The princess of Shiraz

Married men should be subject to very strict rules when it comes to conversations inside the office with single women. When asked what they did during the weekend or what plans they have, they shouldn't talk about how much they love their partner's or what stuff they do for them. Reference to taking children to the animal farm or doing an art project with them - all of this and everything else about family that makes single women so emotional, has to be STOPPED! And then the single women are like - "oh that's so lovely! I need to find a guy who does all that too!"

I am sitting there listening to all of this and I am thinking - "hello! you need to talk to the single men about that!". Yes, single men don't have to do all that. Doesn't mean they will not do it when the need arises!

Rewind 13 months. I hear about her. I don't know who she is but I am curious. I just carry on with my work. One October morning in the not-so-cold meeting room, I see her walk in with her moon boot. I tell myself "yes, she seems nice". I actually hadn't talked to her up until then.

Now. She's the most awesome person I have met in this office. She is smart, intelligent, driven, has a great smile, with a bit of chicness. And she runs marathons, swims, does bootcamp. I could just say "I don't know how she does it" (reminding me of Kate Reddy).

Over the period of a year, we managed to chat a bit - about my job, crossfit, a bit of family stuff. I tried inviting her to crossfit. Never worked. I guess I should stop talking about crossfit to women. Probably puts them off. I don't know. I just don't know!

Past. I walked back with her from the city all the way past Domain Interchange. It was perhaps the 'one and only' time when we had a good conversation. Just once. It never happened again. I hinted to her once that I'd like to join her on a walk. She declined politely (Maybe she sensed something. Sometimes women just know so much and men just don't get it. Rather I don't).

Now. She always talks to the married men in the office. And they "all" flirt with her. I see it all the time. I am like, god! you men are ridiculous. I think she knows that (that the men are flirting or I hope she knows). I think she likes the attention. Don't they all?

There's so much of this work ethics, sexual harassment and colleague rules that single men need to be mindful about. The married men - not so much. For them, all that is banter. Not for me!

Mustering up the courage to ask her out - I don't think I could do that. If she absolutely does not like it, it would put  a huge risk to my job (which, by the way, is going bloody good well). If it becomes a soft decline, then the oddity of sitting across in the office and being reminded that this happened.

Its all so complicated! Well, isn't that what's life is all about? Some letters are best delivered as "return to sender"

Nick

Nick Langmaid is my colleague from work at Australia Post. I worked with him last year for over 3 months in 2014. A pretty busy and challenging project - we managed to get it over the line. Of course, there were plenty others working on it. We were just doing our bit.

That was my first project with Post. Nick had been a long timer at Post. He was literally the knowledge bank of all things financial systems. Any questions people had about payments and accounting entries - he had the answer. He knew every system, literally off the back of his palm. While working with Nick, he made sure that I got a strong understanding of how it all connected together. During that time, we also got to discuss about our passion for staying healthy by cycling to work.

In late October 2014, I moved to another project, another office. A few months later, my previous project manager at Post met me in the office and mentioned to me that Nick had a minor heart attack and he was in surgery or something. A month before that another manager in our project had also gone on medical leave to have a bypass done. I was actually joking to my manager that it was because of the stress he created on our project that people were having heart trouble. I told myself that someday in the future, I should go and say hello to Nick and just check about his health. After all, we did work together.

I guess you know by now where this is going. Today, I received an email from my manager that Nick passed away on his way to work in the morning. I was completely shocked. I just blurted out so many abusive words at work that people around me were wondering what was happening. I couldn't take it. I was pissed off with myself that I never took time to go and meet him. At one side I was angry and on another, I was depressed. I was almost in tears and I couldn't speak. I told myself that you can never predict what could go wrong with the heart. I decided to go and meet my manager who gave me the news.

I reached the other office and met him. He and his colleagues were shocked too. In fact, it was all of us together in that one previous project. In that conversation, my manager mentioned to me that it was a cycling related accident and not a heart attack. I immediately realised that I had read about a similar event in the morning. A cyclist was  knocked down by a truck in a place called Keilor East. No name was provided but the cyclist did not live. Now, I was even more stressed. 

Honestly, I did not expect Nick to leave the world this way. I am at a loss of words but this is cruel. I told myself - Only if I had taken that extra effort to say hello and enquire about his health.... I didn't. 

Its such a mad world and in many instances, we are just doing things that have no meaning in our life. Be it work that provides us salary to pay our bills or the monotonous activities to keep our life going, we are caught up in that ever engulfing web that makes us forget and only repent.

Today, I repent that I didn't meet Nick. I just didn't take the time out of my life. I could have easily done it and I should have but I never did. What would stay with me now is my remembrance of a Sean Connery look that Nick had and a deep voice.

I am a victim of my crime called life.

Leaving Maximum City

So, all of this happened way back in January and I was really lazy to write about this.

Towards the end of December, I decided that it was time to leave. I may have stayed around for maximum another year. Dont think I could have managed beyond that. But life had to take a different track.

Quitting was actually not easy. This was not the first time but it was very tough this time. And for the first time - Totally unplanned.

On a not so fine morning (which I realized a little later), I entered the office. As usual, I was one of the few people to get in that early. I opened my inbox and I saw an email from my boss. He had written to find out what I was working on and wanted to have a status update. I was totally shocked when I read that email. I had already planned to quit sometime in December but this email put me in a spot. I had to take a quick decision. If I were to meet him as if nothing was going to happen, started something to work on and then later told him (in less than a week), he would be really furious as to why I didn't bring that up during my earlier meeting with him. It was quite natural. So, the only option that was left was to quit that very moment. I took some time and waited for my friend, had a chat with him and then composed the email. This time, I almost started shivering. I still can't explain why, but yes I did shiver. Maybe because I was not sure what my boss would tell me or rather how he would react. Nevertheless, I wrote that email and stepped out to have a cup of tea.

I got a call from an another person who works for my boss and asked me to meet with the CIO. It was my first meeting with him and also my last meeting. Over a cup of coffee, I gave him my reasons to leave. He was very understanding and he told me that he will do his best to get me relieved.

I tried to meet my boss that day. He told me that he was busy and he will call me. I waited for 2 days. No response. I tried to meet him again. Same answer. Then I decided to write an email to keep things on record. I got a response that something will be decided in a few days time. A few days passed. Suddenly, one fine morning, I got an email from the HR that it was my last day and I had to pay up the notice period if I wanted to leave. No discussion nothing at all. Decision taken without consent. I was partially bankrupt and had no option but to tell them that I was prepared to serve the full notice period instead of paying the shortfall. Now, this went into another discussion. My boss was probably irritated with all this and he asked me to move desk to somewhere close to his cabin. I moved and he was out of office the next few days, busy with meetings. As usual, I kept calling HR frantically trying to find out what was happening. Meanwhile, the guys who were responsible to get me relieved from the company were never aware of these happenings. They already started processing everything based on my previously mentioned last day. I had to tell them to take a break.

At one point, everyone was okay with me serving the notice period. I tried to meet my boss again. There were many failed attempts and one day I got through to him. He told me that he was going to speak to the HR. I told him that I could wait. Meanwhile, it was already New Years. Everyone in my friends circle at the office was eager to find out what was happening. Things were not moving. That's all.

Finally, the surprise came. The HR discussion was done and they decided to relieve me. Again, this was told to me all of a sudden. I had like few hours left in the day to pack up and leave. I finished all the formalities in quite a jiffy and left.

I can still remember those 2-3 weeks after I submitted my resignation. I was literally wasting time in the office. Everyone who came up to talk to me would ask me the same question - when is your last date? and I would say "nice question, but simply no answer"

Camp 3 to Summit

We reached Camp 3 and there was some surprise for sure.

The environmentalist did not need aspirin. He actually needed the inhaler, but he managed to borrow one from some other team who decided to help (this happened on its own and was not part of the simulation).

The photographer and environmentalist were at critical health. Everyone else was at weak health. Satellite communication went for a toss. All weather predictions had to be done manually. Every team member had been given a set of data that could be used to calculate the weather range, windchill factor and windspeed. Based on this information, the team could decide whether to move to Camp 4 or stay put for another day.

The team got into action. All data was collected and using traditional temperature formulae and windchill tables, the weather forecasting was done. We found out that we risk a frost-bite within 5 minutes of ascent. That was the last thing we wanted.

The biggest decision was made. To stay back, stay alive and stay healthy.

The decision helped us. It was the 4th day and the sherpas delivered the oxygen cannisters. Our next job was to divide the oxygen cannisters among the team members. Health status has improved and everyone was good to climb. Weather was fantastic and there was no point in waiting. Again, everyone had relevant information on the oxygen cannisters. The number of cannisters were to be decided based on the hours taken to summit and back, from Camp 4, and the rate at which oxygen was being consumed by each person.

We did some calculations and then split the cannisters. As we were doing that, we also figured out that there was a cost associated to with the cannisters. So we were quite careful about allocating extra. We were also mindful about the weight that it would add to the backpack. This was a big mistake on our part.

None of us needed medicines. We put our footsteps forward. Camp 4 seemed to be a tough place. Icy winds and troubling temperatures. Health had come down. The environmentalist was not very sure now. He had an incentive to stay here and collect some browny points. So, he started suggesting us to think about leaving him at Camp 4. The leader was not too keen on doing that. The other question was to decide whether we need to administer medicine or not.

After prolonged discussions, we decided that if we were going to leave the environmentalist behind, then we will not give any medicine to him. Our other option was to give him the medicine and move to summit. The photographer was also weak and he needed aspirin too. We administered the medicine and decided to Summit.

The worst happened. The marathoner, environmentalist and physician could not summit and they were rescued.

Camp 1 and 2

After the brief was sent out, I had a break for close to 10 days. Our first meeting happened after I was back. Some groups had already finished the simulation by the time I was back.

Our first meeting was quite a breeze. We were at Base Camp. We sat through and introduced ourselves, stating what we look forward to during this simulation. As everyone was in great health, we decided to proceed to Camp 1. We reached the camp without any problem at all.

The next decision was to move to Camp 2. The photographer had some issues because he had an incentive to stay at Camp 1 for one extra day. None of the others had any motivation. There was a restriction to have only one rest day during the six day trip. The environmentalist wanted to spend an extra day at Camp 4. The leader wanted everyone to stick together. Seeing all this happening, the photographer decided to move to Camp 2. He thought that if things did not go well, he could stay in Camp 2 for an extra day and then get back to Camp 1; basically not summit at all.

Everyone ascended to Camp 2. This place was first sight of how things could go awry. Everyone's health had come down. The environmentalist was critical. Anyone could contract asthma or AMS. The physician did have the medical equipment (inhaler, aspirin, blood pressure monitor) to administer to one of the team members at a time. The important decision was to know what medicine to give and see how we can progress.

The photographer was in a fix. Now he had to decide. He was the only one who had a different motive - "Stay back". The discussion began. The leader was quite clear. He didnt want to keep anyone back. The overall team objectives were at stake. The photographer decided to take a call. If he didnt stay back, he would lose only 25% from his overall goals; but the team as a whole would achieve more, perhaps more than 30%. He decided to let go of his personal interest.

The team took a call to administer the aspirin to the environmentalist and move to Camp 3. The marathoner played the very important role of gauging the temperature at every stage. We were at Camp 3 now.

Mt Everest

Mt Everest is a simulation exercise that focuses mostly on team work, leadership, and conflict resolution. As part of the training program, its being administered here.

We have been divided into teams of 5. There is one leader. Every person on the team has a defined role to play.

The Team needs to progress from Base Camp to Summit. In between there are 3-4 camps to cross. Moving from one camp to another is a decision that the team needs to make. This decision could be based on individual interest, climatic conditions, individual health, availability of supplies, need to rescue etc.

Yesterday we got the first email about the simulation. Immediately one of the teams called for a meeting and I got to know about that. I had just logged into the system to see my role and my goals and within that short period of time, a team meeting had been called.

Anyways, the team met and this is what happened. As a given rule, everyone could access the system through the same password, which means, I could use my friend's email id and know what his role in the team is (which I think is a big flaw in the administration of the simulation). So, this team actually logged into the system for everyone on their team, copied all the details and sent out a single document containing all the information for each team member. Now, this means that every team member knows what the other's role in the group is. They also get to know more details about each role such as individual goals against group goals and scoring patterns for all the individual goals.

The simulation is rigged now. This will not give rise to any conflict as the leader knows what the other team members want and he will know what to answer without any reason for negotiation. The game will be staged rather than being simulated.

Now, the team says that they did this because they want to be the number one in this game; whatever it takes. 'What does that mean' when they were asked back. They said 'They would get points as a team and every individual would also get points'. So yes, now you got all the points that you need and you also won the first place. So What??

Nothing happens. This is an office and you don't get a performance bonus to win this game. This is just a simulation to know how teams work and how they resolve conflicts. If the most ideal and healthy situation was simulated, then  there is no need for a team. The leader can himself see everyone's strengths from the simulation screen and make a decision. HA HA HA

While I was writing this, I got an email from the organizer that its okay to share information (even with unique passwords, team members could still share information). The most important thing is if that can be converted into actions. Let's see what happens next.

The way they work

My boss here is quite a big guy. Atleast that's what I can figure out. We really don't have a place/site where we can see hierarchies of roles; hence I cannot make any conclusion. My previous company used to have defined roles and all that used to be visible on Outlook. Here, the whole outlook of Outlook is different.

Anyways, in between, I must also tell you that its Diwali season here and the whole office is in bright colors (of course I am not. I didnt wish to wear kurta and enter a suburban train). Diwali here is as big as Christmas in the United States. People take off for more than a week. Literally no one is working in the office today. Most of them are preparing for the festive evening get-together for their respective departments and let me not tell anything about Monday and Tuesday next week. Work is out of question as the office will just be having a few faces here and there.

My boss is a very technically sound person. He has great ideas. I dont know how he has the time to know a lot of things but he does. Also, he has a lot of people reporting to him. By a lot, I mean really a lot, like hundreds. I am sure all these hundred don't meet him everyday, but it does make things complicated. For example, if I need to meet him, I need to go and find out where he is first and then fix up a time to meet him. This is because he would always be in other meetings all day.

This brings me to another juncture. People hardly use meeting requests here. All my meetings have been confirmed on the phone. Whenever I ask anyone for a time to meet, they say ' come anytime today ', which is a very ridiculous answer according to me. Nevertheless, I haven't been requested by anyone for a meeting. If they did, then I'd ask them to send a meeting request for sure. I wonder if there is any meeting agenda that is circulated at all.

Also, when you are discussing with another person inside a meeting room, someone would knock. They would come in and start talking to that other person. Once they are done, your conversation would continue. Nor the person you were meeting with or the person knocking the door takes the decision to postpone the second conversation. Bottomline: 'different meetings happen in parallel'. And because there is a good chance that another party is waiting for a discussion in the same meeting room while yours is happening, they may give their free unwanted advice to you when they hear your conversation.

I think there is more to come on this. Most of this is rather very funny to witness.

The meeting

Let's get there by 11am was the latest message on Thursday night. I was not sure if I heard it right. Why get to a place by 11am for a 2.45pm meeting? But these guys never want to take chances when it comes to the Chairman.

We were at Makers on Nariman Point by quarter past 11 or so. Our team was sitting in a small conference room preparing for the afternoon meeting. My slides had pretty much nothing to say as I had spent the least time here - just about a month and my work started early this week.

The feeling had not sunk it until it was 2.30pm. I was going to meet the man behind the new Reliance. The son who made all of this happen. The person who is in the news almost everyday. I had not imagined that this would ever happen. Absolutely not.

As we were seated in the room, MDA comes in and meets everyone personally for a few seconds. Then our presentation begins. We present all our slides - few mins each. He asks a few questions to everyone to get a feel of whats happening.

The meeting in whole was quite interesting. I wouldn't say it was very empowering but there were some key messages. MDA expects this new bunch of people to take up good leadership roles within the company. He mentioned to us about the need visualize to the future and create the path to excellence.

There was a mention of the concept of Generational Peace. He kept talking about the fact that the older set of leaders needed to shed some of their key responsibilities and believe in the idea of young blood taking the reins. For this to happen, the new set needs to step up a little.

At the end, he told us to think about the end state and then work backwards. Overall, it was ok but there could the other side to this. And that will be my next post.

Almost a month

It will be a month in Bombay, one week from now. I still dont know how I am able to survive the 6 day week. Its a big drain on personal life when you know that Sunday is the only day left in your whole week. A mid-week holiday, whenever it comes by, although it rarely does; is definitely a boon.

Last week, we had presentations from different group companies. Each rep explained to us in detail about the businesses that they were in-charge of and the kind of markets they serve. It was quite interesting to see the diversity of products that is being handled by this single entity called Reliance. I mean, its just a few words to say that they backward integrated from textiles to oil and gas exploration - but what a TASK to get that executed and moreover the will to do things so massive! Thats unbelievable.

The presentation week concluded with our visit to the Jamnagar refinery. We took a corporate jet from the military base in Mumbai to Jamnagar.

Truly World Class. There is Jamnagar, which is a small town and then there is Reliance Jamnagar, which is a whole new world altogether. For the first time, I saw the Reliance Mart which is comparable to the Walmart SuperStore in the US. The WM Store is still bigger, but I guess in India; we are always in a struggle for space and if we need big spaces, we have to go out of the city atleast 35kms. The city population would never drive all the way there to buy the household stuff. If retailers built such huge establishments in the city, they end up paying a hefty rent and hardly beark-even with such stores.

So, Jamnagar was a construction marvel. 700 acres of guest house and residential land. Amazing recreational facilities including two huge football fields, just enough to play some wonderful ultimate everyday.

The refinery itself is a maze. Although I couldnt understand every technical explanation that was given, it was still mind-blowing to see how the whole place was running all day and all night without a glitch.

Reliance has also spent loads of money on developing a green belt, which has a million plus mango trees; the largest in Asia. I couldnt believe my eyes when I saw that. We were driving through kilometres of mango trees. Now I have to wait until May 2012 to taste some of that.

Twelfth Day

Its been twelve days now. Work has not started.  Over the last week or so, I met a lot of people who are in-charge of different departments within the information techology organization. Just the usual introductions and trying to understand what they are doing and how my future work will fit into the whole context etc etc

There is also a weird attendance policy in the company. You have to be in by 10.30 am and you can get out only by 6pm. If you came late or left early, you need to justify; else you lose your pay for the day. Stupidity I thought, only when I saw lines of people queuing up at 5.55pm; waiting to swipe their card out at 6pm and then rushing to catch the first shuttle to the station. I kinda get the feeling that a lot of people dont like this but I guess they cant help it.

Just like it happens in traditional Indian Companies, the Sir culture is present here as well. And being the north, rather west, they also add brother along with your name once in a while. Its becoming very difficult for me to switch to the respect format from a first name format. A friend of mine told me that eventually I will end up doing that - I mean start accepting the system and not questioning. Right now, its not like that. I definitely dont want to change; but lets see.

Evenings after office have been well spent. Vandhaan Vendraan and Mere Brother Ki Dulhan. I was glued to my seat watching Miss Kaif give that naughty wild smile - oooohhhh.. goose bumps and because she was playing a girl from London, she did all justice she could. Hopefully I will watch a Telugu movie during the weekend.

Back

Oh, its so difficult to get back to something after a very long break. Here I mean work and blogging.

Three weeks of vacation - first my wedding, then a trip to delhi to attend a close friend's wedding, a day trip to agra, back to chennai for the reception, then to perth via singapore; to chrischurch from perth, a week in the south island, back to perth again for about 5 days, stop over at singapore and then back to chennai. Whoooaaah!!

Whattaaey TRIP maan.

After all that, when i came back to work, there was no work. Thankfully, I had come back for something more interesting. Ultimate Frisbee. Yes, the Kodaikanal Fly Baba tournament is coming up during the last weekend of March. And Chennai is going to Bendy Field in Kodi with a 35 member team. This time we got our own bus!!!

Other than ultimate practice, i dont have much to do. the week i landed, i spent one day in office sorting out proofs for tax purposes. the recession is quite bad. bad bonus, no promotion and maybe no hike too. promotion and hike decisions have been postponed till june or july. management is buying time to see what the market reactions will be. haha. last year, around 200 people were made directors in the office. i was like - WHAT is WRONG with the guys in talent management?

Whatever, I still have to write atleast one post about my kiwi land trip. Until, then I am just signing off.

The Persians are waiting for me to lead their army.....

Swipe for lunch

From tomorrow, we have something different to look forward to, at the office. MEAL CARDS.

So, it used to be like this. We paid 15 rupees for lunch and the organization paid the same. Now that's not there anymore.

We got this new thing called a meal card. One more extra card. Amidst so many credit cards, debit cards, fuel cards, MTV card, dhaba express discount card, oh yeah, access card; now we have this card to used at the cafeteria.

Company will not pay that 15 rupees. They have brought this new scheme called Flexible Benefit Plan. I seriously don't know how flexible this is. If I end up paying more tax by July next year compared to this financial year, then I'll know about the inflexibility of this flexible plan. Company will top up a fixed amount every month on this card and then you can swipe this card for lunch.

Previously you just paid 15 rupees and it was the hassle for the accountants in the finance department and the guys from the access card department to figure out how many ate or how many swiped twice, whatever that maybe. Now all accounting headache has been shifted to the employee. Every time you swipe, you have to ensure that the person at the counter enters the right amount and if you need to track the account, then you need to keep the bills and later claim if you need to reconcile. There is also an online account tracker.

But you know what? Having been here for about a year, I am sure my company will tell me to scan the receipt and send it via email to a given email address and raise a query in a new system.

By the way, this card can be used in other retail outlets within the city as well. Other than the big names, I really don't know where else you can use the card.

One of the names I saw on the list of outlets in Chennai said "PADMA STORES" and that's it. That was effin crazy!!! I guess there are enough surprises like this.

Office Conversations

So every office has N number of systems passing data here and there. Half the time we dont even know why there are so many systems, why do they follow redundant processes and why can't things be simplified.

But, with an ever expanding office, these questions sometimes just go unheard of. While I was caught amidst the demands of these painful systems to input the information that it required, a funny incident happened.

I had to add a location by the name Luxembourg into a peoplesoft system because one member from my team was travelling. Since that location was not available in the list of places, I had to place a request. I wonder why they have some strange policies for adding a location onto a system. They asked me too many questions - most of which was unwanted.



Anyway, so I dropped an email to the helpdesk guys to add the location. A day later I got a call back from the helpdesk guy(H).

H: Which project? (And I give him the project details)

H: Let me get into the project details screen.

Me: Ok (thinking that this guy knows what he is doing)

H: Ok, so what is the service order?

Me: (i got confused now. why did he need the service order? this was nowhere connected to that? but then i still decided to give him the answer) Let me tell you where it is (and i walked him through a few screens and brought him to the service order screen)

Me: Can you see the number 1215078? That is the service order.

H: Oh yeah I see it now.

(There is some silence now. Still wondering why this number connected to the problem I reported, I thought he was thinking about the solution. Maybe something innovative.)

H:(suddenly) But this service order is attached to a resource called Praveen and not Luxembourg

Me: (totally shocked, I didn't know what this guy meant. After a few seconds, I realized that this guy had actually thought that Luxembourg was the name of a resource within the company. Controlling my laughter burst, I decided to explain the problem to him)
See, thats not the problem. Let me tell you what needs to be done
(and I showed him the right place to fix the problem)

H: Oh, you mean this one! For this, you have to ask the Database Team in Calcutta. This is not controlled by us.

Me: (Oh yeah, when Luxembourg becomes a employee name for you, I am quite sure you wouldn't have any clue) THANKS, please forward my request to them.

(By the way, Luxembourg has still not been added into the system. Those guys have contacted the European Head to get some approvals. God only knows!!!)

The preparation

This story is about office stuff. Certain parts might look a bit exaggerated for the reader, but it truly isnt like that.

Introducing the main character - so, I have a friend in the office who works with another project team. By nature, she is a very innocent and sweet person. Its her first job and she is all energized to do anything and everything - the go-getter kinds.

But you know about big organizations, right? At times, they have a strange influence of the government. Things happen a bit slowly. People sit around a bit, taking their own sweet time.

Our lady was very annoyed with what was happening. In her team, she was the youngest and she wasnt getting the "state-of-the-art work" and any travel. If there was any travel, then arranging for a visa took most of the time. Dont get me started about the visa desk. That's another post. Anyway, past is past.

Then she got into a very good project with a bank. She worked really hard, put a lot of effort into contributing to the project, along with her manager who was working with the client.

Travel dates got fixed. It was decided that she'll be at the client's office for more than a week. The excitement began. She got herself new clothes - the kit allowance was used effectively. Tickets were getting blocked.

Meanwhile, she gets an email/call telling her that she should have a "preparation call". More excitement. She quickly straightens out the presentation deck and then also gets ready an elevator pitch, just to create the right impression - sends it out to the people concerned. Running in her mind are thoughts - ok, we'll be discussing our game plan for the next week, what our presentations are going to focus on, who are the people we are going to meet, what kind of future work can we pitch,... a host of things like that.

The preparation call begins. Questions are coming from the other side - Have you got your tickets? Has peoplesoft been updated? Did you find a good hotel? Also, make that coconut oil bottle a 500ml one, instead of 250ml. By the way, you are coming only for 10 days, which means less clothes to carry, so can you get more stuff - like sweets, sambhar powder etc?

In her mind ("oh my god! is this preparation"?)....

Workplace never gets better

So the next thing I did was to enrol in the Fitness One run gym at the office. Although the name of the Gym suggests a good brand, inside here its like yet another street gym with few standards. I dont understand, why the Gym fee has to be this low. Its actually less than a third of what you have to pay outside. And because of this, the facilities are quite bad. And the music sucks! Big Time. It just spoils your mood for a good workout when you hear that.

The most and ridiculously funny part is the dress code. You are not supposed to wear a sleeveless t-shirt to the gym. And this rule was given by the HR Department here. I still havent got the point.

Found this on another blog and thought I must let you all know. Click Here

And the next thing is about people just pushing their work to you. So this is right now happening to me. People above just transfer all the junk work to you and they keep waiting for you to let them know. In the middle, there is nothing called a follow. All they do is write an email and keep quiet for 10 days. At the end, jump at it and whatever. Still the problem of doing something because someone used to do it before exists around here. Not much of reasoning.

News spreads quite fast I say - my project was running off-track for a while. Luckily, we managed to get it back to running on time. That was after I spent two whole days trying to explain why we didnt deliver on time. So, the first question that your peers or seniors ask you (with a dirty smirk on their face) is "I heard that your project is delayed and the client has raised an alarm". All they want to know is whether your ass is on fire. Few months back, there was a huge appreciation that we were doing extremely well. Not many people bothered. And people have their own egos. A notion that just because they have spent donkey's years in the Services Industry, they know it all.

And the non-stick gum could be in stores by 2008! Its getting too technical. So you can read more about it here. Click Here. Please do not consider this as a filler to my blog space. Its just my initiative to let you know those interesting facts from around the world.

I still remember a gum incident that happened in school. I think I was in 10th grade or maybe 9th. A friend of mine was a big fan of the BIG FUN bubble gum. Remember this brand? This brand was literally an our time brand. The Babool and CenterFresh and whatever we have now are all late entrants. Anyway, so out of doign something for fun, this friend pulled out the gum and stuck it on another friend's head. You know these things. The stuff they put inside are so strong that it just got stuck completely. It gave no way. The next day my friend had to get a haircut done. That one place on his head looked like a small crater.

Gender Genie

I came across this new thing called the Gender Genie - a website that tells with 80% accuracy whether an article was written by a man or a woman. In fact, I wanted to test it and I tried my last post on it. The result was - the male score dominated the female score by more than 100%. the algorithm is based on the fact that men and women can be categorised under certain styles of using words. women use more personal pronouns whereas men are inclined towards using words that quantify nouns. in fact the whole paper is available on the website.

at work - we have a local version of Toastmasters. There is a meeting every fortnight, late afternoon, and people are invited to talk on prepared topics. there are table topics as well. anyway, i had the chance to attend one. with great expectations i walked into the hall and i found less than 5 people in the audience. out of 5000 plus people in the office, there are just 5 who want to test or work on their communication skills. i wonder if so many are busy with work. im quite sure that its not the case. just that they are too lazy to move their butt from the seat they have been warming for the whole day.

at this juncture, i must also tell you that generally, the communication level inside the organization is extremely poor. people know to code well. they might even enter the limca book of records for maybe coding so many thousand lines in a day but they are extremely bad at writing even two lines for an email. most of the english that people write is verbatim of what they talk over the phone or to their friends. i mean - the thought just falls into words. it doesnt get any flavor of grammar. and i dont understand why people are not bothered. is this a lack of interest from within? i do see organizational initiatives once in a while, but i have a general feeling that in all this struggle, the aim is just to make sure that ends meet ( i mean, to make sure that business happens. like we had this concept called JIT - Just In Time and later when I was doing in-plant training with a renowned manufacturing firm, the production manager told me that there was new term called SHIT - SomeHow In Time).

Food for thought - George Orwell listed four writers' motives: sheer egotism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse (the desire to record things as they are, for posterity) and political purpose (the desire to push the world in a certain direction).

Do you know what you are doing?

I suddenly realised that even in an organization like this, people are working in silos. The concept of synergy is lost.

I read this line in an IMD Article - "if your customer knows more about what they buy from you than you do, the true cost of unintegrated IT gets very large"

and its almost the same thing thats happening around me. the customer talks to me and gets something underway. at the same time, he talks to another person who probably sits in another location for the same thing. since there is not one effective communication channel established between the decision makers, sometimes we end up doing the same thing over and again. the customer is extremely smart. he knows that we work in such a model. so all he needs to do is get both of us working and choose the best solution. and what do we get - business at twice the acquisition cost.

very basic concepts that i remember reading from the management of organizations course keep coming into my mind. most of it just happens because it happened before. if you question the fundamental behind whats happening, then there is hardly anyone to answer. but if they need something, then they are constantly behind your back. i remember filling some workbook during work. i was new to it and all i was given is the last month's workbook to see and replicate. there were more than two sheets on that workbook and i was sure that the numbers in the sheets had to match. that was the logical step. so i went on and checked all the sheets a number of times and nothing matched. i was surprised. and we follow this every month like clockwork. do we really have an objective?

and in the next category are team members. in fact, i dont even know the kind of work these people are doing and yet i can figure out that some of them are happily free riding. but some of them are so shameless. they know that they are wasting time and still expect that they have to be promoted after a performance review. i know of one who is quite an experienced fellow - more than me, just in the number of years. but now i know for sure that even years of relevant work experience is definitely a bad criteria to judge a person's abilities. for this guy's work is just instruction based. if you tell him to think on the fly and do it, he will panic and break down or wash his hands and shout back at you.

and on top of all this is the bureaucratic nature of doing work. there is a restricted car park - where only people from certain levels in the organization can use. and then the people in support services keep opening the doors and saluting senior staff. if you are at a certain level and above, work gets done faster. if you are at the lower end of the ladder, then you are at the mercy of whoever that guy he is. he would think that he is doing you a great favor by just doing his job and nothing else. in fact, he is there to do that, but he thinks that he can keep you waiting as long as no one complains. QUASI GOVERNMENT - as one rightly put it.

Weekly roundup

I didn't realize that its been a week since i wrote something on this space. A friend of mine who reads this space regularly had to remind me of that. He did ask me whether it was because of work. my frank answer is - is definitely because i have been trying hard to find work in the last one week.

ever since Sivaji happened, i have following up quite regularly on the movie. a whopping budget of 90 crore (international readers please excuse me for using crore) indian rupees - can you believe that. and i also heard that the superstar got 17 crore as salary, which is the fixed component and then a variable pay that would come from distribution revenues. mba stuff happening here too.

anyway, during the last week, i hardly went for work. on monday i was in bangalore attending a wedding and catching up with few friends from b-school. then on wednesday, mr.manjeri(the coimby man on my blog's main page) and i left to tirupati to attend another wedding. during this time, my manager decided to get me into a new project. all this while i was supposed to work for a chicago based bank's projects. not that i had started work on that. just that the allocation had been done and the people in that team were doing some knowledge transfer - very much like the gyaan sessions at ISB. too many PPTs and stuff like that. on friday i was introduced to the new project and i said yes. although its 90 percent confirmed that i will start work on this one from monday, anything can happen. bottomline: i still dont have work.

another funny incident happened at office on friday - a friend of mine entered the office lobby wearing sandals and the security guard stopped him. he wanted my friend to get permission from the HR because there was a slight violation of the dress code. i was furious. this is a place where people walk in like a herd of cattle especially between 9 and 10 am. nobody checks a shit you could walk in with a detonator and that silly guy wouldn't know a thing. with such a security lapse uncared for, this guy demands a dress code authorization. extraordinarily funny.

every IT consulting company in india is preparing to start a full fledged technology consulting arm. and we are also seeing whats happening with the dollar. azim premji had once said that it would take 36 yrs for the rupee to be at par with the dollar, but i kinda feel that it might happen in like 10 years. suddenly all firms are aggressively looking at revenues from europe. and i got to hear that Infosys is trying to get something from Cap Gemini. Thats actually a very good strategy. CG is headquartered in Paris and a large portion of its revenues is from Europe. They always say - quicker the better and this is also some kind of first mover advantage. companies want to pay less and thats why a lot of them are moving out of india as well. today, we are in a different game. the cost advantage is no longer with us. we need a new and radical strategy.

The temporary status continues

I cant believe that I still dont have an employee id. I have given up now. I have better things to do. Since yesterday, I have been looking up a good number of websites on furniture design, suspended bridges, architects etc. Its good fun to read something new.

Office etiquette has been shown the backdoor at my workplace. Every 5 minutes you can hear someone's phone ringing. The volume level is extremely high. The ringtones are also picked up from the Tamil movies and hence its almost like listening to a radio station. Apart from this, I have a jobless neighbor at office who keeps entertaining me with his activities. He uses the phone (both land and hand) extensively to talk to anyone and everyone about anything other than work. And apart from this, his phone gives this stupid alarm when he gets an SMS - "Excuse me Boss, you have a text message", as if its as important as "Houston, we have a problem". The sounds dont end here. There are some managers, sitting in open cabins, around me who use the speaker phone to talk to their friends, or family or banks.

During the entrepreneurship conference that happened in ISB last year, a professor from one of the IITs told us that his team had come up with a mobile jamming application - one that would stop all the mobiles within a particular area, from ringing loud. I definitely think we need one of that here.

I was listening to Burt Rutan's talk from the TED Conference, where he was mentioning about innovation cycles being reduced to none and how the US had crossed two generations of no innovation in the space exploration area. It was also interesting to listen to his observation of how airplanes became successful only because of the theory of natural selection.

Bill Clinton meets Dick Cheney.
Bill Clinton says - "Nowadays, you Republicans get away with everything you do. When I just took a shot at someone, I got impeached for that."

Its Training Time.. Alleluya

"Icebergs are those things that, on the surface, appear much more trivial than they are. Unlike the Titanic, they don’t always sink your project, but they may knock it way off course."

This is what i read from one of the presentations.

For the funniest part, I still havent got my employee id. Today is the fifth day. The latest reason that the HR has found to tell me is - the server has crashed and it will take more than 2 days to rectify that. I was like(in my mind) - Huh!, do you know where you are working? A company that boasts of being one of the top players in the IT services industry. And you tell me that it would take 2 days to get a server up and running. Would you tell something like that to your client?

So if you dont have your id, you cant do anything. No access to any floor. No coffee or tea or lunch without the help of others. YOU CANT EVEN GO TO THE LOO. Because of the funny way in which things are arranged around the office here (projects are demarcated within a single floor through access points), you cant get to any place without the ID card.

Every morning I keep talking to myself that today would be the day the bus driver would check if I had a valid pass and with that feeling I would try and sneak into the bus with that confident look on my face, that look which says that I am one of those old-timers in the organization and you better be smart enough before you pop up any question to me. But yes, if he got brave enough to do that, then I dont know what to say. I definitely cant tell him that the SERVER CRASHED.