Not someone to write a travel blog, I am still forced into posting this entry because of the ripples of thought a recent visit to a great eastern country stirred in me.
A short visit to this vast country made me realize that God has been very equitable in distributing the nature's beauty. This country has fantastic beaches, mountains, desert & snow!
While we marveled at the god created & man made attractions, a lot of friendly people around offered to take photographs of our family for us, something I had not experienced before. Though these incidents, faces will go a long way down the memory lane & bring a smile on my face whenever I think of them, this post is about something else, something more profound - at least for me. So without drifting further, I will make my point.
Having come from a background that focussed on consumerism, the early closing hours of the shops in this country had me wondering if it made economic sense to limit the shopping time. Though never very strong in academics, the only thing I was sure was that governments & corporates mostly benefitted when people spent - for fulfilling a need or no, by impulse or otherwise, with cash or credit, on local made goods or imported products, and longer the hours, more the spending, my not so fast processor told me. Unable to keep my confusion to myself, I had confided my thoughts to a close friend, a local in that country. Her reply not just offered me enlightenment but also had me floored. It was quite simple (for her), she said that the people spent their evenings not in busy malls where they sold zillions of things, but at homes - with their families & that the government encouraged a work-life balance, a term quite familiar to the 'HR' by profession me. When an advanced country could imbibe this concept, I appall at why corporates that probably give birth to such lip service jargons find it challenging to practice it in letter & in spirit.
A short visit to this vast country made me realize that God has been very equitable in distributing the nature's beauty. This country has fantastic beaches, mountains, desert & snow!
While we marveled at the god created & man made attractions, a lot of friendly people around offered to take photographs of our family for us, something I had not experienced before. Though these incidents, faces will go a long way down the memory lane & bring a smile on my face whenever I think of them, this post is about something else, something more profound - at least for me. So without drifting further, I will make my point.
Having come from a background that focussed on consumerism, the early closing hours of the shops in this country had me wondering if it made economic sense to limit the shopping time. Though never very strong in academics, the only thing I was sure was that governments & corporates mostly benefitted when people spent - for fulfilling a need or no, by impulse or otherwise, with cash or credit, on local made goods or imported products, and longer the hours, more the spending, my not so fast processor told me. Unable to keep my confusion to myself, I had confided my thoughts to a close friend, a local in that country. Her reply not just offered me enlightenment but also had me floored. It was quite simple (for her), she said that the people spent their evenings not in busy malls where they sold zillions of things, but at homes - with their families & that the government encouraged a work-life balance, a term quite familiar to the 'HR' by profession me. When an advanced country could imbibe this concept, I appall at why corporates that probably give birth to such lip service jargons find it challenging to practice it in letter & in spirit.
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