Chess problems

I am re-reading the '300 Chess Problems' book from 'Pankaj Publications' after a long time and i find it to be exiting. The book has middle game scenarios that will enable either white or black to win within another 5 to 7 moves or enable either side to win major piece. So, it is all about clever thinking of 5 to 7 possible moves ahead w.r.t both sides.

It is like a Q&A book that we will be using during our Semester exams. The more you solve it, the more easier the exam would be . Similarly, the more the number of problems you solve from this book, the easier and flexible will be your mind as it depicts different environment w.r.t white/black for every problem that is depicted. Our mind will get accustomed to the wild environments & become stronger.

I used to read this book and try resolving the problems towards checkmate/removal of major piece . It was intially tough as i need to figure out all combinations of the 5 to 7 moves to checkmate. Figuring out either the Black would win or White would win was itself very interesting intially. Slowly, i was able to decode it easily and helped in increasing my Chess skills.

Garry Kasporov , Anatoly Karpov are my favourites in Chess. I have read about their tactics and moves in articles/books. I have not watched Viswanathan Anand matches, but i like him :-)

The ANSI C Programming Language

I have been reading the book 'The ANSI C Programming Language' from 'Brian W.Kernighan & Dennis M.Ritchie'. It is very excellent. I would recommend it once you get some hands in to C language. It does not beat around the bush. A MUST READ FOR A C PROGRAMMER.

Some interesting notes are -
1. '\n' represents only a single character. An escape sequence is used for hard to type or invisible characters.
2. The range of both int and float are dependent on the machine .
3. printf is not part of the C language, it is just a useful function from the standard library of
functions that are normally accessible to C programs and its behaviour is defined by ANSI
std.
4. EOF is an integer defined in
5. An isolated semicolon statement is called as Null Statement
6. A character represented within a single quotes gives numerical value. Ex - '\n' is equal to 10.
7. getchar returns ascii value of character being read.
8.when a string constant like"hello\n"appears in a C program, it is stored as an array of characters containing the characters in the string and terminated with a '\0' to mark the end.
The %s format specification in printf expects the corresponding argument to be a string represented in the above form.
9.An external variable must be defined, exactly once, outside of any function; this sets aside storage for it. The variable must also be declared in each function that wants to access it; this states the type of the variable. The declaration may be an explicit extern statement or may be implicit from context.
10. ''Definition'' refers to the place where the variable is created or assigned storage.
``Declaration'' refers to places where the nature of the variable is stated but no storage is allocated.

Financial Intelligence

I got Robert Kiyosaki's book titled "Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!" . The book gives insight into Financial Intelligence & Financial Freedom. The author explains the need for making the 'Money To Work For Us' and 'Not To Work For Money'. He compares the thoughts & actions of the Low/Middle Class People with the Rich People to convey the methodologies to get rich. He narrates by using a Rich Dad who creates money and Poor Dad who works for money. One dad struggled to save even little amount of money . The other simply created investments.

But, i do not agree that all rich dads and poor dads are as portrayed by the author. Only, poor people can become rich . So, only if the poor dad has the quality of the rich dad as portrayed by the author, they can become rich. Rich people can become More richer only. A rich dad with the quality of the rich dad as portrayed by the author can make them More richer only :-)

He correlates the life to a 'Rat Race' made of 3 points that gets looped in life -
1. Fear - This is present initially for survival & that will drive ones earning requirement,
2. Greed - The later desire to get many nice things & greed drives the earning requirement.
3. Earn more - Pay more Bills . To pay more, earn more.
The only way to get out of this Rat Race is by using the Accounting & Investing.

I agree that switching to a big pay job and earning More Money cannot solve problems, Given more money, one will enhance his lifestyle & increase his needs & pay more bills & might also get into debt. Thus enters into Rat Race.

He stresses the need for 'Financial Intelligence' by having a complete understanding over the Income Statement, Asset Cash Flow Statement & Balance Sheet.

He says that we should never be arrested by Money such that we need to surely work to lead our life & we should avoid a situation of working at a job just because of fear for paying bills.
He states that we should have automatic Cash Flow From Asset -
1.A business owner who has a system in place can leave the business to a manager and still earn income.
2.A web site owner can stop working on the site and still earn income (e.g. from “automatic” advertisements like Google AdSense).
3. A book writer can stop writing and still earn royalties from the books she has written.

His examples for teaching the difference between 'Real Asset' and 'Liabilities' are good.
Asset - Automatic money/income generators
Liability - Home for middle class. It is not a asset if on loan. Car is never an asset.

Real Asset - Patents ,Investments (MFs, other bonds ..), Others work for you and you need not spend time to get the money (Amway / Quixtar), Mutual fund, Stock Business tools or equipment, Real estate (from which you earn rental income), Education

His concept of stock value getting increased whenever a company downsizes its resources appears strange to me though he substantiates stating that people like company that has low labor costs.

He also stresses the needs to achieve 'Financial Freedom' by asking the below questions -
Ask yourself - 1.For whom are you working for ? 2.Whom are you making rich ?
He tells us to have our own second level job along with the mainline job. His idea to join MLM to get trained in Marketing/Sales to get over fear of failure is interesting.

He also cautions by saying 'Mind your own Business' (continue with your wages based job and save to the maximum) and not to jump into business unless you are completely aware/convinced about it.

His 10 steps for awakening the financial genius are excellent.

I think, he can give more indepth information for Financial Freedom/Intelligence.

This book is simple & excellent ! The info conveyed are very practical and useful . I recommend it for everyone.

Negotiation

I got 'Secrets of Power Negotiating' by Roger Dawson. It is simply 'Brilliant'. The negotation tactics are explained with simple examples from our daily life incidents.

He not only teaches tactics like Nibbling, Principle of Higher authority, Good guy Bad guy, Relecutant buyer, Flinching , Trade-off, Withdrawn Offer, Walk away trick & many others, He also teaches the counter tactics for those tricks.

He emphasises the need for 3 stages in negotiation (Get expectations,Get information & Agreement) and the advantage of being the person writing the contract.

The need for always being a Relectunt buyer following a Flinching policy with the Walk Away mindset and cutting short the negotiation range with the first question to the counterpart is very true.

The PuppyDog, Decoit and Red Herring principle made me laugh and are very practical.

He explains the various types of power that a person can have and states the necessity to identify the power that controls us and being prepared for it during negotiation. He also tells the kind of powers that can make a person very important in the negotiation.

He reinstates the need for collecting more info about the counterpart before negotiation and also during the negotiation with Open Ended questions. The use of time pressure tactic is really interesting.

His analysis of 4 personalities like pragmatic, extravert, amiable & analytical is very excellent and deserves credit. He conveys that it is necessary to know the personalities in first few minutes of the negotiation and use statements / decisions according to that personality to arrive at our favourable agreement.

His ability to give examples from negotiation between countries, teacher & student, owner & tenant, shopkeeper & customer, hotel management & customer, employee & employer, door-seller & resident and among the family members makes him a very good negotiator at all levels.

It is a very practical & useful book for everyone !

Defusing Anger

I came across '21 Ways to Defuse Anger and Calm People Down' from a friend. Michael Staver explores the mindset & belief of Angry Person and the ways to deal constructively with such Angry people. His definition of Fear (Finding Evidence Against Reality) with an example of a brain adding head,nose,legs,eyes to a non-existant thing is excellent. He starts by conveying the losses due to anger such as Loss in Judgement, Inablity of self-control & Inability to Receive.

He correlates the stages of anger with the Bell Shape & conveys that it has its own characteristics just as the base(normal person), slope(gradually increasing anger - Escalation) , top(Peak of anger - Crisis) , slope(Decrease in anger after crisis - Resolution) and base(Back to normalcy). He conveys tricks to handle anger at every such stage so that the angry person reaches the falling-slope / base of bell without doing much damage.

He also busts many myths of anger like 'Verbal/Physical venting will have lasting calmning effects', 'Getting angry is the only way to get things done', 'It is only natural to respond that way - The excuse myth' , 'Strongly confronting an angry person will back them down' and many more.

The author conveys the need for listening, being quiet, empathy, venting, dis-engaging, warning-signs, timeout, apology, playing referee & many other interesting practical tricks that are very useful in office, dealerships, negotiations & relationships.

He also gives steps to deal with 'abusing anger' & for tackling 'dangerous threats'.

Certain instances are so True that prove Michael Staver's expertise in Anger. His ability to mix humour at certain scenarios while teaching the Anger Defusing tricks deserve credit.

The tricks & scenarios are very practical and is a Must Read for Everyone.

InitBlog

I got Robin Sharma's 'Monk Who Sold His Ferrari' recently . It looks like a tiny book, but in reality it has a very vast content. Robin Sharma has built this book with his thoughts about Self leadership, Personal responsibility & Spiritual embodiment by having a Lawyer's visit to India(Himalayas) in the main track. He provides information exact to the point with simple & tiny examples.

Hats-Off to his style of narration using a Garden, Stopwatch, Sumo warrior, Pink wire and Diamond path . He makes the Mind as Garden and asks us to be the watchman for it. The role of watchman is to look out for negative thoughts & keep it out of mind. Just like the strong Pink wires , he asks us to have the will power in controlling the mind(garden). By doing this we will have mastery over mind and inturn mastery over life. Self mastery also requires the Time mastery & he uses the stopwatch to convey it.

Ideas like Half filled Cup, Energy Leaks, Blueprinting, Opposition Thinking, Mind Filter, Magic rule 21 & Push-ups deserve credit. He uses few Chinese and Sanskrit words to explain certain basic things that are existing from ancient days. His ability to go beyond languages to convey the info to his readers is interesting.

Robin Sharma conveys that,
People who study others are wise and People who study themselves are enlightened.

I would like to convey that,
People who read 'Monk Who Sold his Ferrari' will move one step near to their life's goal/achievement.

I recommend it for everyone.