Blood donation at Narayana Hrudayalaya Bangalore 3/3/21

My close friend and classmate Brian DSa from Goa, sent me a message on 2nd March. It was from the Bangalore Blood Donors Forum (BBDF) that a patient is in urgent need of 30 units of blood at Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) and asked whether anyone could help. A sincere request, a great deed to carry out. After all, it was a request from a close friend.

NH was the most convenient place for me to go, just 10 kms from my Anekal campus of Alliance University. Also my blood being O+ve I could donate to anybody. Though my last donation was on 24 Dec '20 and it was just past 9 weeks, because of the urgent  request from BBDF, I did not wait for the mandatory 12 weeks before the next donation. 

At 10.30 am I left the AU Anekal campus to NH by bus (a low Carbon footprint activity) and returned by 12.15 pm after donating 350 ml of blood. Very trained nursing personnel made the process very simple, professional, smooth and remarkable one. The donation procedure lasted about 20 mins. After a very minor refreshment I was back inside the bus to the campus at Anekal.

 

This is my 39th blood donation, ever since the first one in '85. This is my fourth or fifth donation at NH. I was feeling really on top of the world after  the donation. I thought they would take 450 ml of blood as is usually the case at St. Johns, but at NH they took only 350 ml, no strain at all.

Thanking God for giving me the great opportunity to serve mankind this 39th time. 

Most people look down upon blood donation because of poor awareness. That system should change in our society. Blood donation keeps you healthy and active, with a great feeling of doing something and giving back to society. Click here for the link to my 2016 blood donation, again to Narayana Hrudayalaya. 

One blood donation gives you enough vitality and health as running two full length 41 km marathons .. so why wait ?

George 

Make this lenten season a memorable, forgiving one ..

The vicious rift in Kerala, the southern state of India, between the Malankara Orthodox and Jacobite Syrian Orthodox factions of the ancient Eastern Orthodox Syrian church headquartered in Antioch, Syria has been bothering and pestering believers of both sides for more than a century now. 

 

Both sides have gone to court and the Indian Supreme Court had come out with a final verdict on 3rd of July 2017 in favour of the Malankara Orthodox faction working out of Kottayam, Kerala.

 

What could have been a peaceful settlement did not end then as the Malankara Orthodox priests wanted to extract their pound of flesh in the name of the verdict and antagonise the Jacobite faction, by insisting on a unforgiving settlement to follow the (invisible) 1934 constitution, which was not acceptable to the Jacobites. 

 

Even three and a half years after the verdict, and Orthodox faction spending crores as litigation fees and grabbing 52 Jacobite churches, the matter has not been peacefully resolved. There is a belief among the Orthodox Christians and more so with the intelligensia that a more peaceful, loving, hand-holding, accommodating approach by the Orthodox faction could have seen a peaceful resolution of the conflict much early.

Listening to Pope Francis, if during this lent season starting from 15 February, we could, starting from the Malankara Orthodox clergy and laity, try to be free from grudges and be reconciled with everyone, the objective of our Christian faith would be more than met. 

For the past couple of weeks, I have been attending the online Sunday mass / qurbana at St. Mary's Syrian Orthodox Cathedral, Manarkkadu, Kottayam, Kerala, India. Manarkadu st Marys is the famous pilgrimage centre for intercession of Mother Mary. It was spiritually very satisfying. It is high time our priests start walking the talk on the sermons they make during the qurbana, of love, brotherhood, forgiveness etc.  

Most of us immerse in the practice of lent, ie. generally avoid rich food, luxury and pleasure, abstaining from food till noon everyday and try to be more engaged in spiritual activities, forgiving others, having frequent prayers and doing social service.

Instead of attending only our service or qurbana, and carry out the activities as listed above, if a large number of Orthodox believers could attend occasional Jacobite qurbanas during this lent season, it would be the best way to show our love and develop respect for our brethren. 👍🙂

 

Can we forgive our Jacobite brethren during this lent season ..? If not during this year, let us plan to forgive and be Christ-like at least during the 2022 lent season .. Again a wasted year ..

Why are our spiritual leaders not taking proactive action to bring peace in the church ? There are vested interests of protecting their turf of influence and affluence besides simple ignorance and playing politics. If all Christians following Christ are sure to go to heaven, why do we need all these sects and groups? If every good person irrespective of their religion can lead a happy life, do we need religions at all ?

It is our baggage of materialistic assets (the devil) that is stopping us from getting closer to God. Nobody wants to admit it openly and continue fooling and cheating the innocent public.

Pope Francis, different from the others, is known for making such spiritual, introspective and surprising calls every year during important occasions. The spiritual head of almost 1.2 billion Catholics, who are about 16% of global population and about 50% of all global Christians, as per 2010 data (click here), is a very respected figure for the whole world. 

George Easaw

Unknown facts about our body ..

Body matter - Some interesting secrets about the body ....

 

 1. Our nose can detect the smell of 50,000 scents.

 2. Like a fingerprint, each tongue has different lines.

 3. Some of the bones in the human foot are stronger than concrete.

 4. We can light a watt bulb with the energy produced by our brain.

 5. If the first tear when crying comes from the right eye, it is a happy cry and if it is from the left eye, it is a sad cry.

 6. The average person blinks 12 times a minute.

 7. Our eye is 576 megapixels.

 8. You can't sneeze with your eyes open.

 9. Every minute 300 million cells in our body die.

 10. Our body produces enough heat to boil half a liter of water every 30 minutes.

 11. Do you know how much saliva an average person produces in his lifetime?  The same amount of water needed to fill two swimming pools.

 12. The eyes of newborns are generally blue.  Later, when the ultraviolet rays hit, the eyes turn black.

 13. Every sixty seconds your red blood cells are circulating throughout the body.

 14. During urinary incontinence, your bladder often appears larger than usual.

 15. It takes about six months for a fingernail to reach full growth, that is, from its base to its tip.

 16. The average person in the West consumes 50 tons of food and 50,000 liters of water (not only water but also all liquids) in his lifetime.

 17. The muscles in the eyes contract and expand a million times a day.

 18. One kidney in the human body has one million filters to purify the blood.  It purifies 1.3 liters of blood every minute.  The amount of urine it excretes in a day is 1.5 liters.

 19. The average lifespan of a person is 40 pounds of skin peeling off their skin.

 20. A man's brain uses 20% of the oxygen in the air he breathes and the calories he absorbs.

 21. The ovaries produce about five million eggs, but only about 400 cause the pulse of life.

 22. Every human body has a different smell.

 23. Have you ever wondered why your stomach is indigestible?  This is because new cells are produced faster than the cells of the stomach that are destroyed.

 24. There are about half a million sweat glands in a human body.  The amount of sweat it produces in a day is 750 ml.

 25. 90% of the knowledge we gain is from the sights we see around us.

 26. You can never tease yourself.

 27. The bark of newborns is used to implant new skin on the body of burns.

 28. The skin of a full-grown man is about 20 square feet when stretched.

 29.  We can recognize the taste of anything only when it is mixed with saliva.

 30 .One produces ten million sperms a day, which is enough to produce a population equal to the population of this planet in six months.

 31. There are 300 million microscopic blood vessels in a human lung.  If these are executed one after the other, it will be about 3499 km.

 32.  It is estimated that the IQ level of those who dream regularly is higher than others.

 33.  When you go to bed, your height will be less than one centimeter than when you wake up in the morning.  This is because the cartilage in your spine is compressed throughout the day ....

Stratetigically Collaborating with the competition -

Usually when we have competition in the area we work, everybody tend to take it lying down, doing things behind the scene so that the competition is not aware of your actions and plans. We take extra care in snooping on what the competitor is planning to do and try to get what his immediate and long term plans are. If it is a product  company we tend to lok at the new product releases in the market by competitors and see how it affects our position in the market.

But in some sectors the competitors can collaborate or cooperate, help to build the market and within the market, compete with the same players with whom one has collaborated in setting up the market. We call this process Coopetition. 

An article in HBR When should you collaborate with the competition (click here) by Graham Kenny Jan 2021, speaks about this coopetition process in Australia, how the wine growers and Avacado growers collaborated in the initial stages decades back to educate the consumers about the benefits of wine and Avocado and later with an increasing aware customer base, compete in the same market to get a share of the market.

This strategic move can help create new markets, till now unknown and unexplored.

A similar exercise was undertaken by Amazon with the introduction of their Personal Assitant Echo dot in the India market by 2017. A customer base unaware of the product and how the AI product could change their life, underwent a series of informational campaigns by Amazon through the print and electronic media to educate the customers. 

Once the customers became aware of the technology and industry competition understood the potential of this new AI contraption that could slowly change the way humans interact with machines, Google through the Google Home, Microsoft through Cortana and Apple through Siri have also entered the market and are competing with each other to get a share of the market. 

George..

How many AI apps do we daily use ?

We all are enamored by the mention of the word AI , but are we fully in grip of the potential AI can make in our lives. Why are some of us afraid when there is a mention on AI, while others are upbeat when they hear the word AI.

I have been trying to find out the AI apps I use in my daily life and have been successful to a limited extent. 

The basic purpose of this exercise is to create better AI awareness in the society and for my students, so that they are better prepared to face AI when it hits us very soon in the next 5 - 10 years.  

Are AI apps harmful to society and humanity in general or are they beneficial ?

To prepare oneself for the AI revolution, it makes sense to know how many AI apps are we using presently and for which processes.

• Email replying - Google AI
  
• Searching to get better and relevant search results - Google search AI
• Spam filter - Google AI
  
• Email sorting (smart email categorization) - Google AI 
• Google Maps - Google AI
• Google ads - relevant to my search - Google AI
  
• Google doc - grammar check - Google AI
• Translate from speech to text - Google AI
• Translate from about many languages to other languages - Google Translate
  
• Facebook photo upload - suggests friends, Facebook AI
• Image editing - Faceapp AI
• Image editing - Prisma AI
• Online shopping - products suiting my taste at Amazon - Amazon AI
  
• Chatbots at SBI, HDFC 
• Music search and playback at Amazon echo dot - Amazon Alexa AI engine
  
• Music search and playback at Google Home Mini - Google AI engine
  
• Washing machine at home - Haier, Fuzzy Logic
• Website building - Leia app
• Chat companion - Replika app
  

I am constantly trying to find different areas of AI application. Will keep updating this list. I am yet to find an AI financial app that can help me manage my finances well.

George.

Why academic administrative positions remain paralytic ?

In general administration,  people get satisfied rising up the administrative ladder. But in academics it is misfits in academics or people who have no confidence in their academic qualifications or accidentally entered the teaching profession that aspire for administrative positions.

The objective of academic administration is only to enable effective academics. The Professors have to ensure good teaching in the institution.  

It is only high quality teaching that will be remembered by students, not administration. 

Sadly in India, academic administration takes the upper hand over real academics, which is the bane of our country. These administrators with qualifications from doubtful institutions with poor credibility, kill academics instead of supporting it. They take false pride in bringing around academic paralysis in Universities across the country. 

Improving the quality of academics by improving teaching quality and increasing student confidence in their own academic qualifications is the only way out. 

George 

How corporate governance is helping a Panchayat in Kerala, Kizhakkambalam to excel ..

To this day, corporates have not harmed anyone.  The corporate never seemed to be a terrorist who was bound to eat the man as a whole.  They have not drained anyone's blood, except for the fact that a simple graduate who could have taught at a parallel college in the country or driven an auto rickshaw would have had a dignified life through corporate work.  Not only that, but they have paid him as much as he could afford for his education.

 This is not a corporate bragging right.  It is about the 2020 election victory in Kizhakambalam panchayat.  I need not say more about that one movement, you may have seen a lot of videos about the comforts that people in the East Coast enjoy.  Nowadays we see those people who were lucky enough to buy a kilo of sugar for 10 rupees and a kilo of coconut oil for 44 rupees.

  Sabu Jacob, the inventor of the Kambalam model, was also present at the Asianet discussion.  In that discussion, he explained the secrets behind turning a panchayat with a debt of Rs 35 lakh into a panchayat with a surplus of Rs 13.5 crore.  Most importantly, he said, it was to avoid corruption at the governmental level, to avoid middlemen for many things, and to save a large amount of money from it itself.  Many in Kerala know, without Sabu, that the remaining 60 are being stolen by politicians and bureaucrats.

 A minister, a politician, an academic and then Sabu of the 2020 panchayat were in the discussion.  One of the jokes was that Sabu, a corporate giant, spends all the money he spends on the panchayat out of his own pocket.  In a surplus panchayat, the question remains as to why a corporate should be so cash-strapped.) What was then seen was a kind of political intolerance to establish that this system of corporates would not succeed broadly in the state of Kerala.  It does not take a great deal of intellect to understand that Sabu is not the only one who can afford to build roads, cut and spend for the people in the country with the profits made by Kitex and Anna Aluminum.  Because such a head-scratching person cannot be such a successful businessman.

 But it is as clear as day that Sabuchayan has a talent that politicians and many ministers do not have.  That is management excellence.  He is successful as a big corporate entrepreneur because of that management excellence.  It is because of that incompetence that you and I continue to be worthless of a chuck and a lime.  His business management skills, he used beautifully in the administration of a panchayat.  It was a success.  Satisfied with the people, the   Kizhakkambalam panchayat was retained and the three nearby panchayats were captured.  If only the three neighboring panchayats had embraced 2020 with no symbol, no code of conduct and no activists, or if they had defeated all the mafia-like political parties in our country and seen the victory of 2020 in those panchayats, one need only think of how great the magic he would have done in the East.

 What I like most about what he said is that if someone comes to the  Kizhakkambalam panchayat office with a need, he will return as soon as he has done what he came for.  If it does not happen on the next day, the next day or the next day, the person's ward member, certificate, or other benefits, if any, must be delivered to the person's home.  This means that a person does not have to go to the panchayat office a second time for one purpose.  What a beautiful democratic concept.  What politicians who deceive the people by saying great democratic socialist ideas cannot do, is implemented in a panchayat overseen by a corporate boss.  It should be remembered that the Kizhakkambalam is in Kerala, the Malayalee who always goes to government offices for a small thing and puts on his shoes.

 Another thing is that Kizhakkambalam is the only panchayat that has its own fire force and can use farm implements and tractors for free to the farmer.  What else is behind it?  From billions of scanning machines to Volvo buses, we hear so much news that they are being destroyed without maintenance.

 Paddy is now grown profitably in the paddy fields of the Eastern Ghats.  Sabu Jacob also shared the fact that Kizhakkambalam will soon become the largest fruit producing panchayat in Kerala.  While other panchayat members in Kerala receive a salary of Rs.  If someone is approached without money to go to the hospital or otherwise it is the duty of the ward member to give them what they need from this money.  How can democracy be better utilized?

 What I am going to say is the extreme state of intolerance and jealousy of a politician.  Shouldn't the Election Commission be talking about the couple's right to vote?  If a person from Amethi can contest in Wayanad, what is the impediment for a person from Wayanad to exercise his voting right in the East Coast?  Sabu Jacob gave a reward of Rs 1 lakh to those who voted despite being physically abused by the political mafia.

 Finally, political parties are constantly making a misleading statement that only political parties should exercise democracy.  It was seen in that discussion as well.  This is because if such talented people come on the scene, they are convinced that the whole life of these people who make a living from politics will come to an end.  The Constitution contains guidelines on what is needed in a democracy, and anyone who abides by it and delivers accurate services to the people can become a participant.  What the head of a corporate body pretends to be is ugly and the politician who listens to the party's discipline and acts accordingly is only spitting out perfume, which is just an exercise in the politician's stomach.

 If there is anyone who is jealous of countries like Sweden, Norway, etc., who are jealous of being the country with the happiest people, they should go to the East Coast and find out if 2020 has given them happiness even if they are not the happiest.  Ministers and politicians need to realize their incompetence and promote greats like Sabu Jacob as advisers and consultants.  Let’s at least skip a foreign visit and go to the East Coast and at least learn what they are doing there.

 Attribution.  - Media News