English – Anil's blog

3 Tips to create a professional Email ID

For a person of Telugu origin, if the surname is Atluri like in my case, it would be [email protected]. Now Anil is a common name and so there may be many with the surname that is Atluri. So what do we do then? We could use AnilTheAuthor. Or an other simple thing would be A for Anil = [email protected].

So why do you need a professional Email ID?Let us presume you are a recruiter. How would you react to an email id like say: [email protected]. Better still, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected], [email protected] ? ?

Funny? Let us say you are a HR and you are working for a popular employer. it is only natural you will be receiving quite a number of résumés with these kind of email ids, what happens to you. The first thing that happens to you is you turn away from these email id’s. If nothing else they bore you to death. In other words, even before this HR person looks at the résumé this email id has created a negative impact. A negative impact is a minus. Do you want that? Obviously not.

So follow these 3 tips to create a professional email id. Before you do that, remember there are two parts to an email id.
One – is the name you choose and the other is the domain name. For example, in this email id: [email protected], lakshmi is the first part of the email id. That part which comes first before @.
Two – is the domain name. For example anything that comes after the ‘@’ sign. In this example it is the @gmail.com.

Unique Email ID

1 – First and most important one; create a unique email id. An email id that gives you the edge. That makes the HR or any other person immediately connect with you.

2 – In order to have that unique email ID that gives you the professional edge, maintain two email id’s. One for your professional life and an other for your family, friends and other stuff. That way when you open your personal email inbox you know what to expect. emails from your friends and family and may be those promotional mails from various other businesses and other such entities. Now, if it is a professional email id, you do not miss those interview call letters, offer letters, and other important emails.

So now there is no chance to lose your most important professional / career / education emails. Because this is exclusively and unique email id just for your job / career and or profession.

No Nicknames. No numbers.

3 – Having decided on a professional email id, how do you go about creating one? The best way to do is to use your first and last name. For example let us presume your first name is Lakshmi and your last name is Devi, create one that says lakshmidevi. But then since this name is quite common, it may have already been taken by some one else. So what to do? Use your first name and add your surname to it. (When I say surname, what I mean is your family name. In India there are many ways a person is given a name. For example the Tamilian uses his father’s name to be the last name. For the Telugu speaking people, it is the family name. Family name for the Telugu is the name of the village they hail from. So then in the Tamil name example let us presume that the father’s name is Raman.

Then the first name is Lakshmi and the last name is Raman. Therefore it is lakshmiraman. However for a person of Telugu origin, if the surname is Atluri like in my case, it would be anilatluri.@gmail.com. Now Anil is a common name and so there may be many with the surname, that is Atluri. So what do we do then? We could use AnilTheAuthor. Or an other simple thing would be A for Anil = [email protected].

Numbers and Email IDs

There are also those that use numbers with their names. For example birthdate or birthday. Something like this: [email protected] . Personally I woldn’t recommend that. First thing, we do not want to give the spammers our birth date and invite unnecessary spam mails. An other option would be to use name of a subject that you specialize in your email id. For example let us presume you are into finance. Your email could be SoumyaFinance. With little variations it could be sowmya_finance or finance.sowmya or sowmya–finance. A combination of a hyphen (–) an underscore ( _ ) or even a dot ( . ) would make things easier for you. Yes, there are also some webmail sites that offer generic domain names like engineer.com, songwriter.com etc. You can go to through the complete list of domains available here: Remember some of the services are subscription based, meaning you will have to pay for it. They are all not free.
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So keep it that way.
Your professional / career email id is unique. Do not share it indiscriminately and attract unnecessary spam mails and lose your most important professional emails. Be clear. Never, ever give it away. Use it carefully. This is one email id you are most likely be using for the rest of your life.

My List Of “Top Ten Books”

That was the question before me. Where do I begin? That pestering question was around me like a monsoon mosquito buzzing around. Why a mosquito you ask? Why not a fly? Fly does not bite though it could kill you. When did it begin? On 29th of August, some time around noon I think. We all affectionately call him TRS and apart from other things he is a voracious reader and he tagged me. Where you say? Facebook. That’s where. For the ”top ten books”.

There were others too. But I am not mentioning here because here I am going talk about only the English books.

It is a great advantage to be born into a family of letters. That is until someone comes and asks you for a list, like TRS does here, to list the “Top Ten”

Here is my first one in the series.

Physics for Entertainment.

Yep. A non-fiction book. Actually a set of two books.

This is the book that kindled in me a certain scientific temperament. It helped me understand things better and equipped me with the right tools to understand life as it unravelled its secrets to me.

I tore off a page from one of my used rough note book, made a container out of it, and with the lighted candle, boiled water in that paper container! That was just fantastic don’t you think?

Then I understood how this little bird you see in this picture constantly keeps dipping its head into the glass of water?! Like a perpetually thirsty bird! I think a whole generation was inspired by this book.

Yakov Isidorovich Perelman was the author of this book. It is unfortunate that this author died of starvation during the seize of Stalingard, by the Germans.

Yakov Perelmen - Physics for Entertainment — Author of many scientific books and editor of magazines including Nature

This book was translated into many Indian languages. One of them was in Telugu నిత్యజీవితంలో భౌతికశాస్త్రం. (nityajiivitaMlO bhautikasastram).

So there you are TRS, this is the first book in my “top ten list“. I’ll try to post them as and when I find the time.

Gratitude Challenge – Day Four

He was my father’s contemporary. He was my father’s friend. Many do not know that he was the man who published “vishalandhra” (విశాలాంధ్ర) from Madras which later became the Communist party’s Telugu daily newspaper. He is the man who brought to light Guradazada’s ‘dEsabhakti’ (దేశభక్తి) poem penned by his own hand. He was the editor of “Soviet Land” a periodical published from Madras. He was one of the founder members of “arasam” (అరసం – అభ్యుదయ రచయితల సంఘం). A chapter of “Arasam” came into being in Madras and my mother was one of the founder members of that chapter and it used to conduct its meetings from our bookstore. The literary giants of the day used to attend those meetings and so were the film personalities especially from the Telugu film industry. It was left to me being the youngest of them all to spread the mats, arrange for refreshments. I also used to prepare the invitations. Invitations were nothing but post cards sold by the Posts and Telegraph department. I had to write the program and post them. During those days he used to visit our book store and spend long hours in the evenings after his office hours. He was Setti Eswara Rao. I did not know then that he had been observing me keenly. It was he who first mentioned that I had a gift and I should hone it. He was referring to me and my reading habits and my writing skills. That is the second time in my life someone mentioned that I had a certain talent. A talent to read and write. Of course, he did not mention it to me, I do not know why, but he always took an interest and encouraged me to write. There were times I used to scribble and throw them away. That is until a few years ago. Unfortunately I do not have any of his pictures at this time and this will have to do. Yes, I am grateful to Setti Eswara Rao garu.

***

It was in 1987, on February 13th the Government of India issued a commemorative multi colored postal stamp on my maternal grandfather “Kaviraju” Tripuraneni Ramaswamy. His daughter Chouda Rani is my mother. Atluri Pitcheswara Rao is my father. (He was a naval engineer, he served the Royal Indian Navy and subsequently when India won her independence he became part of the Indian navy. He participated in the Royal Indian Mutiny, against the British). I am their only child. My father passed away while I was very young.

During an interview with BBC — Smt Mohini Giri, during an interview with BBC

So my mother and I were at New Delhi to attend the postage stamp release function by the the then President of India Giani Zail Singh. Smt Lakshmi Raghuramaiah wife of Sri. Kotha Raghuramaiah who held many prominent positions in the GOI, had made an appointment with the founder president of the War Widows Association. So we went to visit her. After a few minutes of chat she chose me to be the topic and was asking my mother about me. At the end of the discussion she had only this to say to my mother. “With your love for your only son, you are stifling him. Leave him with me and you will be proud to be his mother. Please listen to me”. Of course I do not know what hidden talents (which I am not aware of ) she was impressed about, but she is an other person in my life who in as many words made a deep impression about my own self-worth. Here is a total stranger, an elderly person, who had seen a world at much higher plane and found something in me that to this day haunts me. Gratitude, yes certainly for letting me know something I did not know until then.

***
“Start immediately. Stop. Mother Serious.” That’s why telegrams were dreaded those days. The minute they see the postman at an odd hour visit you by on his cycle with a pink document folded and sealed, one is always terrified. I remember one particular instance. That telegram came late in the evening almost when it was night. The minute my father opened it and read it out my mother started weeping. It informed us that her mother passed away. Those were the days of Telegrams and Wires.

My father had a friend who was into international trade. Exports and imports. He used to travel abroad quite often. He used to send me beautiful picture postcards from all those countries he used to visit. That was his way of saying, that I was in his thoughts. Madras is the only international airport in the peninsular India then and the gateway to the world, at least to those who could afford to fly. During one of his returns to India, invariably he visited me and took me out. He had something to convey to his importer in Europe. He took me to the GPO (General Post Office), on Mount Road, they call it Anna Salai now. That is the first time I was exposed to a Telex machine and international communication. He is the first exporter I ever came across. I filed it away as an other memory. Period.

Later I came to know a lot more about International Trade and commerce and many other components of the trade. I knew what was a Fax. I knew about ships. Containers. Precision. Strict Quality Checks. Pricing. Vendor Negotiations. International markets. Different Cultures across the continents. Penalties for delays. LC’s. Red LC’s. Open LC’s. Packings and packagings. Services. Cargo. Flights. Samples. Foreign Exchange. Dollar Terms. Taxes. Licences. Permits. Quotas.

And it was not the mundane affairs of the transcontinental commerce alone. It helped me sit up and open my eyes and observe those human creatures that clothe themselves in billion shades of grey and white and in between. I am a good listener and have always been one but with this man I have become a better listener.

All this was made possible by one man’s implicit faith in an other human being and his deliverables. He was always pushing me to my limits. He knew more about me than I knew about myself. Every time I thought I reached my limits, he used to nudge me. A very small nudge. That nudge helped me leap. Thanks to him today I am a totally different man. Today I can very confidently claim that I do not need any nudging. I can reach out and cross limits beyond my very own limits set at the horizon. I set them, I tried them and I reached them successfully, every time.

Aditya Pamulapati

Love you Aditya. I do not know where I would be without you in my life. This is not Gratitude. This is sheer unadulterated celebration of joy and of friendship. Thank you dude!

Note: This is the fourth part of the Gratitude Challenge (Day Four). This is a post that I posted on my Facebook wall and I felt that confining it to that SMN is not right and that it should reach out to more people. That is why you see it here.Well, I guess that sort of sums up for the day four. It’s been hectic and one more day to go.