Cup and coffee
This one is a nice story on handling pressures related to work life.
A group of alumni, highly established in
their careers, got together to visit their old
university professor. Conversation soon turned into
complaints about stress in work and life. Offering
his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen
and returned with a large pot of coffee and an
assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass,
crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some
exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot
coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the
professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking
expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain
and cheap ones. While it is normal for each of you to
want only the best for yourselves, that is the source
of your problems and stress. What all of you really
wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously
went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's
cups. Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money
and position in society are the cups. They are just
tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of
Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only
on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."
So, don't let the cups drive you... enjoy the coffee
instead.
Labels: Matters of life
2006 List of Fortune Top American companies
The Year of 2005 when the big oil displaced the retail giantFinally, it happened. Hot oil market in 2005 helped Exxon Mobil to
snatch the top position in the list of Fortune 500 American companies
from the retailing behemoth Wal-Mart Stores. Exxon mopped up revenues
of USD 339.94 billion, slightly higher than USD 315.64 billion earned
by Wal-Mart. But, the growth in revenues clocked by the former (25.5%)
was much sharper than that reported by the latter (9.6%).
Exxon staged an impressive performance on the profits front as well. It
became the largest profit maker US company (USD 36.13 billion) with 42.6
per cent rise in bottomline. This was way higher than Wal-Mart's profit
of USD 11.23 billion growing at a pace of 9.4 per cent.
General Motors was the distant third in the revenues list with sales of
USD 192.6 billion closely followed by Chevron (USD 189.48 billion). While
a 28.1 per cent jump in revenues helped Chevron to move two places up,
GM could retain its position despite a small decline of 0.5 per cent
in revenues.
Overall, the top 500 American companies grossed USD 9.1 trillion in 2005,
a rise of 10.2%. This formed more than 70% of the American GDP. Profits
rose by 18.8% to USD 610 billion. The top four industries clocking the
maximum profits were commercial banking (USD 91.7 billion), petroleum
refining (USD 74.5 billion), insurance (USD 47.3 billion) and pharma
(USD 42.5 billion).
Labels: Corporations
Does god exist?
The other day, I ran into a discussion over the existence of god. The
undertone of the discussion was that god is not visible and hence one can't believe upon something which is not felt by the human senses. While the discussion
was on, i recalled one nice piece of stroy, which I read somewhere.
One day, a man enters the barber's shop and asks for a hair cut. While,
the barber is on his job, he starts talking about miseries in the
world. The barber further says that there is no god in this world. If he
is there, why he can't just come and rescue people? The customer doesn't
say a word. After the job is done, the customer pays the barber and walks
out of the salon only to return back immediately. The customer, now back
in the salon shouts out loudly," Hey, there is no barber in this world!"
To this, the barber gets stunned and says,"What are you talking? You
just had a hair cut from me. How can you say that there is no barber in
the world?"
The customer takes the barber out on the street and shows him a beggar
with long dirty hair and whiskers. To this, the barber says,"Oh! that
beggar. Look, now I can cut his hair only if he comes to me. How am I
supposed to serve people who don't approach me?"
The customer says,"That is true even with god. He can serve only those
who approach him!!"
Labels: Matters of life
The CRs and DRs of Life!
I found this one on
investopedia. It solved most of my doubts about the debit and credit concepts, which i gathered from various accounting text books! Have a take on this one...
Why do accountants use debits and credits instead of simple
pluses and minuses? Why is the notation for a debit "DR"?
Debits and credits, and the technique of double-entry accounting,
are credited (no pun intended) to a Franciscan monk by the name
of Luca Pacioli. Known as the "Father of Accounting," he warned
that you should not go to sleep until your debits equaled your
credits.
Let's review the basics of Pacioli's method of bookkeeping.
On a balance sheet or in a ledger, assets = liabilities + owner's
equity. An increase in the value of assets is a debit to the
account, and a decrease is a credit. On the flip side, an increase
in liabilities or owner's equity is a credit to the account,
and a decrease is a debit.
Having Latin roots, the term "debit" comes from the word "debitum,"
meaning "what is due," and "credit" comes from "creditum," defined
as "something entrusted to another or a loan." So when you increase
assets, the change in the account is a debit because something
must be due for that increase (the price of the asset). Conversely,
an increase in liabilities is a credit because it signifies an amount
that someone else has entrusted (loaned) to you and which you used
to purchase something (the cause of the corresponding debit in the
assets account). You can see why simply using "increase" and "decrease"
to signify changes to accounts wouldn't work: the terms "debit"
and "credit" signify actual accounting functions, both of which
cause increases and decreases in accounts, depending on the type
of account.
What about the terms' abbreviations? There are a few different
theories as to why debits are abbreviated "DR" and credits abbreviated
"CR".
One theory asserts that the DR and CR come from the Latin past
participles of debitum and creditum which are "debere" and "credere,"
respectively. Another theory is that DR stands for "debit record"
and CR stands for "credit record." Finally, some believe that the
DR notation is short for "debtor" and CR is short for "creditor."
The approach Pacioli devised has become the basis for modern day
accounting, and the use of debits and credits allows companies
and individuals to keep track of their transactions and manage
their money. While the origin of the abbreviations of debit and credit
(DR and CR) remain somewhat of a mystery, each theory has "credibility"!!
Labels: Knowledge-wise
