Thursday, July 30, 2009

Point10Solutions - A Portal for a Good Cause !

A lot of times, we have heard, people and associations all round the world, promoting ideas about helping others, their ideas involving donations and monetary support for the not-so-lucky people in the society, individuals setting a tone of contributing to the welfare of the ecosystem, organizations (profitable and non-profitable) going beyond their limits in helping youth, retired people, homeless in some way or the other.

With this notion in our mind, some of us truly thank God for everything that he has blessed us with, and making us a little bit more lucky in terms of providing us with a slightly better life than others. Be it a well nourished child-hood, a great circle of friends, supportive parents, loving partner, good wealth but far more greater health and one such thing that ranks somewhere in the middle of these blessings (which is nowadays becoming a lot more important) is the luxury of good education.

Up until recent times, education was considered just another "requirements" of life, but lately has turned into a much needed necessity of a person's career. Of-course we can sit down and argue, that most of the successful millionaires and billionaires of the world at some point of time gave up studying and education, yet turning out to be great successful entities. But then, these very same people have been found promoting education and literacy too. It is not so rightly said, that only an educated man will be successful in life, but it could be very much rightly said, that studies and education is surely not going to hurt anyone and who knows, at a later point in time, they might just turn to be your life savior recipes.

Having said that, I have recently joined a group of people, certain individuals who want to give something back to the society, students and professionals who want to contribute their share of blessings so as to help those needy students realize their dreams. This group called "Point10Solutions" breathes on a vision which states "Revitalizing the Education Ecosystem".

I came across this concept through a friend (Hiren Panchasara) whom I knew back from USC and just casually sifting through their blogspot for Point10 figured out that this could be a good start for a noble cause. Everyone of us has some kindness and goodwill hidden inside us, but sometimes, just due to a lack of proper platform, or a medium, we tend to shy away from coming forward and extending our hands to give a little bit of support.

Well, I liked their concept, and to be honest, I liked that this is not just any other association who is going to go places performing like a social service group. This is something different. Their first concept about "Books10Solutions" is doing great rounds everywhere (and some of you might have heard about it in the news), as the team is gathering up individuals from all around the industries to come forward and sponsor 1 single student for only 1 year, in terms of the cost of his/her books. The price? It's just a bare minimum of 2000 Rs. with a maximum limit of 5000 Rs., which I guess should not be a major concern for professionals like me and many more. But the benefit? Just imagine how much benefit those students who are in real need of such sponsors can get from this kind gesture.

I have been now involved in this group through Hiren and Jatin, who are doing a wonderful job with this vision. My role in this group is to maintain the blog, articles, news, posts, invitations etc - basically anything to do which involves composing and creating textual content and getting involved in any kind of other activities to get this project rolling further. Anything right or wrong you see up on the blog, the invites, the articles etc you know who to blame now ;-) ....

Well I hope, all my friends, relatives and the hidden anonymous visitors of my blog, would come forward and support Point10Solutions for a good cause. Looking forward to all and any kinds of contributions (Funding the students, donating books, professional help/guidance, improvisation ideas etc ...). We have received tremendous support from leading industrialists, university faculties, business owners, job professionals, students and other common people from the society. You can check out Point10 Solutions latest updates and their coverage in the news recently. Also check out the upcoming event being organized in Ahmedabad.

Make a visit to read about Point10Solutions concept, vision, upcoming events and more at:

Point10Solutions - Parent Portal
Books10Solutions - Funding Books for 1 Student for 1 Year
Education10Solutions - An Educative Networking Portal (Coming Soon)
Jobs10Solutions - Coming Soon (The Point10 Way into the Industry)
Projects10Solutions - Coming Soon (Work While You Study)

Point10Solutions Team Members Profile:
Click Here

For more details you can drop a line at: team.point10@gmail.com
(Or contact me directly)
I look forward to a lot of participation, feedback, comments and suggestions to help Point10 Team move forward.

Cheers
Samy

Sunday, July 12, 2009

A Mid-year Mini-Vacation !!!

I have not been able to keep up with my blog recently, and to be honest, I have ran out of ideas lately or let me put it this way : I have no great updates from my side of the continent. Things have been ridiculously following a strict monotonous routine and Dipali has also now slowly discovered the challenges of doing a full-time job and managing everything else on a daily basis. It amazes me that how much important the Saturdays and Sundays are for people like us who go through so much the entire week.

Well to ease out my stress and give myself a fair amount of relaxation time, I was blessed with a week of shutdown by my company. What does that mean? Well in the world of bad economy it means, companies who want to ensure cost cutting force their employees to take some days off - either paid or unpaid. In my world, it means, totally freak out, hang out in your room, not getting off the bed unless you get a nature's call, delay your baths, watch loads of movies, eat like crazy and the most important : Sleep like you have never ever slept before.

For the past whole week, starting 3rd of July, I have been enjoying a mid-year, mini-vacation of sorts, the first 3 days turning out to be hectic, going places ,being social, but the next 5 days, let me say it again, 5 "working week-days", lol, were just the best in terms of doing only one thing - "NOTHING" !!! I wanted to set all kinds of records, and to be honest, I simply wanted to see how much a lazy ass I can be and I think I lived up to my own expectations. Sleeping, Eating, Movies etc I think I almost set all new records with personal bests.

The first 3 days were all about going places in the hot California summer, 17-mile Drive, Yosemite Park and Bean Hollow Beach. Links to the pics are on my Facebook and/or Orkut profile ...

The rest of the days went by really quickly with me sticking to a strict routine of catching almost 15 hours of sleep every day. Slept like crazy in the summer afternoons, reminding myself of those wonderful days back in school, where one used to devour the Mangoes and sleep 4-5 hours like a log of wood. I was too lazy to even write something on the blog, and thought that it could be done at any point of time, but this divine time will come once in a life time :P

Boy, the days did go by pretty fast, and with the weekend approaching the heart felt gloomy but yet a bit happy, as for workaholics like us, a few days are still OK to enjoy, but given some more lazy time, the mind gets more crankier than ever, and with nothing to do things tend to get out of their normal course of life. Of-course a zillion ideas pop up when the vacation is about to start, with some bullets on the stick-it notes all over listing down things to do, things not to do etc but I guess we can hardly stick to those as the vacation kicks in ... One feels just too lazy to even bother looking at those stick it notes... :)

Finally, as I opened my Outlook Inbox on a Sunday which felt no different as before, after deleting all the trash emails, I got a shocker to see approximately 80-90 emails which would require at-least a one line response from my keyboard :( Bummer !!! What an end to a vacation and what a start to another work week ahead ...

Having said and done, I did conclude upon 2-3 useful constructive things all through my holidays to work upon for the coming months ... Let's see how those go and one of that is to blog more frequently, with at-least one blog post a week ... Preferably on weekends ... (After all, that would surely help me get my essay composition and construction abilities all roused up for Dipali's GMAT exam to help her out ... Believe me, it is really really HARD to concentrate on a single page filled with black words for more than 10 minutes after a gap of 3 years from the educational front ....)

So after, 10 days of holidays, 3 places with approximately 1000 pics, around 150-180 hours of sleep, 10-15 pounds of food and more food, 14-18 movies, 2 hours of GMAT (hard work), basketball, cricket, helping a friend move to SF, multiple games of Sequence, lying around like a lazy ass, 2-3 constructive ideas, ZERO blog posts, I am finally back in the grind, looking forward to another batch of toiling 4-5 months before I am off to India for my marriage ...

Phew !!! Days really go by fast on my side of the continent ...

Cheers
Samy