Monday, July 18, 2005
Book Review - How full is your bucket? / China Inc.
With nothing better to do I thought I might as well post a couple of book reviews. Books I read in the last couple of months.
How full is your bucket is a book from a couple of guys in Gallup. A fantastic "Easy to preach, difficult to follow" concept. Its about how much difference positivity makes. I forced about 6 people to read the book amongst my friends in the last couple of months (before leaving my "old home"). The concept of the book can be summarized in a couple of lines. Let me try,
"Everyone in the world is carrying an imaginary bucket with her/him, every moment of interaction can be represented by an imaginary drop into the bucket or a dip into whatever lies in the bucket (a fluid would be a good idea to visualize). A positive interaction causes a drop both to the person causing it and the person effecting it. A negative interaction is one that causes a dip"...so obviously Gallup's theory is: the more full someone's bucket the more productive, successful, happy, willing to fill buckets etc, etc etc the are. Recommended reading. That wasn't two lines !!! Anyways, amongst my friends it has been working very well, whenever someone makes fun of someone else we joke around with a "you just drilled a permanent hole in my bucket"....or in a good mood situation a statement like "whats up why do you seem to have an overflowing bucket today?" is way too common.
About China Inc. The author is strong in numbers - He talks about how the chinese economy is doing. The book for the most part is giving numbers and statistically convincing "how china took over every single manufacturing business from the US....lots and lots of numbers from Michigan, Ohio, and every manufacturing midwestern state. (The author also seems to be infatuated with Beijing's namesake in Illinois Pekin for his examples). The part about software piracy is scary (especially in the minds of young chinese). The part about human rights is not all that scary but there certainly is truth to the story. After reading a part in Willy's blog about china "disallowing blogs" - I am completely able to relate to a few things I had taken for granted about China. That said, it certainly is an exciting country. All cons are compressed into one chapter and that comes at the very end. I wish the negativity was sandwiched in between so that we could walk away from the book with a sweet taste of a "Booming economy". Recommended reading if you are either super-pro-China or wanna throw a few numbers to startle your b-school peers.
Trying to meet up / talk to a few schooltime friends. No luck so far.
I read three blogs today in detail - two of which had a mention of long distance relationships. Coincidence? Maybe.
With nothing better to do I thought I might as well post a couple of book reviews. Books I read in the last couple of months.
How full is your bucket is a book from a couple of guys in Gallup. A fantastic "Easy to preach, difficult to follow" concept. Its about how much difference positivity makes. I forced about 6 people to read the book amongst my friends in the last couple of months (before leaving my "old home"). The concept of the book can be summarized in a couple of lines. Let me try,
"Everyone in the world is carrying an imaginary bucket with her/him, every moment of interaction can be represented by an imaginary drop into the bucket or a dip into whatever lies in the bucket (a fluid would be a good idea to visualize). A positive interaction causes a drop both to the person causing it and the person effecting it. A negative interaction is one that causes a dip"...so obviously Gallup's theory is: the more full someone's bucket the more productive, successful, happy, willing to fill buckets etc, etc etc the are. Recommended reading. That wasn't two lines !!! Anyways, amongst my friends it has been working very well, whenever someone makes fun of someone else we joke around with a "you just drilled a permanent hole in my bucket"....or in a good mood situation a statement like "whats up why do you seem to have an overflowing bucket today?" is way too common.
About China Inc. The author is strong in numbers - He talks about how the chinese economy is doing. The book for the most part is giving numbers and statistically convincing "how china took over every single manufacturing business from the US....lots and lots of numbers from Michigan, Ohio, and every manufacturing midwestern state. (The author also seems to be infatuated with Beijing's namesake in Illinois Pekin for his examples). The part about software piracy is scary (especially in the minds of young chinese). The part about human rights is not all that scary but there certainly is truth to the story. After reading a part in Willy's blog about china "disallowing blogs" - I am completely able to relate to a few things I had taken for granted about China. That said, it certainly is an exciting country. All cons are compressed into one chapter and that comes at the very end. I wish the negativity was sandwiched in between so that we could walk away from the book with a sweet taste of a "Booming economy". Recommended reading if you are either super-pro-China or wanna throw a few numbers to startle your b-school peers.
Trying to meet up / talk to a few schooltime friends. No luck so far.
I read three blogs today in detail - two of which had a mention of long distance relationships. Coincidence? Maybe.
