What can we do for our parents?

Looks like a simple and innocuous question. But, one which is difficult to answer.

Whenever Father’s day and Mother’s day come, I ask it to myself. What can I do for my Father which can do something back to compensate all that he has done for me?

He has taught me everything that I know in life. He taught me how to read and write. He made maths fun to learn. He taught me how to look at the stars in the sky and make sense out of them. He taught me how to play baseball. He taught me chess. He taught me to fight even when my chips were down. He taught me to play poker and keep it straight. He taught me how to enjoy poetry. What can I do back for him?

Roses can do for mother’s day. But, for Father’s day, I found a different gift. His own portrait! He is going to be thrilled when I give it to him. The portrait to my mind is the best among any father’s day gifts. Any other material as father’s day gifts is not as appealing as the portrait itself. Take a look at this portrait and see how beautiful it is :

The portrait is handmade by the people in paintyourlife.com. It comes with guaranteed Quality since all the artworks are created by hand by experienced professional artists. They also use top quality materials. It comes at a very low price. You need to pay only 20% advance and the prices are affordable. The oil portraits on canvas start from $99 and charcoal portraits start from $69. The design aspect can also combine several photos into 1 painting. All the art is generated by live artists and not by computer. Hence, it gives you complete satisfaction.

There was a salesman in one of the Shell petrol pumps who was from India. He was observing how the petrol pump worked and what kind of business they were doing. He wanted to do something big. He wanted to start the biggest of the industries. He wanted to put up the biggest of the refineries because he understood that the name of the game in the petroleum business was in backward integration and was in refining.

At that time, India was not even known for big industries. It was under a severe “License Raj” where you cannot expand and make your business big.

But, he went on to realise his dreams. He in fact put up some of the biggest industries India and why even the world has ever seen. As per his dreams, he went onto put up the biggest refinery India has ever seen.

His name is Mr.Dhirubhai Ambani. The founder of the Reliance Industries group which so dominates the Indian subcontinent today.

When someone asked him the secret of his success, he smiled and said, “I dreamt big. I made it happen. Others also dreamt and made their dreams come to life but probably they had somewhat smaller dreams”.

Did you recently build a new house? Or perhaps remodelled your old house? Or perhaps remodelled the bathroom of your old house? In that case, you would have bought some bathroom vanity. How was the experience?

Was it good? I am sure you were baffled by the range available. I am sure you were struggling to decide on what to buy and what was good for you.

I know. I did some shopping for my friend to buy Bathroom Vanitiesfor his house. I have some reputation as a good negotiator and as person who has some interior experience. So, when he wanted to buy and install new set of vanieties, he asked me to do it. 

I found it very difficult to choose. I needed some perspective. So, I decided to get the vanities online instead of from any store.

The online store helped me to objectively take a look at all the available ranges. I could sit and match the colour of my friend’s house and his bathroom to the double vanity that I had advised him to buy given the space in his bathroom.

This is what I ended up buying for my friend:

Looks fantastic? Isn’t it? There are beautiful ranges that the online store has. It offered money back guarantee. Absolutely no hassels. Free shipping included. They also arranged interest free financing for the deal!

MetLife Inc. (MET), the nation’s largest life insurer, has posted a a first-quarter loss. This comes on the back of problems in its investment portfolio and rising costs while the premium revenue has continued to fall.

MET Shares fell 3.9% to $28.60 as the results were well short of analysts’ expectations.

However, the Chief Executive C. Robert Henrikson said, “We once again demonstrated the benefit of our diverse mix of businesses, which continued to perform well despite the problems in the economy and the recession”.

The words had no effect on the wall street as the expectations and the performance were two different things and the investors took the shares to the celaners.

There is one person in our lives who is more important than anybody else in the world. That person started caring for us even before we were born. That person carried us around in her womb. She took care and she took pains while walking and while sleeping so that we can develop healthily. She ate food so that we can grow well. She underwent morning sickness while we were happily sleeping in her womb. She carried us around for 10 months before we could see the world. Even when we decided to come out, it was becuase she underwent great pain, in fact described as the greatest pain, second only to pain endured during the dying moments to give birth to us.

Her name  is MOTHER.  All our mothers.

Her sacrifices did not stop with giving us our birth. In fact, it rapidly multiplied only after we were born. She has taken care of us every moment of our life till we became adults and suddenly decided that we can take care of ourselves.

But, what do we do in return to her?

The least we should do is to celebrate the occasion like the mother’s day and call on her. Call on her with a gift that she would enjoy so much. A gift from the FTD. A gift such as A beautiful rose which would make her day. A gift so memorable that she would have tears in her eyes and tell you how much she loves you.

Don’t delay. Mother’s day is around and hear. Get her the mother’s day flowers from FTD and make her day.

What makes the Oscar Awards the best loved awards? Is it the glitz and the glamour? Is it the stars involved? Is it our innate urge to ‘bet’ on something which makes us say that “hay, I know this film is going to win this award’ and then check out the awards function to see whether we were right?

It is difficult to exactly say what makes the Oscar awards tick. There have been many awards before. There have been many awards after the Oscar awards and none generates the kind of excitement and the build up like the Oscars do.

The stars and the starlets certainly add their bit of glamour quotient in it. No doubt about that.

I used to wish that there is an “Oscar” kind of award function conducted for every single product which is there in the market. Then, there would be no confusion in terms of which is the best product and which one is not.

Then, it is upto the consumer to look at the price and decide whether he or she wants to pay for that kinf od a product or not.

Take for example, the night creams. At night, the skin is more open to inputs as it opens itself and its pores. This results in better maintenance of the skin if one uses some night creams. One also has the chance of using a lot more intensive cream in the night than what one can use during the day. Such a cream used in the night can also result in much better skin rejunuvation as the skin does not have to battle against further damages like sun burns and free radical damage during the night, which it has to during the day.

But, the problem is that there are so many night creams in the market. So, which one is the best one? What is best for me at a given price?

This is where the sites such as nightcreams.org becomes very useful. It gives a very unbiased view on all the such creams which are there in the market. It gives night cream reviews which paint a clear picture of which cream is top rated followed by which cream and so on. It uses some key parameters to evaluate the products in the market :

One, Customer reviews : Where it takes into account the reviews given by the customers post the product experience. Two, it takes into account its own Scientific studies done on the products. Three, whether the cream being reviewed is effective or not. Four, what kind of ingredients are being used in the creams. Five, how safe the cream is. Six, what kind of customer feedback is available on the given brand of cream.

The reviews then become totally unbiased and very useful to decide on which one is really good and hence really the best buy for us.

People in Mexico were totally ignorant of the Swine Flu till they started seeing unexpected death of people two weeks back. The unexpected death of over 15 people alerted the Medical authorities to go for a thorough analysis which lead them to detecting the Swine Flu.
By that time the Swine Flu had spread across most parts of Mexico and killed over 140 people and hospitalized over 2600 people. Now the Mexican authorities have asked all the business and Government establishments to go on a five day long week end, starting from today till next week Tuesday.
It has asked all it’s citizens to confine themselves to their homes and spend their time with their family.
The Swine Flu has already inflicted a heavy damage to the already ailing Mexico economy. Most of the Hotels are seeing lot of cancellations, and are left with hardly any customers. And almost all the airlines have canceled over 50% of their flights due to inadequate number of passengers.
The beaches are deserted even though the mercury is running high. The Swine Flu is indeed expected to push back the economic recovery for Mexico by at least six to eight months, as per seasoned experts.
The Swine Flu has already spread into US, Israel and even New Zealand. All the leading countries of the world have advised their citizens to avoid traveling to Mexico till further notice. That only spells doom for the ailing Tourism and Service industry of Mexico.
Today, US has reported the first Swine Flu death , forcing Texas to close down all the schools and educational institutions across the 1200 miles border towns , alongside Mexico.

I had a set of DVD collections of all classic movies. My major worry was to have a complete replication of all the classics done so that I would never lose them. So, I had a DVD full replication service engaged for the same.

Replicating and copying the DVDs or the CD collections that you have is an important thing that you must do. It might be the movie collection as I had. Or it may be a wedding album. It may be a CD of collection of photographs or clips on a birthday party. It could be a collection of rare memories of a trip that you had taken in a foreign land with your friends during your college days. It could be any such important thing. Keeping it in just one CD is risky. If something happens to that CD, you lose your treasured moments.

I got help from the VE Associates who provide a range of services such as graphic design, full-service CD authoring, DVD authoring, CD and DVD mastering services and replication and duplication for companies around California and nationwide. They regularly work with clients from all across the country, irrespective of where their clients are from. They give expert advice to their customers and their staff is extremely good at making your projects a breeze.

So, don’t wait too long. Get your memories and your collections replicated!

I received 135 forwards of emails yesterday. I had just returned from a hectic tour schedule where I had gone around meeting my customers. My colleagues know it. My friends know it. Yet, amidst the 675 mails that have accumulated in the last 3 days, 135 of them were simply forwarded mails with jokes and anectodes. Another 100 odd mails have nothing to do with me though they have kindly marked me in.

Just imagine my exasperation in going through the mails.

The mails did not have proper subject also - otherwise I could have decided to read them later on.

Worst, some of them were marked Urgent.

Whatever has happened to the email manners ?