Thursday, February 23, 2006

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

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???

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....

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Happiness?

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)

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Art of Teaching?

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.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Weird Day

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...

Friday, February 03, 2006

First Blog

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.....