Random office memories - 2, Environment day at office

Not sure which year was it, but there was an environment day at office. Trying to do something for the environment from our office side. But there was some twist awaiting. This time there was a notice board in the pantry requesting suggestions from people on how to save and do less harm to the environment.

Loads of people were writing stuffs. All these people had noticed the leaking tap in the hand wash area. The tap had been leaking since almost a week and nobody did anything to fix it.

I was literally getting furious, because the water for the building was supplied by tankers and had to be pumped 10 floors using electricity and generators when no power, wasting this was getting on my nerves.

And these people celebrating World environment day amidst this water leakage blew my whistle off. I couldn't handle the situation and I went on and wrote on the board,

" PLEASE FIX THE LEAKING TAP BEFORE CELEBRATING ENVIRONMENT DAY".

I remember writing a line very similar to this though I do not remember precisely what I wrote. Beneath it, I wrote our team's name instead of my solo name, just to confuse people. But the HR manager knew who the black sheep was, in the entire team, and spoke to me personally that it will be taken care of.

It was more like an embarrassment on the face of the organizing committee because, I had brought in sarcasm into public. Then the facilities manager tried to get it repaired in few days time, but failed to do. This along with few other reasons spiraled up and few days later he was fired.

I feel sad for complaining because it did take a wrong turn, and somehow I feel I too was responsible for someone getting fired, which I still cannot affirm whether its true or not. But it lingers on.

So this was another irony - celebrating environment day amidst leaking taps! it happens in India!

Cheers,

Random office memories - 1, Birthday or birthday carnaval

I had written about this person X who was one of my source of inspiration, because of which I turned to listening to retro Kannada songs. It happened so, during 2015 or 2016 not sure, we got to celebrate his birthday on a weekday.

Weekday meant, there was a chance for him to get sweets for colleagues in office. So the day began and everyone was wishing him on his birthday. Around 12-1pm he went outside and brought almost 1.5 kilogram of sweets costing close to 2 k if I'm not wrong. So everyone had their chance to eat birthday sweets.

The best part of this whole chapter is that he had brought a very very very good quality of sweet savory and everyone ended up picking up more than one piece. In-fact he was very much fine with it. He was going and calling everyone to come and have sweets. It was a very sweet gesture indeed. Soon around 4pm the 1.5 kilos of sweets which he had brought got over owing to the fact that everyone was eating 3 pieces by themselves.

So, now we had the support guys who were coming in around 5 pm and there was little left, hence he went and brought 0.5 kilo more just to give it to these guys. The day ended with everyone being well fed on birthday sweets. But one strange and beautiful incident happened towards the end which actually made me write this entire post.

As the day was coming to a close around 7 45PM and we were ready to head out, I was standing at Mr X's place and speaking with him, while one lady approached his seat and asked him if there are any more sweets left. He said none was available, but the lady said, she was feeling hungry hence wanted to check if he had any sweets left. I just felt wow, this magical effect, where people were looking for sweet to satisfy hunger by eating sweet savories, was it because of the sweet savory quality or the person X or both?

Cheers,

Random office memories - Series,

All of a sudden, I get a thought to write about random office memories, I don't know why, I'm missing my previous workplace where in I spent close to 3+ years, its the longest I have spent in any organization I have worked till date.

I survived this time, because of friends, rather cab mates or is it the passion to trek which rather started during my tenure at this organization and still lingers on. Its during these three years I got to visit, Kashmir, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh (2 times) and Uttarakhand.

I got a lot to write about these trips, but equally important things happened at office too. I wish not to write about work (rather abstractly infact), but about random incidents, which I remember. Apart from the cab series, I can recollect loads of things, hence thought, why not write about them (while listening to Fleetwood Mac of course :) )

Cheers,

Finally its sunday!

After working non stop for almost 15 days (on the trot) I get a day off. If you think, I slogged a lot with too much work, well, I would like to say more than work it was the dependencies, and poor infrastructure resulting in me slogging.

Only plus point being, workplace is closer to home. I did not have time for anything, literally, listening to music or reading or cooking or watching television, I was literally walking like a zombie. And the day I broke the build and tried to fix it, I was driving like a zombie around 1 AM in the night back to home :)-

Finally the sprint comes to a closure, and the European colleagues who had gone on leave will come back on Monday. There shall be some sanity restored over the monopoly of the dumb Indian Management :)- (sarcasm can never hide from me).

One thing I realized after the past two weeks, a service based company mentality can never match a product based mentality, come even God may!

Cheers,

When west meets east and says goodbye!

I do not know, if I could classify this as nostalgia, never mind. Secondly, west meets east has got to do with West of India and East of India. India is a vast vast country and the distance between east and west is huge.

So one such friendship happened between two guys one from the east and one from the west. Both of them joined our organization on the same day and were working for the same vertical, but different technology.

Apparently one of them was a consultant and not on a permanent payroll. It so happened, this person who happened to be on a contract role, was working on a project which just failed to take off. So he was left with no work and was straight in line to get laid off. Instead he chose to accept a job at his hometown and move back.

Today, he had come back to Bangalore from the west in order to collect his remaining things and wind up from here. And what happened to the guy from the east, well, he still works in my team.

Around 7pm in the evening, the guy from the west called the guy from the east asking him to meet outside office campus, probably for one last time, before life drifts each other miles apart and away.

No sooner the guy from the east was leaving office, it somehow struck me and I told him look west meets the east.

If you are wondering, west meaning which place, well its Pune and east.. East is Chennai and the place they meet is in the middle, Bangalore!

Cheers,

After a long time!

Today being a Sunday, I had been to office too. I had work and was busy at office. But today was different, I had been to office in my car. After joining work at Global Village tech park, this was the first time I had been by car.

You might be wondering what's so strange in me going to Global Village in my car. Well, the last time I had been to Global village in my car was in the year 2010, month being May/June. It was at 8pm in the night and I was extremely happy that day, because, I had been offered a job at Mindtree. It was the first time I had been offered by a company at Global village. I was travelling to ITPL at that time and I was very happy to get relieved from ITPL duty.

So I had been to Global Village by car at around 8 30 pm in order to submit my photos and filled up form for background verification and other things. The sad part is I never got an opportunity to join Mindtree as I joined elsewhere.

Life has come a long way since I rejected Mindtree offer, infact, I'm so happy that I rejected that offer, I got to see a lot, do a lot and in turn learn a lot. Sometimes, sitting in comfort zone never helps.

Joining Mindtree was more of comfort zone for me if not anything else, as it was closer to home. Today going by car brought back all those memories. So indeed nostalgia!

Cheers,,

You might be wondering, joining a job at Global village is again falling into comfort zone, well, it is true and I agree, after close to 4 years of hard hard software work with no breaks I needed this one badly. Fingers crossed how long it continues!

Busy at work!

I have been busy since the last week and its continued into the weekend. Ever since I joined this new workplace, things were looking normal. But with local software development team half retired, few people in Europe on long leaves and other development teams in Europe disbanded, I had to deliver on something critical epic/story for the release.

So have been chugging along. Planning to work tomorrow as well. Hoping to be in good shape for next week's code freeze! Wish me luck. Post that, its going to be a full on blogging run!

Sometimes, I feel, I should stop doing technical work and become a manager / get into management. But what fun in being non technical in software industry and stakeholder plus software market being European or American. Management sitting here would be entirely people management, because everything from hike percentage is decided by European management (for that matter)!

Plus the fun directly working with European and American teams, stakeholders being technical (instead of being one with local management) is nothing short of extra-ordinary. There is no place for diplomacy and its either deliver or perish, so I would rather chose risk over diplomacy!

Cheers,

PS - By the way, did I annoy someone? 

Shuttle driver #17 - A driver who moved a dump truck!

This tale is pretty much a very old one. I have traveled in office shuttle many a time after I started working. So one such tale is this probably from early 2008, may be Jan or Feb. I used to travel to Sarjapur using office shuttle.

This vehicle was a Swaraj Mazda a 22 seater probably a bigger one. Once what happened was while passing through ISRO layout, there was another vehicle blocking the road and hence we had no option but to come to a halt. Our driver did honk two times, but the other driver was nowhere to be seen.

It was a truck which was blocking the way and the owner of the truck was working hands on in the neighboring empty plot of land. So can you take a guess what was the vehicle and what was the driver doing and how we finally got to move?

The truck blocking our way was a dump truck used to collect trash and the driver was hands on digging into pile of trash adjacent to an empty plot. He signaled our driver to wait for few minutes before he would move his vehicle. Since it was early morning he was expecting our driver to wait. But our driver instead chose to move the dump truck himself. He argued that he had the licence to drive a truck and had driven a truck before.

I agree to this logic of having licence and thinking about moving a truck. But how many of us would do it, that is move a garbage dump truck, given the fact that we have a valid licence. He moved the truck few meters and cleared the road and came back looking like a man who had achieved something! (no hint of sarcasm please).

This is one such cab tale from a while ago!

And by the way, was I judgmental? Never mind!

Cheers,

Alter thoughts - 13

Alter thoughts 13

On reading.

So this is about reading, I'm just trying to find if similarities exist between reading and poking nose into other's business. Sometimes we end up reading so much about history, fiction, fantasy and other genres.

Why is it that we read, we read to gain more insight into facts, learn about what people, process, things exist around us or probably about those imaginary characters coming out of people's head.

I'm somehow trying to convince myself that people who read literature, outside a student's textbook, are more or less interested in other people's business. They turn to reading to interfere in lives of other people. Even though those people may be imaginary only.

But is it a common phenomenon for a human to intervene in other people's lives. Do all humans do it or do a specific set of people do it?

If only a specific set of people tend to interfere in other people's lives or business where and what are the rest of the people interested in? is it materialistic things?

So do people interested in materialistic things read less, or less bothered by whats going on in others lives?

Just curious if there is a fine line of similarity drawn between reading and interfering in other people's lives.

Cheers,

Alter thoughts - 12

i haven't written much on my blog, reason being, I am reading, busy with few things. One more thought always runs in my mind.

Is success is needed in any venture? Are there business whose main intention is to sustain and emphasise less on profits? or there are none.

Lets assume a company is started afresh. Private partners pool money and start running the business. After few years it turns profitable. The company goes public and then stocks of the company are brought by general public.

So now this company, has it got to be profitable all the time to pay dividends to the share holders? Can't it be that it sustains itself year after year doing same amount of activity?

If the company is not public and in the hands of private stake holders, do they opt for profit after profit or are they happy with uniform profit all through the years.

Why I'm writing this post is, the company in hope of turning more profits makes more investment into assets and manpower and other stuffs. In the end, if the company does not get much contracts to service and turn a profit or if the goods or services made or provided by the company are not sellable, there is no chance of profit, then what the company will do?

Will the share holder either public or private be ready for a loss. How many years can they run in loss, who will fund them, in the face of too much competition, is there a chance for turnover. To take over competition the company has to invest more and more, can they get back the invested amount atleast forget profit.

Also what I saw in Bangalore is that, the infrastructure is so so poor that, anything which has to sell has a heavy dependency on infrastructure. Now there is  mall which sells high tech stuffs at this so called place. With such traffic during the day, do you think I would venture out into the mall or would I stay indoors peacefully.

So does infrastructure play a role. and if the service provided by the company is of a minimal cost, to make a profit, how much should the company sell to make profits?

Cheers,

Alter thoughts - 11

Over the internet, on the television and in the books, papers I have time and again, read, seen, that laughter is the best medicine. Loads of good things happen when you laugh out loud. I do have read few books pertaining to spiritualism, I'm not that expert in scriptures, but I have touched a bit of its surface.

What thought comes to my mind is, in many of the books written by these spiritual masters, emphasis is laid on knowing oneself, mastering oneself. There is no mention of this laughing out loud technique anywhere. Did not the ancient masters of spiritualism laugh out loud, why did they not advocate them to others via their books? Why is it that they told people to be calm amidst wildfires, but not laugh out loud amidst wildfires or tight situations?

Has it been mentioned anywhere in Bhagavadgeeta or elsewhere, is that I am the one who is ignorant? It might be so, but at this moment, I do not see many places where the so called laughing out loud has been mentioned as a healing therapy or something to master.

In the modern day scenario where in I tend to keep to myself, without expressing my emotions, would I be considered someone to be  of a strict personality, where as I may be the exact opposite. I may be calm, trying to navigate around my thoughts, but just because, I do not laugh out loud in the crowd, do I get judged to be someone who is sad or strict?

Well, I do not know.

Cheers,

PS - I may be trying to compare two different dimensions over here, but somewhere, I feel the two things are related or irrelevant. Just my words seem to be inappropriate
Cheers,

Alter thoughts - 9

new ventures or so called startups!

Recently there have been a splurge in startups in Bangalore, many of these startups are offering services and few others products.

I do not want to speak about those offering products, but I wish to think about those offering services.

So my doubt is, will these start ups scale up in order to make enough profits or will they too go off or rather vanish?

I just tried to think about 3-5 startups which provide services.

Let me take the startups
1. For food delivery.
2. One which targets fitness.
3. One which targets online selling/marketplace.

Assume I have a startup idea, there is a high chance somebody is going to copy the same idea, so there you go, your chances of making profit just got halved.

Take for example the city of bangalore where infrastructure is just pathetic and yes its getting even worse. So assume you have a fitness based startup. Most people crawl at snail's pace to reach their workplace and come back home. Do they have sufficient time to attend to fitness startup considering it might or might not be closer to their home. They might make it to fitness center, but for how long, eventually they will get caught up with time and laziness and responsibility. So your target audience just got reduced. Your fitness startup has now to target people who stay at home and not get to crawl through traffic. People at home ma get sufficient exercise by doing household chores, so will they join? I may be wrong in coming to this conclusion, but, I'm just guessing.

Lets now come to the startup giving great discount on products,one which is an online market place for buying/selling. So, for this startup to sustain, it has to sell more goods and make profits. All population needs to cram more goods into their homes in order to keep these startups profitable. Is that going to happen in near future. Is there a chance the small tiny homes of people run out of space to keep unwanted items and they realize its no more healthy to buy unwanted items.

Going by this trend, I am trying to understand which startup is going to be profitable and sustainable. Probably education startups providing online tutorials? Is that? I doubt.

Am I advocating too much of negativity in saying startups wont be successful or is it my plain logic? Why can't I think startups will be successful? I just can't, everywhere I get to see peoples' greed rather or capitalism, so that's what prompts me to think otherwise. fingers crossed!

By the way a successful startup is decided by media. Going by paid media, I can get a article to circulate saying my startup is profitable, even though I may be running on investor money.

So, concluding, how do we get to know about a startup which is profitable and sustainable in a cramped infrastructure like bangalore? Is it providing a product or service?

Well,not sure, bring your thoughts!

Cheers,

Alter thoughts - 8

where is the privacy?

I still remember the incident which happened in Hubli, when I was a kid. We were visiting a temple and my mother happened to meet one of her schoolmates in Hubli after 20 odd years. She had come there with her son. So how was it,like meeting someone after so many years. There was no good connectivity before, people could not add each other on facebook as friends, could not message each other on whatsapp, forget that, they could not speak to each other over phone line as many of them did not have access to private phones.

So this being the scenario, we did not necessarily have to spend time attending to the virtual social life and we could be discreet from people as well.

Growing old was so much more fun, doing things slowly your way instead of catching up with everybody's facebook/instagram posts, trying to ape them.

Anyways, this was one such alter thought which came to my mind!

Cheers

Ghuttu - Uttarakhand / Remote villages of the Himalayas - 2

After Ghansali village in Uttarakhand, we headed next to Ghuttu. This was another small village kind of thing located remotely from mainland. It was one of the better populated villages with a GMVN guest house. It had a good place to eat. There was a bus which would start each day morning and go to Hrishikesh which would be around 7+ hours journey. Apart from that, the another bus would come back and be parked at Ghuttu overnight. This is the place, where we actually relaxed and had great dinner after a hard hard trek. It had a flowing river, lesser population, less disturbance,
amazing sunset.

We got to stay in this place for almost 3/4 of a day from 1pm in the afternoon till 6 30 in the next day. I cannot really call this a remote village, but indeed was an awesome place to unwind after a long arduous trek.

For lunch we ate all sorts of junk food, Samosa, gulab jamoon, veg chowmen.

Dinner was usual roti, rice and curry!

Cheers,

Ghansali - Uttarakhand / Remote villages of the Himalayas - 1

Auden's col was one such difficult trek, where we had exhausted everything in order to complete this trek. We were at our end of our energy levels, we had been stuck in snow blizzard for a day, we had rapelled from 500 feet using a single rope. We had crossed glaciers and we had walked through rockfall and avalanche zones.

Finally after a hard day's climb, we got to this village. The best part of reaching this village was encountering kids each one of them asking "Mitthi". Initially we did not understand what Mitthi was. But it meant sweets or toffees.Incidentally these kids request each visitor to that village sweets. Unfortunately, after being in the Himalays for 9 days, we did not have any
stock of chocolates of toffees. Everything we had was stale or just gotten over. We spent one whole evening plus night in this village guest house. I can never forget this village due to the hardships we encountered in reaching this village.

Cheers,

Remote villages of the Himalayas.- 0

Though I have been only on a few Himalayan treks, I am fortunate enough to visit few villages remotely nested within the Himalayas.
Reaching there has been problem, but upon reaching the remote village, the feeling of joy excitement is nothing short of unparallel.
Its always fun, thinking of these remote villages. Reason being, they are are so remote, its kind of achievement, after days of wandering in the Himalays like a mad guy, we end up amidst these villages which are almost a day or two away from regular human civilization.

So here goes the list of remote villages which we were fortunate enough to visit amidst our Himalayan treks.

- Ghansali / Uttarakhand.
- Ghuttu / Uttarakhand.
- BaraBhangal / Himachal Pradesh.
- Rajhgunda / Himachal Pradesh.
- Kaza / (Spiti)Himachal Pradesh.

Cheers, more description to follow.

Alter thoughts - 7

There is a general saying which goes, man should not sit idle, instead should strive for excellance. Excellance comes with hard work, meaning an individual must be in continous pursuit, which indirectly means he should not idle time doing nothing. He should always be focused.

I have seen people idling time. Where they do absolutely nothing and spend time, over discussions having tea, or sleeping under a tree. These people are often criticized for not being productive, growing old doing absolutely nothing.

So let me tell you my side of the argument and let me try to convince you why.

I am totally in favor of people who are sleeping under a tree, idling time over conversations and growing old doing absolutely nothing. But why is that the case?

Assume a situation each and every person works very hard. you will not find an individual, who is unproductive. Everyone works their heart out. But have you ever thought, are there sufficient usages of everyone striving hard.

A cobbler can work hard and stitch 100 shoes instead of 10.
A metal worker can work very hard and come up with loads of pressed metal, cut metal polished metal.
A cook can churn up 100 meals instead of 10.
A driver can drive all day long and drive 1000 kilometers instead of 100.

Lets take a step back, a cobbler will stitch 100 shoes only if there is a demand for those many numbers, if there are buyers for so many shoes. Why will a cobbler stitch so many shoes when there are no buyers?

Same way, a cook shall not cook, if there are no people to eat 100 meals.

There it goes, whats the point in the cook, driver, cobbler being so productive and hard working? when there is no demand for his work.

May be there is a way to artificially induce deficit in the market where in people can buy junk.

So, whats the point in everyone being so productive, striving for excellance. This brings us to the point where people criticize idlers, people who grow old doing nothing.

Are we correct in criticizing them, of course NO, as long as they are able to feed themselves comfortably, who are we to criticize the idlers?

After all life is meant to be enjoyed. For some people enjoying may mean through hard work and earning money while for others it might be just idling time.

What say,

Cheers,

One such Trek to remember - TTTT 38

There is some kind of general presumption that goes with a Himalayan trek. The presumption is that, after each Himalayan trek, any individual ends up losing weight, because, its exhaustive, walking, climbing over days together is not simple task.

But I have one such tale to share, where, my weight neither decreased nor remained the same. Yes, you heard it right, it means that, my weight had increased after the trek.

We went for a 12 day trek in the Himalayas, in September 2015, and when I came back to Bangalore and checked my weight, I had increased 0.5 kilos.

I may have eaten proper food in the time between completion of trek and me checking weight. But still, I think I know the root cause of this.

We had 10 ponies carrying food supplies. We had eggs till the last but two days of the trek. We crossed 3 high altitude passes and each time after pass crossing, we had chomen /noodles , pasta, custard and other food. On arriving at campsite on each trek, we were treated with loads of food.

No wonder, my weight increased over 12 days!

Cheers,

PS- How I wish, I do the trek again.!

Trek was Bara Bhangal trek in Himachal Pradesh, crossing 3 high altitude passes.
This route is fondly called the shepard's trail!

Happy birthday, Jamsetji Tata

Remembering the architect of India, Jamsetji Tata on his 178th birthday. 

Alter thoughts - 6

This post is a bit haywire, starting with me, going to he, then me, kindly excuse, just got a bit confused as to what I was trying to write!

Time and again, I have heard, people saying do what you love and love what you do. Some thoughts linger in my head regarding the above two line. I agree you need to do what you love. But when it comes to the question of sustenance, does this really apply.

Lets assume, I love photography and I wish to pursue it as a career. So, I end up doing what I love and I love what I do. Now lets give a thought about sustaining and revenue generation. In order to survive, I need money for my daily needs, food and shelter. Following my dream job can I achieve the same. Well, yes, but how?

Traditionalists say you have to work very hard, day in and day out you have to focus and finally it will yield results. So lets just think about hard work, scope of application and reward in the field of photography.

Just like me there will be 100's of people pursuing their own passion of photography so, its not a niche field. You just cannot tell how one person(professional) is better from the other just by looking at the photo and comparing.

Now, since there are many photographers around who do things professionally, what are the chances of me getting a contract and making money enough to be able to sustain myself? I'm not sure. If I had inherited a fortune from my parents things would have been different. But over here I rely on external contracts for steady source of income.

Does it exist, may be or may not be. Since there are many professionals in the field of photography, you need to charge bare minimum to get contracts. so you end up with some money after all.

So are you now sure that, you are still in the game and enjoying it considering you earn something which is a bit meagre? I'm not sure,

What I would like to tell is, even if you may end up doing what you love the most, you should never expect it to earn you a bread, because the chances of having a non existant market for your interest and high competition might drive you nuts. If it does not earn you a bread, should you still be doing what you love? (is there sufficient market to provide source of income to all, who follow their hearts)

But these days, I see, artificial market generation, in other words, trying to market a field which literally is non existent or is not essential. in order to make people spend money on things (photography) which they are not interested in, there is tremendous aggresive marketing strategies applied, where in the user gets tricked into buying unncessary junk and realizes the fact that he has invested (his saved) money only later to regret!

Is it ethical, just in order to keep one's inventions and interests running, you trick people into the application of stuffs, while you well know, its only leading to capitalism and nothing else. For example buying stuffs using smartphone on massive discounts!

Cheers,