God-fearing, mortgage hating, low-salary earning mortals? Something to ponder over, ain’t it?

In case you are working for such an MNC, I suggest you get your wooden chair replaced immediately. Better still, buy a plastic one yourself and haul it to office everyday - that way, you can be sure its not going to be “moused”. And considering the spiralling cost of plastic these days, take a loan for the chair and leave your essential body parts with the bank for safekeeping!

/Radgovin

Resume of a Hero

This flash fiction story is an entry for the Caferati Flash Fiction contest 2008. Let me have your comments on the same.

Name: Sajnee Rant

Age: Twenty seven years only. Period.

Status: Married to Seventy two thousand females and keeping each one of them glad.

Special abilities: Can dodge bullets, scale sky scrapers with bare hands, sing in twelve hundred languages, light a cigarette without the aid of match sticks / lighters, hair style that sets the trend, clothes that can give an emperor a complex, sport skills including but not limited to football (ability to score from goalkeeper's position), cricket (able to hit any ball out of the stadium, especially if it is the last ball and there are 5 runs required to win the match), table tennis (reflexes quicker than a gazelle's), tennis (currently playing under the pen-name of Federrer), javelin throw (world record for longest throw of javelin, across the pacific ocean), shot put (another world record), kho-kho (captain of the Indian team), rifle shooting (under the pen-name Rathore), boxing (world heavy-weight champion in the featherweight category), et al. Other abilities include: ability to run faster than Rajdhani, stop an Airbus A380 from colliding with runway fences, up turn cars and trucks at will with a single flick of the wrist, ability to raise and raze mountains with the twirl of the little finger, control over the rain gods and an immaculate sense of timing, when it comes to saving damsels in distress.

Academic:
B. Tech. CSE, IIT Bombay,
PGP Marketing, IIM Ahmedabad,
Ph. D. Social Sciences, Stanford, California,
MBBS, K. E. M. College,
M. D. Neurosurgery, Oxford.

Applying for the post of: Sweeper for Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), 'S' Ward

Finance Basics

Everyone can do with understanding the basics of Finance. Same is applicable for me too! :)

Sr. No.	Term	Meaning
1	Liquidity Ratio	It shows the ability of a firm to pay its short term debts as they mature
2	Current Ratio	Current Assets / Current Liabilities
3	Quick Ratio (Acid-test)	Quick assets / Current Liabilities where, quick assets = current assets - inventory
4	Profitability Ratio	It is used to measure a firm's efficiency & ability to generate profits
5	Gross Profit margin	Gross profit / Sales
6	Net Profit margin	Net Profit (PAT) / Sales
7	Ownership Ratio	This helps to analyze the present and future investments in a firm & to compare the investments with factors such as Debt, Earnings, Dividends & Stock price
8	Return on Equity or Net Worth (RONW)	RONW = Net Profit / Avg. Equity
9	Earnings Per Share (EPS)	EPS = Net profit / No. of shares outstanding
10	Price Earnings Ratio (P/E)	P/E = Market price of shares / EPS
11	Debt Equity Ratio	Total debt / Total Equity
12	Debt Service Coverage Ratio	(PAT + Depreciation + Non cash expenses + interest on loans) / (interest on loans + Repayments)
13	Average Net Funds Employed (ANFE)	ANFE = Average Net Working Capital + Average Net Fixed Assets
14	Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)	ROCE = (PBIT - TAX) / ANFE
15	Economic Value Added (EVA)	EVA = (ROCE - WACC) x ANFE

For further reading: http://www.dsm.com/en_US/html/invest/glossary.htm

Movie Review: Taare Zameen Par

All the citizens of this great country that we live in, i.e. Bharat, will agree with me that some of us, or even most of us, are the biggest hypocrites in the whole wide world. Not only that, we are among the worst racist and non-secular people in the world. There is ample proof of all these qualities everywhere. I will cite a few examples:

• Policy formers emphasize the need for increase in female to male population ratio. Policy formers reside in New Delhi. India's highest rate of female infanticide occurs in the northern states of India.
• We talk about equality for all. And then we go ahead and have reservations for backward classes and women, when economic concessions are the need of the day.
• We talk about equality and yet when the time comes to implement a uniform civil code, we make hasty reversals in policy.
• We crib about how the west has zero respect for women, how women are treated as objects in the west and how, traditionally, India has always been kind and generous to women. And then we have incidents such as rapes, molestation and groping that take place every day.
• Worst of all, we have got a very poor media: one which is interested in marketability of the news as opposed to the impact. A media which excels in doling out sensationalist oeuvre as opposed to journalistic excellence. A media which leaves no stones unturned when gets an opportunity to calumniate any individual/organization - an opportunist media, in short.

Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that cinema has chosen over the last few years to make movies which deride this phenomenon of rapacious journalism. Also, movies over the years have criticized the attitude of the Indian masses: the chalta hai attitude, the over dependence on fortune as opposed to hard work and the ineptitude of the junta to realize plights of differently abled people in this country.

The movie Taare Zameen Par, which speaks about learning disabilities, comes as a breath of fresh air. For me, there was serendipity in how I came across to seeing the movie. Me and MsF had gone to watch Welcome [which by the way is a good brainless comedy to watch and forget about your worries for a while]. Since the theatre we went to was not playing the said movie, we decided to watch TZP. This was what we call a run-time-decision (RTD). And like most of my RTDs this proved to be an amazing experience.

TZP is the story of a boy Ishant Avasti, born to middle class parents in the city of Mumbai. Therefore, that puts him into a category of millions. He is, therefore, no different than any other kid roaming the streets of Mumbai and that is exactly how his parents treat him. What his parents do not realize though is the fact that their child is unique. He has abilities that very few other people on this planet possess. That of looking at the world in a different way than is taught at schools, imbibed by parents and reinforced by interactions with peers. He is a dyslexic: he has learning disabilities. Unfortunately for him, even his parents do not realize this disability. However, with this disability he is also in possession of a wonderful gift - that of an amazing ability of capturing what he sees as pictures - pictures which range from tranquil colourful panoramas to intense, soulful paintings showing the pain in his small heart.

TZP scores maximum points for the rendition of the lead character's emotions. The movie revolves around the child actor [sometimes a tad too long!] and Aamir Khan plays a wonderful supporting actor role. He lets his lead actor direct the pace of the movie, involving himself just at the right time when he feels the movie might be losing some steam. Although the movie has a running time in excess of conventional hindi cinema, at no point is the viewer forced to think about taking a breather. The musical score by SEL is brilliant, especially the track "Kholo Kholo". This depicts the state of mind of "the brash and confident child who loses his confidence because his parents don't understand his plight and send him to training school where he meets a teacher who helps him understand himself and regain his confidence so that he can shine in this materialistic world".

A must watch movie for people who have been deprived of good viewing fare over the last year, with ostentatiously crappy movies such as OSO and Saawariya hogging the limelight. 4.5 stars to this movie out of 5!!!

Good Reading

http://www.thumpertalk.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-501866.html

This article by Jay Leno makes for great reading!

/R

Delayed posting

Deprivance is a measure adopted by the blogger to increase the popularity of his posts.

- Old Chinese Proverb

Alright, you guessed it right. There is no such Old Oriental Proverbial Saying [OOPS] [which incidentally will not make a great name for advanced surgical instruments]

Surgeon (to nurse): Gloves?

Nurse: Check

After a while, Surgeon: Scalpel?

Nurse: Here.

Surgeon: Spatula? (Huh?)

Nurse: Take it.

Surgeon: OOPS?

Thud! (Sound of patient falling from surgeon's table due to cardiac arrest)

Anyway, since there is no such existentialistic proverb to justify my absence from blogging, I need to get back to posting absolutely random musings of my mind at a sporadically regular pace. And this is precisely what I am doing right now, after a hiatus of around twelve hundred years. Really! The last time I checked, I was in Guangzhou province, distributing freebies to the poor people who were busy constructing the Great Wall. And now, I am here typing some random alphabets, seemingly to generate a sentence, which has the purported intention of conveying to the reader that he does not realize I am trying to increase the length of the paragraph by incorporating meaningless, unending sentences.

Since my time in the Orient, I have realized that it would have been better for me to have been an occidental representative interested in the growth of the wall than being a freebie distributor. Distributing freebies never did any good to anyone, especially if the freebie being distributed was a manual on DIY: Building Iron Maidens from wood and stones! This lead to a lot of unrest between the workers, especially the more enterprising ones who tried out the product of the manual on their supervisor, with impaling, OOPS, I mean, inhuman effects.

What the workers also managed to do was teach me English and send me through time into the future to write this blog, though I have no idea of where they got a manual on DIY: Time transport brainless individuals who know nothing better than to hand out freebies such as a manual on DIY: Building Iron Maidens from wood and stones! Was it really the workers? Or was the previous statement copy pasted from one of my science fiction stories accidentally? Oh my God! I just hope that my readers don't realize my secret to random humorous articles: that of copy pasting sentences from various stories, all penned by my various personalities. An example of which can be found here.

More later. For now, let the deprivance continue! :)

OOPS?