This week, we will talk about the ubiquitous email! Along with that, find out how a word launched a thousand thoughts and which guy is not to be dated and finally, a new way to say thank you. Join me…

Emails are the modes of modern business communication. Professionals have to be really careful about their emails these days. A primary reason is that, with time running ahead of us perpetually, it’s impossible to read or respond to every email. What’s more, the more important ones get buried in an avalanche of correspondence that you won’t bother reading. I have some friends who have thousands of unread emails in their inbox! I’m much tempted to ask them what prevents them from dealing with emails on a daily basis?

How much time would it take to delete the unnecessary emails every morning? This is how I do it. I mark all the emails I won’t read. Trash them. Then sort out the emails I got in separate folders. The congratulatory ones I receive from readers and business relations go into one, the personal ones go into another and so on. I also attach descriptive tag lines so that I find it easier to dig them out. Email clutter can be a terrible pain and I’m past that time when I used to go raving mad trying to find something that I urgently needed. Try these folks, they help to make life easier!

Kate has been thrown into a dilemma over a rather nondescript word! To refresh your memory, Kate works as a freelancer. Now, Kate has this good-looking (that was what she told us) client who means a little more to Kate than serious business. Kate finds this guy is suave and all. Megan told me that Kate is considering on cutting down on other projects so that she can work exclusively with him. However, there’s a lot of slip between the cup and the lip. This guy apparently told Kate that he finds her “cute”. Trust guys to be really ambiguous sometimes!

Kate is worrying her nights off wondering what that means! Kate confided to Megan, “Does this mean that I’m not ‘dateable’?” Megan rubbished such a thought as creative imagination, more so to console a distraught Kate. Kate asked Irina if the guy had meant that he found her sort of chubby instead of good-looking. Kate, one of the die hard fanciful romantics, is spending all her waking time trying to dig up a logical reason for the word ‘cute’. Last heard, she was checking Merriam Webster to find out all the connotations for the word! Oh, Kate glared at me when I suggested that she should ask the guy himself!

An incident could have become a cause for some bad feelings if the person involved was not as sensible as Megan. By chance or coincidence, whatever you call it, Megan chanced upon Irina’s ex at the cafe. Since our friends are well aware of whom we dated at what point in time, it was no big task for Megan to remember that Irina was pretty sore about this link-up going dry. This was one of those rare relationships that you keep thinking of for years after it’s no more around. But this guy seems to have moved on well. Since he knew Megan back then, he was fast to pull up a chair.

Megan talked with the guy with an open mind. But somewhere down the line Megan felt that the guy wanted this to be more than just a casual conversation. He was actually trying to charm Megan. And being successful as well, if I may add! When Megan told me that they had exchanged phone numbers, I was quick to ask, “Are you going to date him?” Megan, always sure as a matron, shook her head and said, “You never date your best friend’s ex! That’s against the unwritten girl code!” Megan took out her phone and deleted the number, saying, “It was just courtesy!”

People have their own way of showering appreciation. While the oh-so-touching thank you notes are still elegant and classy, innovative ways of thanking people are very much in vogue. How you thank someone speaks more than the actual message! If you are thanking someone in the same cliched way, it somehow gives off the impression that you are not much sincere about it. For those really special people in your life, you have to think of unique, never-seen-before ways of expressing gratitude. And you have to learn something from Eleanor’s son, Mike, and his wife, Lisa.

Mike’s son Andrew was crying himself hoarse over a toy bike. When Eleanor heard about it, she arranged for one to be delivered at their home. Needless to say, the kid was over the moon with his brand new gift. But it was his parents who were more touched by Eleanor’s gesture. So they thought of something that would be appropriate for such a warm, loving way of reaching out. Mike and Lisa took up the camera and captured moments of Andrew with the bike. They created a visual delight of images and send them over to Eleanor. Eleanor’s eyes were not dry when she was telling me this story.

Here’s a G.B. Stern quote for those who don’t really like expressing their indebtedness: “Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.”