Spouse , a book i am reading myte

Frankly speaking of all other the books which i have read of Shobha De i have;nt really admired her work except
"Speed Post" . All of her works which i have read is mostly about personal lifestyles of rich people of "South Mumbai" , who
try to imitate the lifesyles of the Hippy Westerners , but eventually end up being more dirtier.
and hence , most of the times her books are filled up with dirt and sleaze in my Personal opinion , from whatver i have read in her books.
And May be she too writes that because that is what use to sells among the indian readers.

Now I am reading the book Spouse by Shobhaa De’ which I happen to purchased form a vendor near my company guest house where i am currently staying.
Usually the characters in De's books have less or no substance in their
life with no resemblance to reality but just an ostentatious diplay of thier high profile lifestyle and wealth.
They were just social objects and nothing more to that, "Speed Post" being an exception to that which is a collection of posts
by her to her son and daughters.It depicts her relationship with her children as a parent, and herself as a child to her
own parents also taking into consideration her other relations. Now here she has acted like a true and a wise indian mother
taking care of her kids and guiding them through the rights and wrongs of life, and also giving then enough space to grow and mature , independently wihtin the
indian societal limits. But as far as i have understood the Westerner too do a much mature and better pareting of their
kids , and raise them to become successful individuals when they are grown ups.


Any way the book spouse which i am reading through currently , may be i got interested to read it because of my recent
marriage, but i am not much sure if i picked it up for that one reason as i had nohting in my book shelf to read lately.
This book by De’ deals with the success, failures, setbacks and joys of married life enlisting instances
of her experiences. As the book says it about trust, companionship, affection, sharing ( one's finances, belongings ,car , gas bill, credit card bill and monthly rations to everything that can be bought on earth etc etc )
and claims to enlist how
marriages work and why they fail. Apart from suggestions and practice leaning practices what makes this book most
interesting is that it opens a window to De’s very own married life which is more real with less frills or drama
of high social life. One can easily relate to similar instances in their own life. If not called as a complete guidebook
of married life then at least it can be taken as a reference book dealing with a-to-z issues relating to marriage.
Another thing to look for in this book is its interesting tittles ,( with hindi sub-headings )given to the various chapters.

Both the above books opens up De’ in a more transparent and honest and interesting manner. When it comes to portray
her character, it is herself only emerging as the most down to earth, mature, sensitive,
emotional and strong person capable of enough respect. Well May be someone close to her can comment on it better ,
because as a reader we just come to know about her from what she writes , Whcih i think is not enough to guess about a writer's personality as they are a "pro" in the job of a writer/author myte ;)

This has got something to do with wock myte :)

Just when we all thought Oracle was done shopping (at least for now)after spending
more then $20 billion USD in the last 3 years, we got the news of yet another acquisition,
case in point Hyperion Solutions. Starting January 2005 we saw Larry implementing the then
new growth strategy which puts vertical market product acquisitions squarely in the center.
Oracle believes that for it to reach its 20% growth target for the next 5 years it has to
pursue the new strategy as it can no longer rely on just organic growth. Oracle's chief geek
executed this strategy by targeting industry segments such as retail, government, and financial
services, where key rivals like SAP and Baan have not yet found a huge audience (Baan ERP is
now owned by infor and is known as SSA ERP LN, It is basically Baan ERP project "Gemini" that
runs on Unix servers).

The only thing left to be seen now is how oracle leverages these pure play acquisitions
and makes them work with its core competencies, if Oracle is able to actually deliver on
its promise and pull it off, it will be a success story that will be taught in business schools
and told in corporate boardrooms for years to come.


Since I have long been working on Portal Infranet Billing System implementation extension and deployment,
therefore that acquisition last year was of particular interest to me, one thing that strikes me
immediately is that with Portal Infranet and Siebel, Oracle is now the only enterprise solutions
provider that can provide a truly end to end single vendor CRM solution for Telecoms and ISPs,
and if you tie in to this equation PeopleSoft, it becomes a solution that can give SAP executives
many a sleepless nights.

Just added (Saturday March 31st 2007): I saw another news release regarding Communications Billing
and Revenue Management System (CBRM, previously Portal-Infranet) being now available for the Linux
platform, I think given that linux is the one of the most deployed web hosting platform,
its a very smart move on behalf of Oracle to align themselves with the open source platform,
though I think if given the fact that MySql is maturing very nicely and is catching up with many
of the features readily available with Oracle, MySQL will be the first database choice for all
those willing to host on an open source database.

I guess Oracle's remedy for that is theInnoDB and SleepyCat (Berkeley DB) acquisition. everything
has a sale price and Larry seems to always make an offer no one can refuse.

jobs site

4 International Careers & Jobs

Divorces , higher in developed nations.

I often hear people criticize the very high rates of divorce in the west–-particularly,
in the United States–-as being an example of all that’s wrong with the culture; they claim,
it reveals the lack of familial bonds, the superficiality of love and emotions,
the selfish me-centricism, and just the general decadence of the culture.

However, when I see the alarmingly low rates of divorce in other cultures – where divorce is a societal taboo,
such as in Japan, India, and China – I see the rampant disregard for individual human rights
(especially in the case of women), I see individuals choking under societal and familial pressure to
remain in suffocating relationships, I see individuals racked with emotional guilt for having extra-marital
affairs in the dark, for entering and remaining in marriages despite being gay, I see children growing up
with psychological scars from seeing their parents quarrel and fight before their own eyes, I see teenagers
rebelling against their parents and running away with their lovers or friends to escape the nightmare of
their homes occupied with two individuals who hate each other, I see youth engaging in frivolous sex and
self-destructive relationships unconsciously mimicking the failed and forced relationships their parents had,
I see women being raped by their husbands, men being forced into alcoholism and escapist hedonism,
I see a political society that gets increasingly moralistic and paternal because it believes that
morality must be forced upon people and that people are inherently evil, immoral, unruly, or savages.

Japan has the highest rates of suicide in the world. India has the highest number of people with AIDS
than any other country in the world.

Both Japan and India have very low divorce rates; but do not presume that this low rate reflects the
strong cultural values of marriage and love and relationships in these countries. Indeed, I argue,
it is quite the opposite.

In a sense, high divorce rates are good; in fact, it is an almost reliable indicator of a healthy and
prosperous culture that respects individual rights and allows individuals the space and freedom to BREATHE!

Marriage is only valuable, good, and moral to the extent that the individuals involved in it, make it so.
In other words, two individuals could be “live-in” partners and yet have a much stronger relationship than
some average married couple. It is not the nature of a relationship that lends it a certain moral value
but the individuals involved in it. People bring in value to a relationship, not some abstract notion of marriage.
Entering into marriage – being married – by default does not mean you are in some “valuable” and “serious”
relationship and must act accordingly. Within or without marriage, a couple (or group of individuals) can
still have a very meaningful and valuable relationship. Thus, I am not necessarily arguing for the position that
divorce is good or marriage is bad. To me, they are equally meaningless without considering the nature of individuals
involved.

Show me a culture with high divorce rates and I will show you a culture that’s prosperous, healthy, and free.

Marrying is certainly not a duty or an obligation – let alone an ethical one. Marriage is entirely optional,
and should be done with focused deliberation. Whether people enter into marriages solely depends on their
personal preferences in the matter (surely also with regard to the socio-political situation in their society).

A very apt quote by Morton Hunt that I include here:

Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages,
but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it.