Wanna buy inexpensive textbooks

Education is U.S. is typically quite expensive. On top of that, textbooks costs hundreds of dollars. If you are a student, I can empathize with you, since I paid my graduate education (MBA) out of my pocket. I always strived to save money, wherever I could. One such avenue was textbook purchase. Here is how I went about saving money in textbook purchase; obviously the choice was online / Internet shopping:

1. School publishes textbooks few weeks before the beginning of the course. I make sure that I order the textbooks at least 3 weeks in advance for timely delivery. If school doesn't publish the textbook, I would recommend contacting your Professor regarding the same. My professors were always helpful. Make sure to get the correct edition though. Sometimes it matters a lot. [Check with Professor whether older editions would work for the course. You can find older editions at significantly lower price than the current edition.]
2. Pick up the ISBN or Book Title and check out the deals at GetTextbooks.com. This website gives the list of deals and the provider.
3. Choose the "trusted" provider and order it from them. I have had couple of bad experience with buyers from Half.com and other provider (I don't remember it now). It is typically few buyers in those sites, not the provider itself has issues. I never had issues with Amazon.com and its buyers.
4. Remember to read few comments and check the rating of the buyer, before placing the order. Read the item description very carefully.
5. Note, you will be ordering the paperback edition (not the hardcover one). While ordering the paperback edition, do NOT order the Indian or black & white edition. The paper quality is usually not good. Other eastern country editions are usually good. This will have the exact content as U.S edition, so no worries about the content.

Btw, another inexpensive source is to borrow it from friends or families. Don't be shy and, in my opinion, it is not a crime. In fact, there is nothing wrong in it. They will be glad to lend and share some financial burden from you.

I haven't sold any textbooks, as I plan to use them in future for reference purposes. But few of my schoolmates did; so, you can make some money by selling the books. If you plan to do so, then sell them immediately. Otherwise, publishers come up with new edition and old editions loose value significantly. You can sell the textbooks online at well known sites (e.g., Amazon.com, Half.com, etc). Hassle free option would be to broadcast email to student aliases and find buyers within your school.

Happy reading and good luck!

I am interested to learn about other tricks that work or worked for you.

How to make friends in an unfamiliar party?

Couple of weeks back we were invited to the birthday party of my daughter's friend. Let me call him Alex. My wife has met Alex's mom at the Gymnastics class that my daughter goes to and they knew each other for a while. But, I am a newbie to Alex and his family. My wife prodded me for a while whether I want to attend the party. Clearly, I wouldn't know anyone in the party, unless the world has shrunk to the size of a peanut. To be honest, I am not an extrovert. At the same time, I am not an introvert either. So, I contemplated for a while and decided to take up the challenge to explore the uncharted world.

Last afternoon we were at the party. My strategy was to get to know someone through my daughter and socialize with them. She is adept at socializing and making new friends. I thought that she can be a gateway to meet her friends' parents. But, as soon as my daughter entered the party hall, she vanished among kids. My wife is new to the crowd as well, except the hosts. Well, you can imagine how busy the hosts would be in the party. So, can't expect them to take care of us all the time. With no backup plan or tactics on hand, I started fiddling with my blackberry for a while. Soon, I got bored with the old toy. Then I remembered the following quote from bible:

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you
shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you."

I started working out the room. I spotted couple of active (or extroverts) folks in the crowd and mingled with them. Unfortunately, they took up charge as official photo and videographer for the party and they had to do their duty. I was pushed to ground zero. I went fishing again, but all the attempts ended up with brief introductions only. Finally, I was able to converse with a person and able to socialize with him. In the end we even exchanged our phone numbers and planned to meet up some other time.

If you are like me, then here are some tips to break ice and make friends in an unfamiliar party:

• Smile - If your kids' leave you sinking in an unfamiliar crowd, then smile will come as a rescuer. Even otherwise, keep smiling always - You never know who is falling in love with your smile. This will serve as a gateway for networking or socialization. Folks would almost always reciprocate and depending on that you could make a call whether that is the person whom you want to socialize.
• Search - Search the room (or party hall) for extrovert folks. They are easy to mingle with. With them you don't have to work hard. They will carry the conversation. :-)
• Topics - Here are some topics that you could ponder to begin and continue the conversation for a while. Remember! you are not interviewing someone. You need to "develop or build a conversation," but not make someone run away by asking too many questions.

1. Name
2. Home - Local and/or native
3. Work
4. Travel
5. Family
6. Hobbies/Interests

• Read - One of my professor has recommended How to Work a Room by Susan RoAne on this topic. I began reading it, but haven't completed it yet. Perhaps, that could be helpful to prepare you. Also, read newspaper or be familiar with the current news. This would help to easily discuss about any topic.

Btw, I am not an expert at this; socializing is a soft skill and there is no strict formula. Hope you find these helpful to you as well. I am interested to know what worked for you and what didn't. Looking forward to hear from you.

Got Google Voice?

Hurrah! I got an invitation to sign up for Google Voice. I immediately registered and got a local (San Jose) number. I fiddled with the application for some time and it has lot of cool features. I haven't tried all of them yet, but few.

1. Voicemail - Nice voicemail feature with the transcript. Notifications sent as email and SMS to your mobile. Transcript was mediocre given my accent. Perhaps, I was spoke too fast. But the cool thing, is you can "read" the voicemail and helps you if you are in "boring" meetings (which happens very often in today's corporate world), but couldn't really call your voice mailbox and check it. :-)

2. Incoming call - rings "all" your phones depending on the setting. This is quite handy if you are running out of your mobile phone minutes. You can pick up the call on your home or office phone.

Google Voice is still in beta and hope it would get better and better. Boy! those folks in Google are really innovating. Go Google!

Oh! wait, did I mention that you can place calls within US for FREE using Google Voice? Whatz your experience with it?