My Journey From Godavari In Rajahmundry To River Mississippi In Greenville Usa

I grew up in a large family system interacting with seven siblings. My parents lived in a large house in Rajahmundry and most of my memories are drawn from my early life in this house. I was dark compared to my other siblings and that is the beginning of divide by my close elations and cousins and so on. All the incidents are either witnessed by me or told to me by my parents and grandparents and have recorded most of the good things and events. Some of the readers may find similarities with their experience and may like to read the small biographical sketch.

This is the story of a chick of a sparrow family living on the roof inside the house in Hyderabad, India. The chick accidentally falls to the cement concrete floor and is dead. But, through a miracle, a Hindu Priest who was performing a special Pooja is able to bring the chick back to life. However, on another day, the chick again falls down hearing the loud noise of firecrackers. This time it falls into a box of pickles that were being exported to New Jersey. This is the first adventure of the birdie. However, the birdie is very young and has never gone out of the small nest inside the house and so begins to explore the new surrounding. The birdie also acquired the power to understand the spoken language of Hyderabad namely Telugu and she becomes friendly with a small girl and shares its story.

It is a great privilege to write a preface to my father’s book. I like to share with you how he had shaped me and helped me reach this position today. One evening, some seven years ago, I received a phone call from the Board of Secondary Education informing me that I secured a State Rank in my intermediate examination. Tears of joy rolled down my cheeks. I am sure you would agree with me that it is one of the best moments in any student’s lifetime. Thank s to my father I could accomplish that. Later as we discussed my future plans and career pathways that I should consider after my intermediate, my father suggested me to go for a job with my ‘plus two’ qualification. I was naturally surprised. I remember his words; “…if you concentrate with your senses, studying for three hours a day is enough to come off in flying colours.” I joined as an apprentice in a Chartered Accountancy firm and later in Nagarjuna Power Corporation Ltd as an Industrial Trainee, for a monthly salary of RS. 1,500. Of course it was tough to study and work at the same time, but I enjoyed the challenge. When I left NPC, my salary was around RS. 2,500. In the mean time, using the ‘Art of Studying’ instilled in me by my father I simultaneously completed in the evening college my B.Com (Hons) and Chartered Accountancy. At this juncture, I came across an advertisement by the World Bank Group. I applied and had to face stiff competition from more than 100 candidates, most of them were from some of the prestigious Management Institutes and other Business Schools with considerable work experience. The American executive, who interviewed me, was very much convinced with my bio-data, and I bagged the job and became one of the youngest analysts in the World Bank Group. My posting was at Delhi, and my salary was Rs. 1 lakh per month and I was 23 then. After working for two years, I was fed up with my routine job and wanted greater challenges and varied international exposure. I wanted to study further. When I informed my intentions to my father he readily encouraged me to take the plunge. There is a quotation in one of my father’s novels, “Even if you are a fish, I believe that there is no point in staying in a pond where you don’t like the water”. I resigned my job and left for INSEAD (France), ranked the World’s best non-US Business School to do my M.B.A. with my two years savings, about RS. 15 lakhs. After completion of my post graduation, I joined as a Business planning and Control Executive with ‘Michlin’ at Singapore and worked for 2 years. It’s me who asked my father to write this book to help students whatever be the stream of education they choose. I agree with him that spending millions of rupees on education is a luxury not every one can afford. When a parent is able to invest a simple ten minutes a day and enthuse the child to do better, as a Chartered Accountant I can assure that it would be the best investment one could ever ask for.

Now you can satisfy your appetite for information This book is not about the minutia of RSS and Atom programming. It's about doing cool stuff with syndication feeds-making the technology give you exactly what you want the way you want. It's about building a feed aggregator and routing feeds to your e-mail or iPod, producing and hosting feeds, filtering, sifting, and blending them, and much more. Tan-talizing loose ends beg you to create more hacks the author hasn't thought up yet. Because if you can't have fun with the technology, what's the point? A sampler platter of things you'll learn to do Build a simple feed aggregator Add feeds to your buddy list Tune into rich media feeds with BitTorrent Monitor system logs and events with feeds Scrape feeds from old-fashioned Web sites Reroute mailing lists into your aggregator Distill popular links from blogs Republish feed headlines on your Web site Extend feeds using calendar events and microformats

“Mom. What is wisdom?” a girl asked. Her mother showed a jar in the kitchen and queried whether she would eat a cup of sugar from it. “No” aid the girl. “How about eating few raw eggs or Maida?” The girl was confused. Her mother continued: “But you love to eat the mixture of those ingredients, called ‘cake’. Same way, wisdom is the final product, ingredients being intelligence, knowledge, skill, logic, Reflex actions, Lateral thinking, Common sense, Rational thinking, Answering under tension, Presence of mind, Communication, Spontaneity, Art of listening, understanding and speaking. Individually they are not effective, but combined together, they formulate wisdom. Unfortunately no educational institution teaches them”. “Mathematics is the poetry of logical ideas” said Newton. To solve a mathematical equation, first devise a plan. Draw the nearest and correct route to the answer. If you fail to reach the target, use other variables. This applies to management accounts, statistics, costing… and life also. ‘Wisdom’ mainly comprises of memory and intelligence. When a student solves a mathematical equation faster than others, he is normally said to be intelligent. When a student is good in history or biology, he is industrious. Mastering maths involves three steps. Understanding the problem / Practice (solving innumerable types of problems) / Application (solving a particular problem in different ways). I was a member in interview panels of some reputed organisations. Many intelligent candidates also used to be nervous. They were unable to answer simple questions due to negative cortisol, a neuro-transmitter that is released in the brain when you are nervous. For a simple question like “Are you a bachelor or unmarried?” instead of answering ‘both’ (if he is so), the candidate said, “I am a bachelor”. Many students fear maths. Once you understand the basic formulas and elementary theorems, mathematics is one of the most interesting subjects. Studying math is different from other subjects, as ‘study’ is of two types, Active and Passive. Mathematics is an active study. Whenever you are bored or feel sleepy, engage in mathematics. Unlike other subjects, each ‘step’ in maths is built on the previous lesson. For example, unless you are well versed with algebra, you don’t understand logarithms. Irrespective of whether you are a 5th standard student or a Post graduate in Mathematics, this book suits you. Solving puzzles in this book reduces over-confidence, and develops wisdom. It quickens reflex actions and eases tension. Here are 300 puzzles. Give one puzzle every day and ask your student (or child) to work on it. Some of these questions test the capacity to hold your nerve under pressure. Don’t feel dismayed even if you are not able to answer some of them. Optimism knows what the ‘tips’ are, but success knows where the ‘pits’ are. Know the pits first. This book shows your deficiencies, and encourages locating your sphere of weakness. Tease your friends with these questions. Request your parents to ask you these riddles and win a bet for correct answer. And finally… Many of these puzzles are from internet and are not my own. I modified many of them to nativity, included additional explanations for complicated questions, and added some of my own. My intention is to pool all varieties of puzzles, categorise them into groups and present them to the students. I also included few cine-artists and cricketers names to make it more interesting. I thank Ms Prasanna Vanamala, Uday Srinivasula for assisting me to finalise this book. - Author.

Dear Black Girls is a letter to all Black girls. Every day poet and educator Shanice Nicole is reminded of how special Black girls are and of how lucky she is to be one. Illustrations by Kezna Dalz support the book's message that no two Black girls are the same but they are all special--that to be a Black girl is a true gift. In this celebratory poem, Kezna and Shanice remind young readers that despite differences, they all deserve to be loved just the way they are.