Thoughts galore

2011-05-29T09:59:00.000+05:30

'Why so serious?' asks the joker in 'The Dark Knight' and I would like to ask this question to many people in my workplace, more importantly I would like to ask it to myself also. In last few years I have got this bad habit of thinking about some serious or rather uncomfortable questions. I wonder what I am doing to myself or the circumstances doing to me. Few years back when I newly joined my organization, I was known for my always smiling face. Sometimes my colleagues use to ask me why am I smiling, and I used to say "Well, just like that." That smile on my face has vanished over the years. I still laugh a lot when some of us friends get together and we make fun of each other or tell jokes, etc. But, that smiling face has somehow lost in the past. I want that smiling face of mine back. I want to work towards making things so good for me and around me that I am smiling all the time again.

Facts from the corporate world

2011-01-02T13:11:00.000+05:30

I was just going through my old draft posts, which I never published. I found this post, which I wrote almost four and half years back. Not all facts have been valid in particular to me but I have observed them around me all the time. Some of them are valid only for IT industry.

Some of the facts are what I wrote 4 years back, the rest are additional ones.

1. It takes only one manager to convert a simple commonsensical technique into a management fad and destroy it from its roots.
2. It is ok to apply any technique without understanding concepts and theory behind it. (root-cause of previous point)
3. To survive in corporate world you must have very effective filters in terms of your ears. Only what you want to do should be listened.
4. It doesn't matter whether what you say is conceptually more correct, more logical and more commonsensical, boss is always right.
5. Normally the person immediately responsible for you (immediate boss) is the person who least understands what you are doing.
6. If you want to learn how not to use IT, IT companies themselves are the best examples.
7. Since IT people make more money than there equivalents in other Industry, they think they know more things and better than others, while the reality is exactly opposite.
8. The more you know about the domain in which you are doing work; worse will be your perceived performance, more chances that you will not be allowed to do right things, more chances that you will be removed from doing that work
9. Agreeing with your boss is considered as substitute for responsibility to take right decisions.
10. Talking is considered as substitute for knowing (actually I guess this has been applicable from hundreds of years, you must have heard the proverb 'empty vessels make most noise') and people who talk the most are the one who are given leadership roles - so you know... why on average leadership in corporate world is so horrible
11. If you want your organization to suck at something, make sure you make it part of the goals for the people in their appraisals and the corporate system will make sure that all the genuine efforts will suppressed and discouraged in favor of enormous volume of absolute mediocre and fake efforts made to meet the goals.
12. It is not necessary to understand problem in order to provide solution. (especially true in IT industry), you just have to sell the solution, using some buzz words, calling it latest technology, saying some other client used it (doesn't matter that client is repenting the decision) - No wonder, very high percentage of IT solutions are such gigantic failures.

Well, I just had a nice lunch and feeling sleepy, so I will stop with these for the time being. Anyone who happens to read this post (hmm.... ok, that can happen only by mistake), is welcome to add more facts in the comments.

2010-12-28T15:35:00.003+05:30

Last two-three weeks, I have been putting lot of hard work to do certain things, that I am not sure whether I should be doing, and do not have enough clarity about them. Then, today I came across this quote.

"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim" - George Santanaya.

I wonder if it applies to me in my current situation. To some extent, it definitely seems so. I mean whatever I am doing definitely contributes to some shallow aim, which in conventional world are very important ones, but does it really contribute to what I want to do from my heart? I don't know, my senses are dead. After visiting my parents on the weekend, my mom mentioned that my approach to working was so much unlike me, not giving enough time to myself to recover or refresh my brain.

The funny thing is I still don't know what to do, whether to keep playing the game which I will lose with 90% probability (assuming this is perhaps the final hurdle and if I cross it I will win the game) or to start a new game?

2010-11-27T20:08:00.002+05:30

'When was the last time you did something for the first time' goes the tag line for an advertise of a particular movie series on a movie channel. What a lovely line it is. Really, how boring we make our lives as we grow up. We go to the same damn place to work, we go to same restaurants, we always eat same kind of food and so on. As we grow up, we become more and more afraid of trying something new. Most people spend their entire life without really understanding what is that they enjoy doing the most. The place where I work is so personified by this attitude of 'afraid to change' that everyone is just stuck to their work they have been doing from years, the routine they are having from years. Sometimes, I wonder whether my insistence of putting a logical completion to my earlier work is really my need or am I also afraid to change? At least at this moment, I think it is my need and hope it never becomes fear to change something in my life.
I think at some level most people are not really afraid of trying new things. It is just that in today's world (or for that matter as much as we can see back in the history) we average people have made our life so miserable, so much constrained by conventions, social rules, etc. that once we reach adulthood we are supposed settle into routine for rest of our life or at least till we retire from so called work. We are afraid that our work (rather a beaten path called career) will suffer or family will suffer or health will suffer or what will people say, etc.
In a way I like, the way people in some European countries and countries like Japan, work for 11 months without taking any extra holidays and the go for a vacation for a fortnight or a month. Of course, most of them visit different place as tourists. Although it is nice to visit different places (especially it is nice to relax in naturally beautiful places), countries or cultures, tourism also becomes a kind of routine after some time. One can learn a lot through travel but for that going as a tourist, staying in a hotel, visit museums or some nature related points, take photos and come back is not really good idea. If you spend just one month in a different country or a culture interacting with people there and understanding their culture, you will perhaps learn more about life than your entire schooling may have taught you. You will realize how many stupid assumptions we make about life, about how we should behave, about what is good for us and what is bad for us, how many things we think are sacrosanct and then see those things have no value in other culture and it does not really make any difference or sometimes even betters your life.
Well, all these things apart I think it is nice to have one month off in a year, where you can get away from routine and have a nice recreational period, when you can be like small children with curiosity in eyes and itching to understand, try and experiment with new things. Ideally, entire life should be like that, But, why not start with one month? Well, can I do it? Hmm....

2010-09-24T22:13:00.004+05:30

Have you ever imagined, how difficult it can be to take a good photo of the moon in the night without having a 'lovely big zoom camera with freedom to choose many manual settings' and a tripod. Yesterday was pournima and probably better day for taking photo but I tried to take one today. Why? I don't know, I just went into the balcony, because it is very pleasant outside with little cool breeze due ti drizzle we had in the evening. I just had a look up and thought well I got to take photo, how often have I tried to take a good photo of the moon which I see daily. So, I took out my camera after almost 4-5 months and tried. First few photos, with auto mode could not capture anything except a white dot in the middle of plain black background and for the first time I started missing having a nice SLR or digital SLR camera with good zoom lens. Of course, the failure to capture a good image must be more of my lack of photography skills but what the heck, machines can always be considered inadequate, can't they? So, I went into manual mode, disabled flash, increased exposure, tried higher ISO settings and long shutter times, but to my dismay my hands are not steady enough to capture a good image for long shutter times and increased exposure only change whit dot to very bight white dot. Finally, the best image I could capture is the one uploaded here. That too, it looks better because of some small clods surrounding the moon. Well, sometimes simple things are very difficult to get or capture.

2010-09-19T20:45:00.000+05:30

Nowadays, writing has become such an arduous task for me that it doesn't just happen. It is as if, somebody has sucked up all the mental energy needed for writing. I can react to people's writing through my writing but I don't feel like writing something on my own. Although most of posts are not really great, some of them do have good thoughts. Writing has never been my strength but sometime 5-6 years back, I found that it gives me some me some satisfaction. The funniest thing is that almost daily there is at least one thing I feel I should write something about, but I just can't get to my keyboard and start writing. And, if I sit to write, after two-three sentences suddenly all my thoughts dry up. All that chain of thoughts gets lost somewhere.

Well, this is not only happening to writing but almost everything I am doing nowadays. I wonder what are those things in our brains that help us going from just thinking to doing. I really need to fire them up. Or, may be convert some thinking energy to doing energy, can somebody invent such a transducer? It will be really useful for me, as I think too much. Well, sometimes even if you energy to do something, you still don't fill like doing it. You can hear a lot of lectures on how to get rid of procrastination but until the reason why you procrastinate is removed (assuming that reason is not just being lazy), nothing really is going to improve the situation.

Well, tomorrow I have to meet somebody who is going to question me, why I am not working. I feel like vanishing somewhere.

The Great Dictator - Last speech

2010-08-15T21:11:00.005+05:30

Chanced upon this wonderful movie by Charlie Chaplin while surfing channel on the TV. This was his first talking movie, satire on Nazism and typical lovely Chaplin movie. At the end of movie jewish barber played by Chaplin who is mistaken as Adenoid Hynkel gives a speech. We may not have dictators like Hitler any more, but most of the speech still pretty much valid for today.

I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite! Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed, and brutality. Look up, Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope, into the future! The glorious future, that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up!

2010-08-12T19:52:00.002+05:30

Long time, since I wrote. Why did I not write (asking myself)? Well, I did not feel like. Sometimes, in your life it becomes very difficult to sit and write something nice. When I started writing on blogs, for long time I hardly wrote and then I sometimes wrote about frustrations and some time about very random topics. Not that, I am trying to put my history of blogging here. I still observe a lot and feel like writing on lot of subjects but somehow the things are not coming together.
Overall, it has been a quite an unusual day today. For some reason I have been really relaxed today, to the extent that for some time I felt like, I don't have any work to do. All my work is done and of course as a result I was also feeling a bit bored. But, from last two days I think if there is one thing to learn that is people can really surprise you. Someone, I never expected will invite me for dinner, invited me for dinner; someone I thought generally is not very inclined to give feedback gave me a very nice and clear feedback on one of my ideas; and someone else who I always used to think is above some bad things in professional life seems to be stuck in those very bad things. All that I can see, is some difference of circumstance. The first someone, has probably come to accept the fact that however ever these guys may be (me and my colleagues), they are here working with me and some relaxed informal interaction may be nice. The second someone is looking relaxed since last two three weeks, may be some end of trouble for that person and that has changed that persons professional interactions very positively. While the third someone, seems to be changing from the moment, that person felt some threat to his reputation and his understanding of himself. I think it just highlights the fact that you might never understand a person without really taking his circumstances at present into account. It is always worth giving a chance if the circumstances are changing. I wonder how many people do I understand as they are their natural self, rather than the way they are in some forced situation. Of course, it is impossible a task. I think it is well known that forget about understanding someone else, we often do not even understand ourselves.
I guess this is enough for today's rambling.

2009-11-05T18:41:00.001+05:30

It is not a very common phenomena to wake up in the morning with the feelings that "I must fail tomorrow's exam". But it happened to me day before yesterday. As if to realize this feeling I could not give answers to many questions that I knew in yesterday's exam. What was even weird was this will probably the first time that I will be failing an exam and I did not have any bad feeling about it. However, almost in comical turn of events, I have not yet failed, but I have been given a chance, where I need to put in some work and I can save myself from failing. Some wise people say that most people quit just before their goal is about to realize, but how do I know whether it is about to realize or it is right time to quit. If you don't quit, finally you will achieve the goal but at what cost? Will it really be worth it?
I don't know what kind of answers am I searching for, but I am searching that's for sure.

2009-09-21T18:28:00.002+05:30

I was one of those lucky students in the childhood whose school was just five minutes walk from the house. I went today to a xerox shop in front of my school for copying some documents and after a long long long time, I was looking at my school with lot of time in my hand. After leaving the school, I must have passed my school thousand times, but somehow I don't think I waited and looked at it for some time. It almost the same as it was when I was studying there; at least from the outside. Except on the front sign showing my school's name, there is this funny text added that says, "ISO 9001-2000 certified"; couldn't help a chuckle. My beloved school has also fallen victim to trend of getting into standards unnecessarily. Well, let it be that is the most unimportant part. The building was never the part I was very attached to, although I do remember those classrooms and corridors. Whenever the school comes into my mind, I remember two things; one, my wonderful teachers and second, those carefree days. I wish I can be so carefree today. Adult life somehow doesn't make sense at all. Few months ago, I had this great urge to visit the school and meet my teachers, incidentally one of my classmates and long times friends happened to visit the school that time and informed me that hardly any teachers from our times are left in the school. Although that was expected ( I myself is 29 now), I felt sad and dropped the plan to visit the school. Many time when I am here and roaming around my place I will come across some of my teachers (especially my favorite ones like Chandane bai, Pawar bai, Afle bai,), but that hasn't happened. My school wasn't one of those hi-fi schools. It was simple school with limited facilities, but it was my world in my childhood and along with my home, that is the place which shaped the most important part of me.
Well, I just thank all my wonderful teachers. Wish they are having a great life and thank them again on behalf of all their students whose paths have been brightened by them.

2009-08-16T18:22:00.002+05:30

sometimes, they say you need to compromize;

sometimes, they say you need to lie down;

sometimes, they say you need to let go;

sometimes, they say you need to accept the orders;

sometimes, they say you need to accept the world as it is;

sometimes, they say you need to forget what you like;

almost always, they say you need to be different than what you are

and yet...

sometimes, you just need to be you, gather the courage and fight the world

2009-07-03T23:29:00.000+05:30

yet another day when I don't feel like doing anything. I just feel like writing and that too on paper using pencil or rather I am feeling more like drawing something using pencil and paper. So, what can be done?

Likhne ko to bahut ji chahta hai,
magar likhne ke liye kuchh sujhta nahi hai,
likhe to likhe kya,
vahi do-char vishay rah gaye hai,
kabhi karyalay ki murkhta pe likhte hai,
kabhi likhte hai khudki jindagi pe,
kabhi likh dete hai is jahan ki buraion pe,
nahi vo bhi sujha to likhe dete hai pyar pe,
kya jindgai yahi reh gayi hai,
kya inhi chakkaro me vo khatam ho jayegi,
kya kabhi vo nayi subah hogi,
jab hum khoye rahenge apni hi dhun me,
har ek pal ka maja le rahe honge,
na sar pe mandara rahi hogi koi chinta,
na bachegi kisi ko kuchh sabit karne ki aavshyakta,
na hogi kabhi kami jindagi jine ke liye,
pyar hi pyar hoga is jaha me,
ulajh rahe hai hum is khwab me is tarah,
ki hakikat me dur ja rahe khwab se,
ye likhte likhte hum kaha pahuch gaye hai,
kyon khudsehi hum khafa ho rahe hai,
likhne ka to bahut ji chahta hai,
magar likhne ke liye kuchh sujhta nahi hai.

First impressions

2009-05-23T14:49:00.000+05:30

One often reads that “first impression is the last impression.” However I have learnt through my experience that first impression probabilistically is the most deceptive impression. I also think that I probably know the reason why it is so. I think it is because in today’s world (probably as long as human kind has existed) most people pretend to be someone else or trying to follow some rules set by some religious or philosophical gurus or some babas/matas or some religious scriptures or some self-improvement stuff. Most people go by these rules rather than the intent behind them. Throw them in difficult situations or situations where they have to hurriedly interact (without having chance to remember and follow the rules) and their real personality starts coming out. When you really want to change for better understanding the intent rather than following some rules, your actions come from your sub-conscious, very naturally, you don’t have to remember to behave or act in certain way. Of course, there are many self-improvement gurus who say that of you follow something with enough regularity and make it a habit, it starts coming out naturally after some time, just like riding a bicycle, once you learn it, you can do it any time again. It is hard to argue against these statements, but there will always be some difference. It is like no matter how many languages you become expert of but in some sudden event first words that come out of your mouth will be of the first language that you acquired as a child. Of course, this was all about the people who are unintentionally pretending to be someone else; I don’t think I need to write about people who pretend purposefully to get some thing out of you.
And, last but not the least; you never know under what conditions a person is behaving in a certain way. I am not saying you should totally ignore somebody’s bad behavior but you can definitely decide to give the person a reasonable chance (I am not talking about crimes, that’s a totally different discussion. Here I am talking only about the day-to-day behaviors). Only when you give another chance and interact more with a person, you start understanding the real personality of the person. When we act in a particular situation or dialog, there are so many different things going in our mind and each of those things affect the way we act. And, then there always our biases that make us interpret a certain behavior in a favorable or unfavorable way. I am sure, you must have met with at least some people, who look extremely repulsive in the first impression but as you start knowing them more and more, you like them and sometimes they even become your best friends.

2009-04-23T22:42:00.001+05:30

Was just watching an ongoing sports tournament of a famous sports worldwide and found another fine example of the fact that the company in which work is run by bunch of brainless morons. My company is one of the sponsors for the last time champion team of the tournament, the players are sporting logo on their shirt and helmet. This would have been wonderful if my company sold products or provide services so that individual psychology matters and like when you go out buy a toothpaste, you remember some brand name because you saw it on your favorite sports person's shirt but my company provides services for big businesses. In the time of recession, where they are laying off (well, they are so called ethical people so they can't lay off, so kicking out people using all kinds of lame excuses) people, reducing salaries but wasting money on one of the most ineffective marketing strategies for the kind of business my company is in. I mean if my company sponsors some team or some event it should be technology or consulting competitions and events. That's where, CEOs or senior managers of the prospective customer businesses might notice the enthusiasm of the company or its willingness to learn new technology or to get into consulting space and demonstrate abilities in the same. Anyways, can't complain much, because this might not be as costly decision as some other decisions these brainless morons have taken in last one and half years.

2009-04-17T21:31:00.003+05:30

I have final exam tomorrow, for the subject I started studying only today and here I am doing as much timepass as I can. Well! what should I say about myself. I am caught in two minds. At one end I am thinking that anyways I don't want to continue so why am I bothering, just enjoy as much as possible; don't think about studying and all. At the other end, I am still pretty much hoping that things will work out. The situation is quite silly since I am neither able to enjoy nor able to study. Indecision is definitely the biggest immobilizer for a man. One should take decisions, it doesn't matter, everyone makes mistakes and that's how you learn. I can preach all of this, but finding it difficult to follow. Probably these four months were biggest waste of my life, so be it or I should do something and make them count. There is no use just brooding over it. I also know that things never work out just by hoping they will, you have to make them work out; you have to stand up and take some action towards it. I am not taking any action. May be I should do something about it, well at this moment I am writing about it, may be this is the first step or may be my inertia of inaction will continue, who knows?

2009-04-07T22:37:00.002+05:30

I want to walk a different path. I don’t know what that path is, I don’t even know where I will find that path. I don’t even know what the destination is. Once I know the destination I might find the path. My opinions and belief are so different from most people in this world that all the paths that are currently visible to me, promise only unfulfilling journey or rather journey that will suck life out of me before I reach the destination. I have faith in myself but I am so lost that the faith itself seems to be hanging. I wish I had faith in god or divine or something that would have made things so much easier. May be I am trying too hard, may be I should stop trying. May be like, ‘Govinda’ in Herman Hesse’s “Siddharta”, I am also obsessed with seeking and this has closed doors for things that will present me what I seek. What should I stop trying, I don’t even know, what I am doing. It seems more like random things that I am trying to put together hoping that somehow it will make sense.

(hmm... I have been writing, but don't feel like publishing. I have one big post on politics but still mulling where I should post it.)

2009-02-28T20:55:00.000+05:30

It is amazing, I have so much work, so many things to do, and quite a lot of it is what I would like to do on my own, and yet all I can think of doing right now is to avoid everything and just go and hide somewhere for two-three weeks. I don’t know whether those two-three weeks will be enough. I don’t want to do anything for these two-three weeks, just laze around. May be I will do something if I really feel like doing something. I don’t know why I am feeling like this but the feeling is very strong. I have been planning to do lot of things today, but all I did was just nothing. Well, I did some bank work, but apart from that, nothing. I opened my laptop several time to study and write two documents I am supposed to write, but all I did was played stupid card games, connect to intent and keep reading webcomics. And, I always keep finding really interesting and good webcomics.

Hardwork kills....

2009-02-07T23:34:00.004+05:30

Hardwork here is refered to doing only one kind of work/thing for long time, typically more than 10-12 hours in a day.

(Knowing that one of my office colleagues checks my blog once in a while, it may not be a good idea to post this. I can not say this post is entirely my idea, I think somewhere it is inspired from an essay written by Bertrand Russell which I read about 2-3 years back. I don’t even remember name of that essay. This post goes in bit different direction than Bertrand Russell’s writing. )

One bad thing happened to me in last few years is that I have stopped believing in hard work or rather. I am yet to see a person who works 14-16 hours a day and is truly happy. As the Indian proverb goes one must visit physical, mental, emotional and spiritual side once everyday. Working so much almost always screws up some other dimension of life. Yes, you can work for 14-16 hours on something that you really enjoy but can you be really happy if you are failing in some other dimension of life. I have seen so many times that people who have gone ahead working so hard, do repent on something or don’t have good relationship with their spouse or some other reason. If at the end of the day, when you are dying if you think, I wish I would have taken time out to do so and so thing, does it really matter whether outside world considers you one of the most successful people in the world? Sometimes the very fact that you are supposed to be happy by doing lot of hardwork and being successful by some outside world criteria but you are not makes you do stupid things. All these so called hardworking people buy lot of totally unnecessary things to show off or rather to prove to themselves that they are happy and successful. Or they derive this illusory happiness by buying more things than someone of their same age or same field or position or something. Material happiness is the only thing that can be tangibly seen or shown so most of them run behind it. Of course almost all corporate support this hardwork theory because that is the way they can get more from you with the same money. They don’t really care about people, all they care about is resource utilization, after all for most of the companies people are just a resource and resource means cost. So you are a cost for them, unlike some machines used for long term or typically land is considered as asset, you don’t have the fortune to be called as asset. They want high resource utilization. And, no I am not a communist, I believe, communism is as much bullshit as capitalism. Just think, there is so much overproduction in the world, not just in terms of physical products but also in terms of services. Almost everywhere or sometimes the whole countries are going bankrupt because they can not sell their products or services. Even if we just go ahead and reduce working hours to half of the current for all the companies in the world, the world will lose absolutely nothing. Although just as every industrialist becoming a billionaire is creating few thousand or more jobs, almost each one of them is indirectly causing almost same or more number of people in the same or different country to not meet their basic needs. Being a human being I feel extremely sad for this. The business has somehow become strictly negative sum game, where there are too may losers per winner and even for those winner companies normally except for promoters and top management executives, most employees are losers. Efficiencies, cost cutting and automation have become synonymous with having hanging swords over employee’s head.

And, by the way, I am yet to meet anyone who can do quality work for 14-16 hours in a day. Most people steal the time in between some or the other way.

In the end, you don’t know what to do. Hardwork as a great virtue, has been so much ingrained in our system that you don’t know what to do. Even though I have written so much about it, I have started this particular post by saying that it is the bad thing that I don’t consider hardwork is necessarily good. Of course, there is also other point of view in calling it bad thing. It is always easy to believe what most of the other people believe and go with the flow. It is very difficult to questions these beliefs and even more difficult to follow those if they conflict with majority. It complicates life too much. Unfortunately I have got too many beliefs that do not go with the majority.

2009-01-14T11:58:00.000+05:30

Just as I was looking out of the conference hall, there was this bunch of ducks moving around. The most fascinating thing was each one was independent, finding its own food and what it wants to do and yet as a bunch they were together and moving in the same direction. It seems like each one of them know what is their destination. None of the ducks bothered about being first or worried that it is last. They did not need any leader and there was no follower. How wonderful it would be if our organizations also worked like that; where each one of us have same destination, where we all go in the same direction, without anyone to feeling the need to control others. I don't understand, why as humans we have this enormous desire to control? Especially in organization, the desire to control also comes from mistrust. We never seem to trust each other. Almost every organization has 'trust' in some or the other form, directly or indirectly in their values, yet, I am yet to see any organization where trust is followed as value or embedded within its culture. In fact, most organizations, if you read the policies and procedures, you will discover that almost half of those are based on the assumption that employees can not be trusted. Well, less I say about man made organizations, better it is.One interesting this was, behind that bunch of ducks, there was a crow following them, walking on the ground just like them. What was the crow doing there? I guess it was also curious what those ducks were doing?

2008-11-25T01:11:00.000+05:30

It is easy to get distracted from the goal you want to achieve when the way things are happening are not in your favour. I am always amazed at some people's capability to adjust to ever changing goals and be satisfied with it or perhaps be happy with it. One of my senior colleagues in office always keeps advising me that I should be flexible and always take direction that other people (Seniors in office, etc.) want me to take. As always, I just smiled knowing within my mind that I am going to be adamant in my position or at least I will try my best to be adamant. I have every right to be like that. If I have given my whole and soul to some work from last three years and people just want me to change its direction because of their lack of understanding and their incompetence, I am not going to do that. I don't care, how bad reputation I get because of that. My life and my career is mine, not others. Well, my senior colleague made a very interesting statement, that success is when everyone happy. I chuckled, on his statement, because I presume that everyone includes me also, so if something is going to make me unhappy, it can't be success, can it be?
Its good to be adjusting and you can probably be very successful, by adapting to the world around fast. However this success is only the success as the outside world sees it. If in the end, you think, that I wanted to do that in my career or it would have been wonderful and immensely satisfying if I would have finished the problem the way I wanted to then that adaption hasn't brought any success to you. If one keeps just adjusting to the world around, he can never become what he wants to become, he always be someone what others want him to be, or what thousands of others already are. I have firm belief that happiness and satisfaction comes within you and not by what people consider what you are. It all might sound selfish, but it is not. It perhaps sounds so, because all the above discussion is about career, which is only one dimension of the life, if you start thinking about other dimensions, you automatically will go much beyond self.When you start thinking about your interactions with people, you know you gain more by giving than receiving. Even with respect to career, everyone must contribute to the goodness of the world, but in his/her own way. We all like doing something, we all have something that gives us immense satisfaction, that brings out all our intensity. If whatever we do, we do listening to our hearts that chasing the illusory goals set by the society and people around you, I believe we will always end up making positive contribution to ourselves and to the world.
Hmm... I didn't know, I can write such crazy stuff also.

Tips to complicate your life

2008-05-13T22:43:00.002+05:30

Be honest and sincere
It is amazing how far these two simple desirable characteristics of a human being can take you towards complicating your life. Every time, you come across something to do, if you do it sincerely you make your life miserable by compromising on other things (for example if you are talking about office work, compromising on family and social life, etc. and vice versa) and if you give an honest reason you are in trouble. My experience of lie especially as I have grown older is that honest reasons always get you in trouble. In corporate world, you can be considered a unprofessional or a person who is very bad at team work or worse if your boss might hate you for your honesty, especially honest opinions. In today's world, dishonesty and insincerity is perhaps the most effective ways of spending life without much work. Of course, this only at the deep level, the key is to show that you are honest and sincere when you are not. That's where the smartness comes in and that's why you see so many top people in the companies who seem to be damn smart but somehow don't do any useful work.

Have multiple useful interests
If you look around, the successful people are normally those who have one great passion in which they totally lost themselves ignoring all other things or the people who are naturally gifted with multiple talents. If you want to complicate your life and perhaps if you are not one of those naturally gifted people whose enormous talent allows them to do multiple things in the same time as we do one thing, you must pursue multiple interests. The interests can be as simple as learning a musical instrument, or reading books or traveling or writing or complex things like organizing charity, working with NGOs. Nothing gets you more tensed than knowing that you want to do so many things but you simply don't have time and energy. Nothing frustrates one more than the fact that doing one of the things that you enjoy doing robs you off the other things you equally enjoy doing.

Follow yourself rather than going along with the wave
Ha, this is perhaps the best one. This creates all types of possible complications in your life. Many people will consider you a fool; hardly anybody will understand why you are doing what you are doing, you won't fit into their simple logic; you will have to answer all kinds of silly questions that people will ask, and you will feel lost half of the time wondering what the heck is happening. And the biggest of all, even of you are happy with what you are doing you might be considered an unsuccessful person even by the people closest to you and that can create havoc in your life.

Always aim higher
As much as it might be step towards success, it can make you do more than what you can. It will also make you put lot of efforts in one area of life compromising on other. Unless you are the lucky one aiming higher on one area somehow coincides with ignoring some other area of life and then that area will keep troubling you. If you are successful in the area in which you aimed high, you are in the trap of success and you don't have the courage to step back and let it go. And on the other hand if you are not successful, you have to put too much effort to come back now and you perhaps don't want to give up remembering the quote "most people give up when they are just about to succeed", you are saying to yourself "Mera number jarur ayega".

well, same tips can be considered useful for having good life. Hmm... is good life equal to complicated life?????

"Seven Blunders of the World" by Mahatma Gandhi

2008-03-27T05:25:00.002+05:30

"Seven Blunders of the World"
1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle—Mahatma Gandhi

I came across this today. Well, quite depressing, because last 4 are quite common across the world and second is not that uncommon.

TED Talks

2008-03-14T06:03:00.000+05:30

Here I am having enormous amount of work to complete before March end and I am completely drowned in listening to all the TED talks. Its a great treasure. Everyday I come home from office and listen to some of these talks. I came to know about them few months back but forgot in between. Now 3-4 days back, found the link again, I am going on watching the videos. It is magnificent experience to listen to some of the best people in the world not just in scientific area but also in literature, social work, etc. I wish I will do something so that someday I can also be speaker in this conference.

Fighting negativity

2008-03-13T02:47:00.001+05:30

Though there have been some moments of happiness, I am in negative frame of mind from last 4 years. The negativity is going on increasing day be day. I am not anywhere close to be able to remove it successfully from my mind but I have learnt a lot of things about fighting it. What I am writing here will probably be most helpful for people who are alone or loners like me. First, and probably the most important thing one should know is that forcing yourself to have positive thoughts does not work. After your surge of positive thoughts is over you feel even more miserable than you were before. What works is being around happy people, or talking with others especially friends so that some topic that triggers happy memories or usual friend jokes leading into laughter. What needed is trigger for some happy thoughts and laughter and not forceful positive thoughts. However if you are depressed or sucked into negativity/pessimism there is high chance that either you are alone or people around you themselves are complaining types or somehow you can't connect with them (you hardly know them or very different nature, whatever may be the reason). In short you are in situation like I am from most of the last two years, it is very difficult to find such triggers. In such cases you might to use some techniques which can't cure you but can relax you for some time. Taking number of deep breaths, listening to your favorite music, Reading your favorite books; such things do work. I am not sure about the movies, there are hardly any movies which doesn't have violence or some sad or stupid annoying thing in that. For me what works best is taking deep breath and walking alone. Walking has always been a great relaxer for me. Sometimes, I can't even enjoy music, or read books but walking always works. If you are frustrated then another very effective way to relax is to write. yes, just write whatever you are thinking, whatever negative thoughts you have and you will be surprise how relaxed you feel and suddenly there is no rush of those stupid negative thoughts but you are manging to be calm. The last but not the least thing is eat good healthy food. This is very very essential. If you are alone in some foreign city, it might not be so easy for you to do this, but try as much as you can.
Although I am still struggling with my won negative thoughts and can't get out of them, if I haven't had done all the things above I probably would have gone insane.

Paper writing

2008-03-06T02:24:00.003+05:30

With my awesome power of writing disability which is quite evident in this blog, I had been trying to write three technical papers from last three weeks. Now, you say writing technical papers is whole different ball game. Well, yes, but for me there lies the problem, as one of my former bosses said (I had too many, ok 5 in 4 years is not so bad) I write papers like I talk. So, yes writing technical papers is different, it is written in English but its not English. Something stupid like that. You have all kinds of crazy rules for how the language of paper writing should be. The language is definitely not human. I suspect some alien wrote the first scientific paper and laid the rules for writing papers thereafter.
As if the language itself is not big enough problem, there is another problem with research papers, that is of new ideas. According to editors of most journal and conference proceeding and rules for papers, the ideas of papers have to be new but they should be based on some previous writing. Now, that's quite decipherable for my small brain, it should be new but it should be referring to numerous old things, more the better. Hmm... Also talking at abstract level is cardinal sin on paper writing. Only some 50-60 year olds who can not think of anything new can write and speak such things. Youngsters like me are strictly disallowed from braking the mold or thinking at different levels. God save the scientific world.
chalo, have to get back to paper writing, have to go through loads of papers so that I can give reference to some maniac professor's casual statements in his paper. After all, I have to prove that my new ideas refer to lots of old ideas :(

Brilliant lecture - on how schools supress creativity

2008-01-27T22:48:00.000+05:30

State of education in India - Part 2

2008-01-20T07:44:00.000+05:30

Apart from access to education, what worries me about education in India is quality of Education. Though the perception about education in India is still very good, I suspect that after a decade or two, the perception may not survive. I hope it does not happen. Already in my generation itself, the number of people who actually wish to think is too less and unfortunately that's what industry wants, especially the high recruitment software industry, whose still main business is to take boring, pathetic work that westerners don't want to to and ask our people to do that mindlessly without questioning whether what they do makes sense? or is it this stupid coding and documentation for 60-80 hours in a week is what they want to do?

Aah, as always I am digressing from the topic. So, what wrong? Why do I think quality of education is going down? Well, first, to have good quality education, there should be teachers to teach. Most times, teachers are there physically but shouldn't they be teaching? You tell me, that's why all kids go to tuitions. Let me ask back to you, do tuitions teach? All they do is to tell you how to get more marks in exams, which is actually what even schools do. Is getting marks education????

What lacks most in today's education scenario is ability to think. How many schools encourage thinking? Almost none.... Student has to write answers as told by teachers or else... The common method is to know what possible questions will come in exams and rattofy them, who the hell needs to understand? The goal is to get marks in the exam and not learn? That's what parent want to. I know it is difficult to blame them because in the stupid system we have made in our country, entry depends on stupid marks. But how much really success in life depends on marks you get in all the exams? very weak relation, if there is any at all. Just look around, are all the successful people are the academic achievers?
The real problem is the way education goes because of the marks system. Mugging has becomes the most essential skill in today's education system. Find out all the questions that can come in the exams, write the answers and mug them. Of course, even that is not so much work, there are all kinds of guides and everything that do for students. Where the hell is thinking? Where is learning? Do we want to see our future where people can't think and have to depend on some specialist for every damn little thing? Already, we are not too far from that, and do these specialists really help, they do not understand how their problems in their field relate to problems in other's fields, and therefore they screw up, they literally play with our lives, not juts healthwise, but psychologically, spiritually, and all the other ways one can think of.

aah... I digressed again. Coming back, what is our education systems in India summarized into: non-committed teachers, sometimes nonexistent teachers, filled with techniques to get marks without learning, discouragement of thinking (thinking and understanding is not just about asking questions, This is the biggest myth existent in today's world, asking questions is just one means). The other big problem our education system creates is that of listening, yes listening. How many of us are good listeners? How many of us can listen somebody with all biases kept aside and understand? Because, the emphasis is shifted from sitting in classroom to listen to teacher to exercise and mug the answers the children never really become good listeners. Whether you believe it not, it is one of the most essential skills in life.

The next stage is that of higher education. Indians are among the most successful in the world when it comes to higher education, and people like Jawaharlal Nehru created string emphasis on higher education by encouraging building systems like IIT. Ironically, despite all this the amount of research output that comes out from Indian Education System is pathetic. Why do all bright Indian kids have to go outside India to do great research. Yes, infrastructure and industry environment has been problem, but that's not all. Let's start from IITs and IIMs which are like pinnacle of our higher education system. If you go to any IIT, first thing you will notice is that except for one or two departements here and there, the main fcous is always on B.Tech. degress. There is one famous line in IITs 'B.Tech.s are products, M.Tech.s are by-products and Ph.D. are wastes'. Very very derogatory line not only for researchers but IITs themselves. Yes, that's the attitude in general you will observe. There is no bigger myth about IITs than that all B.Tech are the brilliant people while M.Tech.s and Ph.D.s are not. It is simply that B.Tech.s are the one who grabbed the opportunity first. I had been an M.Tech. student in IIT and average intelligence of them is no less that that of B.Tech. though it is most likely that top 5% B.Tech. students will be more intelligent than top 5% more intelligent than M.Tech. There lies root of another evil in our system but I will come back to it later. The point is about research and higher education. Some of the professors in IITs do wonderful research but very few students get opportunity to be part of that. Overall research almost feels like a totally separate dimension of IIT. No wonder there is so less research output from IITs. If you look universities all over the world, research is always driven by students, professors provide the trigger and background (and take the credit too) but it is always driven by students, their enthusiasm, their fresh perspectives, and their hardwork. I do not intend to belittle Professors, they also do tremendous hardwork, show enthusiasm, etc.. Professors are the enablers and the mentors. The point of I want to make is for high quality and high quantity research output it is essential to have student participation in it. I am not very familiar with IIMs but as much I have heard from my friends in IIMs, situation is not much different there.

One of the roots of evil in our education is the great belief that intelligence is everything. Let me tell you it is only one of the several things a successful person needs. Education is not about intelligence, education is about learning to live like a human, to instill values, to be able to differentiate between right and wrong, to understand ourselves, to understand nature. I know, all are only worries about development and progress, so on and so forth; but even there intelligence is only one of the several things. what about professionalism, what about discipline, what about attitude, what about perspective? In India, we have very bad habit of judging children and unfortunately also their future based on so called intelligence (which rough translated as ability to score in exams)? I ask you, what the heck is intelligence? Are we going to be a developed nation by having intelligent people who have no sense of how to use their intelligence or commitments or responsibilities or how to deal with people or morals or values or empathy towards fellow citizens? The answer is absolutely 'NO'.

I think this has already become too big and I am not writing it very well, so I will stop it here. Perhaps I will be able to better it in future.

How intelligent are our intellectuals

2008-01-14T07:21:00.000+05:30

Did you ever notice that all the so called intelligent people around never try to understand anything, why is something the way it is? They always look things from angle and then criticize. Often the lens they use to evaluate are not the purpose at for which the thing has been made.
From last five years, I have been around some extremely intelligent people, including IIT professors, IIT students, very senior corporate people (corporate biggies are not necessarily known to be intelligent, but I had been working in R&D group where 80% people are extremely intelligent).
I think the worst of these kinds are the corporate managers, who just pick-up some latest technique from the theory/IT Package/methodology/management philosophy and try to implement without understanding what the heck it is meant for and when they fail they blame the technique/methodology/management philosophy. When I was doing my masters in Industrial Engineering and Management, I used to think why the hell all these very good techniques and methods in Industrial Engineering are known as management fads in corporates. But, when I joined a company (unfortunately I still work in that company :( ) within few months I realized why all these become management fads and failures. Because no managers basically tries to understand what exactly it is meant for, in what context it can be applied and in what context it cannot be.

How Interesting?

2008-01-13T22:18:00.000+05:30

Your Birthdate: April 11

Spiritual and thoughtful, you tend to take a step back from the world.
You're very sensitive to what's going on around you, yet you remain calm.
Although you are brilliant, it may take you a while to find your niche.
Your creativity is supreme, but it sometimes makes it hard for you to get things done.

Your strength: Your inner peace

Your weakness: You get stuck in the clouds

Your power color: Emerald

Your power symbol: Leaf

Your power month: November

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

2008-01-12T22:08:00.000+05:30

I wrote three weeks back about need for people to come together to teach needy children and within next few days I came to know about the trust 'Ananya', who is doing the exact same work, educating children who had been denied the right of being educated. What makes me really proud is one of my friends is working with the trust.
Here is little bit info about the trust http://www.ananyatrust.blogspot.com/
and http://www.giveindia.org/give/ngoprofile/getOrganisationProfile.do?ngoid=62

If you wish you can also support their cause.

State of education in India - Part 1

2007-12-29T07:21:00.000+05:30

The focus in this part is on actually children attending primary school.
Today, one of my friends suggested creating a forum, where we spend some money every month to help in educating some needy children. He was ready to take responsibility of finding needy children and ensuring that money is spent on education only. Of course, I agreed its a good idea and we can pursue it. It will take sometime before we actually will be able to start it. On another note, with the disease I have that of thinking too much my mind went off in direction of is this the right problem we are solving? Is the biggest problem we have for education in India is that of inability to pay for education? And sadly the answer was an emphatic "No". We need to get bottom of this as primary education for all is one of the most influencing factors for development and betterment of any country. (Sorry being lazy and not having access to all my books currently, I am not giving any references here, But I am sure there is strong argument on this in the book "The Great Indian Middleclass" by Pavan Varma)
We have enormous education infrastructure (I agrees it is still inadequate and significant percentage of villages in India are still without any schools, but again I am not sure my friends will be going to such remote villages to help children), we have government funded schools, we have schools by municipalities in every city, we have schools by zilla parishad in districts. All these schools have very nominal fees (in many cases even below poverty line people also can afford it), education for girls is free in these schools; then surely tuition fees are not the problem. Also the problem of primary education has two dimensions, one is that of enrolling itself and the other is that of not completing it. The statistics show that percentage children especially in rural areas enrolling but not completing their primary education is staggering (Once again pardon me for researching actual numbers and including them here). There are many reasons, lets try to see them one by one,
1. Poverty: Don't blame me for making stupid arguments, I know making statement that paying tuition fees is not the problem but poverty is the problem sounds stupid, but that's the fact. The fact that many families in villages and very poor families in cities and towns look at the children as much needed helping hand for bread earning prevents then from sending their children to school. Though this situation of is changing rapidly with poor parents understanding importance of education, it is still not enough and in some cases poverty really do make then helpless.
2. Fictitious non-existent schools: This is especially the problem in rural areas. With highly corrupt government system, there are many schools only on the paper. According to government records many areas have schools and students studying in them, but in reality both the schools and students are non-existent.
3. Corruption: Corruption is highly rampant most of the education institutes in India. It starts from taking donations for admissions (some companies in Mumbai, offer special loans or allowances to their employees for paying these donations), to forcing children to buy books, uniforms, from the school itself, exorbitant travel expenses. What right does a school have to force children to buy books and uniforms from school itself? Its outright illegal. But, parents can't do anything after all future of their children is in hands of teachers of very same school. Unless every parent revolts against it, their children are going to get targeted and typically rich parents consider it waste of time to get into these issues. Sorry, I am going away from the problem in focus. But, corruption also exists in different forms even in the funded Government, Municipality, and ZP schools. The schools keep finding some or the other way of taking money. I wouldn't be surprised if it is one of the major reasons for poor children dropping out of schools in urban areas.
3. Lack of teachers: yes, it is hard to believe it that in a country like India which has millions of graduates passing every year and high rate of unemployment, there are not enough teachers for primary education. The roots here are more due to social perception in India. In today's India, teacher is one who hasn't got any other job. It is considered as last option by most of the young generation. Coupled with the fact that hardly anyone from urban areas wants to got rural areas the situation becomes disastrous for rural areas, especially the remote villages. Lack of teachers leads to lack of any motivation and environment for children as well as feasibility of having schools.
4. Lack of motivation and environment for education: Due to bad quality of schools, teachers absence, demand of money and sadly many times total neglect by teachers towards their students leads to many children not wanting to continue their education or their minds getting diverted to everything else but education. Neglect from school and teacher's side can be horrible. I remember, once on request of one house helper my mother started teaching a poor boy and to her horror she found that this boy who is supposed to have passed 8th standard from a Municipality school, could not do even simple addition and subtraction and could hardly spell his name. Also if parents are not enthusiastic about their child's education and/or they illiterate, that also sometime becomes barrier for children's primary education. This robs them of proper environment to appreciate their efforts and guidance if school is not providing it. Of course, there are plenty of examples of children to very poor and illiterate parents doing wonderful in studies and go on to become successful in life. But, these are exceptions, average children cannot overcome circumstances to that extent.

I am sure there is more to this problem than I have been able to put so far. We need to present poor children India with opportunity to have at least proper primary education (Yes, Proper is very important word here, there is no use having children passed 4th standard on paper, but can't even write their name). Some of us need to go into areas where such needy children are there and teach them informally for free. If schools are not doing it and politicians are more interested in feeling their pockets, we so called sophisticated nice people must do it. Is any one within us ready? Sadly, we all have money to spare, time to blog (like I am doing), we have time to go movies, pubs, etc. but we don't have time and patience to teach these children. Well, leave about teaching ourselves, it is really time consuming, can we at least find some honest and sincere people who are willing to do it, can we support these people? We need to do something and do it fast. Can we all sensible :) people come together and build a corruption free system independent of Government to make opportunity of primary education available to millions of poor children across India? Can we come together and at least change the perception about being a teacher so that future generation won't consider becoming a teacher as last option?

Something I must remember all the time

2007-12-24T08:22:00.000+05:30

When faced with uncertainty, cost of not taking action outweighs cost of taking action

I am irritated

2007-12-21T05:04:00.000+05:30

Well, I am irritated too many times, but today is something special.

I don’t want to be an academic researcher, that’s for sure. I don’t want to spend my life working on minuscule problems, writing papers on those problems which nobody bothers to read with some obscure mathematics, which nobody understands or at least the people who are supposed to use my ideas don’t understand. I don’t care if my ideas can not be expressed with some formal notations, hell with the notations if they are inadequate to express my ideas. What is more important is that the idea makes sense to the people in Industries or society (whoever are intended users of ideas), then it will get used. I want my ideas to be used, I don’t care of some stupid academic community. I don’t want to write papers with flowery language, politically correct statements, obscure mathematics and spend years on gathering data on pointless detailed experiments to prove myself to the academic community. I don’t want to make any contribution to these buggers, who stay away from actual work, except from doing some experiments in between to prove their work; I want to make contribution to people actually work. Fog god’s sake, I am doing research on business and management area, not fundamental science. My research is directly supposed to make difference, either minor or profound way, not like fundamental science where effect is more often indirect.

Someday I wish to...

2007-11-11T03:23:00.001+05:30

Talk without any inhibitions (without caring about what somebody will think or say or get hurt) and without getting twisted from anyone including my boss.
Say "I Love You" to a girl and hear "I love you, too" in return.
Sing in a huge audience (though after two minutes there might not be any audience left)
Own a library of my own with all my favorite books arranged in an order
Make a flamboyant speech in front of a big crowd and get appreciated
Play tabla with a mastero

I am sure there are more, but that's what I can think of for now...

What do I like about my job?

2007-08-05T23:25:00.003+05:30

Research – Challenging work, feels like I am actually trying to do something not just some manipulation with current ideas
Very good guides for the work, the kind of people I love to work with.
Freedom on the content of work
My seniors don’t have stupid conceptions like only if I am working late in the office, or coming to office on Saturday or Sunday then only I am working.
My seniors do understand that there is something called personal life beyond the routine job life.

What do I hate about my job?

2007-08-05T23:25:00.001+05:30

Very Low salary, internally as well as compared to other companies
Responsibility without authority. Only thing I have some control on is content of my research work that too because I am stubborn and arrogant, well! My bosses do understand that I need some freedom to do research.
My position is one of the biggest hurdles for me to do my work effectively. No one listens to me. Or of they are listening, they stop moment they know, I am just an ASE.
Lack of understanding and support from seniors for difficulties other than work in the job
Total darkness about how I am going to take forward what I am doing and my career

Feeling of stranded in the middle of the ocean on support of a single wooden log and absolutely no idea of which way to go.
There are no roads to travel; I have to build my own roads while traveling towards destination.

Amazing amount of hypocrisy; lack of ethics, morals, and professionalism in the company and the industry in which I work.

2007-07-10T22:27:00.000+05:30

Hmm.... such a long time, not that I have anything to write even today. I am mentally just drained to think of something nice to write down. All the things in my mind are just too damn negative to write down here. Struggling with myself. In a situation where I must make some tough decisions about my professional life and whatever decision I take I am going to be the loser. It's fascinating what amount of frustrations one has to go to chase his dreams, to do what he likes. Three years I wouldn't have thought I would be able to survive so much of a psychological pressure, but somehow I am surviving.
So much for thinking of writing down something nice.... what bullshit!

The not so golden silence

2007-02-20T22:32:00.000+05:30

My dear friend, don’t ever take virtue of silence from me. In today’s world silence is cursed. It is mistaken as dumbness; it is mistaken as lack of knowledge. Though a person keeping silence is more likely to be a better listener than who don’t, his/her silence is most likely to be taken as lack of interest than his ability to listen. Often your communication abilities are considered directly proportional to your ability talk more and more. Pointless talker is likely to be considered better at communication than a person who can explain idea effectively in few simple sentences. Listening is effective when you understand a person the way he/she wants you to understand him/her than the way you want to understand him/her. Some wise person has said that ‘Description is not described’. Even in Businesses, in presentations and meetings where essential purpose of communication is conveying the idea effectively, the same thing can be observed. Very few people understand that talking is only a part of communication and often talking more than necessary can actually make the communication ineffective. Silence gives one more time to think but that also seems to ignore in this world. So my friend, I repeat again world is of those who talk, and not those who consider silence as a virtue.

Man as an animal - 2

2007-01-07T22:28:00.000+05:30

Continuing to what I wrote before, I am of strong opinion that animals also think, they also learn and they also have consciousness. The reason why we as a humankind have been able to achieve so much that we crossed a certain threshold of 'intelligence' and 'communication' combined. We are definitely more intelligent than other animals what supports us in achieving all this is communication. Our ability to speak with so many different sounds allows us to form very comprehensive languages and communicate all sorts of ideas to other humans. In other animals such communication of ideas is very restricted. Once I had read one article where it was said that Neanderthals though may be were more intelligent than us were restricted in their communication since their structure didn't allow them to speak as well as humans. They were very weak in communication compared to homo sapiens (us). While this may or may not be true the point of communication is worth noting down.
The reason I used word threshold in the second line in above paragraph is because most of you must know when some characteristic of any system is increased beyond certain threshold it alters behaviour of the system very significantly. Those of you who are familiar with cybernetics or systems theory can imagine a positive feedback loop which is primarily weak becoming very strong due to a certain factor becoming extremely strong.
What supports my arguments above is:

What we have achieved is through thousands of years of learning and not overnight.

Whatever science ,technology, philosophy, etc. we are so proud of today (and which is the basis of all the achievements of human kind today along with its experiential learning ) is through some wise and very intelligent people who came up with ideas and the ones who could implement these ideas, all others have just adopted these ideas through the very rich communication we have.

2006-12-18T22:47:00.001+05:30

Optimistic me: (Looking like some one having nervous breakdown, lost his heart, very grim face, all the circumstances are against him; however probably the most influential part of me who has driven all my life) Don't lose heart my dear, this is just another obstacle, you find a way to overcome it and success is all yours.
Pessimistic me: (with broad smile on his face) see, I told you, I warned you so many times, this is what is going to happen, but you won't listen to me; you always listen to that stupid optimistic guy, he has no sense of reality. You have put yourself into deep hole, with no hopes to come out. You have managed to effectively ruin all your career prospects. You have not just made miserable yourself but also in turn will make your family miserable. You are a loser.

Man as an animal

2006-11-26T23:42:00.000+05:30

Some great thinkers in the world believe that what separates humans from animals is consciousness, i.e. man knows what he knows but animals don’t. I don’t believe that, I think we are just too arrogant to accept, we are just epitome (I am not sure of this also) of a continuous process of evolution of millions of years of earth. We are just another animal who is more evolved than any other, and it has nothing to do with consciousness. Do we want to mean that suddenly when humans evolved from let’s say Bonobos (our closet brothers in the evolution chain) who have 99 point something percent DNA same as human we suddenly gained consciousness. If animals don’t have consciousness then every damn decision they take or every damn thing they do should be instinctive and there shouldn’t be any rationalism to it. If one does not have consciousness then every situation one faces must be new for him/her/it. Should we then say animals can’t learn, oh hell! But then I guess the n number of researchers on animal behavior will surely disagree on it. If any decision taken by an animal is instinctive then I must say we have lost great deal of instinctive powers (well, I think though we may not have lost; we have certainly forgotten our instinctive powers due to our obsession for rationalism and reasoning). Don’t think I am against rationalism, it is very essential for e.g. I can not write this post, by just saying that I suddenly realized that man is also just an animal and so accept it, but what I want to say is we are obsessed with rationalism and forget that rationalism is just medium through which we express our instincts. First we realize something and then we explain it through rationalism. Well, sorry to go off the topic, let’s come back to we as an animal. Though I am not a scientist in animal behavior, having seen 26 years of real life, enough National Geographic Channel and Discovery channel that there are if not millions there are at least thousand of example where animals show perfect consciousness about the situation they are in and what they can do in that situation.

It is very interesting how I stumbled upon this thought. Very often I have imaginary conversations in my mind with people, and in one such conversation today on movies where I was imagining a conversation with my friend, we (I) came to conclusion that “people like to see in movies what they can not do and what they don’t or cannot have but they want to do and want to have. And what sells most is action and sex, so is it that most people by instinct want to be physically strong (wanted to say violent actually ;)) and like sex a lot. Isn’t those instincts same as any other animal in the world?” Here I suddenly went into this tangent of these so called efforts by great thinkers to differentiate between man and animal.

More things you want to do faster the time goes

2006-11-22T18:10:00.000+05:30

I guess almost everyone will agree on that line. Whenever you have plenty of things to do, you find less and less time to do those things. You keep doing one thing, and then suddenly, day ends, month ends, year ends, and you wonder, what the hell happened? where the hell has all the time gone? I am still to do so and so things. But that's what happens, and that's how life goes.

I know many people will be eager to give advice on planning, timetables, etc. etc. That works only to some extent. Anybody says more about managing work, that's all bullshit. Come on, show me a person for whom everything goes according to plan. I believe people for whom plans work perfectly, either they are horribly unambitious about what they can achieve or they are extremely lucky. I know, I know that planning is about being prepared but hell, but just being prepared doesn't get things done, you actually have to do the things.

Job: name of thy evil

2006-09-23T12:21:00.000+05:30

Well, I know job is not a bad thing as such but then why do I don't find anyone who is really happy with his/her job. In my friend circle, even those who joined with their favourite work and outstanding salaries, have got bored of there jobs and looking for new challenging opportunities.
Others, are thoroughly frustrated that the job is not what they like to do or their boss or amount of work or something else. Why is it so difficult to be satisfied in a job? There are some people for whom work is the only good thing about their job, their salary is low, company culture is bad, etc. etc.
Some may blame dissatisfaction to human nature of always asking more, but is that really the reason? It may be the small part but not certainly the main reason. The way jobs are designed in most organizations make them boring. By very nature, most jobs are boring. I know I am making very strong statement but that's what I feel when I see around. Only people who seem to be happy are those who are extraordinary enough that they can progress fast enough so that they are on new challenges before they get bored with the old things. By very design is job is for a particular set of activities and when a person as identified and established for that job keep doing the same or expected to do the same, that being his recognised competency.
Though one might say this is how it is there from ages of human existence, I feel it is not so. Simply because though one has expertise in only one area how to handle that area has entirely left to the person, and like for everything decisions were in his hand. This act of taking decisions in all kinds of situations is often what gives satisfaction of facing challenges. Though there is nice theory of empowerment in Industry (at least in manufacturing industry) it is often seen that the constraints put on employees in terms of directives and process guidelines are such that the empowerment has absolutely no meaning. Most people hate doing same things over and over again and jobs seems to stress on that aspect very strongly.
We need jobs which consider human oriented approach. We need to wake up and do something about it. The arguments here are not yet complete but will come up with more thoughts at some later time.

2006-09-08T16:27:00.000+05:30

No matter how good are you; you don’t get what you deserve unless you ask for it and people who keep asking even when they don’t deserve always get more than those who deserve – this is my observation from many years and I am sure you also must have experienced this at least at some point of time. Why is the world so? And what is more disturbing is that even most just people you find seem to make this mistake. Of course, I am not talking here about people who are good but don’t work towards their goal; they don’t deserve but what about those who are good, who work hard towards their goals, do all the work with utmost sincerity but just don’t bother to ask for what they deserve?
I know what you are going to say, either you are going to say “It’s their mistake if they don’t ask,” or you are going to say “Life is unfair”. But these arguments don’t work; asking is exactly what most such people don’t like and putting everything on destiny is probably worst thing to do. Does anyone has any solution?

Some relief finally....

2006-08-09T18:31:00.000+05:30

Had a wonderful one week vacation touring Goa and spending some time at my home sweet home. Finally got some relief from the boring routine I had been in. Its long time since I wanted to run away from Hyderabad for at least a week. However I still think one moth would be better but impossible to get one month. Still hoping to be refreshed for the work.

Most of the air travel I have done in night, at that time, cities look very good due to their lighting and all. However this time I started around 2 in the afternoon and the city looked terrible. Stupid concrete buildings everywhere and nothing else, absolutely ugly it was. On the contrary as I was reaching Goa, everything on the ground looking green, small houses inside the green, rivers flowing in between. It was marvelous; immediately I felt like my tour to Goa is going to be worth it. Actually it is not the usual time to visit Goa; monsoon is supposed to be off-season to visit Goa but then I like Goa in monsoon, it was just too good. In fact, being off-season there was very less crowd and we could enjoy more places in less time and like that fact very much. Also being at the rough sea in the monsoon time is a different pleasure in itself.

One thing I desperately need is some place where I can every now and then and the place allows me to relax, forget the world around me and be myself, not the stupid constrained individual who is always worried about how he can accomplish what he wants to achieve while satisfying all the stupid material constraints put by the world on him.

Me and Philisophy???????

2006-06-19T09:12:00.000+05:30

Yesterday in a conversation one my friend commented to me, “Nik, you are in danger of becoming philosopher.” Well I just smiled but in my mind I started thinking, “Holy Shit!, is that true?” Well I know that’s happening to me but is the influence getting so strong. Despite all the things in my life are not going well, I am trying to be cool and calm. Probably because over the last few years I have become optimistic (and also lost the ability to understand seriousness of few things) or is it that become philosophical. My optimism is actually has come from some good things that happened when I was in bad situation so somehow I believe that no matter how bad situation gets something good will come out of it. However I seem to have conveniently forgotten that when good things happened I was actually in total down in the dumps, I had lost all the hope that I could do something good. Rather than forgotten, the very hope that something good will happen is not letting me go in down in the dumps. Now, I don’t know whether that is good or bad. Now, if you are wondering where philosophy is coming here, I guess apart from optimism the other thing that is keeping me cool and calm is my moot acceptance that things will go only the way they are supposed to, I can not fight all the things and I should be happy with what I get and try to enjoy that. Looks like, I am taking all the wrong things from philosophy. I don’t know from when I am started accepting such things, that urge to change the things by my own is vanishing and I have to act, act fast.
I was kind of conscious about my patience moving towards danger zone, but my friend’s comment has made it explicit. Probably, as first measure as my friend does I must remember each time I read a book by some great personality or ‘systems thinking’ book or any other book which contains influential philosophical thoughts, that I am reading it for pure pleasure and not be very serious about it.

2006-06-12T12:25:00.000+05:30

Today started with Mr. Murphy striking, the gas cylinder in our room finished. It always finsihes on Monday so that either me or my roomies can't do anything till friday. Being proud (?) memebers of the so called IT industry (Labour shops), none of us can get home in time to go and bring new cylinder, but that's life and that's how it is supposed to go on.
I came to office and followed ritual of checking mails and some news. In the news section couldn't find anything new exciting, only serious news was the grenade blast in Jammu. Somehow, the frequency of public joking of politicians have reduced nowadays. Newspapers are still following the rahul mahajan heroics, Arcelor's refusal to Mittal and so on. Football worldcup is not yet making big headlines, of course it is just first round and all the exciting matches yet to come. In between Federer despite all his amazing tennis skills has lost to Nadal in french open. I thought he might win this time. This guy Roger Federer never fails to amaze me with his skills; in each of his match there will be some shots on which you will say "where the hell did that come from?".
No no, I am not using this blog as summary of news, it was just few things went through my mind quickly. Probably it was an effort to prove that though I don't write much on social or political issues I am very well aware of them and follow them regularly ;)
After the ritual of mails and news I stumled upon the big question which also like a ritual I stumble upon every day, i.e. "what to do?", I am unusual researcher with 5-6 diferent activities related to each other in abig picture, but where to start is always puzzling. I started with sending mail to our academica collborators as a start and then wondering which book should I read for my work.
If you hapen to be reader of this blog :)) and if you are wondering why am I writing about my boring day actiites the answer is simple, " i don't know what to write about", well actually while writing this I realized there are at least 3-4 things in my daily life I can write about. I guess but at the moment I will save the the elctronic words from the bytes of my words.

Increasing blog visits

2006-06-05T15:56:00.000+05:30

So, few months ago, I started this blog with extreme enthusiasm and though the enthusiasm still persists, the things around me have started taking toll on my writing activities. Suddenly, I am finding n number of other things that I have to complete before I write something and being as lazy as I am I don't have to tell anyone that I normally not able to complete these 'n' things and hence sit to write something (I am not saying writing good and as it is completely different question).
Meanwhile I few times I went through the statistics on who visits my blogs and not to my surprise I found that hardly anybody visits my blogs but as a good engineer I analysed how to get lots of visits to my blog. There are always two ways to achieve success one is by manipulation to turn things in your favour and one by being good in whatever you do. No need to tell further that in real life most people choose the former way. So, when it comes to writing blogs you must be either very good like greatbong and others or use some of the following techniques. Though these techniques won't give you success like greatbong but will definitely have the capability put you in a decent position...

always write on current and preferably controversial topics and doing so do not forget to include some controversial or famous names related to the topic or issue
Leave comments (take care to be among the first few to be doing so) on the blogs which are already famous, it doesn't matter whether you really read the blog or have an opinion, you can always post comments like "hey, me first!" or some such comments which have nothing to so with the blog.
give some cross-references to some news articles or famous bloggers in your blogs, so that people searching for the news, or the famous bloggers looking who visits their blogs can bump on to your blog.

As you might have noticed that all the above three are primarily possible because of the google power and statistics counters. Though 3 seems to inadequate number as the points explaining technique for increasing your blog visits, try these first, I am sure you will be surprised with the result. Some more will be added later, If I happen to attract some people to read my blogs or some unfortunate souls bump into my blogs through some google searches and so.

Anyways, If you are good writer, you can also register at some bloggers' sites which ranks blogs and bloggers, it is a virtuous cycle as you get more visits your rank improves and as your rank improves more people visit your blog; of course only upto a limit after which quality of your blog dictates your rank and blog visits.

2006-05-29T14:16:00.000+05:30

Hmm… it happened again; while I was going for dinner I met this young lad. As a true andhraite he first spoke in Telugu. Some of andhraites have such a strong accent that even if they are speaking Hindi or English, it feels like they are speaking Telugu. So, after carefully hearing him twice or thrice, I determined that he is speaking Telugu and asked him to speak Hindi. So, this guy told me that he has lost his purse and needs some money to go to his place. At first he asked 80 rupees and then said needs at least 40 rupees (as I was unaware of the place he mentioned he has to go, I couldn’t figure out myself home much he might need) adding that if I give address, he will come tomorrow morning and give the money back to me. He looked genuine but then my recent previous such incident came to my mind and I told him that I don’t have money; maximum I can help him is 10 rupees, gave him that and proceeded. Unfortunately, with me things don’t end such way, that guy had gone but as it always happens to me my conscience started killing me when I started waiting for my dinner at the mess. I started thinking, well if he looked genuine to me, why the hell I didn’t give him money, even if he would have cheated me, I can certainly afford losing 40 rupees. If he was genuine my money would have helped him a lot. What is more important, that somebody got help or I don’t get cheated? Ideally it should be the former one, but as most humans do the latter had become important for me. The very concept that I am getting cheated and the money is not being used as you would have likde it to be psyches me out. Well, I started feeling bad about the whole incident. I could have asked some more questions, as one friend do in such situations so that he is certain of his conclusion no matter whether the conclusion is actually true. That way, at least his conscience doesn’t trouble him. In my case, actually even then my conscience will trouble me if I haven’t helped or later I find out that I had been cheated. In this case, I hoped with 10 rupees at least he can call somebody he knows and ask for help.
I don’t know, why but such incidents happen to me at quite a good rate, as I remember correctly almost once in a two weeks. Now, probably you will understand why I was such a skeptic even when I though the guy was genuine. I don’t understand this rate, is there something written on my head like “this guy will help you” or “you can easily fool this guy”. In Hyderabad largest percentage of such people asking for help will be those who went for Tirupati and lost or finished their money in between. And even after so much experience with such people I haven’t yet been able to decide whether most of these are crooks or genuine. Once I met one unique fellow, I came to know about his crookedness since one my of my roommates also happened to be asked for help by this guy. This person tells people that he is former government employee and then something happened for which he has filed some petition and then takes out a huge bundle of money and says he already has collected some money and needs last 10 rupees. I doubted him and didn’t give him money, but just a minute late saw one person giving money; and this guy asked my friend money 2 days after that.
I don't know what to do, but life is not easy anyways.

Bizarre...

2006-05-23T08:59:00.000+05:30

Reservation issue is getting bizarre day by day. At one end there is Mr. Arjun Singh and government, who want to change everything except their decision, suggesting bizarre solutions like increasing seats in all the collages. Already most education institutes are facing faculty problems on the top of that there hardly any educational institutes who have money to expand their infrastructure and these people suggesting seats increase, how much funnier can it get? I read again in the newspapers today, that it might take 3-4 years, to increase seats, but is it really possible, and what about the overall quality of education? Of course, I agree higher education must get more and more prominent as years go by, but it can not happen just like that, it needs to be done through some major reforms in the entire educational system and not just focusing on increasing the seats.
On the other end students doing hunger strikes and all, I definitely understand protests but making the public suffer for the protests is what I don't understand. I have the same objection as I have to strikes of government servants, teachers (I have real grudge against them, as they always strike just before board exams), airport employees, etc. I got message yesterday from somebody that one person died in hunger strike, what is going on? What the heck are people trying to do? What we need is more and more support from students from all educational institutes than strikes.
Mr. Arjun Singh has absolutely no clue as to what he is talking about and how his decision is going to affect the country? If you read his interview here, you can see he seems to have no clue about background of his decision, how he is going to implement the decision and so on...
It is also very clear, that the parliament is not clear whether the reservations are needed at all?
I wish there is someone who can take wise decisions on such issues and more importantly has the authority to do so.

Food Taster...

2006-05-22T14:08:00.000+05:30

In my two years stint as a Masters student at IIT KGP, I learned and unlearned many things. One of the things that I unlearned or rather had to unlearn was to being selective about taste of the foods. The exotic, tasty, super-hygienic food at kgp made sure that even 2 years after leaving kgp I still consider anything edible as good food; only something stale or something horribly gong wrong can be recognized as bad food. When I eat something very tasty or home food I feel like I am in heaven. Being put up in the new hostel at kgp, consisting of new cooks, the food I ate was even more outstanding. It was the place where I realized that even something as simple as omelette can be made uneatable. Sometimes, we used to get dosas for breakfast, and horrible would be a softer word for them; when we complained our mess manager he used to say that cook is new and he would learn. Wow!, that was a revelation; a cook selected through rigorous central government procedures and doesn't know how to cook. My mess manager probably could write a book about 'how not to get a good cook'; its just unimaginable that in place like kharagpur which has much more than significant population of telugu people you can not get a cook who can make eatable dosas.
This was in IIT, the other hotels etc, were a different story at all, except on dhaba inside IIT and one far away at a place called 'gol market', there was hardly any hotel where we didn't taste stale food once and fought with the people there. The dhaba inside IIT was good, that was the only place where one can get descent tasty food in IIT, so it had other problems, sometimes we had to wait for an hour or so for food to arrive. The 'Dal tarka' we used to get there, I am still to get that good 'dal tarka' anywhere. Thee other dhaba was damn good especially for non-veg people.
I can go on and on this topic, especially how quality of food in our hostels were ensured by a central facility, etc. etc.

Faculty problems...

2006-05-16T10:35:00.000+05:30

One of the biggest problems, Indian higher education is facing right now is faculty. There are not just enough faculties, I mean just in numbers; quality of faculty is one level higher. The problem is for real; as an engineering student I have seen how pathetic is the quality of lecturers in private colleges and in my days in IIT, I have also seen it failing to attract young enthusiastic good faculty. However, I read in ‘Times’ few days ago, faculty is going to be imported from Europe and just couldn’t stop laughing. It is yet another example of how stupid solutions can be implemented to solve the problems. If there is any country in the world, which has the highest number of well qualified, enthusiastic professionals that can make great faculty, I guess that has to be India. If you study last decade, the number Indian faculty in all top universities across the world has been increasing rapidly.
The problem is definitely not availability of faculty, it is attracting it. If one has to get European faculty, I guess one has to attract them by paying very high and providing good growth opportunities (I am sure at the expense of existing Indian faculty, we Indians always have this bias of considering westerners better than us). If you do same thing for Indians, I am sure one can get better than better faculty than Europeans. In India, most professionals look teaching as the last or convenient option (when on is more concerned bout place or doing time-pass rather with career perspective) if all other options are exhausted.
So, what is so unattractive about being a lecturer in Indian universities and colleges? Well, many will point out pay packages, but according to me that is just one of the many things. There are many more reasons; like reputation for the profession, slow growth opportunities, lack of research and consulting opportunities, etc. I have just mentioned three of the most important ones. Of course, the first one is derivation from the others, but it is true that in our society if you for teaching profession people think that you didn’t get any other opportunity and therefore you went for teaching.
Well, what brings a good interest and develops faculty is research and consulting opportunities; this is one of the reasons why most of the IITs faculty is so good. If while teaching one gets research and consulting opportunities not only one can increase his/her but also gets familiar with the latest of happening in the filed, bring them and experience and all of it leading to teaching students well with help of experience, examples of actual application, understanding of basic concepts and latest developments. Focus must be on such issue like bringing consulting and research opportunities in the universities rather than importing faculty from foreign countries. Universities and Government has to introspect as to how such opportunities can be made available to the faculty. For such opportunities to exist Industry must trust Academia, which today does not happen. Academia itself should take initiative and do some projects for Industry on experimental basis to establish the trust, may be in initial years Government can support such collaboration. From industry side, Indian industry itself badly needs such research help in order to cope with the international competition and excel on the global level. Take example of IT industry, how many years can they survive on just giving services to foreign companies and countries they have to look at the other options. They all try to move up the value chain (God knows what that means) but what they don’t understand is with what they are doing now itself, they can change the world with different attitudes by generating value rather than lowering costs and for that they need research help from academia.
There are good solutions available than doing stupid things like importing faculty from European countries, academia must spot it and Industry itself should take initiative because after all these students are going to Industry after they complete their education and hence the future of industry depends on issues with academia.

Cheer up...

2006-05-15T11:28:00.000+05:30

Its amazing how pleasant environment changes how you react to the situations and it changes your mood. It probably affects me more as I am very moody person. For example, today I was very worried about something in the office and thinking very hard how to deal with it, and suddenly joined my boss with conversation with other colleagues. My boss has great sense of humor; he can have very cheerful conversations and make small timely jokes to lighten up the environment; he even explains very difficult concepts in such conversations. Well, I am not trying to butter up my boss, I am just trying to tell that after such conversation suddenly despite all my worries, I came in good mood and my characteristic smile came on my face.
It is very important for a person to be in company with people who are always cheerful and face the life smilingly; not does it just cheers you up but also gives inspiration to face all kind of situations patiently. And exactly opposite is the situation when you are with people who are always sad over things surrounding them. Actually I was going to write this about people who always complain and cry over situations, but then I suddenly realized that not all people who complain are sad. You can say the realization might have come up from my own experience itself. When I complain I still care about the things and I am not sad, it is just that I want to improve them and contrary to that when I stop complaining I am really sad, I have given up. I find those people amazing who complain and cry over things very jokingly, and make joke on themselves.
Laughter and cheers are among the most important things in our life, without it our life will become hell. We have to turn around things cheerfully and enjoy every bit of life. All such things are better said than done. Well, hope everybody around me does it without taking wrong meaning (ha ha ha… sometime I can’t help but pessimistic. It is difficult to follow your own medicine) of it…

Plagiarism...

2006-05-09T08:54:00.000+05:30

He: did you hear about the new plagiarism case of one author called Kavya Vishwanathan
She: Yeah, how shameful for her to do any such thing like that.
He: did you see, some funny comments by some stars about her writings in times. Especially, Anu Malik defending it.
She: of course, he must. He is the one who gets inspired by the music of the most other artists. It is very shameful.
He: Of course, it is. (smiling)
She: Why are you smiling.
He: You know I just remembered one of my professors. He wrote a book on his area of specialization, which was inspired by some other book, same way as many our Hindi movies are inspired by movies from other languages. What more funny was that he used to say that it is ok to copy as long as you acknowledge original author.
She: chalo, at least he had that much respect for the original.
He: Hmmm… yes. I also had one thought… suppose I want to write a novel in the future and if some line I write happens to match exactly from some other novel, which I never read or read years ago, would that be plagiarism too?
She: You and Novel????????? :D
He: Didn’t I say suppose?
She: Ok, Ok… But why will it match?
He: Why not? Come on… If not millions, there are at least thousands of novels get published every year and it is definitely possible that in two of those books a situation and sentence may match by coincidence.
She: Well, though it seems almost impossible, but I don’t think I can argue against that.
He: So, what do you think?
She: It might not be the case that you have done plagiarism but I guess if somebody notices it or author wants to sue you; you won’t be spared.
He: I guess so, I am filling very bad for myself. Life is unfair and unfortunately it is never unfair in favour of me:(
She: Hmmm… hey, you are acting like you have really written the novel and got sued. By the way, I think you just got inspired by Calvin and Hobbs.
He: yeah, I thought you would notice it. Hey, I just got another weird thought; what is if I copy something from an extremely good novel written in some other language and especially from a language, where rarely people read English literature. Even if somebody notices it, fat chance that they would be able to prove anything.
She: Looks like you are in a nasty mood today.
He: Not really, but thoughts on this topic are endless, especially if you happen to go through engineering or management curriculum or doing some software development, you know how important Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v and google is in our life.
She: Hey, I guess we should stop you have started going into your philosophical type discussions. He: Ok, as you say.

Winds of change...

2006-05-04T12:30:00.000+05:30

Yesterday night as always as I was doing some timepass on my PC, I heard quite a sound of trees. As I went outside I saw a superb forceful wind blowing outside. I enjoy strong winds.(probably I never have experienced real storms or hurricanes or other destructive winds like that) I don't know there are some natural things I enjoy a lot. Despite I being Mumbaite and seen such showers some thousand times, watching heavy showers is also one of those things I like a lot.
I just stopped whatever I was doing and sat for around 45 minutes in the gallery enjoying the wind. Suddenly, a flurry of thoughts started coming to my mind, how nice would it be if these winds could also bring about winds of change in my life.
How wonderful it would be if one day some wind comes up and blows away all the trouble in life, alas! Fortunately or unfortunately such things never happen in life.

Difficult Times...

2006-05-02T18:18:00.000+05:30

Most difficult times in the life seem to be the one when suddenly everything seems to be going exactly the opposite way you want it to, you just start wondering, what next? The next is normally something really good or something extremely bad which completely shakes up all your beliefs and confidence. Most amazing thing about all this is when you know something very important for you is going the wrong way suddenly you notice that even the smallest the incidents are going the wrong way.The reason why I say something good might come out is because the people who have tough character normally like such challenges and then they start working towards something better, and for normal people only when things start going the wrong way they realize that they are in a fool's paradise and they have to work hard to get something better. Well, can they do better? who knows? Difficult times only bring out the real personality out of the people. Very few people have the gift of being able to handle such situations very calmly, most either panic or give up. Of course, one always should keep his/her hopes alive but the problem is that just keeping hopes alive doesn't work, one also has to keep working towards bringing the hope into reality.Then there is another situation, where things move so fast that you don't understand what exactly is happening around you, is it good or is it bad. You just get driven by the pace with which things are happening, just going with the flow, and when you stop, you realize what grave mistake you did. So, what do you do at such times? How do you take time out for yourself so that you can judge the situation and find out whether what you are doing is good or bad for you?Hmm.... here is another abruptly ending blog, really if any blog deserves name 'random thoughts' it has to be this.

Those feared questions...

2006-04-25T15:25:00.000+05:30

Since I have joined an IT company after completing my M.Tech.; there are few questions that which I fear, few which annoy me a lot.
Probably the most annoying question I face is, which platform do I work on? I feel like answering "hey, I don't beg like you."; I know it might sound rude, but why always assume that an engineer in an IT company must always be doing coding or testing.
Success in an IT company is measured by number of times you have been onsite, normally parents who have their children in IT company and IT people who have been onsite, will always ask this question "So, when are you going abroad?" or "How many times have you been abroad?" following with remarks like "what? not even once?", "what, you don't have chance, what work you do there?" (here they really don't want to ask me what work I do, they are just doubting the fact that I work in an IT company). It starts getting funny, when they start telling stories of how well their son or daughter were doing and how many times and how different places they have been. Now, being in an IT company I know how exactly people live there, but I still have to say yes, yes etc.
One question that always left me speechless is "what exactly is the work you do?". In fact, after my futile attempts to explain satirically my work; one of my cousins simply concluded that I don't work (well, it might be different issue that she might not be that far from reality). Being part of an IT company everyone expects me to be doing something in some programming language and I not doing anything like that just shocks them. On top of that saying something like working in research group ends up in a disaster leading to questions like, "Oh!!! so you develop some technology?" then I try to explain something related to modeling. Unfortunately nobody has yet mistaken it as modeling as in 'fashion modeling' (probably my physique is too good to believe something like that for somebody), and one who doesn't understand modeling give me the look 'what the heck is that?". I have always avoided telling something about 'systems thinking'; anticipating that might prove to be last thorn in the flesh.
Another of those dreaded question is, "So, what are your next plans?", an annoying version of the same question is, " So, when are you switching?" (for ignorants and unfamiliers, switching here means switching the jobs and the frequency with which most IT people change jobs I think you can't find more appropriate term for changing jobs by IT people) . And what is really the most fascinating is the look these quizmasters give when I say "No, I don't have any plans for switching?" and that look is nothing when I say " Well, I want to do PhD, let's see how it goes?". Except my very close friends and my family who know me very well, I haven't yet seen anybody who is familiar with IT scenario and able to digest that statement. The obvious questions follow, "what the heck, why do you want to leave field like IT which is full of money and do something like PhD, do you want to become lecturer or what?" Going into deep, just worsens the situation, so I normally stop by answering "You know, how crazy I am?" to which nobody argues, afterall I have earned this reputation by hardwork of so many years.

So, if you happen to be one of such quizmasters, please don't ask me these questions.

Writing dilemma

2006-04-25T14:39:00.000+05:30

I posted some blogs in a hurry and now I am wondering what to write on. Yes, last two- three I am trying different topics but couldn't come up with anything nice to write on. I have about 10 incomplete drafts now including some things about my work. Now you ask me, why to worry about writing something nice, when you have already written so much of junk. Inspired by curious gawker and silverine, I also thought of writing something very good and funny, but needless to say I couldn't. I don't think I will be able to reach the level of imagination of curious gawker and viewing with comedy angle for day-to-day happenings like silverine. Nonetheless, I tried and almost wrote a good half page as a story and then couldn't think of any more.
I guess I should be happy writing some normal stuff like this, but couldn't help keeping my desire down for writing good blogs; especially when no one seems to read my blogs.
Some other options are like writing on social issues or writing fictional stories. Writing on social issues is not an easy taks, as it always some or the other way gets related to politicians and whenever it comes to politicians, I get psyched out and feel like using lots of bad words.
Writing consistent good blogs is huge challenge, of course at this time I think I should worry about wrting good blogs then I will worry about being consistent.

Hmmm........

2006-04-19T16:17:00.000+05:30

I don't know what is going through my mind now... Yes it sounds weird. I don't know what I should do and therefore I am trying to write something here.
I saw "shawshank redemption" some 2-3 days ago. It's a great movie, the way last twenty minutes change your whole perception about the movie and impression it makes is just amazing. However I don't know it was the right kind of movie for me, it teaches one to keep hopes alive and work towards it. That's exactly what I am trying to do with my work, of course I don't know how well or whether at all I am working towards my hopes. I know practically, that what I am doing is not going to help me much except on the knowledge side or my reaserch mind and one can not survive just on knowledge or thinking. Only hope is some miracle that can sore my chances of survival and spirit. And obviously I am hoping for such miracle though I don't believe in miracle.
I don't know what is that makes me believe that a miracle can happen... Is it my passion for research? or Is it my hate for the routine IT or manufacturing jobs ? or Is it my faith in my superboss? or Is it my arrogant belief in myself that I can survive in any situation? or Is it combination of all of these? Whatever it is it's amazing how I am able to survive myself before survive the world.
Reality bites and it bites hard!

Preaching

2006-04-18T12:47:00.000+05:30

I don’t normally preach anything to anyone or give advice. However, some time back I gave some ‘gyan’ to one of my colleagues and she actually follows some of it (well, at least she says so). Now, I know you are wondering that how the heck somebody can listen to me, but let’s assume it to be true. Well, the point is when you preach others you realize how hopelessly you struggle to follow it yourself.
Another thing is when you try to preach suddenly you realize that what you just preached is rewording of some saying you learnt somewhere in third or four standards. It just struck me how those ‘sayings’ I learnt out of fascination (some of them are extremely funny) hold so true in the real life. It is just amazing how the simple things conveyed through these saying can make our life much easier if we are able to follow them. Hmm… that’s the catch, ‘if’, when will this ‘if’ go out of everything?

I am flattered....

2006-04-13T13:11:00.000+05:30

Just read this and this, I am so flattered by it. I didn't know it can be so good. Well, I had taken Meyer-Brigges test once and rather than being happy or sad was simply amazed to see how much I can relate to the results and what are good things about me.

Reservations again...

2006-04-13T11:10:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I wrote something about the reservation quotas, however not really looking it from all the directions. One thing that I realized while talking with my friends is that, really how much difference is it going to make? In some states like Tamilnadu, Maharashtra, etc. the percentage of people on OBC categories is already too much and state level colleges already carry the reservations. If you have to get admission in OBC categories in these states, you have to struggle almost as hard as open category. Why do we need these reservation at the national level then? Some castes are under this category in one state while other state they are not, then how are we going to decide while caste is OBC for the national level? We have to go through all kind of stupidities to answer these questions?
There is one arrangement called 'creamy-layer' certificate which stops rich OBCs to take admission through the quota. Why not make economic terms as the basis for quota rather than castes?
Lastly one of the funniest things is if you are meritorious student who is capable of getting the seat based solely on merit but belong to the caste which comes in the quota you have to take admission in the open category and not through quota. So, not just the percentage of quota but the whole system itself is completely biased against the open category. Where shall people in the open category must go? I think after some time only people who need reservation quotas; will be the open category.
For example, in Maharshtra if you born as a boy in a poor or middle class family which does not come under any of these quotas, you are extremely unfortunate. Why? for engineering colleges (and I think in all kind of degree colleges) in Maharashtra, there is total 52% reservation based on castes and 33% for women.; so you must be good enough to be in the best 15%.
At one end we want to end these caste based discrimination and at other end things like quotas made it more explicit and strengthen the discrimination.
Meanwhile greatbong has come up with post on reservation. I wonder how he can keep writing quality posts all the time?

Reservation and caste politics

2006-04-12T12:17:00.000+05:30

With, all these debates on the increase of reservation in IITs and IIMs; I was also collecting my thoughts and put them here. From the beginning I am of the opinion that reservation is not the solution to the concerns, well not at least today. It might have been a very sensible solution when we got our independence.
Let's go back to the time, when all this started that is the time when Dr. Ambedkar suggested it though the constitution I suppose. At that time caste being a major differentiator (it might be so in some areas even today) it was very important to give these socially deprived people opportunities to better themselves and raise their level to come neck to neck with upper caste ones. But, how long opportunities should be given and is today it is relevant to discriminate based on caste?
Dr. Ambedkar himself has proposed this reservation only for a limited period and if I remember correctly this limited period was something like 7 years. Now, how then this reservation continued? The answer is probably very simple, the great caste politics which has started with the independence itself.
Let's see whether the reservation helps. To be honest with my observation reservation helps to the individuals in the reservation quota while it does not help the society. One of the reasons why reservation makes a difference is that in country like India where there are so less quality institutions and such huge talent pool, if you are above some cadre only thing you need is to get noticed and that's what happens when you are quality institution. So, if Mr. A is more intelligent and hardworking than mr. B but due to reservation Mr. B could go to some great Institute like IIT while Mr. A had to settle on normal engineering college then at least for 10 years Mr. B or even for whole life will be at much better position than Mr. B, because of getting very good first opportunity than Mr. A. On the other hand all the companies, government etc lose simple because they have a less capable person for the job than they can have because it is easy to trusts an institution than an individual. I am sure people who have gine through the struggle of engineering, medical and management admissions will see the point I am trying to make.
Now, if reservation helps people in those category, why shouldn't it be done. First at foremost because we as a society and nation is losing because of it, second it is shaking the faith of younger generation in India. What we are doing through reservation is going to create a chain of new problems, bulk of which already exist. This rediff article to some extent explains different problems coming out of it.
Also more importantly, while you can have reservation for good degree and higher education for getting good primary and secondary education you need to pay thousands of rupees of donation and thousands of rupees fees, how ridiculous is that? So basically the people who are suffering are the poor people and it has nothing to do with the caste.

"Then, would the Indian government have played games with reservations in the
complex world of jobs and educational institutions? No - it would have been
forced to invest in good quality primary and secondary education for the
poor and nipped the rhetorical use of reservations in the bud."

This is extract from a mumbai mirror article and something like gives the more sound solution than a myopic fix like reservation quotas. The article is really about something else but related to this issue perfectly.

In the end also do read this post. It gives a different way of looking at the whole issue.

Who is the real culprit?

2006-04-06T09:12:00.000+05:30

Just few days ago, in the Lakme Fashion week, two incidents of 'Wardrobe Malfunction' happened and there were two news channels showing these incidents again and again and also newspapers carried these stories and debated them in detail. Now, I feel there is something wrong here; at one end we are outraged about distribution of clips through mobile and at other end these two incidents at the fashion week openly shown and publicized by media. I agree, that news channels blurred the sensitive parts or shown black stripe, but does that make it less painful for the two models or is it something diferent than distribution?
How does this act of media different from some person distributing some private photos or clips? Don't mistake me, I am not saying that it is ethical to distribute, my point is just that shouldn't we be more responsible towards media or media should be more responsible? Just because nobody could do anything to media people, do they have rights to do anything they want? Is this the way we want to shape our media?
There is something horribly going wrong with we the humans. The people distributing private photos/clips or news channels publicizing such things more than the real social issues, these are just the symptoms, the real problem is something else; it lies between the way we are, the way the global culture is developing. We are very good at blaming others, we all will conviniently blame technology or older genrations will blame young generations and so on... but we all have to change ourselves
Note: It does not mean, that the guilty should not be punished, they must be.

Appraisals and ratings

2006-03-20T20:09:00.001+05:30

One of the favourite topics of most IT people.

I am also being one of them suffering from this appraisalomnia. As I am suffering from it, I though let me write about it and let others also share it (of course, if somebody reads it).

Goal settings and appraisals is one among several dreadful procedures followed in IT industry and not just IT industry but also employees from several other industries are victim of this. Now, I know, those who always get good ratings are going red with anger, but just read on...

Basically, if you are able to set your specific targets, then since you yourself (of course, along with your boss) set them and you will be rewarded based on them, you are supposed to get motivated and perform better or at your best level. So let's analyze all the fallacies one by one.

Step 1: Setting the goals
You discuss with your boss and then with agreement of both, your boss sets goals for you for the quarter or the half year. Nice and clean you say... Let me ask, have you ever been able to follow your plans as you laid out the first time? It never happens isn't it? Mr. Murphy is one of the most powerful people in the world, and he does strike. If Murphy doesn't strike, wise people know that there are enough tricks in the bag so that your boss can set goals such that even if you outperform all your goals, you won't go much beyond 3 or at the most 4, never 5. One can see the goals and say that whether you can get 5 or not.

Step 2: Self-Assessment
I am skipping some small steps in between. After you have set your goals then end of the quarter or the half-year (well, not exactly end, just before the end, so that your boss can appraise you till the end and the reason why he has to finish appraisals just before the end is these so called fast communication IT companies need 2-3 months to process these ratings finally in order to decide compensation for employees. For a benchmark this time taken for processing is more than what thousand of papers of engineering students are checked and results are declared in Mumbai University. That should give you an idea, how fast these IT companies themselves are.)
Coming back to the main point, here the poor soul must decide what rating he would give for himself, he gives full, the boss will definitely cut it down and if he gives less, boss can say well you yourself given it how can I give you more than that? This is really important step as the comments you write must be tricky enough to justify whatever rating you give to yourself.
I guess you are understanding that things are not as simple and straight forward as they look to be.

Step 3: Ratings by the appraiser (immediate boss)
Question number 1 is are you in the good books of your boss? Well, if you are not, no matter how well you have done, you can't get a good rating. The world is fascinating, no matter what rating your boss gives you, he can always have an argument for it. Sometimes you do good work and still get 3 , he can always say " well, 3 is not a bad rating". The rating can be absolute or relative based on his convenience. This is not the only tricky part, remember you have to prove, that you have done so and so work, now depending on the goal that have been set for you (oops! sorry that have been set BY you) this can be very difficult. Come on, one of my friends have one of his goal set as based on customer appreciation, now just think how many times is customer going to appreciate you, and if he does are you going to keep log, that Mr. So and so called/written/told me that I am doing good work, and even if you keep, who is going to believe you? You can't prove intangible results, can you? but they are often part of the goals.

There are more steps, but this post is already getting too long, and anyways next steps are mostly formalities so leave it here.

Now, there are two final ticks in this trade called "Curve Fitting" and "Rationalization or Normalization" to ensure that your ratings can be scaled down even if they first look good. Curve fitting is like relative grading, so if there is some superperformer in the group and even if you do magnificent work but not as good as him, you can't get 5. All team members must be fit on the curve from 3 to 5, so if you have excellent team, all of them performing very well, don't be hopeful of good ratings. The other trick is that even if you have got 4 and on the center level depending upon the distribution of ratings, at center level your rating can be reduced (unfortunately here, it's not your boss' fault, so you can't blame him) so that compensation can be distributed well (don't ask me what does distributing well means, meaning changes accordingly)

I remember one of very senior members argued on my comments on goal setting that; so many people getting rating of 4 (that means performing better than 100%) , isn't it good? (Well, first thing, if that is the scenario, our company must be super-effcient and benchmark for productivity, but it, in fact scores less in productivity compared to some of the similar companies. So, there must be something terribly wrong with the system, isn't it. It shows that we are super-efficient, but reality is something else)

Conclusion: Percentage of people getting demotivated exceeds many times the people who get motivated. Hence the system results in exactly opposite behaviour to what it supposed to do. so the system sucks and ...........
(Ha ha ha ha, for these two lines, I told you the whole story)

Mystery called Love

2006-03-15T17:21:00.000+05:30

Love is perhaps one of the biggest mystery in this world. It is most common and yet unexplained phenomena.
Just now, I read a forward giving message " don't look for people you love... Look for people who love you"
Love does not just mean the boy and girl love, includes family, friends also.
However the boy and girl love (the other combinations are also implied, so don't get offended if you belong to them) is the hot discussion everywhere (it always is, whole of Bollywood and Hollywood runs on it) and let's just continue with it.
Well, can you really predict that so and so will fall in love with so and so, impossible! isn't it?
Well, I am so stupid that I can not understand what exactly this love is what but at the same time I am not stupid enough to call physical attraction as love. However, if you are great fan of hollywood and bollywood movies it might prove to be very hard to argue against the fact that in many cases(well! I am just being diplomatic or rather politically correct) physical attraction is trigger to this so called love.
In most situations (which I have seen), it starts when the two characters of the story meet each other for some or the other reason and then start talking with each other and they first like each other's talk (my god! I just discovered the first road block in my love journey or rather why I don't have any girlfriend, I am very poor in conversational skills). And, then they start meeting each other often and realise that they like each other's presence (most often they get blinded and not able to see each other's annoying habits which afterwards becomes huge problem) and then they realise that they love each other. Now, the trick here is that what causes this realisation that I love her and things like that. Well, to be honest, I am clueless, do you know it?
I have one friend who exactly like me had opinions about love and used to ridicule things like love at first sight (Well, I ridicule it even today) and then hopelessly fell in love with a girl.
So, again what does it mean? Does it mean that when you get emotionally very close to someone, you have fallen in love?
Anyway, is there anything called true love, isn't it just a moment when we decide to commit ourselves emotionally, physically,.... to someone for life?
When the relationships break, was there any love between the two or love is just flexible enough :) to change over time?
I am not trying to give any answers, I don't know any.
Well, just when I thought I will finish this blog, I remembered one observation. There is one peculiar thing that people who go to some other country where similar people are much less, they normally fall in love or commit to marriage easier. In fact, the friend, I mentioned few paragraphs ago, fell in love with the girl in foreign country. So is the loneliness (or emptiness, which I use to term extreme loneliness) one of the factors here? Is it that when you are away from your family or people you love or you don't have anyone who loves you; you start looking for someone who will and when you see a possibility you fall in love?
I guess my thoughts are too random, but I guess that's the way they should be.
congratulations! if you are reading upto this very last line.

Irony

2006-03-15T10:49:00.000+05:30

Just few days ago, I confessed on this very blog that I have never taken any objective decision or probably hardly taken any and today http://www.3smartcubes.com/ says that I am an Objective Thinker.
Well, being Objective thinker does not automatically make me an Objective decision maker but what the heck! If an objective thinker struggles to be an objective decision maker, what does that supposed to mean?
However the description given by the website includes 'Objective Thinkers often combine intuitive information with the facts they have gathered'; so I guess that explains some part of it.

Struck with boredom...

2006-03-14T14:56:00.000+05:30

Its middle of March, appraisal time (topic for a huge blog altogether), I must be in thick of the action and instead I am struck with extreme boredom. It's like you are running a 10 km marathon and after 9th km, you don't feel like running and you actually stop.
Its 3 PM and only thing I can clearly think of is an hour of sleep. Instead of writing documents to support my self-assessment ratings, I am reading book for my work. Though reading book might be more important from work point of view, writing documents is more important from apppraisl point of view, on which depends my performance pay.
Oh! heck! life is full of unfair tradeoffs....

coloured by emotions

2006-03-13T15:11:00.000+05:30

Can we as a human take a perfect objective decision? I think it is nearly impossible ( at least for me). I bow to the people who can do so.

Think of it carefully... Isn't it true; most times answer is ready with us; it just comes out of our mind and afterwards, we try to defend it by giving some nice logic or theory. This is especially evident when the decision is somehow relating to the people we already know. If somebody we don't like make a very valid point,most times we would find an excuse why that something won't work and go ahead. Though this is just an obvious example, most of our life is full of such kind of non-obvious decisions.

I don't know, how to analyze further on this isssue. It is just nearly impossible. I have just put it from my own experience and my observations of people around me.

One of the great persons in formalizing thinking and inventor of 'lateral thinking' Mr. Edward DeBono has included emotions a red hat in his methodology 'six hats thinking' for the exact same reason.

There is something called "emotional intelligence" which is supposed to help us in life, but I don't know. I confess I have never really read about it but I just be another nice theory. For me, I always think that being conscious about something is more important than reading theory. You read theory and forget it but if you are conscious about something it remains at the back of your mind and after some time becomes part of your emotions.

Undecided...

2006-03-08T19:01:00.000+05:30

Today my mind is wandering in too many dircetions. I sat for writing blogs, started four different topics because of four different reasons and left them in between. Just not able to think, clearly in one direction, all thoughts are getting mixed up here and there.
I guess too much on my plate to worry about... I hope my life also doesn't get mixed up. I have to look forward to complete all the four blogs pretty soon....

I am back...

2006-03-06T10:21:00.000+05:30

Yeah, yeah I know, it doesn't excite anyone (oops! soory, it excites at least me) in the world; however after some hectic activities for a brief period of a week, I am back to reading and writing blogs.
Great! so many topics to write about let's see how it goes!

What happens when you pretend to be someone you are not?

2006-02-23T19:26:00.000+05:30

A very quiet and introvert guy goes for lunch along with his colleagues. Now, as usual discussions start and as normally happens the discussions are dominated by the female part of the group. Now suddenly,
Girl1: (refering to the quiet guy) he is so quiet, yaar!
Girl2: yeah he is.
Quiet Guy: (Oops!, what do I do, I am not really that quiet, oh! may be I am but then it is not considered good, and then insanity strikes him) Well, I have to be quiet sometimes..
[all the group gets stunned, some guys smile quietly, Girl1 is absoultely speechless, but manages to say...]
Girl1: ?????????? No Comments!
Quiet guy: (well, what the heck did I say? How idiot I am?)

Some more episodes to follow later....

Work???

2006-02-23T19:10:00.000+05:30

I don't know, what worries me more at the moment, Islamist fundamentalism reaching to new heights with an actress's dog name is made an issue OR India's talks with US OR numerous social issues here OR that I have to work more. Well, I guess wise people would have already recognised that I am more worried about my work. I am already working more than I usually do, I still have to work more....
Fortunately have some training tommorrow, so I can officially bunk my work. Corporate trainigs are opportunities where professionals pretend to learn; ask qustions more relating to their experience than the training and then go back to work and repeat the same mistakes.
Ofcourse, you can't blame the professional really. You ask me why? If it is a management type workshop it will claim to be the best way to solve the problems, and since all the participants gone through various trainings of best ways, they get confused that which methodology is really the best, so they don't apply any one of them. Well, come on they have to take some trainings, otherwise how will they complete their targets for the appraisals.
Time to go and complete my targets....

Happiness?

2006-02-15T19:32:00.000+05:30

Day before yesterday, I called one of my aunts and she asked am I happy? I just said, I am doing fine but it triggered lot of things in my mind.

What is that we look for in our life? Happiness?
What is this thing called happiness after all?
What happens when I am happy? Does my life stop? Whatever work I do is towards happiness, so if I am happy do I stop working?

Well, I know, all these silly questions I am asking. But all of these coming in to my mind due to the current two opposite side stretching of my life . One side is my interest which is not paying off and not even able to nurture it properly and other side something called money (generally regarded as success, by most people) or rather than money career prospects. For me money, is not success. Money has never been objective function for me, but because of it being necessary evil, it is definitely a constraint.

What is happiness after all?
Is it getting whatever you want? or is it able to do things you want to do? It means different things for different people, some people want to have latest gadgets, some want to walk on beaches, some enjoy hill-stations. Everybody, is so different. The most interesting thing is that for most normal people, money is only the means to the destinations, but everyone ends up caring more about the means than the destination itself. It rather seems all about; what one wants to do rather than one wants to achieve. Well, I am going round and round and still not able to find out what exactly it means. More and higher the wishes one has, less likely it is to be happy for him. It sounds little bit stupid, but definitely not anything abnormal. I think it is a perfect possibility, that an extremely successful CEO of a big conglomerate is an extremely unhappy guy and on the other hand one of the sweepers in his company is a very happy person.
Then, why do we run behind all these things?
Well, I guess I should stop here, let some philosophical guru think about it, I am just an ordinary guy. Let me do my own work, make my work interesting, get some money to survive, go out with friends, spend some time with family, and... (oops!, the line is already getting to long)

Art of Teaching?

2006-02-14T12:14:00.000+05:30

Well, yesterday for the first time in my life, I understood how difficult is to teach? I have given many presentations till now, but yesterday was different, for the first time I was an elder and experienced person for the crowd who were listening to me and they were there to grasp knowledge from me rather than question my knowledge. (Truly, My experience in so may presentations I have given and heard is that, people want to question you rather than listen to you in the presentations.)
It was close to a horrible experience, all the students wore the same bored looks on their faces, which I used to for so may teacher and professors of mine. I had some consolation, when finally 2-3 students asked some questions, and at least to some extent I could answer them. I was wondering what they could be doing, remembering me as as student....
Were they counting number of times I pronounced some word?
or they saying in their mind, "kya bore mar raha hai yaar, kab band karega yeh lecture?" (how boring the lecture is? When is it going to finish?)?
were they drawing some wonderful or funny drawing on their notebooks?
Fortunately nobody threw chalks or paper planes, probably out of respect for my boss, who normally takes the lectures....
When I remembered all this, well I myself had a good laugh at it, and have to agree teaching is really an art. I really cherish memories of some professors, who taught me so well, today I can even argue with tremendously more experienced people on those topics....
It is funny how things fire back on you...
It was a nice experience overall, something I will remember for quite a long time and I hope soon I will be able to do well in this art of teaching.

Weird Day

2006-02-09T16:01:00.000+05:30

Well, my first blog had been quite a lack luster, but today I got anew inspiration by reading one of my very old friend's blog. I may not be writer like him, but who knows I might become a good writer.
I have lots of things to share.

Today, was something weird, I hope it finishes soon.
started morning at 5.30 with my roommate telling me that, he had some accident yesterday and his foot is paining a lot.... I went with him to hospital and surprisingly things moved with good pace, with x-ray being ready within half an hour we entered the hospital. Well, but that's it, things came to a halt here, the general practitioner could not tell whether it is hairline fracture or not, he could just say that it is not major fracture. We have to wait till 10.00 for the orthopedic doctor, fortunately for my roomie it's not hairline fracture but still its bad ligament tear and he has to rest for three weeks.
I came to office late and saw that all big people of my group having meeting, my heartbeat missed, knowing yesterday only I expressed some concernes about my work to my superboss. Well, to my relief my superboss has actually done some good things for me in the meeting, and I am saved from being pushed into another work which I am not keen on doing....
Then well I started the day with the way any IT guy starts, you guessed it right!! that is checking mails. I found the Gmail chat has been activated and one of my friend is online, so I started chatting with him (I hope my boss doesn't read this), and he told me that yesterday he was chatting with one of my seniors at IIT and that senior was wondering why I am wasting my career doing general research in an IT company (Research in Indian IT company? that too by a fresh non-CS, post graduate, that's weird, but that's what I do) on a meager salary (heck! What I do is pretty much most people in my group except the tools team do, and I am the lowest salary getter, me the poor soul!). Well, if you know Hindi, this discussion with my friend was exactly "Jale par namak chhidakana".
Well, that's it till now, I hope the rest of the day goes well. And, if you think this day was not at all weird, well let me tell you I was actually going to write philosophical blog ( :) he he! I am enjoying philosophy these days) and ended up writing this.
I hope someday I write good blogs...

First Blog

2006-02-03T17:50:00.000+05:30

Thoughts are interesting and struggles of day to day life are not just interesting but entertaining also.
I want to write, not because I am good at it, not because I can write funny but to relax myself of my emotions on various things.
I am really impressed with the numerous blogs I read and thought why don't I try myself, sometimes I also think some good stuff :)
Not a good time to blog, just finished my work in the office. (Well, it's pretty hard to agree, but let's assume it to be true for the time being) Like my personality, my work also has some contradictory aspects. I try to research with the world of coders, testers, etc. etc.
Hope to have a good time blogging.....