Wednesday 30 September 2009

Join in the Tree Walk...!

Are you a tree lover? If yes, then... Join the tree walk on Sunday, October 4, 2009, at the Birla Planetarium campus, organised by Nizhal, a trust that promotes concern for trees in the city. Besides learning how to identify trees, tree walkers can also learn interesting facts about each tree! The walk starts at 7 am.
To register, call 9445258328/ 9840744453

Tuesday 29 September 2009

Are you a Member of atleast ONE GOOD LIBRARY?


"When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began,"
says Rita Mae Brown, prolific American writer and social activist.
"Your Library is your Portrait,"
says Holbrook Jackson.
"Books are the ever burning lamps of accumulated wisdom,"
says George William Curtis.
Indeed, this is the best time to check out some of the good libraries in the City, and a compendium of the same, numbering around 115, is available
HERE.

Monday 28 September 2009

Time for a Vision Check-up! Time for taking a Call!

So, what do you want to be when you grow up? That question may appear a little trite, but just think about it for a moment. Are you - right now - who you want to be, what you dreamed you'd be, doing what you always wanted to do? Be honest.

It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in the activity trap, in the “busyness” of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success, only to discover, upon reaching the top rung, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Sometimes people find themselves achieving victories that are empty-successes that have come at the expense of things that were far more valuable to them. If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster. How depressing is that?

Habit 2/7 BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND - is based on imagination - the ability to envision, see the potential, create with your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes and conscience. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. First, there is a mental creation, and second, a physical creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint. If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default. It's about connecting again with your own uniqueness and then defining the personal, moral, and ethical guidelines within which you can most happily express and fulfill it.

To Begin with the End in Mind means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen.

One of the best ways to incorporate this habit into your life if to develop a Personal Mission Statement. It focuses on what you want to be and do. It is your plan for success. It reaffirms who you are, puts your goals in focus, and moves your ideas into the real world. Your mission statement makes you the leader of your own life. You create your own destiny and secure the future you envision.

CHECKING YOUR VISION
It’s time for a personal vision checkup. Take a minute and think about each question below. Write out your thoughts clearly in a separate piece of paper.

1. What am I doing right now with my life? Does it make me happy? Do I feel fulfilled?
2. What do I keep gravitating toward? Is it different from what I am currently doing?
3. What did I like to do as a child? Do those things still bring me satisfaction? Am I doing any of them?
4. What interests me most right now?
5. What fills my soul?
6. What can I do well? What are my unique traits and strengths?

A sample Mission Statement is given below: Use it as a point of reference for creating your own:

Be humble, considerate, honest, kind, loving, and most importantly forgiving, but wise.

Give unselfishly to the needy, but try to provide tools for success as well: i.e., offer a job and a handout.

Keep my word.

Find weaknesses in myself and situations and choose to improve them.

Other important values I must never forget: Learning, gaining knowledge and nurturing friendships.

Work and play where my integrity cannot be compromised.

Refrain from building walls - allow pessimism, criticism to come in, but I will choose to learn from them, not react or hide from them

Refrain from competing, but add to other's success.

Remember and thank those who have helped me. Return their kindness to others that need it.

Allow my values to guide me, not jealously or other peoples' values, competition or wealth.

Look at both sides of an issue before making a decision. Realize that each decision is an independent decision, not necessarily directly related to past or future decisions, and take the time to gather insight to make informed decisions.

Take time every day for reflection, to realize what I learned, what I should learn more about to say thank you, to give myself a pat on the back while looking into what I need to improve upon.

"Real success is success with self; it's not having things, but in having mastery, having victory over oneself"!

[This article is excerpted from Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People]

Part II English - Assignments - Reg:

Dear Students of I BSc Pb& Pbt /Zoology(Reg) and Students of II BA Tamil/Philosophy,
As part of your Assignment test, which forms part of your Internal Assessment Marks, you are asked to buy a brand new copy of the book Essential English Grammar by Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University Press (Rs.90/-)
[or]
a copy of the book Intermediate English Grammar by Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University Press (Rs. 95/-) and do the first sixty exercises to the right of the book. You can start work rightaway. All the best!
PS: Students who are good at English, can opt for doing the exercises from the blue book - "Intermediate English Grammar"

Sunday 27 September 2009

HAVING A WORD FOR IT...:

Several languages cannot match the many words English has available to identify different sizes, types, and uses of vehicles - car, lorry, bus, tractor, taxi, moped, truck, and so on - and might have just one word for all of these.

There is in fact no single word in English for the driver of all kinds of motor vehicles - motorist being restricted to private cars, and driver being unacceptable for motorcycles - a lexical gap which greatly worried the British Automobile Association in 1961. It was felt that such a word would be useful, and they therefore asked for suggestions. Among the 500 they received were: autoist, roadist, chassimover, mobilist, wheelist, doice (Driver of Internal Combustion Engine), pupamotor (Person Using Power-Assisted Means of Travel on Roads), licentiat (Licensed Internal Combustion Engine Navigator Trained in Automobile Tactics). However, none of these ingenious ideas has survived.

Hence, this week's poll (to the left of the blog) gives you a chance to vote a name for the motorcycle rider - one among the seven that you think will be more appropriate - since we are, (according to David Crystal) yettt to find a suitable name to describe the motorcyclist!

Go ahead... Get your imagination working. All the best...!
[Excerpted from: Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. CUP, 1987]

Saturday 26 September 2009

Yet Another Laurel...!

[CLICK ON PIC TO ENLARGE]
Madras Christian College is the only college in the city to have a huge farm spread over one hundred acres of land. The plant in discussion, Nayantara, was cultivated on one acre of the farm, and is all set to fly to Europe.
The farm was set up in the year 1964 by Prof.Chandran Devanesan.
Image Courtesy: 'The Times of India,' pg.4, 26 September 2009

Thursday 24 September 2009

Medha Patkar @ MCC...:

Ms.Medha Patkar gave the key-note address at the Inaugural session of the National Conference on Human Rights organised by the Dept of Social Work, MCC. The grand old Anderson Hall of Madras Christian College was packed to capacity even well before Ms.Medha Patkar took to the dais. There was indeed a standing ovation when the speaker of the day arrived - to traditional trumpet-and-horn welcome - after which Prof.Mrs.Miriam Samuel, Head, Dept of Social Work, MCC, welcomed the gathering.

Our Principal Dr.Alexander Jesudasan welcomed and introduced the speaker of the session Ms.Medha Patkar. While talking about the glorious past of our country, he said that, some fifty years ago, our nation could boast of a Mahatma Gandhi, a Vallabhai Patel or a Sarojini Naidu - but today, do we have such great people? Indeed, as long as people like Ms.Medha Patkar and Thol.Thiruma(yesterday's speaker) are there, the fight is bound to continue against the various social injustices of today. He congratulated the Dept of Social Work for laying emphasis on praxis and drawing the attention of the international community. Praising Medha Patkar, he said that 'she is a person who 'listened' to the cries of the people and stood up for them - although imprisoned many times - she adopted 'satyagraha' in her fight against the oppressors - be it the corporate lords or the government policies.'

Excerpts from Ms.Medha Patkar's speech:

"Every living being has rights. Unless we talk about everyone's right to live, we cannot feel or belong to the community of human beings. Right to live is one of the very fundamental rights of a human being. Human rights, according to Patkar, are beyond constitutional rights because constitutional rights can keep changing - laws can keep changing - but human rights are the same always and at all places," she said.

Listing out the various aspects of human rights, Ms.Patkar said, "When we talk about human rights, we not only talk about sections of the society who are marginalised, but also those that are denied the right to education, right to shelter, right to services, right to live in one's own culture etc. 'Nobody has the monopoly to being called 'marginalised' any longer. Because, farmers are marginalised in the industrialised scenario, the rural population are being marginalised by the urbane populace and so on."

"Other types of marginalisation include social marginalisation, economic marginalisation, cultural marginalisation etc. Marginalisation cannot be taken care of, by reservations alone. We must also have a system wherein we recognize the rights of the marginalised. And, ironically, rights are not pattas to be distributed. They are inherent to every human being, whether or not they are recognized," she opined.

According to Patkar, we are all part of the agrarian economy. There are communities that are engaged in agriculture. For them it's a lifestyle - of living in proximity with nature - land - forests, surface and ground water etc. If you live a life of simplicity, then you can boldly say what the Mahatma once said - that every one of us has ample resources to fulfilling our needs and not our greed.

Elaborating on the same, she added that, in the whole hierarchy of our economy, it's only the priority of the main stream that dominates - and that's where exploitation comes in - even decisions at the national level, in the 'interests of the common man' are being taken by a high-level committee in Parliament without having any national debates, discussions on the same.

Remember, the lunch you are going to have after this session, is testimony to the hard work and the industrious activity of the country's poorest agricultural labourer, who might have even committed suicide due to poverty, even before you had had your meal today.

Ms.Patkar also made a scathing attack on the SEZ [Special Economic Zones] calling them as 'Special Exploitation Zones', wherein large areas of land are declared as foreign territory - (SEZ) by destroying, not just displacing communities who have been living there for generations. Killing of indegenous communities - call it neo-colonization - is the worst violation of human rights. First of all, who gives this right to trample upon their right to livelihood? Just becuase you get elected and become a governing politician, doesn't mean that you can trample upon the livelihood of indegenous peoples.

Taking a 'mineral water' bottle in her hand, she demonstrated how the mineral water symbolises the vulgar way in which we manage our resources. This water belongs to the community who live with it. We are living in the cities and drinking what is called 'mineralised water', which is a sheer exploitation of their natural resources, which is their inherent wealth.

In Kerala, thousands of people have been adversely affected by the Coca Cola plant. Being a social activist herself who is spearheading the protests, she said that apart from the fact that the soft drink is not healthy, the plant has also damaged the ground water resources. For the last six years, protests have been taking place against Coca Cola in this village. Even the company has admitted that without water it would have no business at all. Coca cola's operations rely on access to vast supplies of water as it takes almost three litres of water to make one litre of coca cola. Added to this is the irony that the company said it doesn't have to pay tax as they are not selling mineral water, but only packaged drinking water!!! Each factory extracts around five to 25 lakh litres of water per day. It's not mere extraction but sheer exploitation! The same happens to land exploitation too!

Today's 'corporatised ministers' for Social Justice, Minsiters of Poverty Alleviation, or Minister of Fisheries are not the only ones empowered to act in the 'interests' of the downtrodden, BPL, Fishing communities etc. Debates and discussions are needed with the masses who should be involved in the decision-making process, before passing any legislations to that effect in Parliament.

You cannot claim a 1 Re/- reduction in your kerosene cost, but Ambanis are getting 20,000 crores profit by exploiting the oil resources of the country, out of which 1,000 crores goes to the govt. Apart from setting up of SEZ which can take away your land and water resources, Tourism can also put a check on your land by grabbing them under the pretext of promoting tourism. Mining is another case in point. The sad fact is that, more than 21 tax concessions are being given on a platter to the SEZs with nil tax for the first five years!

Finally, Ms.Medha Patkar gave a call to the youth to stand up and fight injustice with sensitivity and sensibility for the downtrodden, marginalised etc.

Unless you fight, young friends,
Nothing will survive - not a piece of land will be saved!

Hence, the real dream is to steer the country towards equity and justice - two umbrella concepts upon which future society can be built by young India.

Our Deepest Condolences..:

"Other day I had a discussion with one of my friends and we felt that some people live because they are born, some think that what ever they do the end result will depend on the destiny. Some really think that there is a purpose for life itself."

The above lines form part of the last blogpost titled "Purpose of Life" by Roy J George, who was murdered by factory workers as a result of militant trade unionism in Coimbatore recently. Roy, who donned the role of a HR manager had to face the ire of the trade unions and became the scape goat of the management - trade unions imbroglio.

In him, we have lost not only a good blogger, but also a noble humanitarian, and a dynamic HR leader. May his soul rest in peace. You can check out this noble soul's blog HERE.

Wednesday 23 September 2009

Dear Students of II BA English,
For our next lecture on Wilde and his writing, kindly bring a copy of his famous short story 'The Nightingale and the Rose.' The e-version of the same is available HERE.
Regards,
Rufus

Monday 21 September 2009

I CIA - I MA Marks - Reg..:

Dear Students of I MA English,

Your I CIA Marks for the Paper on 'The English Language' are being uploaded on our
related academic blog HERE.

For a commentary and topical analysis of your answer sheets, along with your marks,
CLICK HERE.

King Whitney once famously remarked that Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.

So, for a change, and for once, your names have not found a place in the mark statement at all. It's up to you to identify your handwriting and thereby your marks. All the best.!

Regards,
Rufus

Saturday 19 September 2009

Book Launch...:

Penguin Books India and The Americn Consulate-General, Chennai host the launch of
Gurcharan Das' The Difficulty of Being Good - On the Sublte Art of Dharma.
There will also be a panel discussion based on the book.
Venue: Sheraton Park Hotel and Towers
Address: TTK Road, Alwarpet
Date: September 19
Time: 7 p.m

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest 2009

Essay Contest for 12 standard and College / University Students

Ayn Rand in India initiative is encouraging students from India to participate in this global competition based on Ayn Rand's masterpiece "Atlas Shrugged". For the past many years, the Ayn Rand Institute has been hosting the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest for 12th standard and college students.

Deadline: Sept 17, 2009

(Students from India may want to contact Essay@aynrand.in for more details about the contest)

Ayn Rand in India initiative is working to promote the essay contest in high schools and colleges in India. If you would like to be kept informed about this initiative, please contact info@aynrand.in

Please see
HERE for topics, rules and regulations, and way of submitting the essay.

Thursday 10 September 2009

Our Deepest Condolences..:

We deeply condole the sudden demise of our student S.Michael John (MSW-HRM) who died in a tragic road accident. May his soul rest in peace. The bereaved family invites you to offer oblation of praise to God's goodness on the life of their dear son, for a thanksgiving meeting to be held at THE PENTECOSTAL MISSION, 162, Beracha road, Kellys, Chennai - 600 010. Please participate and kindly be a source of consolation.
RSVP: 9445297795/9444610618

Tuesday 8 September 2009

REVISED SCHEDULE FOR Jun-Nov 2009

Dear Students, the following is the revised schedule for the current semester:
CA Test II - 14 Oct - 21 Oct 2009
Study Holidays begin on: 24 Oct 2009
End of Semester Exams begin on: 2 Nov 2009.
II/IV/VI Sem begin on: 23 Nov 2009.

Compensatory Working Days:
26 Sep 2009 - D.O - II
26 Oct 2009 - D.O - III
27 Oct 2009 - D.O - IV
28 Oct 2009 - D.O - V
29 Oct 2009 - D.O - VI
30 Oct 2009 - D.O - I
31 Oct 2009 - D.O - II

For the College Calendar, Click
HERE

For more details and authentication, students are asked to verify the same with the College Notice Board(s).