High level summary...

Most 'managers' like to deal with high level information. I honestly feel that's a very foolish way of working. Here is a symbolic example of how its so so wrong.


Say, there is a report that describes what a great player Sachin Tendulkar is. The summary or the high level information here is that 'Sachin is a great player!' So what does the manager do? He puts Sachin in a Football field and says 'Go on my boy, I heard you are a great player. Go play!'


So, in such a situation Sachin fumbles. Thinking he's got to get out of the situation, he tries getting on with the game. In the end, Sachin gets kicked out cause he couldn't kick.


Well, you would say good for him. Now he can get back to cricket. Right? Wrong!


Now, his track record according to the manager says, 'Pathetic player. Got kicked out'. No other manager is interested in him because they all will look at this new high level summary. They will show him the door, totally unaware of what they are missing out on and depriving the sports world of!!!!!


What a waste!!!

Post-lunch entertainment

Well, this incident happened a long time ago at my office. One afternoon, I opened my eyes after a short 10 minute post-lunch nap and saw this 'cubicle mate'  X rubbing something on his throat...

Me: Is that Iodex??
X(Grinning): Yeah....
Me: Why? Why are you rubbing Iodex on your throat?
X: Isn't it obvious? Throat ache!! (sniff sniff)
Me: What the *&#@%

How do you feel when things come back and bite you in the butt??

Well, that's what happened to X that day. X spends a good part of his office hours analyzing the 'Cultural impacts of facebook on Indian society' and 'Role of Gmail chat in the modern day socio-economic affairs'. Spam forwards are his specialty. He has this nutty one  in which, by typing in your name in an excel sheet program-of-sorts, it returns the profession destined for you by the stars(LOL). He started off by punching in my name. 'Lakshmi' returned an opinion that I was fit for a career as 'Satan'. No kidding, that’s what it said! But by the grace of God (no pun intended), my name is spelt 'Laxmy'(I remembered my Anglo Indian teacher who thought my name sounded cool spelt this way), and this name returned that I would be a ‘Chef’ or a ‘Neurologist’. Well, maybe I’d be cooking dinosaurs!! Anyway, I thought these were pretty decent professions. X typed in his full name and was delighted to find ‘Supermodel’ lighting up the screen. For the next sixty seconds it was like someone took a bicycle pump and super-inflated his ego. So he decided to call everyone and let them know that he’s destined to be a supermodel. He gathered a sizeable crowd including the all-necessary female population. But this time (underestimating the hidden functionalities of the program), typed in just his first name.

He turned red and crimson alternately as the excel sheet returned 'Anywhere where you can kiss ass…'

I love when life comes and bites you in the butt...such entertainment :-) ;-) :-P

Everybody else's got talent...

From 'X factor' and 'Indian Idol' to 'Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega', every Tom, Dick and Narayanasamy has got talent. From a 5 year old little girl twirling hula hoops around her waist, limbs or neck to a 50 year old lady performing classical dance on a block of ice, everybody is performing on stage these days.

As I watch them from the idle comforts of my sofa cushions, a wave of frustration sweeps over my entire body. A frustration derived from the fact that I cannot absolutely do anything the people on these talent shows seem to do! I mean have you ever seen the creativity and freshness these people bring to the talent shows? I know for a fact that if I were ever to try any of that stuff, I'd be in Apollo Hospital or Narayana Hrudayalaya with multiple fractures or dislocations with the doctor hovering over me and saying 'Oh dear, Oh God'.

For several years now, I have been searching for one talent to call my own. First I tried my hands at some vocal acrobatics ;-) I fancied my voice quite a lot, more so when I was a kid. My mother used to say that I had a good grasp of  'sa re ga ma' which only meant that I would not have a problem grasping the western music. So, I started belting out Bryan Adam's "Summer of '69" time and again whenever I felt like it, more in the bathroom. But these experiments with vocal acrobatics were soon shown their early grave when my brother threatened to throw me out if I didn't stop :-)

Soon after that, I became 99.99% sure about my true talent when I started doodling cartoons in my engineering notebooks and textbooks. Soon my 'Discrete Graph Theory' and 'Software Engineering' was dotted with several scribbles of my own design. This budding artist in me was soon shot down when one of my lecturers caught me with a funny sketch of himself in the assignment that I had submitted on his desk the day before!

It was after this that I realized that my talent lie not in art but in sports and tried my hand at 'throwball' during my engineering days. After a couple of months of playing for the team, I decided not to stun the audience with my stupidity and quit.


By then, I firmly resolved to abandon my search for a talent in me and accepted the fact that I probably had none. Today I see those talent shows on TV and look back to the days when I tried to find a talent and still despair at not being able to find even one. I’m sure that it’s out there hidden somewhere and that I will trip onto it accidentally.


So until I find it, I remain a jealous hunter :-)

Lost!!

Feeling a little overwhelmed, lost and like I'm being pulled in way too many directions. Is it just me?? I hate this feeling. Neither my favorite music nor writing this post seem to help!! Wish someone had some medicine for this :-(

Kids and their hilarious answers ;-)

The following were some real answers given by kids in their exams. The answers are so hilarious that I decided to share it here :-)

1. Name the four seasons?  Salt, Pepper, Mustard, Vinegar
2. How is dew formed? The sun shines on the leaves and makes them perspire
3. How can you delay milk turning sour?  Keep it in the cow
4. What causes the tides in the ocean? The tides are a fight between the Moon and the Earth. All water tends to flow towards the Moon since there is no water there. And the nature hates vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight
5. Name a major disease associated with cigarettes?  Premature death
6. What does 'varicose' mean?  It means 'nearby'
7. What is the meaning of 'Cesarean section'?  It is the name of a district in Rome
8. What is the meaning of the word 'benign'? It is what you will be after you become eight
9. What happens to your body as you age? You become very old and so do your bowels. That's how you become intercontinental
10. What is artificial insemination?  When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow

Apple vs Kid

The other day I was talking to a friend about Apple Ipads when the kid nearby became all excited.

Kid - Apple? Oh yeah I know Apple!
Me - You do? Really?
Kid - Yeah, two weeks ago for my birthday, this aunty gifted a shirt to me from them.
Me - Huh? They don't make shirts!!
Kid - Ofcourse they do. Wait, I will show you the shirt and the label's right there on the collar.

The kid rushed inside and came out with the shirt and showed it to me....

Kid - Ohhh, its Tomato....anyway, what difference does it make aunty?? So what about Apple??

Me - ****speechless ****

Can you miss and forget someone at the same time?

Sometimes my life seems so crazy but at other times its just plain normal, boring and monotonous! Most times I am busy with life itself :-) I keep in touch with most friends either through calls/text messages/ email/chat/other social networking media. But sometimes it so happens that we tend to keep in touch with friends who are far away more than the ones who are right there in the same city as we live :-(

When I text friends to know if they are alright, I get responses sometimes. Sometimes I don't. I wonder if those text messages for which I don't get a response get lost in some sort of black hole! 

The question which often puzzles me is - how can people claim to miss you yet forget to be in touch with you? Can you be missed and forgotten at the same time?

I guess most people are guilty of this. I have to admit though that it feels really nice to be missed by friends. It is even more better if we don't forget why we are friends, isn't it? 

An Iyer girl's musings!

Looks like I am on a writing spree here...three posts in three days....which is good I suppose. I was watching this bollywood flick yesterday night and the central theme of the movie was "pyar soch samajhkar nahi kiya jaata, bus ho jaata hai" (You never think before falling in love. Love just happens). A friend of mine fell in love and got married after a huge "Mahabharat battle" with her folks. So I was musing over it for a while in the night and decided to type down my thoughts.


A majority of the Indian middle class youngsters stick to arranged marriage for various reasons. And most of them I guess would have given up on their love just because of the pressure from their parents. No, this is not the age-old debate of  "arranged marriage vs love marriage". These are just some musings of a middle class Iyer girl. Relax Mom! I am not trying to tell you something through this :-)


The fact is that most parents are very conservative when it comes to marrying their child off to a guy/girl of a different caste (forget religion). We all know very well that when cupid strikes it is really tough and sometimes futile to resist. You come up with very lame reasons like "I can't live without looking at his/her eyes" or "he is so caring and sensitive" or "both of us like the movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, how cute is that?" etc etc. I heard that love is something which drives people crazy, so much so that they would go to any extremes for the person they are in love with. Thanks to our movies that give a million ways in which love unfolds that we are never short of examples of love stories. So, when you realize that you are in love with someone, would you be able to resist? 


Every individual has a right to shape their lives and a life partner is the most important part of ones life. But in our society where many parents are still not open minded about such love stories, can we take a risk? I call it a risk because many a times you might be able to convince them that your decision is not erratic and that it is something which was taken after a lot of careful thought (If you can narrate to your parents your love story and convince them for an arranged 'love' marriage, then you have a very good business potential ;-)). And the battle starts when they do not approve of it.  Elope, register your marriage, come with a baby in one year’s time and ask your parents to forget everything :-) I sometimes think - is it really worth this fight? Should you hurt your parents's sentiments? After all, they lived their life for you!! All this said, the struggle starts now to find someone of your same clan and then fall in love :-) Doesn't it all sound stupid sometimes?? I mean, can you go to a guy/girl and say, “Hey, you know what? I love You. Would you like to spend the rest of your life with me? Er, Um … by the way you are an Iyer right??!!” :-P


Like love in itself is not complicated enough, there comes the problem of meeting the parents! Probably people who have been there and done that would be able to explain the intricacies of the whole thing.


Is it really possible to step aside and defend ourselves from the cupid strike when you meet someone who is so meant for you, someone with whom you'll be happy to spend the rest of your life with? Or should you just go into a shell and be narrow-minded?


I guess this confusion would occur only to a certain set of people. Some wouldn’t even understand what I am talking about. People from the west would really laugh out loud at this. Sometimes I wonder if their approach to life is much more simpler - A son/daughter would go to their parents and say “Mom, Dad, I am getting married” and the mother would jump, hug her baby and say “Oh honey, I am so happy for you!” :-)


But since I am in that part of the world where many people are not that broad minded (but I would say that they are more sensible), I would think a million times before venturing into something like this. And in the end, I guess I would decide to kick away the cupid.


What about you??

In the pursuit of craziness...

Do you ever get this urge to stand up from your cubicle, may be on top of your desk, and start singing on top of your voice or start dancing? Most of us do, don't we? :-) Blame it on the music industry! This thought first struck me when I was working at the Kochi office back in July 2009 and a colleague was playing this song called "Dhan Te Nan" from the movie "Kaminey" whose audio got released somewhere during that time. Now, you really cannot blame me for feeling so? Can you?

If you can, then you belong to the "mango people"(aam aadmi) category. You know, the "do engineering – get a job – get married – buy a house – have a kid – get him/her into school – finish the loans – retire – regret about your life – wait for the eventuality" types. Well sadly, I also belong to this category and I am almost quarter way through :-(

Life has become so monotonous that I feel just like Hrithik Roshan in the song "Main Aisa Kyun Hun". I know, I know...this is the introspection time in my life. And what do I figure out? I figure out that my life outside the workplace (sometimes even at the workplace :-P) is contained to a fixed set of websites:

1. Gmail 
2. The Naukri website
3. The FB & G+
4. The Youtube videos
5. The Chat windows – The same people, the same conversations(mostly)
6. The Property websites
7. The food websites
8. The Car websites
9. Blogger etc.

But it's just not me. Everyone around me is doing the same!! It is like one of those computer games with different levels. The moment you conquer one of these levels, you ought to start giving tips to the others on how to finish the task. For example, the moment you are engaged/married you start giving advise to the singletons asking them how one should start, how a delay might harm your chances of finding 'someone' ever, how you should get tied down soon etc etc., very subtly saying that I have finished the level, and you are kind of lagging behind. 

I ask someone for an explanation as to why I should buy a property now or why I should get married and I get the trademark standard answer – 'That's life'!!! Well, it is life I agree. But are you living it? I am kind of bored asking myself this question time and again. I've had enough of reading "Oh God, its Monday again" status messages or with "What am I doing in this job" statements or the whole lot of jokes revolving around peanuts (salaries) or last but never the least, the "I am bored" statements. 

So what can we do about this situation of mass depression amongst the late twenties people?

Pata nahi.. Pata chalte hi aapko hi pehle bataungi (You'd be the first one to know when I know it myself).....

But we can make a start, can't we? I am not going to say something like quit your job and do what you are passionate about. I am not a hypocrite. Neither a hippopotamus (well, let's discuss this in another post, shall we? :-)). 

Go ahead and do things that you want. Even if you don't get to do the job you like, it will pay you enough to do things that you like. Take a road trip. Just abscond for a couple of weeks, live under a different name in some island (lol, cant imagine myself doing this anytime but still typing it here just because it sounds great). Learn at least one musical instrument. Explore at least 2 states in the country per year. And keep one of them an unplanned trip. Start cycling. Go swim. And do adventure sports once in every 3 months. Play the games you like. Make a maximum number of movies watching record every month (yeah, I did this and felt great). And try and beat it every next month (yet to do this). 

Go on and add to this list! 

What the eff happened to DD?

Normally while surfing through channels, I NEVER stop at Doordarshan, NEVER. Mostly, there will be either strange-looking aunties talking about dead, boring subjects or some gareeb version of the saas-bahu serials. 


But THAT night, DD was something else. It was playing this 1985 movie - Adventures of Tarzan where Hemant Birje was the beefy Tarzan and Kimi Katkar, the desi Jane.


Let me tell you that I was never surprised by skin show on TV even when when the cable TV came into limelight and channel V and MTV showcased lot of "budding talent" when they started airing programs. But THIS was DD for heavens sake! A few scenes of Kimi Katkar left nothing to imagination, but the fact that those scenes went unedited on Doordarshan surprised me even after all these years. 

What happened to my Duck Tales, Tale spin and The Jungle Book?? What!?

Dead man talking?

This incident actually happened with a friend of mine last month. He was going home from the airport in a cab one night. The road was a bit deserted and did not have much traffic. My friend was seated at the back and in order to instruct the driver to take a diversion, placed his hand on the drivers shoulder and called out to him. All of a sudden the driver screamed, lost control of his cab, missed the divider by inches and came to an abrupt stop in front of a tree. 

After a few moments of silence, 

Cab driver - Please sir, don't ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!!

Guy at the back - I am so sorry. I did not realize that a small tap on your shoulder will scare you so much!

After a few moments, the driver replied - Well, I am sorry. It's not really your fault. The truth is that this is my first day as a cab driver.

Guy - Oh! What were you doing before?

Cab driver - I've been driving a mortuary van (carrying dead bodies) for the past 15 years!!

Ta Ta - Bye Bye Boss :-)

A manager(XYZ) of a software project, refreshing his email inbox at work one day, was astonished to see a mail from an employee who was supposed to be busy working at client location on a very critical project, with the email subject line as "Ta Ta - Bye Bye". With the worst premonition he opened the mail and read the content with trembling hands:

Dear XYZ,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you this email to inform you that I'm leaving the job. The offer I got from the new company is too lucrative and attractive for me to turn it down. I had to abscond from work because I want to avoid a scene with the HR and you. I am sorry but I have no choice.

The project is working fine. There are only 108 issues pending, out of which only 38% issues are high priority. Hence I am sure there is no need for you to worry about anything. The next phase of major enhancements I have been working upon, have been completed halfway. I am sure the new person who would replace me would not understand what all I had done so far. Hence, for his and your convenience, I have taken care to remove all the work that I had been doing this far for nearly 3 months now. I am sure you will appreciate my insight and "big heart".

I am ofcourse retaining the originals that I had retrieved for the purpose of Passport verification with me, considering it as a parting gift from you. I am moving out of town since the new company is situated in another city. Also, I have changed my contact number. So you will not be able to get in touch with me, to congratulate me. But I know your blessings are always with me. Last but not the least. I also have the 7000 rupees entrusted to me by our project's cultural events group, for the upcoming movie event we had all planned. I am sure you would have wanted me to keep it with myself as an added bonus from our company. I respect you very much, hence your wish is my command.

I thank you for that in advance, and assure you that I will surely invest them wisely (but not in your company's stocks of course).

Don't worry. I am 4 years experienced now, learning so much from your company. So I will surely use this knowledge to write better programs for the new company.

Also, I'm sure we will meet sometime in the future. If you wish, I will be very glad to give my employee reference for you to apply for a job in the new company which I am joining.

Your faithful employee,

Senior Software Engineer :--)

At the bottom of the page were the letters "PS". Hands still trembling, the manager read:

PS: Dearest XYZ, none of the above is true. I'm am still busy working on the high priority enhancement at client location. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than my "Request to reconsider my Salary and Appraisal" attached with this mail. Please approve it and call me when it is safe for me to come to our office to discuss this. 
My respect and Best Regards to you!

Father's Day - I miss you dad

My dearest dad...you are a world away. How I wish I could tell you in person how much you mean to me. I really miss you a lot. Love you loads!

Me and Dad in 2008...our last photograph together

Some things that will make you feel old!!

• The Bollywood movie "Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge" was released 16 years ago!
• Windows XP was released 10 years ago in 2001!
• The new millenium (2000) is more than a decade old!
• Pierce Brosnan last acted as James Bond 9 years ago!
• Its been 10 years since 9/11 !!
• The Hollywood movie "The Matrix" came out 12 years ago!
• Mother Theresa and Lady Diana have been dead for 14 years!!
• Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai became world beauties 17 years ago! Yeah, they are old too!
• Remember "Jungle Book" on Doordarshan? That was more than 15 years ago!
• The movie "Home Alone" came out 20 years ago! The child hero of the movie Macaulay Culkin is 30 now!
• The movie "Terminator-2, The Judgement Day" came out 20 years ago too. Edward Furlong who portrayed the kid John Connor in the movie is 33 now!
• Sean Connery is 80 years old and retired!
• The first Harry Potter book came out 14 years ago when I was in high school!
• The first season of the series "FRIENDS" was aired 17 years ago! The cast of the series are in their 40's now!
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is older than independent India, he was born in June 1947!
• The movie "Jurassic Park" is older than Justin Beiber!
• Rajiv Gandhi has been dead for 20 years now!
• Remember the li'l girl from the movie "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"...She is 23 now! Even the first "Rasna Girl" is all grown up!
• Bryan Adams' cult song "Summer of 69" was released 26 years ago! 
• Facebook and Orkut have been around for 7 and 9 years respectively! (Kids whom you remember in their diapers are posting their pics on one of these social networking sites these days!!) 

Phew...I thought "age" was just a number...these facts sure make me feel old!! :-P

Communication Failure :-)

One day, a teacher decided that a visual demonstration in the class would add emphasis to the teaching and placed four worms into four separate jars.

The first worm was put into a container of alcohol, the second worm was put into a container of cigarette smoke, the third worm was put into a container of chocolate syrup and the fourth worm was put into a container of clean soil. Then the teacher continued teaching...

At the end of the class, the teacher said:

The first worm in alcohol - Dead. 

The second worm in cigarette smoke - Dead

Third worm in chocolate syrup - Dead

Fourth worm in clean soil - Alive.

Then the teacher asked the class - Dear students, what did you learn from this demonstration?

A little girl sitting at the back quickly raised her hand and said, "As long as you drink, smoke and eat chocolate, you won't have worms!"