31 October 2006

A beginner's guide to survive Assholes!

My formative years in a Christian Mission school taught me that using the word “Asshole” in daily language is blasphemy! However, somehow the improvements in technology (and degradation of social values) plus the years in University, Profession and work-life made me realize the immense pleasure of using the word in daily life!


You abuse a person by calling him an “Asshole” either in front or at his back, to appropriate his untrustworthiness, immorality, chutzpah, etc. and all negative traits in daily life! As if to help the new entrants gain an understanding of the bad world, Robert Sutton, a professor at Stanford in the engineering school, wrote a book - The No-Asshole Rule.


I read a review of this book, in Guy Kawasaki’s blog. He calls the book as a “definitive guide to understanding, counteracting, and not becoming an asshole”


To give a brief peep from the book, here are a few points worth noting from Guy Kawasaki’s review (for the full review, click here):


Recognize an asshole

  1. One method is the Starbucks Test. Usually, when a person does one of the most weird combinations while ordering an item in Starbucks, he’s trying to flex her muscle – hence he’s an asshole!
  2. Just search Google with a person’s name (or a profession) plus “asshole”. The number of search pages will decide the degree of “asshole”-ness!
  3. One of the following actions would qualify a person to be an asshole:
  • Personal insults
  • Invading one’s personal territory
  • Uninvited personal contact
  • Threats and intimidation, both verbal and non-verbal
  • Sarcastic jokes and teasing used as insult delivery systems
  • Withering email flames
  • Status slaps intended to humiliate their victims
  • Public shaming or status degradation rituals
  • Rude interruptions
  • Two-faced attacks
  • Dirty looks
  • Treating people as if they are invisible

How To Avoid Being an Asshole

  1. Face your past. Knowing that you’re an asshole is first step towards change. Begin with checking if your parents / siblings were assholes; or whether you were a bully in your school!
  2. Avoid making people feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized or belittled
  3. Don’t mistreat weaker people (compared to you)
  4. Resist being sucked up in an assholeholic group – Just because your group promotes a negative doesn’t mean you too have to follow
  5. Walk away and stay away from assholes – don’t degrade yourself to their levels
  6. Acting like an asshole is a communicable disease – stay away from this.
  7. Focus on win-win - life doesn’t have to be a win-lose proposition--unless, that is, you’re an asshole.
  8. Focus on being a neutral/ humble person - not better or worse than others
  9. Focus on being transparent with different sort of people - not different – Idea is to find ways to make yourself “one of them”
  10. Be contented - Tell yourself that you have everything – be happy with what you have

How to Cope With Assholes

  1. Hope for the best, but expect the worst. Lower your expectations to reduce disappointment, but hope for the best!
  2. Develop indifference and emotional detachment - In other words, don’t let the jerks get to you.
  3. Concentrate on small wins against assholes – This can keep you going and lead you to win the war.
  4. Limit your exposure. Do your best to avoid meetings and interactions with assholes
  5. De-escalate and re-educate. If the asshole you’re dealing with isn’t a “chronic,” “certified,” and “flagrant” asshole. Be calm and try to re-educate the person about his behavior
  6. Stand up to them – Expose them up-front in their own language
  7. Expose them. Follow Marge’s Asshole Management Metric. This is a 4 point system from (0) to (3). Marge - the boss - points to people behaving like assholes, by holding up one, two, or three fingers to signify:
  • (0) - You are a very nice person, and very passive. No one can say a word against you and would never think to call you an asshole.
  • (1) - You are a normal person who can occasionally assert yourself on an issue you are passionate about, but you handle yourself in a non-confrontational way in nearly all occasions
  • (3) - You can consistently assert yourself in a non-confrontational way and are occasionally an asshole, but you feel horrible about it afterwards, and you may or may not apologize (but you probably will have to confess your remorse to someone)
  • (4) - You can consistently be an asshole and you either do not recognize this or you simply enjoy it


Every society / community / workplace has its own share of assholes, and you need to stop giving in to them. If anyone has info about such assholes, contact GK with details.

26 October 2006

Beginner’s guide to Dubai Job-search

Having survived here for the last 5 years, I thought of evangelizing about job-search in Dubai, for the benefit of all new-comers! The thoughts are entirely from my own experience; hence you can rationalize, if you wish to.


Five suggestions for effective job-hunt in Dubai:

Never spend money on the recruitment agencies:
With all due respect to them, regardless of their packages like "CV distribution", "contact list", "CV modification", etc., you'd probably land up NOT getting value for the money you spend – especially, since you're perhaps residing miles off this region! Instead, do some site searching, desk research, etc. to get what you want - free of cost! www.grapeshisha.com is the site of a blogger who'd perhaps guide you better than these agencies. Further, use Discuss Dubai forum to know more. Last resort – you can leave your email address for free advice, thru this Blog.

Don't spend money on online sites
These sites are all very good for information on existing vacancies with companies and / or recruitment agencies. It is futile to spend money on them, since various companies happen to be their clients - not you! They do not depend on individual job-seekers for their income. Except for a restricted few number of "head-hunters" who choose to remain low profile, most of the recruitment agencies act as a conduit for supplying CVs to companies. For example, Bayt.com is definitely a good JOB BOARD for getting connections - not jobs! Many recruitment agencies also use Bayt for this purpose. It's better to contact recruitment agencies / companies directly, once knowing about them from Bayt. Ditto for Monster, Ditto for many other online recruitment sites.

Be on the panels of a few agencies
Sites of recruitment agencies www.clarendonparker.com, www.mriww.com, www.bacdubai.com, www.sosrecruitment.net, www.grafton-group.com, etc. are effective to the extent that you're on their panel for consideration. Be careful with your choice of words in your work profile, as most of them use the computer logic search through this profile, and zero-in on a candidate. If you need help, contact me for info. more resources.

You are your own best CV writer
It's said that if you cannot write a CV yourself, you're not worth for consideration for the job. A CV is like a marketing tool for your skills suitable for the post. A CV should not be duplicated and sent for every job details you come across! The sooner you learn this, the better is your job search. There are zillions of sites that give you good tips on writing good CVs. Spending money on a stranger to write it for you, is like asking a stranger to be your foster parent! Check careers section of www.wsj.com to know better ways to write a CV. Remember only YOU know yourself better to market yourself better!!

Create a net that works for you
In business as well as in life, the primitive dictum of "scratch my back; I'll scratch yours" works very well. Therefore make friends; network as much as you can; help as much as you can within your network; invite more people to your network. All these acts always increase your chances in getting a job. Some network development sites are really good: www.ryze.com, www.linkedin.com. Learn good networking skills; e.g. read "the art of schmoozing" posted in http://blog.guykawasaki.com Utilize every meeting with a new person (not interviews) to get at least 5 contact names and addresses who can give you "leads" - not "jobs or interviews". Check these leads and personally thank the person who gave you the leads, giving a short note on what happened to that lead!

Hope you all benefit from the above points, as much as I did while doing my own job-search.

(Photo courtesy; Contents adapted my post on DiscussDubai forum)

Technorati :. .

19 October 2006

Spirit of Zakat !!??

We talked about crazy layouts on this board before too.

Apart from "Death" wrap posted by Free Mind below, there's another weird front page headline put into a shameful layout / connection.

The main headline + image headline together gave me the impression that:

"Blair warns Pakistan against hanging Briton... (in the) Spirit of zakat"


While these days KT is rebuked regularly for all the bad journalism that one can write volumes on, GN - known for it's better layouts should not be goofing up with these kinds of communication.


Technorati : .

16 October 2006

Speediest way to trace someone?

I have been following this story of “missing brother" for some time, and am quite amused by the fact that the search should have culminated in jail!

Consider these:

3rd Oct – The “mentally retarted brother” Mahesh Samal went missing after 3 am.
10th Oct – Filed missing report with Al Gharb police
12th Oct (GN)An official in Al Gharb police station confirmed to have circulated name and report to police deptts. and CIDs. “Until now we have not received anything…”
16th Oct (GN)Ramillo…found out that his brother was in Sharjah Central Jail, as his mother called him from India and told him that Mahesh had sent her a letter from jail. "Police arrested Mahesh one hour after he left the apartment at 3am, as they could not find any identification papers on him”

Isn't it strange that:
a) Police didn't have the faintest clues of their arrests even after 9 days of doing so?
b) It was probably a snail mail that was faster than the police in this case, to have informed the mother of his arrests!

Any ideas from the community?

(see comments posted on UAE Community)

Technorati :

What a way to report!!!

I have been pretty often clean-bowled by the ways of layout designs in Gulf News. I’m sure many of the fellow bloggers/ friends in media / advertising / communications must have felt the same too! An example appears in today’s Page 2 reproduced here.

On first glance I got the topline spooky feelings that:
1) “The woman was stabbed repeatedly” while (or because of) “Appreciating Art”
2) The woman who was stabbed repeatedly and dumped by her husband… is seen here appreciating art with her husband

It is true that to a large extent news reporting / layout is about catching attention, making the report look “newsy” and this is what communication is all about.

However, I guess sometimes improper connection may take the communication to negative levels - eg. the report unknowingly connects the art exhibition to murder - Christie’s style!!

And just for the record, this method has often been repeated - even on front-page main headlines!

Am I too critical? I’d love to know how the community feels about it… Sam? SD? Woke? …

(for additional comments see UAE Community Blog)

13 October 2006

About this Blog...

This blog is about “professing on any subject, at any time and place”. Hence all the posts on this blog will be utilised to support and strengthen the meaning of the word Pha(N)chology in general.

However the owner / contributors to this blog do not hold responsibility of assessing whether the posts are really associating or strengthening the term / word Pha(N)chology.

Readers’, Contributors’ and Commentators’ views are welcome on this issue.


ABOUT THE TERM
The term Pha(N)chology used in this blog is completely private and is owned by a group of individuals including me.

The terms of usage of the word Pha(N)chology are as follows:

  1. The word Pha(N)chology has permanent restrictions of usage on or as a title of a Blog / Website.
  2. You can use the word Pha(N)chology as many times as you wish to, but every usage on the web should be acknowledged - by means of direct linkage to this blog, or by other similar innovative means
  3. The owner of this blog and his friends hold the copyright of the idea proposed by word Pha(N)chology. There’s currently no entry of this word in any documented reference books. However any usage or entry in such documents need to be preceded by a written permission of this blog owner
  4. There may be currently other words which are similar in meaning / impressions to this word. We do not claim any connection or association to these words. However one is free to make such associations with proper linkage to this word / blog

Any other proprietary issues / rights / additional terms of usage etc. are held by the owner of this blog. Any discussions / comments are welcome on this forum. However violations of usage would be sub ject to dispute handling by the Creative Commons

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Licence

title of work: Pha(N)chology
year of copyright: 1980
description: “The art, science and practice of professing on any subject, at any time and place”. The term Pha(N)chology is the private intellectual property of the creator and owner of this work, as well as a few selected friends with whom the owner has coined the term.
creator: shansenta
copyright holder: shansenta

Technorati :

12 October 2006

Welcome to Pha(N)chology


The word Pha(N)chology was invented and put to use by a group of young students in Delhi, way back in the ’80s, when the tryst for survival in a highly depressed economy was the order of the day. Forced by the need to stand out among the crowd and succeed, every Tom, Dick and Harry resorted to laying hands upon any diverse subject / topic, and lecture on it - to an audience of comparatively less-informed group members!

It was not a pre-requisite that this lecture was based on knowledge or the lack of it; but the sheer pleasure of being able to leave the audience gaping at oneself, often gave that feeling of “first among equals” within the group or community. This practice was so rampant and recurrent, that it was quite difficult to extricate facts from fiction. Often this type of lecturing was called - in slang Hindi - “Phe(N)kna” meaning “to throw”; hence the practice was gradually given the name of Pha(N)chology.

The Pha(N)chology practice had a viral growth during 1980-90, and was gradually treated as a skill – the art of making an impression among the pseudo socializers.

Fastest way to get started in Pha(N)chology is to start talking calmly and patiently, with much style and panache, about an adventure, project or a long-lost theory, which none of your listeners is supposed to have any prior experience / interest.

Technorati :

Share This