Smile :)

And keep smiling :)

If you want to be happy, be. :)

"Keep adding value to people till they take you for granted. If they don't, try harder. As these are the people who matter." - Eric Blumson

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. - Dag Hammarskjold (from Rohan's blog)

Trivia:
Dag Hammarskjold (Swedish) was the second secretary general of the UN. He died when he was in office in a place crash when he was flying to negotiate a ceasefire in Africa.

Go FedEx!

Number 7 awaits you!

Trust, and other random thoughts

I paid $150 to slow down the greying of my hair a little. Felt it was completely worth it!

But now, it looks like I will enter into another mess I thought I was out of. I didnt set up proper communication channels I guess.. Did I trust too much maybe? Trust is a game I am naturally not very comfortable with.. but something I am pushing myself to develop. What is it that I am so scared of losing anyways? My reputation I guess.. hmmm. Buffet says thats more important than money, and I d agree.

So question is how do you trust someone else with your reputation? The answer is i believe, you have no choice. At some point, you need to. You just find ways to hedge the risk :)

A glimpse of hope

♫ A glimpse of hope..
faded away just as it came
Left me to grope..
'cept the darkness was ne'er the same.

Rest

One 7 hour sleep.. totally unintended.. but changed the entire game!

From "Phew its its Friday, and I still  need to work all weekend!", I became "oooooh its Friday! I have 2 full days to work on credit mobile!".

Was totally worth it. It's good to put important before urgent. Sure, you screw up the urgent stuff but what's life without a few screw ups? ;)

Grace

Under pressure is what separates leaders from the rest..

From rohan's blog on Monday.. felt it was a good time to remind myself..

Be graceful! :)

I am working hard..

I haven't slept properly.. I am hungry and I have lots of work to do.. my irritably is perfectly justified.

That may be so but
1. It is still your choice.
2. That doesn't justify why someone else should be dragged into your pit of irritability.

So stop being a jerk and smile. :)

It's is good to push yourself..

But pushing yourself without thinking is the pinnacle of naivety

Dorakuna Itu Vanti Seva?

Seems apt as I look into the clouds immersed in the song in Raaga Bilahari at 630am.. A cool morning breeze blowing gently.. bread in hand. Just happy. Thankful for all I have. And so much to look forward to.. Not worrying about the list of tasks to complete in the 1 odd hour left before I leave for work.. (and hopefully reach on time! )

Life is beautiful! :)

Dorakuna Itu Vanti Seva? -"Will it ever be possible to have the blessed privilege of such a Darshana?"

Will it indeed! :D

Intense day..

7 learnings..

1)  Working hard does mean you starve. Yes, you are eating food as normal but for some reason, you stomach is screaming out that it is starving. SO EAT!!!

2) Caffeine can keep me awake yes, but I get a feeling I am abusing it. I feel unclean. And I dont even like coffee. Well it tastes ok with Milo, by why should I consume 2 - 2.5 spoons of coffee a day? I must stop.. Coffee cannot substitute sleep.  If I am drinking coffee, it means I am not managing my time well enough to get good sleep. It is important to recognize this and work towards instead of thinking everything is hunky dory because I got 13.5 points.

3) When you call someone ask "Is this a good time to talk?" even if they ask you to call at that time. (Unless it is uber urgent)

4) My SQL isnt as good as I thought it was. Need to brush up.

5) The Directors at Credit Suisse are really nice and passionate. It is such a pleasure talking to them.. today we met a guy who was a front office salesman. He was soo sharp, and overflowing with enthusiasm. Share a lot of information. And we were after all interns. He spent a good 1 and a half hours with us.

6) Follow up from 5. Be like the Credit Suisse Directors. Spread t he knowledge, and help lift people up. It is the highest form of achievement possible.

7) Be happy. Spread happiness. "Dont hate! Love, or be neutral". Everything in life is beautiful. Its all a matter of perspective :)

Weekends

I am slowly starting to realizing their beauty.

I am also understand what "Monday morning blues" are. Except its Sunday night.

But my week begins early - on sunday night.

I need the unwinding on saturday and sunday. It's worth it. It recharges my battery. Makes Monday-Friday worth working.

And I love this go all out on weekdays and relax on weekends concept. Both complement each other - and make the other all the more satisfying! Although you wish the weekends were just that little bit longer, I guess I ll get used to it.

Need to perfect it now - there are kinks to be ironed out but we ll get there!

And as a dear friend put it, onward to a happy and busy week! :D

Check mail in PGP - without bunking work.

Its a Saturday. Office is closed. And its vacation time. There is no cluster leader during vacations.
And there is a power shutdown (not that it matters in this context, but still, no food, no nanyang supermarket, no LIFT, and no desktop. and no fan. and no light in the bathroom. and no lot of other things we are so shamelessly dependent on.)

And you want that account statement you think is in your mailbox. But you obviously dont have your mailbox key because you didnt think it was a smart idea to take half-day in office just to get the mailbox key from the extremely helpful people at admin office who are available strictly from 9-5 on weekdays only.

Ok before we proceed further - status check.

Are you lost?

What is a mailbox key you ask?

Its an old form of encryption.

And why do you need a mailbox key to check mail?

Because the SNAIL mail protocol uses it. I cant help it.

What is SNAIL mail?

It is a rudimentary form of communication in the real world which involves the tedious process of writing on paper, inserting into envelope, pasting stamp etc. and physically walking to a postbox and dropping it. And then you need to physically go get the mail from the mailbox because it doesnt support POP / IMAP etc. And yeah, it is still used sometimes for important stuff.

Anyways, now that everyone is onboard, the question is - So how?

This is how.

Step 1. Take a fork. Go to mailbox. TRy putting it into the hole to take the mails out. Realize that it doesnt work too well. And the process is too slow. Actually, this not that important. Just for self realisation. (and to make the number of steps = 3)

Step 2. Go to laundry looking for a wire hanger that u can straighten. But there are no hangers in R6 laundry, stupid! Yeah, I know. But go to laundry room nevertheless. Reason you go is less important than the act of going itself.

Find this curious instrument (christened the SplitMailSabre) under one of the washing machines. If you dont, try to find it elsewhere. It is key to success. Buy it if you must.

The SplitMailSabre:



Step 3:

It took me 5 mins to take out close to 25mails. Dont be worried if the cleaners / guards are walking around and see you. They dont care. Just do it as if it is the normal way to take mail out of the mailbox.

Oh and no, i didnt find my account statement there. Which is the irony of the situation. Infact, I didnt find anything useful addressed to me.

Disclaimer:

Please use this technique only to get your OWN mail without bunking work. The author(s) of this blog is/are not liable for any kind of misuse of the information provided here-in for illegal / unethical purposes.

The author is also not responsible if you are unable to find the The SplitMailSabre in the specified place.

PS: If you are the one who placed the SplitMailSabre in the laundry room, please accept my sincere gratitude.

PPS: Yes, I know the video doesnt show me take out the mail. Which means you have no proof. Of anything. HA! (Not that there is anything to get proof of in the first place. )

Good day!

Had review session at work. People are very happy. Which is boring - but suits me now. I need to simplify non-CM parts of life.

Microsoft seems to have agreed to pay. Need to focus on CM. Really focus. Obsess over it. There are just 2 weeks left.

Sorry

Dear body,

Sorry for abusing you like this. I promise to make it up to you.

Please understand and cooperate like you always have.

Thanks!
Nishanth

Phew!

This is turning out to be a intense week! Last couple of weeks were also tight but I managed to mostly stay afloat.

Now, I am slowly beginning to get pulled under from different sides and it is forcing me to rapidly prioritize, plan and execute to keep things moving. Which is tiring but very exciting. So far it has been great fun but it is ever so easy for things to become spin out of control. And this time, I was so determined to stop that from happening that I was able to turn the crisis switch on earlier than usual. Crisis mode is always fun - but I hope there isnt much damage done this time around. Cannot compromise.

Perspectives

I am a strong believer in perspectives. Perspective changes everything.

Yet, some perspectives are ridiculously hard to achieve. Like the one where you look at yourself as an outsider. Maybe I can step back - but can I look at myself as another person would? No, I cannot. I am restricted by me. The assumptions  I make about myself. The curse of knowledge. Knowledge about myself.

I have always maintained that the person who knows you best is yourself. I still hold on to that. But then, I realize it is a biased perspective. To see that knowledge in its raw form objectively is very difficult. It is too complex. So we have checkpoints. Abstractions. Assumptions. Axioms. Call it what you want, but it is biased.

I hold that I do not care about how the world sees me as long as I am true to myself. But how do I know if I am lying to myself about being true? The conscience. Yes, it pricks sometimes. Hey, this is not the right thing. But what is the right thing anyways if it is not relative to the external world? How can you just be true to yourself when you are interacting with the external world? Ofcourse I care about how the world sees me. Infact, that is how I define being true to myself. If I am to focus on the "me" which is truly outside external influence, the whole system of measurement would change. But no, I wont go there. I am scared to go there. The whole world would collapse. So what? No no no. I wont go there. Not yet.

So, I care about what the world thinks of me. It defines my values.  Yet, I cannot see myself as the world sees me.

That is what good friends are for. To tell me that I am the problem.

Look before you leap!

Especially when you angry. Anger tends to make your view myopic.

I was totally exhausted..

and half way through convincing myself to dump my work and go to sleep.

And my lovely sister had this on her status:

When life gets you down you know whatchu gotta do? Just keep Swimmin'! Just keep swimmin'!Just keep swimmin' swimmin' swimmin' What do we do? we swim swim.

I asked her why so much excitement and she sent me this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxB_TemN1pc

Gave me that little extra firepower to last the night!

Thank you sis! :)

Preliminary analysis

Judging people is never easy. Yet, your brain often jumps to conclusions using half-data. A quick preliminary analysis using stereotypes and probability. 

This ability of our brain is not a bad thing. 

For instance, we were interviewing our country manager ( and ex-finance minister of the philippines) today. He was talking about his biggest take-away from Harvard Business school other than the network he developed - How to make decisions using partial information. It is an important skill to have because in the real world, our information is hardly going to be complete. We usually have information with varying degrees of accuracy, reliability and completeness. Yet we need to take a call with what you have! If we wait for the full information, the decision might become irrelevant. 

A popular example:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

False information - yet we understand. The brain sees, it spots patterns.. if there are holes, it fills it with patterns it already knows and tries to make sense of it. Sometimes this might be easy and sometimes hard. 

But the key point to note is that, in doing so, you face the risk that these fillings your brain does are wrong. Sometimes it does these fillings without us being consciously aware of it..  Ofcourse, it is less likely to make mistakes if has had more experience / patterns in its repository. But it can still go wrong. You cant know every pattern there is to know. Every now and then you are going to come against something new, and there is a good chance you will be wrong.

So, how can we expect our snapshot of a person (a very complex entity) in 5 minutes to be accurate? It months of interaction to even begin to understand a person.. there are so many variables and each person is unique. Unique DNA. Unique pattern. So, there is nothing for your brain to match against.. it just uses trends from people you have already met, and stereotypes that have been programmed into you plus knowledge you have gathered to fill in the missing pieces of a person when you meet them.

Now, this is good to get a feel of the person, but we frequently base key decisions on this rough picture our brain puts together. We judge a person, predict their behaviour, stereotype them, all based on this approximation. We use this as "knowledge" while it just a conjecture. So much so that it is often hard to change this "first impression" once created.. without significant effort. 

Maybe it is practically necessary in today's world. But it is good to be aware that it is so. That we are upgrading conjectures to knowledgebase. And using those conjectures to make even more conjectures.