Save the earth and some money

Now that the races have been run, the photographs clicked, the speeches delivered and page 3 events to save the earth attended, let us get a little serious about saving the earth. Let us realize that trying to save the earth is not just a media hogging opportunity it is the need of hour that each one of us earthling needs to take seriously every day and not just on world environment day.

Here are some things that we can do to save the earth and save some money for ourselves. Remember being environmentally conscious can be good for your pocket also.

1. Take the bus or metro and avoid the car. Especially if you have a fixed office timings and need to go only from point A to B and B to A in the course of the day. So why waste money on petrol? Why not sit comfortably in the Metro or the bus (though buses are not nice I must admit) and reach our destination. In winters it is better as you don’t have to worry about 2 much body odor.
2. Keep the AC thermostat at 27degrees as compared to 21 degrees most people keep their thermostat at. Remember the lower the AC temperature you keep in a room the higher is the amount of energy it will take which means higher energy bills and more impact on the nature.
3. By the same token switch to CFL lamps and also switch of lights and fans in rooms that are not being used by you.
4. Go trekking: Instead of going to Europe or Hong Kong in the plane go to nearby hills for trekking. It is cheaper and more environment friendly. But please do not spoil the hills with your litter.
5. Take the One Bucket Test: All of us who claim to be championing the green cause here is my ultimate test for you. How much water you use for shower? I bet most of you have no idea so next time try this… Fill a bucket of water and take bath with only this one bucket of water. You will realize that not only it is possible to take bath with only one bucket of water it is also much more environmentally friendly and the freshness you will achieve is exactly same as the shower in which you waste may be 10 times more water. The problem in most Indian cities is that water is almost free of cost due to high subsidy on water. May be government should consider revising the cost of water upward which will force people to save some water. After all it is being said again and again that the next world war could be for water between groups of nations.
6. Walk instead of taking the car to nearby destinations it is more eco friendly and free of cost.
7. Eat less: This applies the most on me. Trust me most of us including me eat much more than our body needs. We make our bodies the dumping ground for food left in fridge and on plates. This not only makes us fat but is also going to cost you more money in long run due to need of specialized care in hospitals. If each one of us just starts eating only half a loaf of bread less we could feed millions of people. Eating less will also cost you less and will be less burden on Mother Nature. We not only eat more than we need we eat highly processed food that require more energy to convert them into their current form + preservatives adding to more pollution and cost so let us try to eat foods as close as possible to their natural form. It is cheaper, healthier and friendlier to nature.
8. Stop the car on red light: Saves fuel and tension, and causes less emission so less pollution plus your car will give higher mileage. By same token there is no point is driving at 90 KM/hr when 50 is the speed limit in the city you any way will get stuck at the next red right so what is the hurry? Speeding is more polluting, gives less mileage and if you get in an accident extremely costly.
9. Car pool. So easy to do yet hardly anybody follows the same in NCR it s popular in other cities especially in US but not in India.
10. Don’t take printouts: Most of us are fond of taking printouts may be because we take even personal printouts in office. This practice should be actively discouraged by companies and each printout or photocopy should be accounted for. Saving paper will save not only money for your company or for you ( in case you are doing it at home). It will also be saving some poor tree some where in the deep jungles which may be housing the nest of a little sparrow. So for the sake of this little sparrow think twice before shooting that printout. Also subscribe to email statements for your bank accounts/ credit cards etc. With unlimited space being available on most email servers today it will not only keep your statements safe and handy for when you need them it will also save paper.

So let us see that not only we do our bit for environment and mother earth for the photo ops let us incorporate these small steps in our day to day life and imbibe them as habits this will not only help our planet for which we do not have a backup, these steps are also pocket friendly too. Remember the old saying-- “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

Making Money blogging

I was going through some posts on Indiblogger.in a website I keenly follow. ( http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php?id=489 ) I found a lot of questions regarding how much money one is making blogging ( answer for me is ZER0). These questions made me thinking that some people seriously want to make some money blogging. There were some references to full time bloggers who are living only on there blogging income. (I hope they are not living in a hole in the wall). So I decided to do some calculations. Consider you have a day job in which you make INR 500000/ annum. Now considering you work 12 months, 22 days a month for 8 hours a day and spend about 4 hours a day in work related activities like traveling, getting ready etc. So we add 4 hours to the daily work and come with a work day of 12 hours. Now we calculate your hourly wages from your job, this comes out to Rs 158.
Annual Wage 500000
monthly 41667
Working days 22
Working hours 8
Travel hours 4
Total hours spent on work 12
Yearly work related hrs 3168
So wages/hour 158


Blogging hours per month 40
Blogging hours per Year 480
Discount for liking blogging 50%
So wage expected for blogging 79
So yearly blogging income 37879

Now consider a scenario where you are a part time blogger and spend about 2 hours a day for 20 days a month into blogging related activities ( writing, researching etc)
Now in order to make an equivalent amount of money to your day job you will have to make an equivalent amount of money from blogging. But in order to be fair since we enjoy blogging we will be happy to receive only 50% of the rate that we get for our regular job. Which means if you make 79 Rs per hour of blogging you should be happy. This will give us an annual figure of Rs 37879 from 2 hours of blogging around 20 days a month. Now you will have to do calculations to get this amount how many clicks and page view your blog needs to get. Please remember that the amount to be earned in every case will be different and if you find that you will never be making equivalent amount of money ( or half of it) to your day job you need to be practical and write purely for the joy of writing a blog to express oneself. Would love to hear from you on this.