Merlins World

Nuggets of wisdom

2011-10-10T17:24:00.003+02:00

They aren’t big chunks, nuggets they are, and small ones at that. But these are the random thoughts that have stirred my mind from time to time. Recently triggered from some heated discussions with various entities that I have chosen to call “friends” I decided to jot them down for the benefit of that far-off day when I shall not remember my own justification for having done or not done certain things. I actually wrote the headers as and when the thought struck me, and then thought it might be a good idea to elaborate, for my own good. Hence they might seem random to you, actually they do to me too. But sometimes random things, just like the sunscreen song, make sense when someday you can look back and join the dots. So let this be random for now.. till that someday when I do look back:

Everybody is somebody’s weirdo.

You are somebody’s weirdo too, so stop judging others. A lot of people genuinely don’t believe this. They genuinely believe that they are “normal”. I live in a country which has a culture of “lagom” which in Swedish means to do everything in moderation in order not to be “abnormal” in anyway. Except that they don’t understand that the entire concept of “normal” is relative. And its inevitable that the way you are, no matter just how impeccably you have behaved and existed as per your code of conduct, is still extremely weird for someone somewhere. Because the code of conduct varies. And stop thinking that you are in the majority. You have NO clue how many people live in China, or India.. or Africa for that matter.

Wishes and aspirations are exciting only till you achieve/get them

I was recently told someone that that person is envious of me. Envious of certain aspects about my life. It has not been the first time this has happened. I have been told to consider myself lucky. There are people who would give a hand and a leg to be where I am. To live abroad, to be able to travel around the world on such a frequent basis. To be financially so stable, to have a job I love so much and I am good at, etc etc. I have talked about this at length in a previous post, that I do appreciate the fact that I have all these things. But somehow, all of this is not as exciting now as it was when I was trying to achieve these things. Maybe I state the obvious, but hey, I didn’t know this, honestly. I thought that once I reach this point, I would have achieved the pinnacle of satisfaction and would not want anything else in life. Its quite the contrary. At least for some people, the mountain peak seems like a dream place from down below, and loses the charm of its superior height not too long after it has been scaled. Does this happen with everyone, or am I the weirdo here? The lesson here is, it’s so not worth being envious of anyone. Because only when you reach there, you will realize it wasn’t such a big deal.

You dont have to be a die-hard rock fan to appreciate rock music, though being a die-hard fan of anything always helps

Sounds weird to me now, this sentence, when I read it. Weird but true. I wanna go and shake up every person who is a die-hard fan of something and who doesn’t allow anyone else, who is not a die-hard fan, an opinion on the subject. The message is simple – yes, everyone appreciates passion, I look up to “die-hard-fan ship” but for heavens sake, stop monopolizing a topic of conversation or a discussion just because you are a die-hard fan. I am an IT management geek, and totally understand that non-IT folks might also have an opinion, I hope others do too!

People change, beliefs change, and there aren’t always tangible reasons you can put down in bullet points

I don’t know why there is always a big deal made out of this, or regarding the reasons for the change. For heavens sake people, grow up, and accept it as a fact of life. I am tired of being accused of changing. I am sorry but I do not have the aspirations I had when I was 10, and I don’t laugh at the same jokes as I did when I was 16. I am sorry if I do not harbour the same notions as I did when I was 20 or, gawk at blondes the way I did when I was 22. Oh yes, my beliefs about culture, people and life changed when I was in engineering college, then when I joined a job, then again when I pursued MBA and changed all over when I came to live in a foreign country. And yet they might not be the exact reason you might be looking for about why I changed. Maybe there are no reasons. Maybe time is the only reason. So stop giving me those accusatory looks when you seem me wearing a suit, because at some point of time I hated formal clothes. Stop laughing when I say I am a one-woman guy, just because I had a wild phase. Accept it, people change. And no, I will not highlight the negative changes in me as examples when I am talking about change :P

Enough of gyaan. It was more of a venting really. And a random one at that I must say. More interesting posts to come. Oh but wait, I keep forgetting that I have lost all my followers, this blog, for better or for worse, is all for me only :).

Picture reference: http://ittybittyartcommittee.blogspot.com/

The Answer!

2011-10-06T16:25:00.003+02:00

As the news about Mr. Jobs passing away hit me, I was tempted to go back to the one video which I have seen a zillion times over the last 5 years, a video that was the guiding light during times in my life when nothing made sense. And as I watched that video for the zillionth time, it suddenly hit me. I could suddenly join the dots. I knew that most of the things he talked about was an answer to "the dilemma" which I talked about in my previous post http://merlins-world.blogspot.com/2011/09/breed.html.

This post will only make sense if you read the post and watch the video below: :)

Filling the gap...

2011-10-03T22:06:00.036+02:00

So I thought that I might as well fill the gap... regarding what happened since the time I went underground up till now. You have probably given up on me anyway. And I have no followers :P The few who follow me, also talk to me in real life... so that is no fun. But what the hell, when did I ever care about who is reading my blog (kidding... kidding...).

But hey, there's all this talk about pictures being worth a thousand words and what not. So, in spite of having being accused of being a "man of words" I shall give this a try. Fill you in with all that has happened in my life since I left blogosphere. I think I owe this blog that much. After all what is the point of it all, if you don't know what has been happening in Merlin's world :). So here goes.....

The Indian Apartment:

Somewhere in the middle of last year, I impulsively bought an apartment. An expensive one, oh yes its darn expensive, the most expensive thing I have ever purchased. And I did it sitting here in Stockholm. No planning, no cracking my head about investment risks, just in the middle of a Sunday... wham... and in a week, I had paid the booking amount. All my life's savings, plus a loan. That's Merlin for you :P. But hey, its swanky. Swimming pools, skating rinks, tennis and basketball courts, a gym and sauna... the works. 14th Floor, 3 bedrooms, 1700 sq feet. I feel rich :P

And the Stockholm one:

Nope, I didn't buy this one. Now now, don't get carried away, I mean I am not THAT rich :P. But this is where I have been living for the past more than one year, and me likes this place. When I rent apartments the deciding factor is always the bathroom and the kitchen.. I know.. its weird :P. Pics below are the hall and the kitchen/bar. I wont make you jealous by showing you the awesome shower cabinet :P

Oh, and then I travelled to New York. It was a business trip to Las Vegas, but I did a stopover at NY. I realized I know too many people who live in and around NYC. Stayed over with J and G, they are the "awesomest"!! Wanted to meet D, but was there for only 2 days and couldn't make it. Did manage to meet P and her newly acquired husband. Damn, a few years from now I wonder if I will know whom I am talking about :P.

Above is the Brooklyn Bridge, I love this photograph and the place, and gave myself a pat on the back for this click :). It was so charming just standing there looking out!

The classic "Hey I was in NYC" pic. And the SOL is captivating!

When I said "a picture speaks a thousand words" I meant something like this pic :). On FB I captioned this as "So what if my dog doesn't pee, it still needs to go for a walk" :)

And then I went over to Vegas for my conference. 5 days in Vegas was quite an experience. And the conference was awesome. And my clients were just the best. One of those trips where the universe conspires to make life awesome for you :)

That is Luxor on the Strip

This is the view from The Venetian where I was staying. It is the largest hotel in the world.

And it is called "The Venetian" for a reason. There are Venetian canals inside the hotel. This canal is on the 3rd floor of the hotel, and the "sky" is fake. Even when there one tends to forget that one is not in the open. The gondolas are electronically steered, thought the person does pretend to row.

Oh, and did I mention that I didn't get an ordinary room so I was erm.. kinda "forced" to stay in the Luxury "honeymoon" suite. This pic is not from the hotel website, it is taken from my automatic camera :P

And now you know why I didn't put up a pic of my apartment bathroom, I didn't want it to be compared with this. Oh, and there was a TV on the left hand top corner, which is not visible... but of course watching CNN while you brush your teeth is a basic necessity, isn't it?

And somewhere towards the end of 2010, I made it to India. I planned out a road trip to a few places (now I remember only Yercaud). The highlight was driving the automatic Mitsubishi Outlander, its an awesome beast. And stop calling it a SUV, its not, this thing is called a "crossover" :)

And then, sometime in spring, we went to Narvik. It was an awesome trip with P and C along with us. I had always wanted to go to see the Norwegian fjords. And it was a dream come true. This pic is a View from the Fagernesfjellet restuarant

This is a view from the train.. the awesome norwegian fjords!!

And then I celebrated my bday in July, I remember nearly blogging that day, I tend to get philosophical on bdays, and this bday was kind of a...erm... landmark :P

And then sometime in Spring we managed to visit Göteborg, a city in Sweden which is not as big as Stockholm, but yet a very serene city. We liked the architecture there, more interesting than Stockholm :)

Then, from Göteborg we also went to a place called Trandansen, near Hornborgasjön where hundreds of cranes come once a year on their way back north for the summer. It is called "The crane dance" and it is a sight to watch!

And then the lovely Swedish summer was on!! Had an awesome time in summer. I kinda now believe that in Sweden you tolerate 7 months of harsh dark winter only to see those 2 months of awesome summer... believe me, its worth it!

More of summer at the beach...

This is A and P's house in Danderyd, the place we spend weekends. Love biking around Danderyd whenever I am at their place, reminds me of biking in Jamshedpur!

And that, in a nutshell is what I have been upto since I left. Some more progress, things like I got two promotions, and a much better salary, but then, I have never had complaints in my professional life, you wont hear me cribbing much there :P. I continue to be a guest lecturer in Stockholm University (did I blog about that?) and have been offered a position in their PhD programme, which I am told, is not an easy task. But the professor with whom I deliver lectures is keen to have me as a scholar, and made the arrangements. Considering that it takes 8 years for an "industrial" PhD, I am not sure I will join, but more about that later.

Phew, this has been tough, explaining my life in the past 1 year in one post. Of course there will be spillovers... so more in some other posts!

The "Breed"

2011-09-26T15:54:00.003+02:00

I don’t know if everyone feels this, but I strongly feel that we are a breed. The definition of “we” is vague, but you know, people like me, the ones who think like me, who like what I like, who loathe what I loathe.. we are a breed. We have similar aspirations... and similar disappointments when we get what we aspired for. We have similar dreams, and similar difficulties coping with how fast these dreams change. We have the same desire to scale large mountains and the same feeling of “now what” once we have reached the peak. Somehow, somewhere in my mind, I have the feeling that we are a breed. We don’t have a name, or a classification. We don’t look similar, or live in the same geography, or wear badges that identify us. The world doesn’t know we are there as a group, they probably think we are just a few scattered individuals. But sometimes I come across more of me... and I look at them, I hear them talk, I seem them smile, and I know they are from the same breed.

I go back and think about all that I have wanted from life and from myself. The teenybopper-dom, the wild crazy “single” philandering lifestyle, the smartass arrogant business school phase, the corporate hoopla, the travel backpacking roaming-the-world nomad life, and I wonder how lucky I have been. And I wonder why I am still not satisfied. It’s like drinking a lot of water and still feeling terribly thirsty. Its like looking at a blurry image, its like wanting something and yet not knowing what you want. It is difficult to explain. And I feel I am not the only one on this ship. There are more of me. And we are all equally, utterly, profoundly confused.

In my thirst which refuses to be quenched, in the destination-less journey, I sometimes feel guilty. Guilty because somewhere deep inside I know I have been lucky. Lucky to have had the right opportunities, lucky to have had the right platform, lucky to have had the right people in my life who pushed or pulled me in the right directions. Lucky not to be born on the pavement, lucky not to have been abducted by the beggar mafia as a kid. I have seen people who forget their roots, I am not one of them. And yet, amidst it all I still feel I am thirsty. And guilty. Guilty for not being satisfied in spite of all that I have been blessed with. Guilty for having had everything I wished for. Guilty for not knowing what I actually want in the end, guilty about wondering if there is an end at all. I take some solace in the fact that I am not alone, but it doesn’t take away the feeling of guilt, even if I am in the midst of more of the guilty breed.

Oh and btw, yes I am back in blogosphere. Don’t ask me the questions about why I have been away, it will take me too long to answer them, and the answers won’t satisfy you anyway. So let it be. I have made a slow transition back to the blogging world. And I can tell you that it has not been easy. And yes, I know it has been more than a year, and yes, I am kinda trying to play it down.

I also know that this is a horrible rant, and rants are the worst way to start. But then thoughtful posts what brings us back to the blogging world. So let me just rejoice in the warm feeling of being back where I belong. :)

An ode to my Bulgarian friend...

2010-07-23T09:13:00.003+02:00

Someone told me that one should blog about ones most irritating habits. There are two benefits, One - you experience a lot of “self-realization” about how irritating you can be. Two – you might be enlightening some other soul who didn’t know that it was an irritating habit. So I have always tried to talk about my irritating habits in order to get rid of them. But some of them stay, it tough to get rid of them. Like this habit of me pinging/calling people when I am upset, telling them that I am upset and then not telling them the reasons. It gets on peoples nerves. But I have logic for this, if I am sad about something, talking about it, and re-iterating the facts because of which I am upset will only make it worse. So instead of satisfying my friends curiosity about the reasons, I try to focus the energies of everyone to more productive usage of trying to cheer me up.

Recently, I was extremely upset about one of those random things I get upset about. And I was talking to one of my oldest buddies. And as usual when asked, “How are you?” I said “I am ok” and then thought I shouldn’t be lying and said “I am not ok, but its just one of those things, it shall pass and I will be ok again soon”. And my buddy very sweetly said “You know you can talk about it if you want to”. And we continued talking about her most hectic schedule at the financial company where she works. Just when I thought that she has probably forgotten that I am not very “ok” she again said “You do know that you can talk about what is bothering you” and I once again said “No, its ok, I will be fine in some time, its one of those passing things”. And she didn’t say anything, she just sent me the link to this song. I was a bit surprised, it happens to be one of my favourite songs of all time. And it did the trick, I smiled and for some time forgot all about why I was upset.

Metallica - Nothing Else Matters

And so I thought I should tell you about this interesting friend of mine.

The friend I talk about is one of the people I have known for the longest amount of time, who has seen me through thick and thin, and stood by me through some of the roughest times in my life. She has laughed with me and cried with me, advised me on some really strange dilemmas and sometimes just been a person whom I could talk to for hours when I was alone in a strange city, sometimes strange country where I had nobody to talk to. Someone who has never really expected anything from me, but has given me unconditional support and has undying faith of my capabilities, telling me “You’re the best” at times when I have been really low on confidence. And now here is the shocker, I have never met this friend in real life. For all of you who have laughed at online friendships, for all those of you who have thought that “penpal-ship” and virtual friendships was one of those crazy teenage things, this will probably shut you up for some time, because this is a net friend that I talk about, whom I have now known for close to (or perhaps more than) ten years of my life and never met. When I first talked to her she lived not only in a different city, but in a different country in a different continent. And in spite of knowing that there would be very little chance of us meeting, we became very good friends.

Life sometimes turns out to be stranger than fiction. In my teen years, I was very fascinated about knowing people from different countries. So I embarked on pen friendships through some school programmes and had quite a few pen friends. But considering international snail mail was not the cheapest, the friendships were limited to one letter in maybe 3 or 4 months. And then the internet arrived. I got onto the bandwagon pretty young (little did I know that computers would become my profession and life later on) and was very soon hooked to all things that were on the internet. This of course included my desire to know people from across different countries and continents. I made a lot of friends including a very sweet girl from Bulgaria who knew very little English and was in a chat room to be able to learn the language as she dreamt of travelling to the US. You would think that it might be slightly difficult to converse with a person with very limited knowledge of the language, however it was not so. The blabbermouth that I am, I used to talk and this girl used to decipher me with a dictionary. And this continued, till she, along with help from her teachers at school and other sources learnt the language. There was no concept of blogs, but I remember writing these long memoirs to my friends in long never ending e-mails, which would drive them nuts. My Bulgarian friend also happened to be on the mailing lists, and I remember her telling me that she found my writing very engrossing and touching. I was surprised and I asked her how she could find it engrossing when she hardly knew the language and I still remember her exact words “The language is just the means to convey the thought, and I understand the thought, even if I do not completely understand the language”. Back in India I had limited exposure to how global cultures work, and I was surprised when my Bulgarian friend once told me that she had shown my writing to her English teacher, and her English teacher had immediately said that this is not an American person, it has to be someone British or Indian, because American English does not have such impeccable grammar. And hence I had learnt the nuances of American English vs British English.

Well, my Bulgarian friend did manage to master the English language, went to the United States for a short period, came back to Bulgaria, completed her studies, and being the ambitious and intelligent girl she is, bagged an awesome job at one of the top financial companies. She is in one of those extremely hectic phases of life, where she continues to juggle her studies (she is pursuing higher education) and a very demanding job, and she hardly gets time to talk. But we manage to stay in touch. I never thought that I will end up in Europe but here I am, and we keep talking of meeting up sometime, but it hasn’t happened yet. However after 10 years of being friends, meeting up seems to be just another trivial detail which doesn’t make much of a difference. As I say often, maybe we will meet up along with our grand kids someday 20 years down the line. Till then I will be happy to have her sending the “Nothing Else Matters” link when I seem to be upset without telling her the reasons why.

The Princess and Merlin

2010-07-12T18:47:00.005+02:00

Firstly, no thats NOT me with the princess. I know post headers can be misleading. Thats the crown princess Victoria with her newly acquired husband Daniel Westling. This post is named as it is because this POST talks about 1. the princess and 2. the name Merlin :P And I look much better than the guy :)

I have this bad habit of blogging about events and happenings ages after it has happened. Now don’t give me that sour look, I know I would have fared miserably in a tabloid or newspaper. Which actually makes me wonder, did I really want to become a journalist/TV anchor/theater actor at some stage in life? ROFL. Look at the geeky me now. I don’t think I’d have done justice reporting about stuff ages after it happened just because, well I was lazy.

So the event that I ponder upon now happened last month. Crown Princess, HRH Victoria got married. I know, its not a big deal for most of you guys, but I was certainly excited. I’ve never really witnessed a royal wedding before. Nope, I wasn’t in the church, the princess did invite me personally a number of times to attend the wedding, but you know how lazy I can be, so I just chose to watch it on TV :). And she was totally adorable! She was not the usual uptight, up-in-the-air royal you usually see. She was totally excited throughout, nudged and shoulder pushed the groom a number of times during the archbishops never-ending monologue, winked at him when the priest said “you should have eyes only for each other” and squeezed his hand when the choir sang some romantic songs. She seemed more the young-girl-in-love-and-excited-about-getting-married than a crown princess tying the knot. She also insisted on having her father “giving her away” which caused quite an uproar in Sweden for a month, as the Swedish church thought it was a very sexist thing, well, to me it was much ado about nothing. She also wore a very modern, sophisticated and simple wedding gown, not the usual glamorous stuff you’d expect royalty to wear. Well what can I say, I have this thing for down-to-earth celebrities and I thought she is a very adorable crown princess!

I know that there has been talk about the kind of money being spent on royals, and on royal occasions like the weddings. Well, if you dig down deeper into the kind of value that royal ambassadors like Victoria add, it may justify some, yes only some of their cost. Victoria actively takes part in various social, political and charity oriented agendas on behalf of her father, the King of Sweden and the state of Sweden. Having studied at Université Catholique de l'Ouest in Paris and Yale, Connecticut, she is extremely well educated, smart, intelligent and has a very wide knowledge of international issues and concerns. She tours Sweden often, and lends an ear to the troubles that people have, in Sweden and internationally, working incessantly as an ambassador for the country. She has worked to promote Swedish tourism, design, music, environmental sustainability, and gastronomy in a number of countries, visited Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to help out with aid work during the Tsunami. Looking at her track record, unlike most young royals, she has kept away from any major scandal or controversy, except the media created ones like her “giving away” ceremony and her “marriage to a commoner” which I think is going a bit overboard. Well, I think shes adding more value than some of the politicians and “ambassadors” in India and Sweden on whom we are “spending” more money on, and who are doing much less for the nation. I also think we need smart young people like her who have fresh views and opinions, and even as a figurehead can take their responsibilities very seriously. I am a tax payer in Sweden, and at 40%, its not a meager amount. But I understand if a country wants to spend on preserving something that it considers a heritage, royalty to me is as much of heritage as any heritage building or artifacts that a country might have. But of course, that is my opinion, its more of an outsiders perspective, I don’t even have the emotional or patriotic attachment a Swede might have towards their royalty. And as for the discussion about spending money more productively towards removing poverty etc, well, we can have that discussion for everything the government does. And some of them are more relevant, like, can they stop buying arms and manufacturing arms and spend that money to removing poverty (believe me the money spent on arms must be 10 times that spent on a royal family)? No I am not a social activist, nor a social commentator, actually I’m quite a self centered guy, so I cannot comment on that kinda stuff, but its just something I wonder about. There are more important issues to bother about than money spent on royalty, who happen to be the pride and heritage of the nation.

Too many serious topics on my blog drive me nuts. So here is something that I have been reading about, and wondering about, and its kinda funny.

So there is this absolutely insanely popular celebrity blogger who has been writing about how insane it is to have anonymous names on blogs, exactly like mine. Urm, there is no direct offense, but of course you do get the drift. Its hilarious actually, to think of the people you know in real life having those absurdly weird pseudo names, like Emotional Atyachar, Lady In Love and Chocolate Kink. Erm... to think of it some of my more serious boardroom colleagues will have quite a laugh on Merlin as well. But I need to remind this insanely popular blog celebrity of a few things that differentiate more mortal souls from the likes of celebrity bloggers who use their own names:

Anonymous blogging gives me HUGE advantage of expressing my opinion without having to bother about what will be acceptable for me to say in a social circle. In the blogging circle that I maintain everything is acceptable!
I work in an industry where our online presence can be tracked and I don’t want my acquaintances to read about my personal life and opinions.
I also happen to be the face of my company towards a lot of outsiders, and when I blog about professional topics, I don’t want my views to be confused with my company’s opinions.
I know that using ones own name brings a lot of known people to ones blog, family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues and some unwanted people as well, which in turn makes one very conscious about what they write. I want to write without thinking what the “people” will think.

No, I still cant justify why I have a somewhat “fantasy” name. It’s a very old pseudo name I was given, one of the many. The others are more ridiculous. And I have always been a bit of a “fantasy” guy, the sorts who was always interested in Harry Potter, Merlin, magic and the type. Laugh if you will, but that’s the other side of me which most serious people at work don’t get to see :).

So Merlin it will be. As long as I have the ability to write without thinking about what the “others” will think, I don’t care how ridiculous the name is. And you know how much of a Shakespeare junkie I am, and well, you know what Shakespeare had to say about names. For those who know me, well.. you know me and the name doesn’t matter. For those who don’t, well.. keep guessing :P.

Ciao and more later!

Photo courtesy: My good friend AC who took great pains to get a position to be able to capture this pose, sorry I flicked it from your Orkut :)

Itz my birfday.. again!

2010-07-11T00:53:00.002+02:00

Picture reference: Lolcats

Yes, “again” because it’s the second time on the blog. The first time I wrote all about the kinda stuff I do and don’t do on my birfday, and then went about giving the link of that post to everyone who’d look at me ridiculously and say “But why the **** wont you tell us your birth date?!!” till the point where they couldn’t look at that lolcat pic anymore. I shall spare you the agony of repeating myself about my birthday dos and donts. And its boring to tell you what happened on my birthday because the point of it all is that nothing much happens anyway. But just for the record I like putting it up here that it was my birfday sometime back. And btw, stop asking me the date. Everyone has his “weirdities”, being secretive about my birth date is mine. At least you know I am a cancerian :).

Some people wished me and some people didn’t. Like always. There were some new ones who persevered in their attempts to find out my birfday (background applause) and some old ones who forgot it and then tried a comeback after my tongue-in-cheek FB status “Thanks guys for your wishes”. Yes I know, I am mean. But let me have my fun, for heavens sake, on my birfday at least. I anyway think there is too much importance being given to birthdays. I wouldn’t care, except for the fact that I like the gifts. Which, btw, reminds me that you haven’t given me one. Yeah, I told you I am mean :). Did I hear someone ask what the best gifts were? The best one was the Georgio Armani perfume, I honestly haven’t worn anything that expensive in my life, thanks a tonne to you-know-who. And Iya, thanks for the flowers which you ordered sitting in another continent!

So now that I have managed to tell you a lot about my birfday in spite of telling you I wouldn’t tell you anything, I shall reiterate my promise that you will find more of me on blogosphere nowadays. In spite of all the ardent speculations and disbelief about my proclamations of being here more often. It has been hot like crazy, I guess I had gotten used to the mild pleasant summers of Sweden. My Swedish friends look at me shock when I tell them that its hot, and I am like “Give me a break guys, just because I have lived in the 45 + degrees in Delhi and Nagpur does not mean that I wont feel warm in 30 degrees”

Things seemed to have calmed down at work mostly because its vacation time in Sweden. Some things are in the pipeline, like I am a part of a team that is designing a course for Stockholm University, will also be conducting the course with some colleagues in Spring 2011. Am also in touch with some professors from Stockholm University, have promised to “collaborate” with them by delivering some guest lectures in their courses. But the thing I was most surprised about was being invited as guest speaker for a conference being hosted by one of the Swedish organizations within my company. Its one of those fancy ones where the organization takes everyone on an exotic cruise and conducts sessions and seminars. I am of course honoured, but at the same time a bit hesitant. It is one thing to talk in front of students, that I have done and will do without batting an eyelid, its easy to talk about something you have done for a living for the past 6 years and are passionate about to people who don’t have the slightest clue about it. It is quite a different ball game however to talk about the same thing to people who have been in the industry for double the number of years, have very strong opinions about it, and are probably going to be asking questions which will really make one think. However I am taking on the challenge, and still think it is an honour to be invited as a guest speaker!

For those of you who are wondering how such boring things rock my boat, you need to understand the geek aspect of my personality. I have a tendency to be nerdy, and I am pretty unapologetic about it. I can surprise you more by saying at some point at the dusk of my life I plan to shift from the corporate to the academic life, which is not a choice made very often, and certainly not a choice pondered upon by people my age.

Which actually brings me to my age, and how relative it is. I like interacting with the “young” generation, thanks to my younger cousins and friends, and it is hilarious being looked upon as “old” by them. Amongst the innumerable disadvantages of working in an environment where nearly everyone is at least 10 years older to you, one of the very few advantages is that it always makes you feel really young. So all those homies who’ve been taking the cracks at me for getting old-er, guys give me a break, everyone around me is at least 10 years older, I feel like an infant. So spare me the “you’re nearly 30” lines, they really have no effect on me :P.

I’ll be up and around devouring my daily round of blogs, so long for now!

Accents: The Toggle Theory

2010-07-09T12:50:00.003+02:00

I think I may have written a bit about accents and attitudes before. Its just too bad that I didn’t start the blog when I was still back in India. I think the opinions I had about NRI accents and attitudes back in India were strong enough not to be published in any public place. The opinions bordered between hopelessness and a “ewwww” feeling. However they might have changed now :).

For the benefit of my European/American friends (no I am not biased but I don’t have any Australian or African readership :P) NRI stands for Non Resident Indian, there are some snide takes on the acronym, but lets not go there. It is basically one of those breed of Indians who have optionally decided to settle abroad in a foreign country, for various reasons, technically Indian citizens who live and work outside India for 10 months or more in a yer. The percentage of NRIs might be small, but with a population of more than a billion people in the country, believe me the numbers are not negligible. As one of my Iranian friends was telling me, when she got down at Heathrow airport, she could hardly spot a single Englishman. There were way more brown/black faces than white ones. Yes, and you thought that it was England that had colonized India back in history. Well, whatever, so there is this breed of people called NRIs. Now why are they different? Because they happen to have adopted the attitudes, thinking and sometimes.. err.. accents of their newly adopted country. I pause before I say accent because that one is a sensitive spot for all Indians.

For those of you who have had any interest in accents, you must have seen/heard the Indian/Canadian comedian Russell Peters and his numerous jokes on the topic. Well, for those of you who haven’t, you must have noticed that the Indian accent doesn’t exactly make the girls drool and the hearts beat faster. Well, it might be good for a lot of other things, but in Russell Peters words “it wont exactly get you laid”. However in spite of all this, Indians are very particular about their accent. Just like there is no typical Indian guy, so also there is no typical Indian accent. It’s a big country of a billion people for heavens sake, the accent varies across the regions. There are around 26 states, and I think I can safely say that there are AT LEAST 26 accents. However the underlying rules do not change. The Ts and the Ds have a distinctive “hard” sound, with a lot of stress. The Rs are not rolled, the “I”s are not ignored, in fact they are stressed upon. Sometimes the “s” sound takes on a “j” or a “sh” sound, hence “it is the truth” becomes “eet eej the T(stress)ruth”. No don’t get me wrong, I am not making fun of anyone here, I am just stating facts. And that my friends, is the Indian accent for you.

Why are Indians sensitive about their most exotic accent? Maybe because it is exotic, or maybe because, like every other race/nationality, that is the identifying feature. However, I can tell you one thing, if you happen to look like an Indian, brown skin, dark eyes, black hair, and do not have the typical Indian accent, you will not be taken very nicely by the Indian “junta”. Which is a condition which most NRIs suffer from. After having faced numerous situations where I was victimized and traumatized for having a “non-desi” accent where I pronounce S as S and not J or Sh, I finally found the perfect solution. A toggle. Yes you got it right, an option to toggle between the two accents. It works almost exactly like when you want to have two operating systems, and you keep an option on the login screen about which OS you want to log into. Just like that, an accent toggle. So in the beginning before entering a conference call, Id pause and think which accent should I “log in” with, and then after a point it came naturally. The only problem is, as you might have already guessed, when the audience is mixed. Well, I just go by the majority.

Needless to say my colleagues find it extremely amusing, some even find it hilarious. But it serves the purpose. It is amazing how an accent can give you an acceptance into a group. The moment I start hardening my Ts and Ds, there is a sudden transformation in the attitudes of my Indian colleagues, suddenly I am their Desi Manager. With Europeans, well it is more a cause for being comprehensible than being acceptable, other than the genius ones who have now given in to adapting to the Indian accent (you cannot be in IT and not adapt to the Indian accent). I am currently working on further toggles between the South Indian accent, the Punjabi (Delhi) accent and the amazingly wonderful Bengali accent (my teams work out of Bangalore, Kolkata and some friends are in Gurgaon). I strongly believe that “The Toggle” philosophy is the next big thing in International Business, I am thinking of approaching Stockholm University to understand if I should write a white paper on the topic :).

As promised, I am more here than I used to be. Ok stop cribbing, this IS more. Accept it :). I am a busy guy, but hopefully from next week I will have much more free time. So you will see more more of me :).

Cheers!

In case you didnt catch the Russell Peters fever, here is something for you:

Picture reference: http://www.kruufm.com/aint-peculiar-thu-jul-12-9-11-pm

Summer and the Archipelago

2010-07-06T10:39:00.018+02:00

Ever had the experience where you keep writing incomplete posts for the blog, and then read it later and don’t feel like publishing it? Till the point where you have a list of half written posts and not one published for the last few weeks! Well I’ve been there a few times before and I am there now.
So this is going to be short and hopefully this is going to be published!

I am slowly getting into the Swedish mould of things. Slog like crazy in the winter with a morose mindset and have a blast in the summer. Nah, work never really slows down, except for the one month in July when everyone, every single swede, shuts shop and disappears to some exotic far-off beach in Asia. Really strange, I say. Sweden is the most beautiful place in July. And so when people ask me “So where are you going in Summer”, I invariably reply, usually greeted by surprise “I am staying right here, for heavens sake, why should I miss the most beautiful weather of Sweden?” But then that’s me, the non-Swede. If you want to get in touch with any Swede in July, please try calling the beaches of Malaysia, Thailand and Mauritius. :)

For a change I’ve been exploring the Swedish archipelago. I know, I know, I should have done this ages back, its my third year in Sweden. But what the hell, I was busy exploring Europe. But this place is HEAVEN! I am doing the hit-palm-on-forehead right now, for missing out such beautiful places which are a couple of hours boat ride from my place. Totally ridiculous. But this is all thanks to my dear Swedish friend J. Thanks J for the awesome tip AND the awesome company!!

You’ll be seeing a lot more of me in July, I’m gonna catch up on a lot of things, blogging included. So heres some of Sweden, you know whom you need to get in touch with if you want to be in Heaven :)!!

Love the clear water and the green algae... the weather was hot, but the water was pretty cold!

Love the sparkle! And my camera, which can capture it!

Our lunch stop at Grinda... lunch with a view :)

If I ever buy a boat, it would look like this :)

Stop laughing at the blurred out face, this is an anonymous blog, I HAD to blur out the face :P

Lunch stop at Vaxholm - fancy Italian joint

Cruise ship to Riga, making its way through the Archipelago

One of the larger islands on the Archipelago

Our cruise ship winding its way through the Archipelago on the way to Riga

Love is relative

2010-06-19T09:14:00.002+02:00

Philosophical topics are not my favourite for blogging. Somehow I don’t like reading or writing heavy stuff on blogosphere. But a part of being true to your blog also means writing what one is thinking and feeling.

My parents are on their way back to India as I write this, after being in Sweden for a month, and I surprise myself by feeling a bit empty. I always thought that I am kinda beyond that, I left home when I was 17, and have lived in residential schools/colleges or alone while working since then, which is not very common amongst Indian families. But in spite of this, my parents and I have always shared a very deep bond. This is one of those things which I have had a very tough time explaining to anyone. Of course, most people I know also feel that they have a strong bond to their parents and family. But love, as with most other emotions is relative, it varies in intensity, nature and the way you express it. Most Indians understand this because of the similarity of the general close knit Indian family culture across most regions in India, but I have some difficulty explaining the extent of my bonding to my non-Indian friends, perhaps because the culture in India and in Europe is vastly different in certain respects. Don’t get me wrong, most European cultures also have very deep family bonds, contrary to popular Indian belief that “westerners” are not as family oriented as Indians. I anyway think that the generalization of “westerners” is a bit ridiculous; the differences between Americans vs Germans vs Swedes are so different that I think any generalization grouping them together is a crazy idea. However, most European cultures have very strong family orientation. But it is very different from what we have back in India. Perhaps due to the conditions that we grow up in, perhaps due to our economic system, perhaps due to our social structure. I do not know the reasons, I just know that it is very different, and very difficult to explain to someone who has not been in the same culture and system. I am sure other cultures will have some difficulty explaining their emotional ties of their family to me.

But it is strange how everything seems relative. What I feel for them now, vs what I felt for them back in childhood, vs what some of my friends feel for their parents. It is all so relative. Strange that I feel so much awe when I see my parents, they have been so selfless when it comes down to bringing up my sister and me. I doubt I can be so selfless and sacrifice so much for my children. And to me that is what love is all about. Expressing love without a motive or intent of getting back anything in return. To be able to get pleasure in sacrificing a part of ones life just because of the love one feels for a person. I do not know if I can give my children the same amount of love, the same amount of fierce protection against the evils of the world. If I can make the same amount of sacrifices, go through the same amount of troubles. Do so much to ensure that they have a safe and comfortable childhood, and never have any issues with education and life in general. Somehow when it was all happening, when I was having the amazing childhood when millions in the same country were having a terrible one, I was perhaps too immature to realize it and appreciate it. But now, standing in a place where I can look back and see it all, it seems crystal clear, and I am in awe!

Its amazing how even the term “amazing childhood” is also relative. Perhaps to a person in a developed nation the term means something totally different as compared to a person in a developing nation like India. Maybe in an underdeveloped nation, it again means something different. But I look back at the people who grew up with me, I look around when I go back to India, and I know everyone didn’t have the same opportunities, everyone didn’t have the same chances, everyone didn’t get the same education, the same amount of love, the same amount of guidance to do the right things, follow the right path. Everyone didn’t have 3 meals a day, and a roof on their head. Everyone didn’t have the choice of going to any school/college they wanted without bothering about the fees. And I feel that I got all this because of the love that my parents had for me and the way they brought me up. Made sure I never had to go hungry, never had to think about poverty, or education, or safety. There are some things people take for granted in the world that I live in right now, some things people forget to say a thank-you for. I don’t forget, because I know of people who don’t have it

For a couple who have lived a majority of their life in a small steel city in eastern India, it is amazing and amusing as to how quickly they have completely adapted and adjusted to the European life. I feel a warm glowing feeling when I see them trying out Italian ice-cream, or buying Grekisk Feta cheese. It is amusing how my mom looks at the skimpily clad girls dancing on the curise ship to Latvia and doesn’t give disapproving looks. I like introducing them to the trivialities of the life in Europe, like cider and Kyckling pytt. For them, I don’t think I can ever do a fraction of all that they have done for me, but I feel happy to be able to have them physically present with me, even for a short period of time. I am happy that they can share my European life which is so different from the small town India life that I grew up to. Just like they showed me so many new things in life, I feel kinda nice showing them the very few new things that I know of, though it is nothing compared to the huge amount of things I have learnt from them. And it amazes me that although they are as far removed from my fast paced corporate life as they could (they are both professors and in the education line) they can still say the perfect things when I talk to them about my work dilemmas. Some people are such that you can go to them for advice about any topic under the sun and you know you will never be disappointed.

Love is relative. What it means for me, it might not mean for other people. The way I define it might not be the way you define it. The way I express it might not be the way you express it. I believe that 99% of what I am today is because of my parents, because of their love, because of all that they have done to bring me up in the right way, to provide me with moral and emotional support and all the things that contribute to me not being messed up in life. No they were not perfect, but they were as close to it as humanly possible. And what I admire the most is that they did not expect anything back, absolutely nothing. They never asked me to come back to India, to live in the same city, or even to visit them. In Sweden, there are a lot of things in my life which do not conform to their slightly conservative views, but they never chide me for it, or even mention it. Even today they are selfless in their love for me, much more than I am for them.

Love is relative. For some it knows no bounds. It will always be difficult for me to define love, but what my parents have for me is the most perfect definition I have.

Ok ok.. stop the moaning, I shall stop the mushy tirade. But I might have to seriously consider returning back to India :)!!

I am keeping my promise of being around on blogosphere! Yay!

People person? (Barca pics)

2010-06-14T23:43:00.011+02:00

I am always disappointed in people. Never with what they do, or what they represent. Never with the roles they play, never with the responsibilities that they are supposed to fulfil, never with the positions they hold. I am never disappointed that the Project Manager didn’t manage the project, always that Mr. X could have managed the project better. I believe in people, not in how senior or junior they are. I trust in human beings, not human resources. And I have tried to change.. for three years and somehow I just cannot. I don’t know if this makes me more successful in what I do, or stops me from being more successful than I am. But I have realized I am a “people” person. Everything I do is driven by the people around me. Like when my friends discuss motivations, and someone says money, someone says type of job, someone says the company one works for and I always say the people whom I work with.... I strongly believe that when you enjoy doing what you do, with the people you like, success and money and the other things follow. In any given day, I do get a lot of joy from accomplishing a target, from meeting my goals, of a job well done, but I get the real “kick” out of life when the people I work with make my day. There’s nothing more fulfilling than to have learnt something from someone, from having taught something invaluable to someone, to have accomplished something together, or to have convinced the client to have brought something that makes both the client and me happy. To me its all about people.

And hence it is always a disappointment when people don’t measure up to expectations. You might say its not professional to be personal, but believe me in the consulting line, its all about personal relationships. Skill is a given, personal relationships differentiate the excellent consultant from the good consultant.

I am sorry for this weird tirade. Its just that I am tired and well.. yes.. you guessed it, disappointed and let down. By people at work. It is always a horrible feeling to put in your 100% and then be let down by others. I had an “ok” trip to Latvia, “ok” because the weather was not on our side, it was windy and rainy, with a choppy sea on the way to Latvia. I had planned to work from home today, but thanks to my overzealousness, a phone call made me just rush home straight from the cruise ship, have an express shower, change into formals and rush to office. And that is what perhaps always leads to my undoing. My overzealousness. I should keep it in control.

I suck at this. I shouldn’t blog when I am low I guess :P.
More when I am up and shining! I of course have to share my Riga trip pics, as planned. Till then, here are some Barcelona pics to drool over :) !!
(In real life I am so self obsessive about my pics, that it’s a shame that I cant put up pics of myself up here, but well.. that’s the cost I pay to keep this anonymous ;) )

Top pic reference: http://www.zazzle.com/people_person_mug-168053699040852091
(You can actually buy the mug!) :P

Riga ahoy!

2010-06-12T13:57:00.005+02:00

Have you had an occasion that you do not look forward to ... its an eventuality which you have not thought about? And then as the occasion draws near, you realize that its actually a good thing for you?

I planned a cruise trip to Riga, Latvia for my parents some time back. I have been to Latvia before, hence it was not something that was making me very excited. However now that I leave to board the cruise ship one hour, I am kinda looking forward to it, I think the trip will do me good. Any trip where I have no access to my work and laptop is always good!

The pic above is from my previous trip. If I can capture some nice ones this time, you will get to see them! Ciao... Riga ahoy!

Blogging Sabbatical

2010-06-11T16:24:00.003+02:00

I don’t know what else to call the break from blogging. Well I know its not good, its like stopping your jogging and gym schedule when you are healthy and aren’t gaining weight. Blogging therapy should continue, even through the good times :).

Loads happening in Merlins world! This is one of those times when life seems to go ‘whoosh’ past you and you are kinda trying to catch your breath. It is strange really, because some time back I was actually cribbing about a lack of excitement and speed in my life... well, there seems to be loads now. I guess you are already bored of the “life is busy, work is hectic, I don’t have time for anything” lines so I wont repeat it. Give you the juicy gossip in an executive summary, the type you’d give to the Sr. Directors and Exec VPs on an elevator pitch. So here goes: Promotion at work, Corporate Recognition Award, a much awaited salary increment, an AWESOME Spanish vacation at Barcelona, and getting mah parents to Stockholm to escape the crazy Indian summer. Howz that? All the good news in a nutshell!

Yes, summer is here, the happiness meter in Stockholm is soaring. Its kinda tough to wake up in the morning, look at the fantabulous weather outside and say “I’m sad”. Its just not possible. When nature seems to color the surroundings with the greens reds and every bright shade you can think of, it is kinda tough to not have a colourful mood to match it. So here I am, all refreshed and bright and shiny.. joining the Swedes in their weather mood swing to the more positive side. Yes, the recognition award, the promotion and the awesome vacation have also played a very major part in my positive outlook :P!

Travel always rejuvenates me. I have been spending time pondering on certain things that I have never pondered upon. I have always kinda lived my life a day at a time, and now for a change, I might have to be actually planning out stuff. It scares me because I know I am not good at it, I am usually only good at taking things as they come.

I am still in Sweden and I don’t know for how long. My parents have stopped asking till when; most people I know have also stopped asking me till when. Recently one of my mentors forwarded me a job role (within my company) based out of Geneva, and after some thought on the matter, I declined. If I am staying out of India, I might as well be in Sweden :P. Damn, I think I have fallen in love with the country, in spite of the minus 20 degrees temperature, spirit dampening darkness and the not-so-warm people. I guess it’s the Stockholm syndrome :P! Or maybe its just the summer talking!

After all the crazy escalations last year, things at work seemed to have calmed down. It feels good that the management appreciates and notices the work of the “youngest” manager of the team at handling what is sometimes referred to as the most challenging area in the account that I work for. As I said, awards and promotions are always good to have, they do good stuff for the motivation, contrary to the video I have been putting up on my LinkedIN and FB ;). I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I will do things that interest me and not let work control my life, being a workaholic is good only for so long. So I did jump into the designing and conducting of a Global Delivery course for Stockholm University which is an initiative from my company. I love the geek stuff :) Am I contradicting myself from the earlier post on Geek Inside? But I guess the bike stunts phase, the Casanova swings, the student politics phase is over and the geek phase is here to stay *shrug*- We’ll see.

No, I wont be promising that I will be regular with the posts this time on, coz I don’t want to build a reputation of not keeping my promises. But I will try. Its always refreshing to be back to blogosphere, you guys will be seeing more of me at least in your blogs. Ciao

Image source: http://soulreflection.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/break-over/

Today I have to borrow words... to fill the silence...

2010-04-25T23:26:00.003+02:00

“Life is good, Andros,” Georgiou began. “I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I love my work, and we have enough clients. Whenever I have dreamed of setting out on an adventure, my father has given his blessing, and I have gone where I wanted. How is it, then, that I still have a wish, like some yeast fermenting beneath my skin, for something I cannot quite name? However good life appears to be, nothing ever seems to fill this gap.

- Chasing Rumi

I think I will get addicted to Cadburys.... they say that chocolates are not the best for your health... especially if they are too sweet. :sigh:

Quarter Life Crisis

2010-03-28T17:33:00.006+02:00

I will be honest. I was browsing through the tonnes of material on the net I usually end up reading on a lazy Sunday and I stumbled across THIS ARTICLE, and this post is inspired by it (recommendation: READ the article). Well I am kinda on the other side of quarter life, but I guess I was in such a rush during my early 20s that I completely forgot about the whole crisis thing and completely forgot to have it, and it hit me a bit late. So, I am in kind of a quarter life crisis now. And maybe because it has come late in my life, it has come in with a vengeance. I know, I know, its just a phase and it will go by, but what the ****, it stinks, and I do hope it goes by faster than I think.

So I can imagine all you 40+ guys laughing hysterically at the idea of a quarter life crisis. Sirs, ma’ms… do not laugh, the world was kind of different when you were 25. There was no PS3, (or PS2 for that matter) to aspire for and to play against. There were no internet romances, or break-ups. And if you are an Indian, I am sure there are very little chances that you would be dealing with a relationship with a girl from a different state, or a different country, or her parents. Very little chance also that you would be wondering which country to settle in, and if you should be in the gaming industry, the IT industry, the ITES industry or a regular conventional industry like the Travel industry. Whether you should change jobs when your job pays more than it should and is more exciting than you thought a job would be, but you are still getting bored. So ladies and gentlemen, do not laugh. Take a step back and let the new generation endure their quarter life with grace.

And for all the below 20 guys (do below 20 guys even read blogs?), brace for the impact, its going to be bigger and worse for you guys *evil snigger*. And for those between 25 and 30, hold my hand, I empathize with you.. it shalt pass, and we shall come out of it stronger and more stable than ever before!

I have cribbed about this a number of times and I will crib about it again. In my current phase of life it is SO difficult to find people who are the same age as me. At work, EVERYBODY is older to me.. don’t ask me why, I have no clue. And in my social circles also, people are either AT LEAST 10 years older to me, or are in the age range between 4 and 13 (the offspring of my ‘friends’). Hence it is SO tough to find someone to relate to within my physical circles of friends. In my virtual circle, which transcends all geographical boundaries on earth, of course I have a zillion friends in the same phase and stage of life. But it’s a completely different feeling to sit over a beer and crib about how your life sucks because everything seems to be a dilemma. This I cant do with a friend settled in the US or working in the UK or those back in India. And so I take my only other alternative, to blog about my rants.

Of course, at quarter life (ok ok.. I am not 25 and I don’t pretend to be, so lets call it a couple of years after quarter life), one has much more fun than say in your childhood, teenage or adolescence. I can eat all I want, have all the excesses that I ever dreamed of and spend all the money I want to on all the stupid things that were earlier forbidden. But the million dilemmas in life just kill me. If I could I wish I’d not have to take a single more decision in life, but till people turn 40, life is all about decisions (or maybe it haunts you even after you’re 40). Whom to date, whom to marry, where to study, what to study, where to work, which industry, what job profile, which company, which city/country to settle in, when to have kids, how many kids to have, when to change your job, prioritize gf/wife over job or vica versa, balance parents with in-laws etc etc. And when you start having more than 2 of these dilemmas, well, God bless you, your quarter life crisis has arrived.

A few days back I was talking to a few ladies who are close friends of mine from school/college. They happen to be 1 to 2 years elder to me or my age, and all of them were totally PSYCHED out about turning 30. And I totally couldn’t relate to either one of them. Is it that I am kind of abnormal that I am totally at ease about growing older, or does it have something to do with “men become more attractive as they get older” phenomenon? But unlike Joey in FRIENDS, I have absolutely no qualms about turning 30 and cannot understand why people make such a big deal of it. And maybe this has something to do with being the youngest guy in my workplace :sigh: !!

This reminds me of the FRIENDS episode : TOW They All Turn 30:

And with this note, I bid thee farewell for now. The weeks have been busy, but the next week is a short work week and a long holiday stint, and I need to tell you about my ventures in research and publication (boring), my upcoming trip to Barcelona (exciting), my parents visit (really exciting), and a probable road trip to Norway… but all of this next time :).

P.S. Have put a cute FB sharing gadget on the right hand column under Archives, and am really excited about it, even though I never write anything worth sharing :).

Image courtesy: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/quarterlife-crisis.php

Itz mah birfday!

2010-03-14T17:36:00.005+01:00

My blog completes one year. This day, one year back I started this blog. I was kind of sure that it wont last, my other "ventures" into web designing, online management research paper publishing and similar other internet frenzies fizzled out. But like I always say... blogging is my therapy.. it heals me. And so I lingered on in this space.

It has been quite a journey, not as impressive as the other 'blog celebrities' I know, but decently satisfying for me. 365 days, 83 posts, 13 followers and 2200 + hits (excluding my own). I would say - not bad. I just went back and read my first 3 posts, and it was nostalgia all over again. Things have changed so much, and then again, some things havent changed at all! Loved the first 3 posts HERE, HERE and HERE. I hope I feel the same things after one year when I reflect back on this post.

For those regular followers out here, yes, you have seen the same title and picture before, on MY birfday :), this is a repeat coz I love lolcatz so much!

Cheers, and I shalt celebrate this today!!

Lolcat picture references: http://icanhascheezburger.com/

The Barometer shows “High”

2010-03-13T20:39:00.004+01:00

Blogging is like my barometer. You can judge the kind of pressure I am in just by looking at my blog. I use it to gauge how things are with me. When I write an “angry Merlin” or “sad Merlin” blog, you know how its gonna be. And when I don’t write at all you know the pressure has gone over the edge.

So that’s how it has been for the last few months. Over the edge. Waking up in the morning to a ringing phone.. escalation, urgent meeting or something. Dragging my laptop to my bed to see what is the latest catastrophe to strike my area. Stumbling out of bed and brushing my teeth while on a conference call and getting very embarrassed when I am asked a question and I have to spit out the toothpaste and answer. Thinking of strategies to appease the clients while showering and then answering mails while gulping a cup of coffee and breakfast… and sliding down the stairs and waving at the bus driver till he feels sorry for me and waits while I run to the bus stop. Getting dirty looks from fellow passengers as I try to check mails on the laptop on a crowded metro train.. and literally running into the office to be on time for a meeting. Hectic meetings, mails, phone calls, customer escalations… and then walking back home.. ready to collapse as soon as I reach home. Hit the couch, have some tea.. check the late night shift of mails (the US team is up and working), create some documents, dinner and then crash into bed. So if I say I didn’t have time to blog it would be an understatement.

Every culture has their own kind of PC… and it varies enormously. For the uninitiated, PC is “Polite Conversation” (please read THIS previous blog post for more info on PC), the stuff you do when you meet a person and don’t exactly know how to fill up the awkward silences. In India when you want to do PC, you ask “so how many children do you have” or “do you have family” (read as ‘are you married’) or "is your wife working or a housewife?" or "is your daughter/son married?". No kidding, these are NOT personal questions in India, its PC. Any stranger can ask you this stuff on their first meeting with you. At office, at the mall, on the bus. Its THAT impersonal. In most of Europe, you can risk offending a person you know if you ask these questions unless you know the person well. Well, in the UK, the most popular topic of conversation for PC is the weather, probably because its so crappy throughout the year. If you have ever been to the UK you’d know how much time the English people spend on pondering and analyzing the weather, or simply cribbing about it. The Swedes I think like PCing about weekends, vacations and trips to Thailand. So their favorite PC will be “How was your weekend?” or “What are your plans for the weekend” or “So howz your weekend progressing?” or “So how was Thailand?” or “When are you next going to Thailand?” etc etc. Sometimes its lost on me, because a) I don’t plan my weekend in advance, neither my upcoming vacation.. or the vacation the year after next b) I have never gone to Thailand, and do not plan to in the near future. So when people ask me about my weekend I wonder if I should get offended because a lot of stuff I did over the weekend was pretty personal, I wouldn’t like to share it with the guy who is from my competitor company at work. Strange, how PC can vary so much with different cultures.

So when everyone asked me “What plans for the weekend?” I simply said “nothing”. When Swedes have a hectic week, they try to have a more hectic weekend to compensate for it. I don’t understand the logic. When I have a hectic week, I simply cancel all activities for the weekend and spend it sleeping, taking long showers, cooking, watching Big Bang Theory, Simpsons, Two and a half men and lazing around. It rejuvenates me more than doing cross country skiing or visiting new countries or taking a trekking to the Norway fjords. I mean, I do all of that stuff (except the cross country skiing) but not to recover from a killing week. There's nothing like lazing around to rejuvenate a person. If this was India, I’d throw in a Kerela massage and ‘adda’ (chitchat session) at a relatives place. :sigh:

I was browsing through Facebook and noticed that one of my colleagues son has just turned one year old. Its strange how priorities change so fast for people. Not so long ago in college all we could think of was type of future job, starting salary, career, role... then it became boss, promotion, increment. Very soon the whole job fever went out of our lives. People started talking about marriage. So there was a lot of worrying about marrying the current girlfriend, worrying about arranged marriage, worrying about love marriage and loveless marriages and worrying about not getting married at all. Now, most of us are beyond this point (word to note here is "most", some are still talking jobs) So now the next phase of discussions are babies. Honestly, it makes me feel old. Not because I refuse to grow up, or “adopt” the passing of time, but I somehow am still stuck in the job mode (that’s the reason I am still having those hectic weeks remember?). Its funny because I made a passing remark to a younger friend (read as 25) who was shifting apartments… noting that this was the last time he would be shifting alone. And on being asked for the reason I told him, “next time it will probably be with a wife and a kid”. The look on his face was of absolute horror and disgust, as if I had just violated some sacrosanct rule by mentioning the unmentionable. After a few seconds of speechlessness, he just flippantly remarked, “Bah, it’s a LONG time before that’s going to happen”. What’s it with these 22 to 25 year olds thinking that they are going to be bachelors and enjoy their carefree youth till eternity. Guys.. open your eyes. Embrace the real world. You are an Indian. If you have not been Europeanized or Americanized by now, in a span of 2 to 4 years, ou will be married (you can hope its a love marriage, it could also be arranged) and in another 1 to 3 years you would be changing nappies. That’s not a long time off now, is it? Stop pretending its never gonna happen. Stop pretending that you will be “surfing” around till eternity. And stop making it look as if marriage means the end of the world. Do not forget the sliver linig. As our beloved SRK always says “Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost!”

If the next week is not as hectic as this one (I hope it wont be) you will be seeing more of me out here!

Every Swedish blog today will write about the same thing... snow

2010-02-22T17:06:00.003+01:00

I broke my own record. I started writing a post 4 times in a row, and left it midway. Which is the maximum number of times I have done this in a row. The earlier count was 3. I know, I am rambling, but allow me the liberty, otherwise the number will go to 5.

I am a bit pissed. Maybe that’s an understatement, but I am not in the mood for extreme statements, otherwise this post will tend to move towards profanities which are better left out of a blog. Don’t ask me why, there’s never one single reason for such mood swings. And I am too lazy to write all of them down. Oh, maybe I can tell you one of the better ones. It is minus 22 degrees today. And as I am not big on winter sports (the maximum participation it inspires from me is watching the winter Olympics on TV), this is not such good news for me. Especially because I still have to go to work, and the dogs and sled that I keep for such occasions was lent to Santa in December and he never returned it. And in this weather even Stockholm’s super duper hi-tech transport system has given in. Nothing, nothing survives minus 24 degrees and such incessant snow. Maybe polar bears do.. and sometimes I feel that God made this side of the world for them. It is certainly not for us humans. We seem to be fooling ourselves by living here with artificially heated rooms and imported frozen food. And getting super depressed because its such a pain to go out. Yes, you are right, I AM in a mighty sour mood.

I amused myself with watching numerous sitcoms on TV. My favorites actually, when you are pissed I guess that is the only consolation. 2 and a half men, How I met your mother, FRIENDS, SCRUBS and the like... I was never keen on TV, till I landed in this polar bear country. Here you have to be big on TV. Else you die. And I so want to live. I am tending to take the way of the abominably irritating NRI (Non resident Indian, for the uninitiated, don’t even make me go into the puns for that) and feel like starting every other sentence in a conversation with the typical Indian accent (you know what I am talking about if you have ever watched Russel Peters), the irritating drawl and “You know, in India...” Never done that till now, but now I really feel like it. “You know, in India” when we feel suffocated we can put on a t-shirt over the shorts and take the bike and go out for a long ride. Or go for a walk. Or sit at the outdoor Café sipping some cool lemonade. “You know, in India” we can start a conversation with the person standing next to you at a traffic crossing and not be considered weird. Or start humming loudly in the middle of nowhere and be considered very positively cheerful. Wear a bright red shirt and bright blue shorts and sit in a café and not be considered abnormal. If you didn’t notice I am bitching about Sweden. I think it is a first on this blog, I usually am all praises about this adopted country. But today I am getting a pleasure out of bitching. Always wondered about what pleasure the girls derived out of having those crazy bitching sessions in school. Now I know.

Lately there has been a trend of some Sweden lovers attacking blogs which do not speak highly of the country. Lost in Translation and HairySwede are some blogs which have faced these attacks. Of course, my blog is not half as famous as them so maybe I am safe, if not, a message to the all Sweden lovers (:goes down on his knees:), I love Sweden and Swedes, but please pardon me for finding it difficult to love the minus 22 degrees (:sob:) and being captivated in my apartment for so many days. I am in awe of you because you guys have managed to spend a lifetime here. Quoting LostInTranslation words about the Canadians, maybe you guys are not afraid of the winter, the winter is afraid of you. But me, this lost Indian guy, who is more used to the plus 50 degrees of Delhi, Nagpur and Jamshedpur, finds it just a wee bit uncomfortable when the needle dips below minus 22.

I just reread the post and it sounds horrible. Yes, I was right, I AM in a crappy mood. I have a good mind to scrap this post and not put it up. But its probably much less crazier than the other ones, and then again, who cares :). Talking of crazy, and keeping up with my tradition of recommending good blogs, here are two other good crazy ones I bumped across. In case you have assimilated the craziness of my blog and want to move one notch up, this should be able to satiate your appetite for craziness. And would give you another glimpse of an impossible life of a non-swede in Sweden.

And yes, you will notice, that nearly all Swedish blogs today will write about the same thing... snow :)

1. Lost in Translation
2. A Swedish American in Sweden

Happy reading!

Geeks and Muggles

2010-02-07T00:05:00.003+01:00

It might seem funny to you, but I was always an aspirant geek while growing up. Maybe it had to do with being the son of two professors who were both PhD and research scientists by the time I was born. Or maybe it had to do with being born in an engineering city, where the highest accolade anybody could have was the Bachelor of Engineering degree. Maybe it was in my genes, or maybe I picked it up somewhere. And although I was absolutely not geek material, I was much better at football, cricket, dramatics, biking, debating, trekking and the like.. the aspiration somehow was always geekdom. And geekdom always evaded me. Until, of course, now. And once I am here, its not what I thought it would be. Its not as interesting, not as inspiring, not as motivating.. certainly not sustainable, and absolutely not “me”.

The other day a colleague of mine asked me to organize a session where I could share the technical aspects of the work we do for the client, the colleague was more into the “creative” side of things. So I had the session and somewhere midway, I realized just what I had become. A person who was crazily passionate about each miniscule technical detail of what we are doing, where we are doing things, and how we are executing our plans. Even when I was not responsible or in anyway linked to those plans. To the extent that I tended to get carried away into the details. To the extent that I was explaining ERP tools, ERP basic concepts, and implementation and rollout projects in East European countries. And I knew that I had arrived. To geekdom. To geekiness. I had finally become the complete geek.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a software developer. Nor am I a subject matter expert. I am not the type who mumbles Javascript and ABAP code in his sleep. It’s worse. I am a consultant. Or rather a consultant involved in selling consulting services. In fancy terms they call it IT Business Development. And the part of my job I cherish most, is the exposure to technology it gives me. Not just to one software, not just to one module of an ERP system, but to a multitude of technology, software, hardware as well as services. And fortunately or unfortunately, it always amazes and thrills me. It makes me dig in deeper into the geekological aspects of things. And its amazing when I can use the knowledge to the benefit of the clients, or my own organization. Its kinda addictive, I tend to get carried away. Till I reach a point when I find myself passionately explaining all the geek stuff to an outsider, who probably finds it the most boring thing on earth. And it suddenly hits me. This has now become my whole life. This geeky stuff, that I aspired for, has become my whole life. The basketball, the volleyball, the trekking, the traveling, the biking and the blogging… all have taken a bow and moved to the sidelines. And geekiness prevails and encompasses everything in my life. I talk mergers, acquisitions, and the future of BI Frontend over coffee, and customization of enterprise portals and splitting of superdome servers over dinner. Its all done in a very “fun” way, over football at O’Learys and over fancy dinner tables at Beirut Café. But its still geek talk.

And I wonder, that in spite of the thrill and the kick I derive out of it, in spite of the adrenalin rush the latest server release or the development drop gives to me, is this what I was meant to do? Pardon my self questioning spree, I have always suffered from the Self Questioning Syndrome, somehow it has done me a lot of good in life. And the answer, surprisingly is no.

They say that there are the idealistic notions of life. And then of course there are the practical realities. I once had a friend who used to sing very well. She was passionate about singing and did her bachelors and then her masters in music. Unfortunately in India, the country of a billion people, singing will not provide the daily bread and butter to manage the basic middle class life one needs. Hence she was extremely worried about life. She did not, and would not do anything else apart from music, she felt she was betraying her call in life if she did anything else. Her career went downhill, her self esteem took a plunge, she started losing respect in social circles. Till a friend explained that trying out a profession would a) not mean that she would have to give up music and b) could mean that she could find something apart from music that she actually liked doing. She tried her hand at multiple professions, and after some amount of job hopping finally settled down in a corporate job. Last I heard, she still is a professional singer, pursuing degrees in music and making appearances in professional shows, but she also likes her job. I took my lesson from the story, the idealistic and the practical nuances of life are not always an OR option, sometimes they can be AND options as well. And that is what I have told myself. That I shall take the AND option. I will mix the practical geekiness of my life with the other more idealistic “creative” options that life gives me. Of course, in taking the AND option, I shall run the risk of one aspect of life dominating the other. Like it is now. When I find myself playing badminton once a week, blogging once in 2 weeks, and not going to the gym at all. When I have not touched a motorbike for months, and have not travelled to a new country for around half a year. When I find myself immersed in making proposals and learning about the latest sever release more often than planning my next road trip.

But I shall fight the domination and strive to restore the balance. And I will not give in to the OR syndrome. I shall be a geek, but manage to lead the life of a muggle (??!!) without the superpowers of geekdom as well. I shall not give up.. on either geekiness or my other callings in life. And I shall also manage to fulfill my wish list, the weird things I have to do before I die (now DON’T ask me what they are, if I started off on that you’d wish you had never asked!). Wish me luck :)…

For the uninitiated:

"The definition of geek has changed considerably over time, and there is no longer a definitive meaning. The terms nerd, gimp, dweeb, dork and spod have similar meanings as geek, but many choose to identify different connotations amongst these terms, although the differences are disputed."
- Wikipedia

One of many definitions that abound on the internet:
"A derogatory reference to a person obsessed with intellectual pursuits for their own sake, who is also deficient in most other human attributes so as to impair the person's smooth operation within society"
- Wikipedia

Image source: http://bytheinside.wordpress.com/

Some more snow, this time at the crossroads...

2010-01-29T14:53:00.006+01:00

I am at the cross roads. Did I hear some one sigh and whisper “not again”? Well, ok, I admit, yes, yet again. It’s not my fault you know, I try choosing the straight roads with minimum intersections, but damnit, I always end up with ones with the maximum. But what the hell, if that is what destiny has in store for me, so be it.

There have been so many of those in recent years that I have almost come to a point where I shy away from decisions. I try procrastinating to the extent possible. Till the point when I really cant run away anymore. I wasn’t always like this, but there is a limit to which a guy can make random gut-based decisions in his life. Phew! Believe me I have had my share. But it just keeps piling on like there is no tomorrow.

So here it is once again. After innumerable promises to my family, my friends and most of all to MBF and myself, of returning back to India for good, here I am rethinking it all over again. I can see the despair in everyones eyes as I say this, but I hope they can see the angst in mine. Its not easy you know. To keep hopping… mind you, not just cities, but from life to life. (More of this HERE, HERE and HERE, seems to be my fave topic on this blog). Whether I like it or not, Stockholm, yes the Stockholm you see in the picture above, is the place which I call home. And though its tough because deep inside my mind home still means India, I still have to know this is where I am most settled in right now. Maybe, some day I shall move back, but now I think I can allow myself the luxury of feeling upset about leaving my current home, Stockholm. Call it the Stockholm syndrome if you will.

Finally the weekend is here. I have successfully completed a week in Sweden. Its tough to imagine that exactly a week back I was in Bangalore, whizzing around in a car in shorts under the hot sun and 18 degrees with the air conditioning turned on maximum and loud music from the car stereo trying to drown out the traffic sounds. Tough to imagine now, sitting here (still in shorts though :P at least inside home) with minus ten degrees, a divine silence engulfing everything and snow all around. I had serious doubts if I will survive a week in Sweden, I almost thought that I will land at the airport take a look around, and head to the counter to finalize my trip back. But it was quite the contrary. I got completely awed by the beautiful snow. No, its not that nice to trudge through, and very unpleasant when it gets in your shoes and mixes with dirt to become a muddy mass at your apartment entrance. Its not nice when it settles at the tip of your nose and manages to give you a bad cold. But gotta admit, its still beautiful.

Weekend plans include badminton, a small party on Saturday and gadget shopping on Sunday. And if time permits, some more blogging!! Heres a toast to getting back to blogging :).. and to a fabulous weekend!

Snow, Stockholm, Sweden and some other things :)

2010-01-28T17:32:00.001+01:00

The sea is frozen, the chill in the wind bites through your clothes and the sun hesitatingly comes out once every few hours in a day. The dress code in the city is unanimously shades of black and grey, the mood is unanimously dreary. There is a strange silence as I sit on the train on the way to office. As the train comes out of the tunnel sometimes, the city is covered in a beautiful quilt of snow. Its like when you accidentally spill a can of paint in the kitchen, the color of nature is unanimously white. Its beautiful to say the least. It kind of takes your breath away. It makes up for the minus ten degrees temperature, the biting wind, the lack of color and the lack of laughter. You cannot enjoy the winter if you don’t let your mind take the bend of the philosophical and let it find the hidden message in those hexagonal snowflakes. Let your eyes wander on that vast white expanse, and then rest it on that single man dressed in black trudging across the snow to his workplace.

Yes, I am back. To Sweden, and to a winter which they say is colder than it has been in the last decade, or maybe more. Though it has snowed every winter, I haven’t seen this much snow in the last 2 and a half years I have been here. I guess the Gods had decided to reserve the best for the last. After incessant snowfall yesterday, as I trudged through the shin high snow, something made me look up. And suddenly I realized why they say that snow can make you feel closer to God. As the snowflakes drifted down from the white sky, I realized how it made everything feel like when you watch it in slow motion. And I closed my eyes, and experienced the amazing silence that snow brings with it. I am sure it can be explained scientifically, because snow absorbs sound or something, but it’s a silence that can make you feel more at peace. More conscious of yourself, and of the beauty around you.

Everyone around me, friends in Sweden and India were curious to know my reaction when I landed here. Would I be disappointed? Sad? Homesick? After all it had been a very long trip to India. So long that when my client (during a client visit to India) asked me where I lived in Stockholm I went "I live in... errr... ummm... damnit, I have forgotten where I live...!!!" No kidding, I couldnt recall the street I live in, it took me a full 2 to 3 minutes to get the name. Yes I was THAT disconnected. So everyone was curious.. what is going to be my reaction. It was tough to explain what I felt. It was like being transported into a completely different realm. And its not just about the weather. It’s the colors, the noise, the smells, the feel, the people, the language, the accents, the complete experience. Somehow, for some reason it is not comparable. I cannot and will not compare my life in India to my life in Sweden. I cannot say this is better and this is worse. I can only say its different, very different. And I can enjoy the bits that I like about both places. And about where I shall finally decide to settle down, we shalt see.

The days are becoming longer. The light is not that bad as it used to be in November. My European friends are awesome as usual, so are my NRI ones. Life in Sweden, from afar, was somehow more scary than it seems once I am here. I shall live. No, I will not have a zillion friends I have to meet, nor a million relatives who will invite me home for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I will not have the chats, the bhel puri and the Indian ameriacan choupsey. I will not have the luxury of getting into the car in shorts and a t-shirt and grabbing some dosa when I get hungry at 10 pm. I shall not have the Ayurvedic massages. But I shall have the beauty of the snow, the peaceful noise-free life of Stockholm and European football at O’Learys.

Do not be disappointed. It always begins on a philosophical note. And then it flows into the more mundane. I shall not fetter you with more of this abstract nonsense, but sometimes, just sometimes, it should be allowed. A lot has changed. That too in a very short while. And I wonder...

But as I said, all in good time...

Back...

2009-12-16T06:55:00.004+01:00

Sunset at the Kerela beach 30 kms from Mangalore

Yes I know. I haven’t written like for ages. No, I didn’t forget all about blogging. There was too much happening in life. Both professional and personal. And blogging sometimes takes a back seat. Even temptations of undergoing blog therapy didn’t motivate me to come back to the blog. But the important thing is, that I am back. It doesn’t matter now why I went missing, right? A crab is allowed to crawl back into his shell once in a while, allow me the liberty.
Now for the updates. I am in India. After nearly 10 months, which is a long long time. On a “pure” vacation (hopefully) for the first time in the year. The last few times it was more of a partial vacation. The past 2 weeks have been a crazy rush.. almost like a mad chase, I don’t even know what it was all for. I’ll cut to the essentials, because it has also been interesting :). Heres what has been happening for the past 2 weeks.

Hectic week before travelling to India... as if millions of things were chasing me.. almost as if my manager didn’t want me to travel back..
Customer escalation.. the worst ever. Last day of work at Sweden.. My nastiest meeting ever.. senior clients screaming.. multiple projects escalated.. enough to worry both internal and client execs..
An eventless flight to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Bangalore.. the latter filled with Indians settled in Canada. Good to know there are people other than me trying to escape from minus fifteen degrees!
Royal treatment on reaching Bangalore... a new apartment, me likes. An Ayurvedic Rejuvenation massage leaves me rejuvenated :).
One last week of work from Bangalore.. much more hectic than the one in Sweden. Killing traffic takes most of the time.
No time to breathe, but a lunch at IndiJoes and a beer at TGIF thanks to some friends. And comfort, peace of mind and good food at home, thanks to MBF :).
Journey to TAPMI Manipal for MBA Workshop, I lose my travel bag on the way to the station (with my MP3 player, camera, and T-shirts I got from Paris, Amsterdam and Rome :( sniff sniff ). I manage to retain my Man Utd jersey coz I am wearing it :phew:
For my senior exec and me, we have one ticket on RAC and one wait listed. We also have confirmed Volvo AC sleeper tickets, but we decide to risk the train.
The ticket checker allows us to board the train, we do not have a seat, it’s a 12 hour journey. After 3 hours the ticket checker gives us one berth for 2 of us. No bribe asked for! I am shocked. India IS changing!! Or is it just South India?
Very little sleep on train (2 people on one berth.. we manage).
Royal reception at Mangalore. One small glitch, the banner says “TAPMI welcomes Merlin and team”. My senior exec is 10 years senior to me, and 4 band levels above me, he is anything but “my team”. But he has a good sense of humor, just winks at me. When will students realize corporate protocols :sigh:
Vada sambhar breakfast at Mangalore. I realize I am in a football jersey and jeans, and have no luggage on me except a laptop and a laptop bag. No deo, no toothbrush, no formal clothes. I need to go shopping.
In Manipal the Alumni committee generously gives me a pulsar and directions to a shop I can buy a shirt.
Its been 10 years since my senior exec sat on a bike, I am tempted to show him some bike stunts, but I suppress my wicked urges and drive carefully.
A discovery that Manipal, the hep the yo and the happening student town does not have one decent shop where I can buy one Allen Solly shirt
Forced to buy an unbranded black (the other colors were HORRIBLE) shirt from Riverdale, which is a shop which is planning to close down and has NO options
Awesome workshop. I think we managed to keep 98% of the students awake for 2 hours (bless the girl who blissfully slept through it all on the last bench), which at a 2pm lecture is the greatest feat for any speaker.
Lot of attention from students post the workshop, am successful in diverting all the attention towards my senior exec saying (he is the guy who will make hiring decisions if any, I am a small fry)
Hire an Apache bike for 24 hours for 1500 bucks and a 5000 bucks deposit. Yes you are right - I have been fleeced. Its all right, I am a NRI in India, and this is the only way I can get a bike in good ol’ Manipal
Thanks to my “juniors” I have an awesome dinner and “bakar” session till midnight. I cant believe TAPMI has a in time of 12 am for girls AND guys! I miss my late night bike rides!
A most enchanting dawn!! Up at 6 am.. don’t remember the last time I got up at 6am without having a meeting.
Joined by MBF and family.. A bike ride to Karkala and other nearby places. Finally give up bike and shift to a diesel Ford Fiesta. An awesome car.. but I prefer driving petrol cars on highways.
Lunch at LX in Udupi.. refreshing old memories… awesome buffet topped with caramel and bread-butter pudding desert.. Drive down to Mangalore, movie “Rocket Singh” at AdLabs.
Some rest and then draught beer and a Chinese dinner at “Froth on the Top” at Mangalore. I can vouch that it’s the best draught beer in Mangalore!
After being deprived of sleep for 2 days, I finally sleep like a baby.
More draught beer at 10 am, its not good staying a 100 metres from “Froth on the Top”. The earliest I have had beer ever!
A drive down to one of the Kerela beaches in the Ford Fiesta. I was driving but I was well below the minimum driving alcohol level ;)
Awesome trip to one of the temples and the beach. A romantic sunset.. with some romantic company :).
Drive back to Mangalore.. more of Froth on the Top and American Choupsey for dinner :). An affirmation that I love “Indian Chinese” more than authentic Chinese :).
Morning and a beautiful train journey from Mangalore to Bangalore on Konkan Railways. The train trip is certainly recommended if you want to see the Western Ghats... absolutely breathtaking
Feels so good to be back to a culture where everybody on the train talk to each other.. the children are playing with each other even before we have put the luggage in. The adults start talking about the trivialities of life.. family, politics, rising prices and education. Soon even some common family ties are found.
Everyone shares their lunch, either bought on the train or from their “tiffin boxes”. They also share snacks, marriage related opinions and a lot of advice for one kid who is ill.
Incidentally the lunch on the train (vegetarian biriyani with raita) costs Rs 20, for the benefit of my European friends that is approximately 3 SEK or 0.3 EUR!! And I have a feeling it’s more expensive on the air conditioned coaches, I don’t know if it cost lesser in the non AC coaches.
And now.. back to the Bangalore grind :sigh: When the time comes to retire, Manipal will certainly be one of the options as a place to retire in :). By the way, the second option is Paris, the third is Rome !!

Fall....

2009-10-11T12:59:00.004+02:00

Fall is here. The temperatures are dipping. The sun seems to be getting shy and peeps out only once in a while. Very soon it will be honoring us with daylight only for 3 to 4 hours in a day. The temperature today is 6 degrees, and it has been progressively dipping to the dreaded zero and sub zero temperatures. The general climate is becoming dull, drab and morose. People are quieter, are more serious and have shifted back to wearing their grays and blacks. MBF with her pink gloves and scarf is the only refreshing change I find in this dull and drab European winter fashion trend.... she brings the only whiff of color in my life :). I wish the other Swedish girls would also follow the trend. People are becoming more focused on their jobs and work, and this will continue till late December till people start shifting to the Christmas mood. There are lesser and lesser things to do in town. The Desis have their own Durga Puja, Kali Puja and Diwali celebrations... but I am feeling more and more restless and impatient. I have loved Sweden and everything it has offered to me.. but I am getting kinda bugged of this whole weather thing. I have lived in cities with extreme weather conditions, Nagpur, Delhi and Kolkata... some of the hottest and most humid cities in India. But this is much worse than all of those. It is not just about the weather here, but it is also the overall mood which dips and becomes morose along with the weather, I dont know how to explain this.

Maybe the time has finally come to make a move. I have cribbed about being a vagabond and craving for a stable settled life in my post before, but a settled stable life still eludes me. Maybe its just me, my restlessness and my refusal to accept something as a permanent life and settle down with it contentedly. A close well wisher told me "You have the greatest job, awesome money, amazing brand name and an exotic foreign posting, dont be a fool and think of ever throwing it away". I agree to all that, but in the end its my happiness that matters. If the great job role, money, foreign posting and brand name has stopped giving me the thrill and excitement it used to give me, it is time to move on. I am not sad, not upset... not even bored... but I realized a few days back that I am missing the zing in my life. And its a familiar feeling. Like the feeling I had when I was in my first job, when I quit to go to business school. Or like when I was in engineering college, and decided to leave civil engineering after a year to join electronics engineering. Alas, it is time for a change again. I dread change, I detest and abhor it, and yet I cannot live without it. Such is life.

For those of you who asked me how the singing went, well, it was awesome :). The photos will appear on FB soon, for those of you who are on my FB. I was dressed in a traditional embroidered Kurta... and jeans (I know I am such a loser to be wearing jeans but I didnt have much of an option so dont groan). The crowd actually went "Once more, once more" and we were all completely taken aback.. we didnt know a crowd was allowed to say that kind of thing in a religious setting. LOL.

I am heading back to India for a month in December. And I am absolutely thrilled about it and am eagerly looking forward to it. Some very important decisions will be made while in India... I guess we need to make such decisions every once in a while :). My friends in India are fed up of me because I keep trying to make plans about where we will go and what we will do when I land there in December. As one guy said "Dude.. this is India... you plan what you want to the next day just one day before... we do not have the European way of planning a year in advance.. come over and we will have a blast.. without planning anything". SIGH! I guess he is right. But can I still just keep myself happy by thinking about some awesome late night bike rides and some early morning long drives into the highway? Some midnight pav bhaji after a late night movie and a trek to the nearest waterfall? And wearing a light jacket and zooming away on a bike in the middle of December! :)

I need to make up for my last nasty post :P. So here is something to make you feel better. A video that always cheers me up and makes me smile. And not just because Salman Khan is so cute, but because I find it extremely amusing to watch the blondes doing all the Indian dance steps so perfectly. I wonder what my European friends would have to say about it :)

Blogging Woes

2009-10-10T22:18:00.007+02:00

I am in a bad mood. I really feel like lashing out. So please do not feel obligated to read on unless it amuses you to read the thoughts of a guy in a really bad mood.

If you are thinking I will now write down the reason of my bad mood, I am sorry to disappoint you. I do not know the reason. I have absolutely no clue. And before you label me as insane, I would say in my defense that there has been too much piling up and I guess it has all reached a point where its just brimming over.

I am kind of disillusioned with blogging. I know, I know, you all told me so. But it was fun till it lasted. And I know most of my close friends have already gone through this phase (yes Iya, SG et al).. the phase of finding the joys of blogging, reaching peaks, having blog fans and then finding that the blog is not able to justify the freedom of expression. That there is too much pressure to write something or not to write something. Or that the comfort level with known people reading the blog is not good. So I have reached the last phase. I can either shut down the blog, or make it limited to people who are really close and who live in the real world. People who accept me for what I am. People who dont have weird expectations from me. I am sorry but I cannot blog about Obama winning the Noble Peace prize because I have some more real life concerns to take care of. No.. this is not meant as an insult to all the people writing about serious world issues. I write about generic stuff too... but not when my own life is kinda all tangled up and needs straightening up. Sigh! I told you.. this will be more of a venting post.

So there are a lot of other things about blogging that has been bothering me. Maybe this is the most unpopular thing anyone ever said on any blog post ever... but the motive behind me blogging wasnt exactly popularity so I shall say it anyway. I do not believe in Blog Awards. I respect all those who do, but I dont. To the extent that when someone gives me an award, I do not post it on my blog. And this has resulted in lost blog friends and lost blog followers. I do not mean to provocate you into a pointless debate, but my point of view is that my blog is for me to express my views irrespective of who likes it and who doesn't. I appreciate appreciation, however self created or passed on jpeg images titled with some fancy names to be put up on my blog template as awards is going a bit too far. I am not against fancy things or aesthetics, and would put them up for the heck of it, but my objection is on the principle that when you give an award to someone and refrain from giving it to someone else, in effect you are saying that one blog is better than the other. It is crazy. How can you compare blogs? It is like comparing apples with pears. So here was one blogger who was a regular reader of my blog. He/She gave me a very generous award.. I was honored, however did not think that I could put it up and declare my blog to be better than others and hence I went and thanked him/her on the comments section and then did not put up the award on any of my posts. The person in question stopped following my blog henceforth. I also heard of bloggers not getting awards and getting disappointed and not talking to the person giving the award. Also heard of bloggers changing their writing style/template/content to be more popular. Well.. this whole concept beats me. Seems to do more damage than good, and seems to serve no purpose. We are all mature people in blogosphere, so if I really appreciate someones blog, why cant I just go and comment on his/her post and let him/her know how much I liked the post or the blog? Why do I need to compare someones blog with someone elses and give an award to one person and not give it to someone else? Who am I to decide what is good and what is not? If a blog has received tonnes of awards does it really mean that it is better than others.... or even that it is really good? If not then what is the point in the awards at all? If it is just a meaningless fun thing then why do I see it causing more harm than good to all my fellow bloggers? I honestly do not think that my writing is worthy of any awards, and I do not think I am great enough to decide if someone else should get an award. Hence, ladies and gentlemen, I shalt take a polite bow and back out of the awards section. And if by doing this I offend someone, then my sincere and humble apologies to the person. For all those who do believe in awards, I respect your belief and do not intend to offend you. This is just my stated opinion, so kindly keep me out of the award circle :).

I have a feeling this post is going to make me very unpopular. And maybe I will not have to shut down my blog... I will be labeled as a crazy person and left alone with zero readership :). I love my blog followers from the bottom of my heart, but when they expect pressurize me to behave and write in a certain way, I feel that the whole purpose of blogging is being lost.

Bear with me. I have been down with flu and working on the escalation with high fever. And have had friends ignoring me... And the work escalation just seems never ending. It seems so impossible when the client and my own company super senior execs are on call and debating on a topic which is simply not relevant to the escalation. Now I know, there IS something called being TOO high up on the corporate ladder. SIGH!

Hopefully will write a more calm and "happy" post soon. Till then let me go spoil some friendships and get back at all the people who have been ignoring me! :). I am in a wicked mood.

Durga Puja @ Stockholm

2009-09-27T14:35:00.006+02:00

Thats a pic taken yesterday at the Stockholm Durga Puja mandap. I would have found it tough to believe the presence of the Goddess in all her splendour in the middle of the Nordics. But such is life.

I will be singing today, right in front of Goddess Durga. I have never been overly religious. But I believe in the almighty. If you would have had the kind of crazy life I have had, you would believe in the almighty as well. Because there is no other way how I can explain the innumerable strange things that have happened in my life. Except that there is someone somewhere who is guiding me, in what so far has been the right direction. And I hope and wish, that the guidance shall always be there, and I shall be on the right path... and it doesnt matter where that path leads me, as long as I do not deter, wander and get lost.

It is so ironic, that after losing touch with Durga Puja for so long, since I moved out of Jamshedpur, I should rediscover it once again in Sweden, of all places. And have "bhog"... and fold my hands, bow my head and "give" pushpanjali... and watch all the women dressed in the brightest colored Sarees and Lehengas, the men trying to appear comfortable in Kurtas... watch kids sing old Bengali songs, and perform Bharatnatyam dance... and then me.. practicing to sing in front of the Goddess, in a language I am so scared of forgetting. All in Sweden. Reconnecting with the 50% of the bong me. Life is strange, and I think I should come to terms that at every step it will have new surprises for me.

I came to Sweden, craving to go back to a country I called my own. And discovered that in some ways, I could discover a part of my patriotism, my culture, my love for my homeland here more than I could discover it when living in my motherland. Would I be singing a bengali song in front of Durga ma, dressed in an embroidered bengali kurta after having an excess of delicious bhog if I was in Bangalore... or Delhi... or Nagpur... or Manipal? I doubt it. So once again. Life is strange :).

A comment from Shimp...

2009-09-27T14:18:00.004+02:00

My blog does not entertain guest posts. Ususally. So this is the first one, and probably the last one. But I was so touched by a story Shimp put up as a comment to one of my posts, that I just had to put it up. Thank you Shimp for a touching story. Sometimes when I feel that my troubles have become so bad that I cannot take it anymore, I read such stories of struggles much greater than mine, and get inspired to achieve greater things in life. Because my troubles are miniscule compared to what other have had to go through, and I feel lucky and appreciative of all the good things that I have.

Here is Shimps comment:
"The nomadic life has its charms. "I'm not tied down. I never have to turn down an opportunity because my roots have grown too deep." Like you, every wanderer I've encountered comes to a point where they crave roots. I think, in part, because all of the places that they end up going, they are surrounded by, essentially, a root structure.

Just like when you were in India, and craved going elsewhere, eventually the difference of being settled is the difference that is craved. Being settled starts to become the "different" structure that appeals.

I'm sure there are particular concerns when living outside of your culture, and that informs your choices also.

We did know a man a little bit like you in terms of wandering, nothing more. He was Indian by way of Australia, then Canada, then four different places in the U.S. before he landed in the same company with my husband. He had a family, and when his kids got to be school age, he sent them to boarding school within India. He and his wife eventually made the decision to return to India to be closer to their children.

There were a lot of farewell parties for him, he was a very well liked man, but it did turn out he had a secret. As a young child he had strep, and it went untreated for a bit too long, not through neglect it was just one of those things that happened.

Twenty years later he found out that his heart and kidneys had been irreversibly weakened. Eventually there came a point where he knew his heart was failing. He didn't tell anyone that was part of the reason for going home, but he did die within a year of returning to India.

His wife still had affairs to settle here, and we saw her several times. She eventually told us that was the reason he had returned to India,

He was a lovely man, and much missed by all who knew him. I did find it fascinating and heart rending at the same time. He left India as a teenager but there was no question in his mind that he would return home.

There's no real point to my telling this story, nothing profoundly revealing or anything of that nature. I've known a fair number of people from different countries, and a fair number of people from India. The Indians I have known have, for the most part, tried to convey that there is a complexity to being from India that you don't necessarily find in people from other countries.

A sort of love, plus distance, and fond irritation. I'm absolutely terrified of misspelling this man's name, because it's been several years and I really only ever heard his name, vs. read it. Anyway, the reason I'm bringing it up, is that a huge part of Vinkata's (please forgive me if I'm butchering the heck out of that) decision to return home?

He wanted his son to be able to make an informed choice. He assumed his son would basically repeat the pattern.

I can't define this well, but that pinpointed the complex relationship to home better than anything anyone has tried to explain to me. Being there wasn't the goal, as much as having the love engendered, so it could be taken with his son (and he also had a daughter) wherever the journey ended up leading. "

Life is Strange...

2009-09-21T16:46:00.002+02:00

Life is strange. You plan for it. You strategize to get the best out of it. You look ahead and base your current actions on how you want the future to be. You chalk out your career, your personal life, your retirement. And after all of it, life just happens. And you realize how little you are in control of it.

I am a meticulous planner. Very career centric. A control freak. I cannot accept not being in control of things. I have tried to strategize every bit of my life. I have tried to build a career that would fetch me the label of “successful”. That would make my parents proud. I have tried to manage my finances so that I can be secure, and can support my parents if ever they need it, and a future family. I have tried to prioritize things in my personal life to guarantee happiness for those I love and those who love me. I have tried to gain control of my health by making elaborate work out schedules and diet plans (don’t grin, I HAVE done this at one point of time). And inspite of it all, life has just happened. And nothing, absolutely nothing has happened according to how I planned it. Some things have happened for the better, some for the worse. But nothing has happened according to what I had planned.

I always say this. At any point of my life, if I was asked to take 3 guesses about where I would be 5 years down the line, none of those guesses would have included what actually happened 5 years hence. In high school I could have sworn I would be a journalist, or a media person. I turned out an engineer. In engineering college I could have sworn I would be in the electronics industry, I ended up in IT. In my first job, I could have told you I would stick around because I was good at what I did. I left at my peak point and joined business school. In business school I had it clear in my mind that I would be in a management position in IT Delivery in India. I ended up in consulting and business development position in Europe. When I landed in Europe the first time, I promised myself I will not stay beyond a few months, and here I am, in Europe for the past 2 years. On the personal front, I have forgotten the number of times I have been sure whom I am going to end up with. And am with the most improbable of them all. Someone whom I could have sworn was beyond my reach. I was sure that when I reached 30, I would never be thinking of settling down, I am so much of a vagabond. And here I am already craving for a city I can call my own and a more settled life even before I reach 30. I could not have imagined me being bored of booze, girls, clubs, dancing, I thought anyone who didn’t have one leg in the grave, would be interested in these. And here I am thinking that there are so many more ways of enjoying life and having fun than just clubbing. I never thought I would be a traveler. And here I am… having visited 11 countries and still going strong.

To all those who ask the question in interviews, “Where do you see yourself 5 years from now” can I please say that I have given up trying to see myself in the future? For all those who ask me how I am planning my personal life in the next 2-3 years, which country I will be in the future, which job I will be in, can I please say, I have absolutely no idea? Because I tried the planning.. and it doesn’t work, at least for me. I have to quit being a control freak, and start to believe in destiny. No I do not want to stop working smart, and doing the right things. I do not want to stop being dedicated, and honest, because these things will always fetch me positive results in the future. But I do not want to do meticulous planning anymore. I want to make sure I am ready for whatever life gives me. I want to make the right investments. I want to be nice to the people who care for me. And I want to give the right direction to my career. But I do not want to try to control it and plan so much when things anyway have to happen with a mind of their own.

The escalations still continue. I still get approached by multiple recruiting companies who see my profile on LinkedIN, now I have stopped feeling awkward about it. I am looking forward to Durga Puja, it has been ages since I was a part of an Indian festival or a cultural programme. I continue wondering where I will be 2 years down the line, which country, which job role, how close to India will I be…

More to come in this space… after all I promised to be regular with the posts. :)

Escalations! Sigh!!

2009-09-20T22:51:00.007+02:00

Photo courtesy: http://how2tools.com/blog/

Things have been very very busy and hectic. There are multiple escalations at work, things have gone really bad.. the client is in pain.. and is screaming. All rescue missions till now have failed, and now drastic emergency services are being rendered. It is never pleasant when the customer gets hit, sometimes I feel it is worse than when your own company gets hit. But the escalation has now hit the highest echelons of management, on both sides. In big corporates, like in the firm I work for and the customer firm, that usually means trouble. When escalations happen, for a person who is caught in the middle of it, it can either be good news or bad news. Because escalations, especially the critical ones, get you a lot of attention from the big guys in the company. The VP level and above. And when that happens, you can either come out of the escalation an absolute star. Or an absolutely worthless manager. Statistics say that its more often the latter than the former. My Global VP has always thought that I am a star. That is why I am where I am. So I have more to lose than to gain. SIGH! The intricacies of professional life.

Today on the metro train, I was sitting alone and this 30 something girl got on. She had a huge suitcase with her, and a big bag. The train was empty but she just stood near the door. She had tears in her eyes... and a far away look. And suddenly she started crying. She was weeping, without any sound, without trying to wipe away the tears, without trying to hide it. Just standing there clutching her suitcase tight and weeping. My heart somehow went out to her. And I felt so helpless. If I was back in India, I would have gone and talked to her. If she had been an Indian, or even an Asian, I would have still gone. And known that she would have appreciated someone just talking to her. But there is a huge cultural difference between Asia and Europe regarding things like these. I know she would feel very awkward if I walked upto her. Hence I could just look at her and send a silent prayer to God to take care and to give her the strength to face whatever she was going through. Her face said that her world had fallen apart. And I wished that she would be able to pull it together and start a new life. Wherever she was going.

Strange how some incidents affect one so much. Some random incidents. I had friends sitting around me who were totally unaffected. They didn't even notice her crying. Everybody went about their lives as if this woman was not there. And I just cannot get her face out of my mind. I know there will always be sorrow in this world, and there will always be pain. But I wish God gave us the opportunity to help others going through the sorrow and the pain.

Durga Puja is coming up. I am singing on stage. In a group song, but still, I am singing. And that too a Bengali song. I am proud of how brave I am. I have always been a stage guy since I was in 3rd grade. Elocution, Debating, Compering, Quizzing, Dancing, Dramatics, Mimes, Paper presentations, JAMs... I have been up on the stage on every opportunity there could be. Except when there was singing. I suck at singing, and I never could gather the courage to sing on stage. But I am now. And that too in a language which is not my first language and I am not very confident about it. But I am singing. :)

Will try to be more regular with the posts. Till then pray that the escalations go away!

Home is where the heart is...

2009-09-10T23:26:00.010+02:00

Its been some time since I was here...
There are times, every crab shall go into his shell... but he will always emerge back out of his shell, when he has recovered, recuperated and feels secure and strong enough to face the world again.

I missed my blog therapy. Sometimes other kinds of therapies work better. But then, as always, there is a searing need to right, to express, to let the thoughts flow out. Without any restrictions, without any controls, without any reins. And so here I am back again :).

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Home is where the heart is. I say this often. Because I have been pretty much the homeless wanderer for most of my life. I have enjoyed it in the beginning, but after a point it starts getting to you and you crave for geographic stability. But circumstances have kept me on the move through most of my life. Through 7 cities in a span of the last 10 years, out of "home" since the age of 17. And I crave to settle down now. Not like forever, though I would give anything to have a city I could call home forever. But, if that luxury shall not be granted to me, then at least give me a city for 5 years at a stretch. And for those of you whom I have heard talking about craving to be a wanderer and a gypsy of the world, well guys, let me tell you, try it for 10 years of your life, before you jump to conclusions. Because every other "senior wanderer" I have met, has told me the same story. That after 10 to 15 years there’s a craving to settle down. And beyond a point, wandering is not the best thing to do in life.

There are two parts of me, and they seem to be in conflict. The first part, craves for stability. Stability in relationships, in social circumstances, in finances, in geographic locations. I do not like changes in these things. I am a true cancerian. Dont groan if you do not believe in sun signs, I don’t either, but its just a coincidence that I am born under the sign of the crab and all the standard crabby definitions fit me perfectly. But there is another part of me. The ambitious, restless part. Which seeks change in what I do in my career... a constant recurring change. Any kind of stagnation in my professional life just won't do. Which does not let me languish and relax in a job, in a role, in a college, in university, until I keep getting newer challenges. This has made me switch roles nearly every year of my life, and has given me a diverse spectrum of work exposure, from HR Recruitment to BPO to Mortgage technology to Information Technology to Consulting to Sales to Business Development. And for some reason the latter part of me has governed my life, has dominated all the major decisions taken at the cross roads. But maybe its time I let the former part of me take more control. Maybe its time the wanderer settled down. Maybe its time to take out the gypsy hat, to wear the regular baseball cap and settle down to a more "regular" life.

Which brings me to an interesting discussion I had the other day. We were a group of consultants and managers from.. umm.. lets see... 3 companies. All of us "desis" and all of us abroad for approx 2 years or more. And the discussion was regarding the same old "do we settle down in India or abroad". So this one guy came up with this extremely interesting theory about which is the best country to settle in. For some (or should I say most) of the members of the group, India was out of the question, because there is no way they see themselves fitting back into that work culture. For me it still is the biggest option, but maybe I am an old fashioned desi crab. So the next country discussed was, yes you guessed it right, the US of A. Our dear old amreeka. Lot of pros and cons thrown in, distance from homeland too large, fewer number of home trips, weather conditions (you are living in the Nordics for heavens sake, anything in USA is better than this!), safety and security, financial condition etc etc on the negative side, and more desi population, ease of fitting in, no language problems, no cultural divide and more desi stores and restaurants (lol) on the positive side. But given the market situation, US of A today is certainly not one of the hottest destinations. So what are the other options? Elsewhere in Europe? Germany? France? UK? Everyone shook their heads together, Sweden is certainly one of the better places to be in. Even the UN says that it’s the 6th best country to live in (read about it HERE). So what are the other options?

So this guy comes up with this amazing idea. Singapore. Modern city. Excellent work culture, mostly derived from the west. Multi-cultural, but with no language issues, universally accepted language is English. 3 hours from most cities in India, which means you can almost fly back home every weekend!! And will never have to miss any wedding or festival back home (one of the major regrets of NRIs). Now our brain-stormer had everyones attention! Weather.. as good as any city in India, temperature ranges from 22 to 34 degrees (not bad if you come from Delhi or Kolkata). Humid... very humid, but then not worse than Kolkata or Chennai. Absolutely modern infrastructure, a paradise for shopping and generally considered a safe city (again, heaven as compared to any Indian city). And the best part is the taxation. It ranges from 0 to 20% and if you are middle or upper middle class you will end up paying 8.5% tax (more info HERE) Compare this to the 32% tax one pays in Sweden!! Or the 10-20-30% slab taxation in India!

I am sure a there were a lot of hits on Singapore job portals that night. Sometimes I wonder about us NRIs. What it is that we seek? I wonder about the restlessness that doesnt allow us to be happy anywhere, neither in our home country, nor outside. No I do not speak for the entire NRI community, I am certainly no spokesperson for them. I just speak on behalf of the NRIs I know of.. first generation and outside India for less than 10 years. SIGH! What will become of us?

Drop me a note if you know of an opening in Singapore. I know of some very talented ladies and gentlemen who might be interested in a shift :). Sometimes, just sometimes, job, career and profession is not everything in life. Even for corporate geeks. Sometimes, just sometimes, being at home matters. After all, home is where the heart is.

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I had another one of my parties. And together with MBF, whipped up a great menu, thought you might be interested in the pics....

P.S. I do not want this blog to appear like a food blog. But it still remains the blog of a foodie, so it is inevitable that food related updates will be given :P. You might be interested to know that I have been accused as being the only male desi blogger in the world who blogs about cooking. I do not know whether to be flattered or to get offended ;).

Menu: Chicken Tikka Masala, Bengali Chhole, Dum Alu, Rice and Sewai Kheer (Payasam) and Gajar ka Halwa :)

And a closer look at the dersert for today: Sewai Kheer (Payasam) and Gajar ka Halwa :).
All credits for Gajar ka halwa goes to MBF.

Picture credit for title picture: http://crosscrafter.com/gallery.html

A Brick in the Wall - Again

2009-08-21T01:43:00.002+02:00

The dinner was good. In all the hustle and bustle, the self-obsessed cook even forgot to take a snap of the food. But I think I have put enough and more snaps of food on this blog. Thanks to all who wished me luck for the dinner :).

I was taken out for dinner by some “entrepreneurs” today. They are starting a new venture in Sweden, wanted to know if I would join them if it became successful. Tough to answer these kind of questions.
I am going through a lot of dilemmas in my head. Trying to search for answers. I was reading something I wrote sometime back.

For me a look at my past means a read of what I had written 2 years back. So here is something I wrote when I was still in India.. at a juncture where things were a wee bit hazy. And I guess I crossed the phase and came to the crest.. and maybe life is so cyclic, that maybe, just maybe I could be going back to this phase….

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A Brick in The Wall
Written on 20th June 2007...

Sometimes things are very obscure, the color tends more towards grey, and there is an over hanging haze. Uncertainty rules over everything, and life seems to be like a car that has skidded out of control in spite of you being in the driving seat. Sometimes it feels like you're bobbing amidst a huge ocean… struggling to stay afloat and looking around for a piece of wood to grab on to… surrounded by the eternity of things that make you but a speck of dust in the galaxy. You’re just a part of things, a drop in the sea, a grain of sand in a desert…. And you wonder about yourself. You wonder about your identity. You wonder who you are… You wonder if you’re just a brick in the wall…

When you set out on a journey, you have a destination in mind. And the image of the destination, the pleasure and the satisfaction of reaching it is what spurs you on. And there are times when after a long journey, after a lot of toil, a lot of sweat, you finally reach your destination, and look around, and wonder… have I really arrived? Is this what I looked forward to throughout the journey? Is this what I yearned for? And then you wonder… about yourself, about the empty feeling inside you. You wonder if you’ve reached your destination, or just an intermediary stop… You wonder if there is a destination at all…

There are times when you set a goal and try to achieve it. There are times when it seems so out of reach. There are times when it seems just impossible. There are times when it feels not worth it. But you just strive on… and at a point achieve what you set your eyes on. But somehow after the initial exhilaration has died down, and you look around at what you got, you wonder if this is what you tried so hard for, so long for. And you wonder if after all this is what you want… you wonder if this is your target, your goal, you wonder that in life what is your final call…

Right now I feel all of this... and lots more. I have everything I ever wanted and I don’t know what it was that I ever wanted. They say I am a good listener and a good mentor too. So if anyone would have come and told me the same thing that I state above I would have laughed it off and said, chill, its just a phase. Maybe it is… maybe it isn’t. Whatever it is, it is tough. The only thing that’s certain is uncertainty and it stands mighty and tall.

I don’t know where I’ll be in another 2 months time, whether I’ll be in the same role, whether I’ll be in the same division, whether I’ll be in the same house, whether I’ll be in India at all. But I shall plough on. There was a time when some people, whom I had relied on, had counted on, had suddenly moved away. Life almost seemed to have been doing an orchestrated dance against me. And the trough just seemed to be getting deeper and deeper. Till I was actually looking forward to hitting the rock bottom so that I could come back to the crest sooner. But the time is past, and even through the haze I can make out the outline of the crest.

They say that in the journey of life u gain some, u lose some… some friends, some confidence, some valuable emotions. And it has never been truer for me. Even as I bend forward on the edge of the cliff thinking I have support, the support is drawn away from me, and I feel the void, the feeling of being suspended in free space. I realize that the support I had looked forward to was an illusion. Sometimes friendship very closely resembles an illusion, a hoax, and it is difficult to tell one from the other. Just when u start thinking that something is too good to be true, something is a hoax, it blossoms into a beautiful friendship and maybe love too, sometimes when u think you have discovered the truest of friendship, it turns out to be an illusion. In the past 3 years I have experienced both these feelings.

I struggle on. I have surprisingly formed new relations, new emotions, and new love. And it feels so good… like salvaging back a lost treasure. There were some people who were close to me… I have let them fade away. Maybe the verb is wrong, I have after all struggled to hold on, but sometimes a one sided effort is not enough.

Amidst the haze and the fog I grope, I trip and I stumble, but I go on. And I hope that my new relations, my new hopes will overshadow the things that I have lost, I hope they will be support enough for me to go on, even if I do not know my destination, even if I cannot see my next step. I hope that what I have gained is much more valuable than what I have lost. And I hope that wherever I am, in whatever role, as a Team Lead or a Client Manager, in India or Sweden, it will not matter. The haze will not matter. Because for myself and for a select few others, I will not be a brick in the wall.

My cooking and me...

2009-08-16T14:30:00.003+02:00

Is there something called too much of blogging? What will they term it as? Over-blogging? Blogochondria? Blogomania? OCBD – Obsessive Compulsive Blogging Disorder? When do you know you have crossed the limits? When you are a very busy senior manager in a company and you find yourself reading blogs in meetings? Or while having lunch? When you come home from a party at 3 am and still feel like gulping down your daily dose of blog reads for desert? When you meet your friend after a long time and over beer you feel like discussing all the stuff you read in blogs? When you quote blogs at the client dinner?

Well, I am sure one-post-a-day and a few blog reads in 2 days will not classify me as a “Blogochondriac”, though I suffer from some of the symptoms mentioned above. And I need to make up on the blogging time I lost when I left blogging for almost… errr… a week? :P !!

I am going to have a very busy week. But my blogotherapy shall continue. I had a very interesting “patriotic” night with a gang of desis, complete with desi food (malai chicken, maacher jhaal, shrimp curry, baigan bharta, chana masala, shahi capsicum, tomato chutney and a host of starters and desert) and patriotic songs antakshari, which soon turned to all kinds of songs, patriotic and not-so-patriotic. It was fun. As I said, the patriotic feeling is a bit more outside India than within India. But I think staying in a place where your identity is judged a lot by your national origins puts patriotism in a different perspective.

Today will be spent in preparation of a party at my place tomorrow (Am I sounding like I live my life from party to party? If I am then its SO not true). Only my European friends are invited, and they have want to have “Authentic Indian Cuisine”, whatever that means. The only problem is that most of my European friends cannot have the slightest of spice in food, and the last time I invited one, he went so red while eating, I almost called the emergency services. Hence I have learnt my lessons, and at the cost of not having the cuisine as authentic as I would have liked it to be, the menu shall be a bit “bland”. Which makes me realize that adjectives like “bland” and “spicy” are relative terms. I thought that I ate less spice, till I met my European friends. Incidentally, the British folks from London are very used to Indian food and can eat more spicy food than I do. The same however cannot be said about the Scandinavian friends. Tomorrow I have a mix of them. Which doesn’t make things any easier for me. The planned recipe is:
Starters: Crostini with Shrimp Salad topping, Peanut Masala and Papad.
Main Course: Peas Pulao, Plain Basmati Rice, Paratha(not sure?), Butter Chicken, Chana Masala, Raita, Alu Chokha
Desert: Pineapple custard and Rosogulla.
Drinks: Sheraz Red Wine, Bishops Finger Öl (beer), Vino Frizzante (Champagne).

I am very apprehensive about the success and popularity of the above menu. Also whether it is adequate or whether there should be more variety. Just to add, that I have limitations, unlike India, in Europe we do not have “domestic help”, and hence everything from chopping onions to putting dishes in the Dishwasher and cleaning up has to be done by myself. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome, but don’t say things like “Why don’t you make Biriyani?” or “Why don’t you add Tandoori chicken to the starters?” I would love to, but then I can only do so much in 24 hours.

Wish me luck for my adventurous venture. I need it.

Heres a catchy Swedish song which I cant get out of my mind.. listen to it if you ever wondered whether there was Swedish music beyond ABBA.

The main chorus of the song, translated is thus:
I laugh now... may I cry later?
I want to live in the moment... undo me later
So I live today, today, today
Tomorrow is too far away but we are here today
So I laugh today

Ison & Fille on 6Lyrics.com

Matters of the heart.... literally!

2009-08-15T14:38:00.008+02:00

I have been away. For a reason. But I am back, like always. With a load to unload. Back to blog therapy. Back to my own space. Back to myself. For better or for worse.

A lot of stuff to come on this space. More regularly that is. Are you with me?

*******************************************************************

The Swedish medical system has me stumped. There’s a bit of admiration, though the intrigue is more than the admiration. Sweden, as a country, has an excellent social security system. This basically means you pay an obscene amount in tax, but they make sure you get the returns. As a temporary resident, I had only felt the tax burden, but had not seen the benefits (primarily because the benefits mostly involve kids, which I don’t have, unemployment, which I have not faced and the medical system, which I didn’t have the need to interact with.. till now). But now I see the benefits. Or what seems like the benefits.

I was suffering some amount of chest pain. Nothing extraordinary, I initially thought that it must have been due to playing excess volleyball (too much sudden physical exercise after a long time), or eating too much. But when the pain persisted, I decided to check out the Swedish medical system. They have a weird but good system, which means that as a tax payer, I cannot spend more than a certain amount on medical expenses in a given year; there is a ceiling to my expenses, beyond that the government pitches in. In my last two years I have never felt the need to go to a doctor (yes I am that fit ;) ), so my balance to that was zero. I first had to struggle to get an appointment. In summer, when the whole of Sweden is on vacation its not the easiest task. When I finally got an appointment, I had a most intriguing session with the old lady doctor, who couldn’t understand English very well. I tried the 2 lines of Swedish that I knew and realized I needed to talk more than just “Hi, How are you?” The doctor was sweet enough to say “my Engliska... not so good... but not worry… we will still communicate” which made me think, we better do, I just paid a handsome ransom so that we could communicate. She listened to me and then immediately scheduled a million tests for my heart, ECG, stress ECG on a treadmill, ultrasound of the heart and a long term (24 hours) ECG with a portable device. It left me stumped. For two reasons. One: in India when you fall ill, you go broke because of the costs of the tests, and I couldn’t understand why this lady wanted me to go bankrupt. Two: I was not ill, and my heart was just fine, beating systematically for the one I love (smirks), I did not know why I needed to do all these tests. Both my questions were answered. All tests, including really complex ones, are free of cost (you pay only the basic fee to see the doctor). And in Sweden all doctors like to play it safe, which means they won’t even talk to you before they do tests to eliminate the possibilities of all serious medical conditions in the book. I think it’s a bit too much. They make me sound like a severely ill heart patient. Give me a break. I am on the right side of 30. I have never had any major health issues. And I am fitter than most people my age. But you never argue with a doctor. And it doesn’t cost a dime extra. So what the hell… I have to live upto Russell Peters “proud-to-be-cheap” Indian image! I gave in, and agreed to be examined.

I came out of the doctors chamber and walked up to the clinic laboratory. A young but cranky nurse approaches.

Me: Hej, Jag heter Merlin, Hur mår du?

She gives me a wry smile which could turn water into ice. She has called my bluff, in some unknown way, she had figured that’s the only sentence of Swedish I know.

Nurse: Take off your shirt.

I swear, those are the first words she said to me. No “hi”s, no “hello”s, no “how are you”s. Just “Take off your shirt”. I have never been told anything like this by a member of the opposite sex at my first meeting. But the tone was pretty commanding, and I obliged.

Nurse: Do you exercise?

Me: Err.. yes, I mean I play volleyball, table tennis, and football

. Does that count?

Nurse (with a I-don’t-believe-you-don’t-go-to-the-gym look): No.

She performs the ECG without a word. Then with a grunt says “Everything is normal, cannot find anything wrong”. I start saying “I would have thought so”, but she was gone by the time I opened my mouth. This lady does not approve of or socialize with someone who does not work out at least 2 hours in the gym. Which rules out all IT consultants. With a lot of difficulty I found my way out of the maze like hospital, to be caught at the reception and told “Someone will get back to you”. Someone did, and scheduled me for a wide array of more tests where I was subjected to more of the Swedish medical technology and a lot more of “Take off your shirt”. At the end of my ordeal, I was introducing myself as “Jag hither Guinea Pig”.

To give them the due credit, they did find a few heartbeats out of place, which should not have been there. But I shrugged and attributed it to the girl I am in love with, and the nurse did not seem to have objections. And that was that. Oh, and by the way, I did reach the limit of my medical expenses for the year. Which isn’t much, but I guess they made sure I contributed my bit to the Swedish

medical system.

I am not much into tags. But some I do. Here’s the tag where I have been tagged by Rhapsody and by Wishesgalore . You can dodge one, but there is now way you can dodge two talented bloggers. So here goes.

Here are the rules :
Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real- nothing made up! If the person before you had the same first initial, you must use different answers. You cannot use any word twice and you can't use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. What is your name: Merlin

2. A four Letter Word: Mess :)

3. A boy's Name: Michael (in memory of MJ)

4. A girl's Name: Midge (the cutie from Archie, remember?)

5. An occupation: Management consultant (cough cough)

6. A colour: Magenta

7. Something you wear: My attitude (corny, I know, tell me if you have a better suggestion ;))

8. A food: Maacher Jhaal (ah! At last, I can use my Bong skills :) )

9. Something found in the bathroom: Mirror

10. A place: Munich!!

11. A reason for being late: Metro delay (not common, but still usable)

12. Something you shout: It starts with M, but is not mentionable here!!!!

13. A movie title: Matrix (the one and only!)

14. Something you drink: Margarita and Mojito :)

15. A musical group: Metallica (oooohhh!!)

16. An animal: Mammoth

17. A street name: MG Road :)

18. A type of car: Mercedes McLaren SLR (Anglo-German supercar jointly developed by Mercedes-Benz and McLaren Automotive.. just awesome. I should also put a pic.. I know, I am such a "guy")

19. Something scary: Merlin :P

20. Ice cream flavour: Mango

Happy independence day! The Indians in Sweden seem to be more excited about this day than the counterparts in India. Maybe because outside the patriotic perspective is more pronounced. So I shall partake in the celebrations and party hosted by a friend and be engulfed by true patriotic feelings! Ciao till next time!

Angel

2009-08-06T22:34:00.005+02:00

Sometimes in life you are looking for something and you do not know what you are looking for. Sometimes, the thing you are looking for is right under your nose, but you fail to see it.

Sometimes it takes a bad phase in your life to come and make you realize that you dont need to go very far in your search for the things you have always wanted.

Sometimes it is right there in front of you, and all you need to do is to walk and claim what has always been yours.

Why do some things elude us till we stop running after them, and then they just come fluttering to us? So calmly, so easily, as if they were always meant to come to us. Why do we sometimes think that something is very important to us, and losing it realize it isnt? Why on losing something that we thought was important, we realize that something totally different is much more precious, and we have never realized it?

I was going through a rough patch. Rough is a relative word. Maybe my rough was not as rough as that of some people I know, some blogs I follow. When I look around me, I see people going through worse situations, and being brave about it. It gives me the strength to be brave in my situation.

There are some things in life I am unlucky with. On the other side, there are some things I am very lucky with. In the end it balances out. Or maybe tilts a little bit more on the lucky side. In the end life just happens.

Sorry for the abstract thoughts. I will not be able to answer tags or write "happy" posts, not for some time. Bear with me. I have been rescued by an angel, and I consider myself very lucky. I need to ensure that the angel stays beside me forever. And I hope the angel realizes how much being rescued means to me.

Pic: Taken with a stupid automatic digital camera by yours truly. Location: Prague.

Bloggers Block

2009-08-03T22:09:00.010+02:00

Do you ever feel like writing about something, start off, and then lose the steam and dont feel like writing about it anymore?

Do you ever sit down to write a poem, pen it down, read it and find it absolutely intolerable and press SHIFT + DELETE? (in earlier times the poets would tear up the paper and throw it away)

Do you ever write a mail to a friend, read it, think it is intolerable, then remember that your friend is used to you being so intolerable and still send it?

Do you ever write a sob story about your life, then write a continuation of it, rewrite it, rewrite it again, and finally delete the whole stuff?

Do you ever write an essay for school, reread it and decide its better to not submit anything rather than submit the piece of crap you have just written?

SIGH. In all probability the answer to all of the above is a No. Its only wierd people like me who have such wierdieties. Since I started blogging in March, there must have been more than 50 times in 5 months when I started writing a post, then midway lost steam and just crumpled it up and pressed SHIFT + DELETE. Thats just me.

Why have I put up the pic with the LinkedIN statistics?

a. Because I am a self-obsessed show-off and a narcissistic jerk

b. Because I have become a complete geek and a nerd, and my professional profile is all I have in life

c. Because I do not understand that everyone on LinkedIN probably has the same statistics

d. Because I have seen too many girls show off about their number of visitors on Orkut, LinkedIN is my only way of getting back at them

e. Because I think I have arrived just because I have great LinkedIN statistics.

f. All of the above

You can take your pick from any of the above options. I select option f.

No, I am not one of those sugar coated bloggers who blog only happy emotions or deep and intellectual thoughts, sometimes my posts are mean and sarcastic. Yes, I had a bad day. Hope tomorrow will be better.

The most random post ever...

2009-08-02T01:03:00.003+02:00

This pic was sent to me by Iya from Vegas. Thanks Iya for remembering me on your trip. Reminds me that someday I have to blog about why I call myself Merlin, and why this blog is called Merlins world :).

Every post does not need to be thought out and have a flow. That is the beauty of blogging, it doesn’t have any rules. Its your space and what you make of it is upto you. Sometimes there is no logic, there are just some abstract “random tidbits”. This post is such. Do not read further if you are looking for some logical or comprehensible reading material. There is no specific point in me jotting this stuff down, its just there in my mind, and I just want to put them on my blog :).

Ever wondered how some typical guy talk would sound like if it was recorded and reproduced? Here is one random conversation between two guys from real life, of course it has been toned down and the expletives have been omitted to make it more readable for a general audience, but I hope the essence has not been lost:

A: I think its time that you got married or at least became committed. Its been too long that you are single, I am not used to seeing you single for this long. What has it been since you last broke up, a year?
B: I am trying, I am trying. The problem is that there are too many girls in my life
A: Dude, that’s a PROBLEM??
B: Yes it is. Don’t be a typical guy. Quantity of girls around you doesn’t signify heavenly bliss. It’s the quality that matters.
A: It does? I think most of members of the male community would disagree. For most quantity is a serious issue because the value of that is zero. They never reach the quality stage.
B: Now lets not talk about the losers
A: Ok, so you have a lot of girls. They are all “prospectives” I assume. So choose one. What’s the problem? You waiting for a Swayamvar or something?
B: They all bitch about each other to me in very subtle ways and convince me that the rest of them are faking, they are not what they appear to be. I think that they all don’t like each other.
A: Duh! Of course they don’t. Theres only one of you, and as there is no polygamy so only one of them gets you. And nobody likes competition.
B: Each one thinks that she is “The One”, the one who connects to me, the one who understands me, the one who relates to me intellectually, emotionally and physically. The one whom I should get married to. And every time I hear that word “marriage” I want to run as fast as I can!
A: Physically (smirks!)
B: Gawd! Will you stop being a guy for once! They all think that the rest of them are Bimbos.
A: So are they?
B: Are they what?
A: Bimbos?
B: No, most of them aren’t. They wouldn’t be in my prospective list if they were. I cannot relate to a girl if I cannot connect to her at an intellectual level. And I cant tell all of them that most of them are not bimbos.
A: So some of them are
B: Umm… yes, maybe a couple of them are… theres the one from the air hostess academy, and the call center girl, they are so hot that you cant just resist “connecting” to them. Their intellect doesn’t matter. They have too much of physical magnetism, the rest doesn’t matter.
A: LOL. So have you.. umm.. taken advantage of their “physical magnetism”?
B: (Grunts) For heavens sake, I am not going to answer that question. I don’t kiss and tell.
A: Ok, whatever, so is this a clash between the intellectual geekiness and animal lust?
B: Absolutely not. I cant imagine being with a girl only because she is hot. What will I do when I want to talk?
A: Err… maybe call up your guy friends?
B: No, my girl should be my best friend.
A: Ok, can we do it this way, you go and propose to your best friend. And give me the phone numbers of the ones with the “physical magnetism”
B: And ensure that no other girl ever trusts me with her phone number again? I will die before I introduce you to any girl I know.
A: (Sighs) And you say you are my best friend..

Here is another one, this one is on the metro train in Stockholm…

H1: Are you feeling ill? Do you have fever or something?
H2: No, I am perfectly fine, why?
H1: A hot, good looking blonde in micromini shorts and a bikini top just walked past you, and you didn’t even lift your head
H2: Yeah, I know. I have also noticed this change in me. But I am kinda bored of these semi nude girls. There are too many of them around
H1: Are you KIDDING?? The sex starved, girl hungry virgin with a pumping overflow of hormones is saying that he has lost interest in semi nude girls?? Someone pinch me, I think I am dreaming.
H2: Cmmon, don’t be dramatic. Its summer. People hardly wear clothes, everyone is over obsessed with getting a tan. Outdoors the girls are not leaving much to the imagination. Everywhere you look around, everyone is in a bikini. So you get an overdose of it. And you get saturated. Then you get bored. Then you lose interest.
H1: So are you telling me that when you get back to India, you will walk into a bar/club and not look at any of the girls around.
H2: Don’t be ridiculous. The only way I am going to stop looking at girls in an Indian pub is if I turned gay
H1: So this is a discrimination only against the European ladies?
H2: (Shrugs) You can say that, I just don’t find them interesting anymore
H1: (Sighs) I don’t know what mistake the European ladies have made, to have lost the opportunity to get the attention of the darkest, ugliest and most moronic guy in India.

I know, I know, these are the most random of conversations ever, and there is absolutely no point in putting them up here :P. But I was just “reminiscencing” (if there is a word like that) and these conversations kinda came back to me.

I was just reading a blog which talked about how coincidences come together to build ones fate, and on looking back, they do not seem like coincidences at all.

Made me think back to one of my most favorite movie of all times, THE MATRIX, and the dialogues about coincidences and fate… here are some of these most amazing dialogues of Morpheus. The Matrix has the MOST awesome dialogues.

Morpheus: "Do you believe in fate, Neo?"
Neo: "No."
Morpheus: "Why not?"
Neo: "Because I don't like the idea that I'm not in control of my life"
Morpheus: "I know exactly what you mean."

Have you ever felt that something was destined to happened? Do you think you're in full control?
There are no coincidences, no random events, no casual happenings. Every event of your life is exactly what you need, part of your personalized program to complete your life's mission.

The tapestry of world history is unrolling, all according to plan, yet you have complete freedom to choose how to react. There are events that will happen. History has a destiny. Your life has a destiny. But it's up to you to decide if you will embrace it, or watch from a back row seat.

If you seize the moment, you will find that unique role waiting for you.

Todays planned menu:
Chilli Chicken, Panir gravy and Fried Rice.

And for those of you who keep asking me, yes I do cook all the stuff for which you see pictures on the blog, even though it seems unbelievable. And though I am not the best cook you would have ever met, I try, and I love cooking. Don’t think you will hear that very often from a guy :).

This is the most random post I have ever put :). Ciao till next time!

Neos Picture and Matrix dialogue courtesy:
http://international.aish.com/seminars/matrix/free_will_and_destiny.asp

Blogging Behaviors

2009-07-31T11:53:00.011+02:00

Nearly all bloggers I have ever interacted with and discussed the topic "Why do we blog?" have come up with the clichéd statement "I blog for myself". Duh! Of course we all do. If we wrote for money, or for fame, or for others, we would be writing a book, or contributing to a magazine, or writing for a website. But we dont. We write our own crap on our own space, hence we blog for ourselves. True. But I have a problem with people who say "I blog ONLY for myself". Especially when they have public blogs and know that they have a good readership. Now cmmon. You cannot blog ONLY for yourself. If you wanted to write stuff ONLY for yourself, you'd pick up a paper and a pen and pen down your thoughts. Or open a MS Word file and type down all your thoughts and save it on your hard drive (I have done this and still do it at times when I write ONLY for myself). Or, even if you did choose to use the Blogosphere, your blog would be a private one. So if you blog on a public blog, then apart from blogging for yourself, you also blog for the readership of a lot of people who might choose to visit your blog. And when you do that, you ensure that you write something which you connect with and relate to, but at the same time also something which your blog followers relate to. And not to mention my old "wife and prostitute" theory, you can read about it on my post on About Orators, Bloggers and Prostitutes.. HERE .

But now that I have started on the wrong (or right?) note by angering all those public bloggers who have declared "I blog ONLY for myself", I will come down to the point which I wanted to discuss. Ok, I am assuming that every blogger blogs primarily for him/herself and secondarily for the audience. Given that, is there discrimination amongst the readers of blogs? If so why? If not, then why are some blogs more popular than the others? Does popularity of the blog affect the blogger (either in a positive or a negative way)

Recently, thanks to the Sweden summer vacations and the excess of time on my hands, I was able to wade through a lot of blogs on blogosphere. Some I liked, some I didnt. Some I found absolutely and shockingly disgusting, and some which completely bowled me over. I dropped in a comment on some posts that bowled me over, but not all because I have an aversoin to "celebrity-bloggers-with-a-fan-following" (more on that later). And with my limited knowledge and visibility of blogs I noticed certain trends in readership and popularity of blogs.

Blogs written by female bloggers are always more popular. Now dont growl at me for being sexist, I swear I noticed this trend and it has very few exceptions. I came across very few blogs run by male bloggers that had overflowing popularity (with the exception of celebrities like Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bacchan). Certainly there were male bloggers with an exceptional gift of the gab who had extremely popular blogs, but they were the exceptions. If you ask me for the reason for this trend, your guess is as good as mine. You may say that the fairer sex are better at expressing themselves, and are more capable of deep emotions. But I will not be entirely convinced about this reason being the only reason for the above mentioned phenomenon. I can make a few other guesses but then I dont want to make this more controversial than it actually is. I MUST mention though that some of the female bloggers had an exceptional and mind blowing skill of expressing themselves. And they deserve to be as popular as they are, their popularity has nothing to do with the sex of their author, I follow quite a few of them and it has nothing to do with the authors being female. But to be honest, in some cases, I wonder if the blogs would be as popular had the author been male. I also wonder why somehow nearly all the followers of these aforementioned blogs are male, is there a connection?
Disclaimer: None of the blogs I follow or comment on come in the category mentioned above, so ladies who own blogs I follow, please do not take offence :)!

There are some blogs whose popularity is uncanny, even given the fact that the author has an amazingly unique line of thought and a very good way of expressing herself. Like this one blog which I was reading, it was only the authors third post and she had started the blog 2 days back. She had 40 followers for her blog (no kidding) and her first post had 74 comments. Whew! She did mention that she earlier used to have another blog which she closed down and this was her second attempt at blogging, but even then... this kind of popularity is unprecedented. As far as I could see, she was neither a celebrity nor a professional blogger, just an ordinary blogger like you and me. No doubt she has an exceptional and unique way of expressing herself and writes like no one else, but whats the secret of having such amazing popularity? Tell me, tell me. If I could have that kind of popularity, I would seriously think of giving up my boring life of a consultant and think of doing some professional writing. Rane, if you are reading this take my suggestions seriously :). Disclaimer: Most of the blogs I follow come in the above category, will any of you guys share the secret of your popularity, so that I can switch my profession and become a professional writer?

Blog followers for each blog have a very distinct categorization. You can say that "birds of same feather flock together". Some blogs I read have the most classy and sophisticated followers, nobody bullshits in the comments of the blog (one example of this is the blog I mentioned above). Shobha De's blog is another example. I love such blogs, the comments of such blogs are almost as interesting as the posts themselves. However there are blogs with the most disgusting group of followers and you almost want to curse yourself for being one of that group. I even came across a pretty sophisticated blog with the comment trail having the worst profanities you could think of. Some blog followers use certain blogs like social networking sites, flirting with each other or some even wooing the blogger. Its almost funny when you read comments like "I-liked-the-post-so-much-that-I-swooned-and-now-I-am-in-love-with-you-will-you-marry-me?". Guys, grow up, and dont tell me you came to the blog because you were interested to read what the author writes... I am sure the author is very good looking and you are crazy about her and are looking for ways to catch her attention, but please respect the sanctity of the blog. Dont pretend to like the intellect of the blogger when your interests lie elsewhere. And puhleazze dont convert a blog to a dating site, please use shaadi.com for such endeavors.

Sex sells. Even on a blog. So you have a whole group of "erotic writers" out there with pretty much their own exclusive blogosphere. Dont venture there if you are not into pornography, I wandered there by mistake and retraced my steps. No, I do not have anything against them, just that I wonder, if someone wants pornography shouldnt they just go to the numerous pornography websites complete with photos/videos. Or maybe I am just one of the ignorant fools who do not understand the beauty of erotic writing. Honestly I did not expect such an exhaustive category of erotic writers, some even giving detailed descriptions of their personal encounters. Needless to say these had immense fan following! Disclaimer: I dont think I need to say this but NONE of the blogs I follow or comment on come in the category mentioned above, so bloggers who own blogs I follow, please do not take offence :)!

There are professional bloggers who blog with the sole intention of blogging to make money or to popularize their blogs. Refer the first para of this post, these bloggers are not blogging for themselves at all. They will write things that make their blogs popular and will do anything in order to get more hits. Once again, I do not judge them, just that I find them very superficial and it is not interesting to read the blog of someone who is not genuine or someone who is faking. For most of it, you can always make out the genuine ones from the fake ones, if it seems too good to be true, know that its a fake. But sometimes it is scary, because I dont want to get carried away by a fake blogger pretending to be a genuine person. Disclaimer: Once again, I dont think I need to say this but NONE of the blogs I follow or comment on come in the category mentioned above, so bloggers who own blogs I follow, please do not take offence :)!

There are bloggers who, though they run public blogs, are not very keen on a lot of publicity. In a way I respect that feeling, and I dont think I myself would be very comfortable with the kind of popularity some blogs have. I was requested by one blogger whom I know in real life to remove the link to his/her blog from my blog list because he/she felt that the blog was getting too many hits, and some of them were through my blog. He/she felt that the consciousness of knowing that there are too many people reading ones blog, some of whom could be people you know in real life, hinders the freedom with which you can write if you dont have a care in the world. And then of course there are bloggers in my friend circle who changed their blog from public to private with very limited readership, so that they could write in peace and write whatever they wanted to. There are bloggers I know who changed their blog domains in order to retain their anonymity. I might ponder one of these soon :).

All said and done, most of the blogs I read have helped me broaden my horizon. What I love about most blogs is that it makes me think. It gives me a glimpse into the minds of people who are in different phases of life. Some remind me of the phases I have been through, some make me realize that there are phases of life that I have not yet reached. There are some very interesting high school bloggers, and believe me there is nothing kiddish about their blogs. For me it brings back so many memories, I so completely relate to them. There are college going bloggers, my favorites, writing about the difficulties of adolescence. There are romantic bloggers, who write about the beauty of love, and the sweet nothings of life, they take you to a different level altogether. There are bloggers with children, and it is fascinating to read about how different life is when you have kids, something which seems so far away for me, but yet it seems so exciting.

I am a bit wary of "Blog Celebrities", and I dont know why. There are times when I come across an awesome post, and feel like commenting, I click on comments and go through a sea of people who have already commented. Sometimes as many as 70 to 80 people. Everything that could be said has already been said and I dont feel that I shall add any value to the comment chain. And I humbly bow out. Sometimes its good to follow blogs silently, because there are too many loud vociferous followers who are already giving all the required flattery/criticism/opinions and there is more than enough competition to catch the bloggers attention :).

I also feel the need to explore the blogging world outside of the Indian blogosphere. I somehow mostly read blogs of NRI bloggers, people who have an Indian origin, but live outside India. Obviously I am able to relate to them better, and I am very curious to know how others cope with the life of an Indian outside India. However I have lately been thinking about reading outside my "Indian" and "NRI" blogging world, especially as my blog has an international audience. I dont think I will be interested in technology blogs (in spite of being in the technology profession, I prefer technology articles to technology blogs) or political blogs, but international blogs which tell us about the lives of people all over the world is something that will surely interest me. And as always, I shall keep you updated of any note worthy blogs I come across :)

And heres something to chew on:

Top image source: http://dearkitty.blogsome.com/2007/09/25/this-blog-on-top-hundred-and-one-list/ Cartoons from: http://www.catchtheposts.com/30-hilarious-blogging-jokes-the-ultimate-collection/

MJ: A Great Human Being. RIP

2009-07-27T16:10:00.008+02:00

When MJ passed away, the blogging world went berserk writing everything that could be written about him. People who had never heard his music suddenly had very strong opinions about him. I didn’t mention him in my posts anywhere, not because he had not touched my life, but because there was too much being written about him, and I was a bit dazed and confused by it. Somehow in the entire furor that followed his death, everyone was too busy celebrating or desecrating MJ the star, nobody bothered about MJ the person. Hence this post comes a bit late, because it took me some time to come to terms with all the information overload that the media created, and to look a little bit deeper and understand that the MJ that I admired was not the MJ that the media and most (thankfully not all) bloggers were writing about.

I have been, as a kid, touched and bowled over by his music. Like most teenagers my age that time, I was at one time listening incessantly to all the songs in Bad and Dangerous over and over again, day and night, to the point where I was banned from going near the tape recorder (I know it sounds ancient, but that’s how we listened to music that time) for weeks. But as I grew up and started googling MJ on the net, I got to know stuff about him that made me admire MJ, the person. Most of the stuff has been written and talked about to the point where its common knowledge for any layman. But for some reason there has been little or no admiration for a guy who was a pioneer in things other than music. MJ was not just a successful singer, or a successful dancer, MJ was also a successful human being.

Few things that I admired about him:
1. MJ was a perfectionist. A meticulous planner. He planned his own shows, to the smallest of details. He heard the sound remixing and the instrument blending a hundred times, and did not settle for anything other than what he had exactly wanted. He would spend months trying to perfect a dance routine before performing it at a show. He would spend weeks synchronizing steps with a team before a dance performance. Ever noticed, that in any dance performance, somehow MJs dancing would be what caught your eye, with the perfect and most graceful moves, and how none of the troop dancers in the background even came close to the perfection MJ had?

2. MJ was a pioneer, he created and used sounds that had never been used in music before. And I am not just talking of the “glass-breaking” sound in BAD. Its there in all the music, he blended, mixed and remixed till he had something that had never been used before. Listen to all the music, most of the sounds you hear was not regular music “sounds” at that time.
The same applied to his dance style. He was an inventor, a creator. He wanted to do new things all the time. He has created and popularized more number of dance moves than any big pop star living or dead. He was also famous for the most innovative music videos.
He is credited with being the first to use the concept of music videos to popularize his songs. There were music videos where he invested more money than what he could make through the sale of the songs. But in the long run it paid off. The concept of spending effort and money into making innovative music videos to popularize music and brand artists caught on. Incidentally, he is also the first “African American” artist to be covered by MTV, the legend goes that MTV tried not giving coverage, but in the end had to give in to the huge popularity of his innovative music videos. A lot of his music videos were creative to the point of being controversial, some were even banned, the controversial ones being Black and White, Bad, They don’t really care about us, In the closet.
He is also one of the first, and perhaps the only person to use the most creative gigs on his shows. Simple stuff that caught the imagination of all his fans. His shadow dancing behind the curtain, strapping himself to a rocket launching himself off and a hundred other crazy things he did on stage made him the favorite of zillions of people.

3. The humanitarianism in MJ. He did not just talk about it, he lived it in his daily life. There are not a lot of stars that walk the talk like MJ did. Creating music for humanitarian and charity purposes is not something a lot of musicians risk. Sex sells, so does the hip and happening “bad” songs with dirty lyrics. MJ had been there and done that. But he took a pause, and created the likes of “Heal the World”, “We are the world”, “Man in the Mirror”, “Earth Song” which reached out to his audience for a cause other than to make money and create music. And I shall not even talk of him being in the Guinness Book for his charity.

4. But the thing I liked most about MJ was that he was an all-in-one, he was a master of all trades. One of the best musicians of the world, the best dancer who ever graced the stage, one of the most innovative choreographers, a heart-stealing song writer, the most fabulous singer, one of the most brave cinematographers, a near-perfect event planner, and most of all the kindest of humanitarians. Think about it, how many people in the history of mankind have achieved near perfection in so many fields.. simultaneously?

I do not know how true or false all his scandals were, and to be honest his personal life does not concern me. But it breaks my heart to ponder.. what if, just for a moment, I assume that all the accusations were lies. It breaks my heart to think what a man, who dedicated himself to giving the world so many new things, had to go through because of the selfish, money-driven motivations of a few people. He never really recovered emotionally from the second lawsuit, even though he fought it to the end and won the case. As for the other infamous rumors I will quote him from his Oprah interview “I admire Michelangelo and his art, and if I got to meet him, I would ask him what inspired him to create that art, not whom he went out with last night!” Bottom line, it doesn’t concern me as to how many cosmetic surgeries he did, or if he had an oxygen chamber in his mansion, its his life, his money, his body, and he can do what he wants with it. He is a star, and entitled to a stars life!

Here is an ode to a man who has been more than an ordinary pop star. Someone who has done and achieved more in his short lifetime than what races of people have been able to achieve over generations. To a person who has given us amazing music, introduced us to dancing as a way of life, and taught us some valuable lessons about giving back to the world what the world has given to us.

These JC quotes are sacred to me, and I don’t think I can use them for any person other than MJ.

“The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones”

For some reason scandal sells more than the noble things done by people, and MJ has been no exception to the rule. But I think for a moment we should separate the good from the bad, and appreciate the amount of good that MJ had in him.
Amidst all the numerous comments that people made in the zillion interviews that were aired on TV, the comment that caught my attention, and shall perhaps be my most memorable comment about MJ ever was something stated by a young girl who was in the troop of dancers who were practicing with MJ for his upcoming tour. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was something like this “It was tough and complex dancing that we were doing, and even for us young professionals who do it on a regular basis, it was grueling work, that completely sapped all our energies. And to think that MJ, who was twice our age and hadn’t had the practice for years, was jumping from zero to a 100 mph and doing all the things that we were doing must have been crazy. I don’t think its humanly possible, but that guy just wouldn’t give up. He wanted to be there, practicing as much as any one of us”. That for me explains MJ in a nutshell “the-guy-who-wouldn’t-give-up”.

P.S. My apologies to those who are not interested in MJ or in music, and those who think that senti posts about celebrities on a blog suck. I do not usually write about celebrities because I think too much is already being written about them and they anyway do not deserve so much attention. But I let MJ be the only exception. Because I believe that he was more than just a celebrity.

Whether you are a MJ fan or not, do stop by to have a look at this 10 minute MJ video, which I believe is the perfect example of the perfection in the life of this man. I have been watching this video since I was a kid, and have seen it a zillion times, but I never get tired of watching it because it is so "Perfect". When you watch this video, think about how much of effort and dedication that has gone behind it all. Check out all the gimmicks, the dance moves and the choreography, and think about one man being behind it all. Make sure you watch his dance moves in the time bracket 4:20 to 5:30 and from 6:25 onwards. Believe me, one has to be a genius to be able to put together something like this!

Todays Menu !

2009-07-25T14:20:00.004+02:00

Lemon Chicken, Konkani Egg Gravy and Peas rice

F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Post 2

2009-07-24T17:03:00.003+02:00

Picture source: http://www.monasette.com/archive/2004_03.html

Back in high school, did you ever take a pause and wonder where you would be 20 years down the line? What you would be doing? Whether you would be the air force pilot / rock star you had plans for, or you would be the cab driver who lived around the corner? Did you ever extend your thoughts to your friends, and wonder what your best friend will be upto 10 to 15 years hence? Of course you would have thought that nothing would separate you from your best friend (s) but ever wondered what everyone would be doing after “growing up”?

Well maybe you never gave it a thought, but back in high school, we used to have such thoughts every once in a while. After playing cricket for 4-5 hours in the scorching summer, we would be lying down under the cool shade of the largest tree in the colony. Tb, the foodie amongst us, would be crunching some local made chips, the cheapest available in the small store at the corner of the store, and sipping a coveted “Frooti”. Ba would be sheepishly stealing a quick smoke, looking as guilty as a criminal. T would be straining to peek into House no 384, trying to catch a glimpse of the pretty girl who had recently moved in. And then the conversation would start about where we would all be 10 maybe 15 years down the line.

We would have the craziest dreams, and wonder if anyone of us would make it big. If anyone would be a millionaire, if someone would be a movie star, or a pop icon. T would wonder if he would be able to get married to 384 (code name for the girl in House no 384). And we would talk of all the people we knew in school, and make predictions of who will do what. At home, in my colony we were some ‘core’ friends. T, Tb, Bu, S, Ba, and Bb.

T was the funniest of us all. He was 3rd down in the batting line up, spin bowler and used to field in the long-on position. Very emotional and falling in “love” with a new girl every other week. A lot like Saifs character in DCH. He was not the brightest student in school, but was very intelligent and had a passion, the only problem was that he didn’t know what it was for. He loved ogling at girls, hated studies, loved roaming the streets on Bu’s Vespa and spent huge amounts of money buying gifts for girls he had never spoken to. T went on to lose touch with all of us (he got back in touch only a few months back), and hence I have very little information for the in-between period. I heard that T dropped out of college, joined Pantaloons in Sales, did very well and got promoted to a team lead, then changed a few companies and is now an Event Manager with an Event Management company. He was the first amongst us to get married and did not invite any of us to the wedding as he was not in touch with anyone. He continues to be very emotional and I wonder if he would still go around in Bu’s Vespa if he could.

Tb was the most studious of them all. He was the perennial topper, very hard working and very focused and ambitious. He was mostly at home studying, but when he came to play on some occasions, he was 4th down in the batting line up, was a medium fast bowler and fielded at short mid-off. He was a quite guy you would tend to under-estimate, but he was very sharp and very smart. His biggest regret in life was that he did not and could not have a girlfriend, because he somehow got very nervous when talking to girls. Tb went on to go to IIT for his engineering, passed out with flying colors, got a job in a big Indian IT company, was not satisfied, and switched to a smaller company for nearly double the salary. Tb continues to do very well in his job, he recently got a promotion. Tb has still not managed to get a girlfriend.

Bu was the talkative one. Opening or 1st down in batting, spin bowler and fielding at mid-on. Bu was not very studious but managed to come in the top 10 at school. He was level headed and was called the politician and the leader of the group. Usually flitted between being the captain or vice-captain of the team. Known for going up on stage, planning out and directing the drama for the local puja and hosting shows at the colony functions. From a boys school, he also had a fear of girls, but everyone believed he had ‘potential’ for making up for it later. Bu went on to do his engineering from some unheard of college in Maharashtra, joined an Indian IT company, got restless and left his job, did his MBA from one of the better Business Schools in the country and went abroad to some obscure country to work for a global IT giant. He got married to his classmate from college, they say she is quite a babe.

Ba was the notorious one. He didn’t come for practices so in the inter colony matches he was usually an “extra”. The rebel and the spoilt brat he had bikes and gadgets at an age when we were still struggling to have enough money to buy chewing gum and balls for our cricket matches. Ba went on to flunk board exams at school multiple times, went to engineering college but dropped out in second year. I hear he is doing pretty well for himself in some not-so-legal-activities back home.

S was the sportsman. Opening batsman, super fast bowler, and ace fielder in any position. He was our star player, we would declare a walk-over for matches where he could not play. Alternated the captain/vice-captain position with Bu. S used to laugh at Tb for wasting his time studying, realized later that it was such a mistake. S stayed on in my small home town while most of us went to bigger cities to study. I didn’t stay in touch with him, but I heard he is an insurance agent now.

Bb was the guy who never played cricket or football or any game which required physical effort. He didn’t like sports, none of us have till date understood why. But he was a great guy and nice to hang out with. So he used to sit with the batting team and entertain them with his knowledge bank of weird things. He was a TV addict, I have learnt about most TV shows (which later I have obsessed about) from him, which includes “I dream of..”, “Wonder Years”, “FRIENDS” and a lot more. He was the one who got me crazy and obsessed about MJ when I knew very little about music, he forced me to listen to all his songs. He had the full collection of Tintin, and was the reason why all of us still quote Calculus and Captain Haddock in our day to day lives. Bb had an uncanny talent of making small model cars out of cigarette boxes. His cars were SO real that I often told him to take it up as a profession, but he was very embarrassed about his hobby because he thought it was very sissy. He would take apart old radios and TV sets, and even had an old Fiat car to experiment on. Needless to say he wanted to be an automotive engineer. Unfortunately he couldn’t survive the rigors of engineering college and dropped out in between. He is now working somewhere in eastern India, I have immense faith in him that he will, in the end, do something great with his life.

There were more of them (in case you are wondering of the missing slots in the batting line-up), but these guys were the closest to my heart. We have grown up together and then have just “scattered”. If someday we all went back and sat together at the same “adda”, the corner stone where we would sit for 20 minutes after our evening cricket, I wonder if the conversation would be as exciting and interesting, and if we will be able to relate to everyone as we used to. Do we change and evolve to become completely different people than what we were as kids? My heart wants to think that we don’t. It tells me that I will be able to go back, sit at the adda and laugh just as much as I used to, and that nothing would have changed. We would just be a bit older, a bit more mature and with a bit of a different background than we used to have, but it wont change our friendship. Nothing would change our friendship. Heres a toast to all our cricket, our “Saat Pitto”, our Kabaddi, “Maara maari”, football, “Cycle Chhor Police”, “S-T-O-P” and all the other games we have played. “Those were the best days of my life!!”

P.S.
1. This is the second post in the series of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. posts that I will write when I feel nostalgic, please bear with me. Inspired by the first F.R.I.E.N.D.S post HERE.

2. Don’t try searching for me in the picture above, it is symbolic and taken from a different source, as given below the pic. Though I am very tempted to put up a picture of our cricket team from back then, I will not do so out of respect of everyone’s privacy.

3. I have now installed tracking software to be able to track my stalker and anyone else bothering me. God help the guy/gal if he/she is some college youngster wanting to have some fun, because, thanks to the Swedish vacation, I now have the time on my hands to track them down and call their parents :). Hence comments are now open once again, please comment!!

And a good day...

2009-07-21T21:15:00.006+02:00

I was determined to make today a good day. And I did succeed to a great extent! In spite of the nasty escalations calls (why cant people talk nicely on escalation calls? Cant everyone just decide that they too want to have a good day?). And so I smiled, talked nicely to everyone (including the people in the escalation calls and successfully disassociated myself from some stupid moronic stalkers! I also had a great Iranian lunch, which you probably already realized from the picture above. I listened to some good music on the way to work and back and did not crib about the long time it takes to travel to work. And I spent a lot of time listening to other peoples woes. I realized that if I can be of help to people, even by doing the smallest of things it brightens up my day.

So that was my day in a nutshell. Thanks to all for your valuable legal advice and sympathies about me being stalked. No, I was not serious about suing anyone :). Even though I traced the persons IP, found out that the person got referred to my blog through the Orkut scrapbook, and even found out the persons location. But I realized I dont have the time to involve myself in such frivoulous pursuits. And I was determined to make today a good day. So my stalker has been spared of the wrath of an IT super geek :).

I have recently realized that all my close friends have for some reason now settled in the US. Damn, not a single soul in Europe. There is the Connought Place Friend, the Sardar Friend, my "Langothia" Cousin, Iya and the Harvard Doctor. Harvard Doctor, whom I have known since I was 11 years old, now even has plans to buy a house in Houston. So I will now have to seriously discuss a US trip with MBF. Too many invitations on the card. Ab ek visit banta hai!

A bad day..

2009-07-20T22:24:00.004+02:00

After having glorified my new apartment in my mind, I am now feeling the negative impacts of staying so far away from my workplace. Travelling more than one hour to reach is not a pleasant thing and I need to get used to it. One cannot have a great apartment, live in central Stockholm AND have less travel time. SIGH! Music shalt be my savior on my trip to work :).

I spoke too soon about the lack of work, today was a day of escalations. Hence not the best of days. But it’s a pleasure coming back to such an amazing apartment, it compensates for everything :).

Some moronic people are stalking me (yes, at last I am a celebrity), hence comments will be disabled till the stalker loses patience and finds something better to do :). I even talked to a very good lawyer friend of mine, who said “Get the IPs and just give it to me and I will sue them out of their minds” but what the hell, in all probability its some kid who has nothing better to do, so I wont do anything till the kid decides to continue. Most people forget that there is nothing called “Anonymous” on the internet anymore. It takes very few tools and a few minutes to track down anyone’s IP, ones location, the OS and the web browser being used, the city and even the exact computer. Being in the IT world gives one visibility to such things and its strange how most people do not know about this and believe that you can still be anonymous. So keep this in mind the next time you think of doing something fishy anonymously on the internet :) !

Summer in Stockholm

2009-07-19T21:58:00.011+02:00

Three blog posts in three days??!! When was the last time I did that? Umm... when I started blogging (my first 10 posts came on 10 days). :) Why this sudden rush of blogging? More time to think, more time to observe, more time to ponder and more time to write. Why more time? Because of the Swedish summer holidays. Oh you didnt know about that one? Well let me tell you about it then. I found it wierd at first but have now gotten pretty used to the idea. It all originates from the fact that Sweden has an extremely hard and gruellingly cold winter and a beautiful, heavenly lush, warm summer. So the Swedes work hard during the winter, without any reprive and with a determination that makes you admire them. And come summer, they all close shop, pack their bags, put on their bermudas, caps, tanning lotions and shades and head out. Where? Anywhere, it doesnt matter, as long as they head out somewhere. Everything shuts down, shops, government services, schools, colleges, offices, even the visa office is close to non operational! I always marvel at how a whole country can completely shut down and go for vacation for one whole month! The favorite destination is Thailand, because its cheap, its exotic and its a far away country. Closer to home, vacation spots include the general touristy parts of europe.. Greece, Spain, the Mediterranean, anywhere with a lot of sun and some beaches to get tanned. Those who cannot afford exotic far away places settle for the swedish archipelago, but getting tanned is a basic neccessity of every Swede in summer.

Hence currently nearly all my clients are on vacation. All of my swedish colleagues and swedish managers are on vacation. The work load is considerably less. Are you going to ask me why I am not on vacation? Well, my client is a global company and people around the globe are not on vacation, hence someone has to be the backup for all the people who are on vacation. And that guy is me. No, dont feel bad, I get to take my vacation during Diwali in India. (>> crosses his fingers and says "hopefully!")

I have to end on a good note, so heres what Stockholm looks like on a bright cheerful summer day, every person in Stockholm is out enjoying the sun!!

Moving House

2009-07-18T18:16:00.014+02:00

Pic reference: http://www.instantdisplay.co.uk/KS2_Other.htm

I have been in a bad shape for the last 2 weeks, because of “apartment problems” and have had to solve the problems in a very short time span. But I decided not to blog about it so as not to jinx the solution.

So heres the story, I can narrate it now that it has a happy ending :). The lease of my current apartment, where I have been staying for the past approx two years was supposed to expire at the end of July. My landlady, who had been living in Italy, had decided to return to Sweden, so she would not be able to extend the lease. I had seen a few apartments and had liked one in Skänstull. Everything seemed to be going fine till one day early morning a few men, dressed in repair overalls rang the doorbell. There had been a major leakage downstairs in the Storage room and the Söprum (Garbage disposal room) and they will have to rip out the kitchen walls and floor. No, they cannot wait for even one day, it is urgent. So out came all the furniture and appliances of our nice modular kitchen. And guess where everything was shifted to? The Living room/Parlor of course! So we had our beautiful kitchen walls and floor ripped out, and our living room had a non functional fridge, a big OTG oven, a dishwasher, a microwave and loads of utensils.

The kitchen BEFORE disaster struck

The kitchen AFTER disaster struck

Overnight life became a nightmare. Nothing could be cooked and it became tough to eat out two times a day (thankfully my friends were sooo nice, there were free flowing dinner and lunch invitations :). Even morning coffee, made with hot water from the microwave became messy because the only place to wash the cups was the basin. The workmen in the kitchen would drill the floor and the noise and the dust was sickening. The fuse would trip every few hours because of the machinery being used. And to top it all, the guy who was supposed to rent out the Skänstull apartment changed his mind because his shift out date got changed. And so if I did not want to live in the hell hole I had to start searching an apartment and fast.

So I saw a number of apartments. And I realized how difficult it is to find the right apartment. As Iya was telling me the other day, for a crab, the home and everything related to it, the house, the location, the size, the partner/bf/gf, is very important. I guess it holds true for me as well. So either the apartment was not located in a good place, (like the amazing lavishly furnished, ground floor 90 square meters apartment in Akalla). Or it was in the most sought after locality in Sweden, but was not a good apartment. (like the 46 square meter apartment in Gamla Stan, small, creaky, falling apart, but a kilometer away from the palace of the King of Sweden, in the old town of central Stockholm).

And the day our fuse refused to take the load of even a bulb, the basin started getting clogged and the heavy noisy machinery started being deployed in our kitchen, we finally saw the perfect apartment. Located in Gullmarsvägen, it was close to the metro station (a very important factor in winter, because you don’t want to walk a lot when its minus 15 degrees with inches of snow on the pavement). Beautiful locality, roads lined with trees, lawns around the buildings and spacious sidewalks and parks everywhere. Amazingly large apartment, very well furnished, a big living hall to have nice parties in and a big kitchen. I love cooking, and it is very important for me to have a nice kitchen more important than any other room in fact (now you will not hear a lot of guys say this!). This one had a spacious kitchen with a nice window facing the trees and great kitchen appliances. Ok, I wont go into the details, but in short, I love the apartment. It is as good as it gets. My office is a bit far off, but I have no regrets about travelling the extra distance (12 minutes extra on the metro) because the apartment is so awesome :). And now I should really stop raving about the apartment. The move, with all its intricacies and hurdles has been completed with everything intact. Alls well that ends well :).

For those who have are on my Orkut/Facebook friends list, I uploaded my apartment pics there, for the rest, heres a nice view just in front of my apartment :).

My Favorite T-Shirt

2009-07-17T23:44:00.002+02:00

Everyone who puts up their own pic as the profile pic on Facebook/Orkut think they are looking cute in it. I am no exception. There is however a small catch. People used to think that the caption on the T-shirt I am wearing in that pic is cheesy. Now they don’t. Now they don’t THINK that its cheesy, now they KNOW it is, because of this post on Shobha De’s blog:

CZECH THIS OUT....

I don’t care. I got this T-shirt from Prague and its my favorite T-shirt. And it will continue being on my Facebook/Orkut profile :). And you can call me self-obsessed if you want to :).

P.S. Too bad this blog is anonymous and I had to cut off the face from this pic :P.

SQCA: Simple Questions with Complicated Answers

2009-07-12T00:32:00.003+02:00

Ever been the brunt of a very simple question that you struggled to give an answer to? A really simple, ordinary question, for which the inquirer usually expects a one word straightforward answer, but for which, just in your case, the answer is extremely complicated. When asked this question, your response is usually a ridiculous answer, or a thoughtful/confused look, a lot of fillers while you try to think of an appropriate answer and go "err..." or "umm.. lets see" and make the person asking the question think "Damn, its such a simple question, why does this guy/gal make it appear like its the KBC 1 crore question?". We all have our SQCAs, Simple Questions with Complicated Answers. For most of my single friends a classic SQCA is "So when are you planning to get married?" For others the question is "Are you single?" For my married friends it is "When are you planning to have kids?". For some ambitious career oriented people I know even "Are you happy with your current job?" is a SQCA. For most of my NRI friends a classic SQCA is " Are you planning to settle abroad permanently?". I even know some people to whom a question as simple as "Was it a love marriage or an arranged marriage?" is one of the toughest SQCAs!!

So yes, I have some SQCAs, one of them is “What do you do professionally?”. Some people don’t ask further when I mention the two golden words “Information Technology”. Some don’t go further if I give them the name of the company I work for, it’s one of the most recognized companies in the world. Its strange, that when I say I work for XXX, they just don’t ask further, even though this company is into more than 15 different diverse fields and has more than a hundred different professions. But other than the few who do not ask further, I get this question a lot. Yes I know, it sounds like the easiest question in the world, but I have struggled to answer it. Because anything I say will not be understood or will be misunderstood. But with time I have realized that I should give the technically correct answer. So now my standard answer is “I am a consultant by profession”. The problem with consulting is that there are too many types of consulting and they are very diverse from each other. Management consulting and Application Consulting are two ends of a stick. Business Information consulting is somewhere in between. If you call a Management consultant an Application Consultant, he will be insulted, call a SAP consultant a Management consultant and he will be flattered. The other problem is that there are way too many jokes about consulting. And the perception of the profession is undermined beyond all imagination. I hold Dilbert responsible for it. Anyway, when I give this answer, I am met by blank looks, or sometimes further questioning. What are your job responsibilities? Are you a manager? What does the role require you to do on a day to day basis? Umm… so I explain, my job requires me to do B2B sales, pitch for new business, do baseline business development.. the role is also into service delivery management, program management, client engagement… and very soon I realize that the person in front thinks I am talking gibberish. And then I shut up and give a stupid grin and say “As I said, I am into consulting”. I am not alone, I recently realized that a lot of people have the same SQCA when I was talking to some of my colleagues. And I didn’t realize the extent to which I confuse people till I created this “How well do you know Merlin” quiz on FB. One of the questions was “What is my profession?”. The options were Consultant, Sales Manager, Project Manager, Software Developer, Chief Information Officer. Nearly all my friends got it wrong! SIGH. And even in spite of all the confusion and in spite of all my self obsessed Reggie Mantle bragging, nobody thought I am the CIO. Damn!

Here another SQCA. “What are your work timings?” Umm… eh.. like.. Typical response to this SQCA as well. I work for one of the best employers in the world (as per the most recent survey :P), one of the perks of working for this employer, and perhaps of being in my profession (which I bet you have still not been able to fathom) is that I don’t have fixed work timings. I can work when I want, from where I want. MBF will disagree, MBF will say, my profession means I work ALL the time :P. But the truth is I don’t have to reach office at a designated time or leave after a designated time. Its the most ideal scenario, as long as I get my work done and keep the moolah coming in, nobody cares when I come and when I go. Of course, I need to be present at client meetings and client events, and they can be at some absolutely ungodly hours. I might be called to attend meetings at short notice, might be on call continuously through the day, a lot of times at night as well. I might be attending client dinners on my birthday. And yet, I do not have any “regular office timings”, which I feel is a big convenience. It means that I can WFH (work from home for the uninitiated), when I don’t have any major meetings, and I don’t have to mail/call/inform my manager or anyone that I am doing so. Hence sometimes I am leave for work at 7.00 am, sometimes its 2p.m. sometimes 7p.m. only for some client event.. it varies. Now you know why this one is a SQCA for me?

Umm.. other SQCAs I have.. “When will you permanently return to India, will you ever?” (The standard SQCA for nearly every NRI), “Are you satisfied with your job?” (The day I am satisfied, I shall retire!) “How much do you earn?” (I know its rude, but people still ask, and I get my salary in two different currencies, its complicated!!), and some others which I am embarrassed to even write about :).

Some interesting answers to SQCAs of some friends, and I swear these are real ones from real life:

Q: What is your ethinicity?
A: Its complicated. My father was half British, my mother was Spanish, I was brought up in Italy, and studied in Australia and now I am a Swedish citizen in Sweden. However my wife is Iranian and I identify with the culture a lot.

Q: How many children do you have?
A: Umm.. that’s a tough question, I have 1 boy from my previous wife, and one from my current wife, my current wife also has 2 kids from her previous marriage, and we have 3 kids in the house presently.

Q: Where do you live?
A: Hmm.. interesting question.… my family lives in London, but I work in Sweden, so I am in Stockholm 3 days a week and in Malmo 2 days a week, and back home in London on weekends. But I have a house in Italy and one in Thailand, and I usually spend my vacations there.

SQCAs are widely acknowledged, not the term (that’s invented purely by me), but the general concept. Recently my business school alumni team opened an online google document where we were supposed to update our current status, company, profile, location, email etc etc. There was also a column for “Relationship Status” and the options in the drop down were Single, Married, Committed and Its Complicated :).

So heres tagging all my Blog friends (if you are reading this, and if you know I read your blog, you are tagged!).

What is your SQCA?

Quote of the day (yes, once again, but its relevant!)
Before you call someone a weirdo, remember.. Everybody is someone elses weirdo!!

Itz My Birfday

2009-07-09T19:25:00.007+02:00

It was my birthday some time back (that shouldn’t be news, I guess on a number of occasions I have pointed out that I am a cancerian!). No, please don’t comment and wish me a belated happy bday right now if you didnt wish me already :P, the intention of this post is not to gather belated wishes! I don’t like publicizing my birthday and want it to be a very small private day for myself with very near and dear ones. Most people I know want to celebrate it with as many people as possible, they don’t mind celebrating it even with strangers, as long as there are lots of people. Although I am in general a “people” loving person, love parties, crowds, people, but just for my bday, I like keeping it low key. So I like it when I spend it with the people who are closest to me, and am happy when just a few handful who are close to me remember and wish me. And I don’t get offended when people don’t remember my bday. For the simple reason that I don’t remember theirs :). But every bday it is very interesting to find out the people who remember and wish me and the people who don’t, because of the huge variations.

So the regular ones, the ones closest to me, wished me this year as well, like always. I am lucky that way. I expect few, very very few people to wish me. And I have never been disappointed. When others wish me, I am amused at the thought that they remembered. I have had fights and tiffs with most of my friends because I have not remembered their bdays. Most of them (nearly all the girls) get extremely angry when I forget their birthdays. It doesn’t stop me, however, from forgetting it the next year again :P. What amuses me though, is that they never ever seem to remember mine :). I don’t mind, really, for me its just another day. But I just cant help smiling at the irony. More interesting however was when some "acquaintances" pinged me and talked to me for quite some time without realizing it was my birthday. I was wondering if I should tell them and make them feel miserable, then thought WTF, Itz My Birfday, I shoudnt be naugfty :P.

So everyone asked me, what did you do on your bday? And my answer is, nothing. Nothing special that is. I like it that way. In general I am an obnoxiously self-obsessed, self-admiring, self back-patting, ego-centric Reggie Mantle kind of creature. But on my birthday, I like things to be simple. Nothing grand, nothing extra-ordinary. And so I don’t know what to tell people when they ask me how I celebrated my birthday. I woke up, was wished by a few near and dear ones, and then wished by a few not-so-near-and-dear ones. I worked from home. I am very secretive about my birth date, so I made sure nobody at work knew (I find it a bit awkward when people I know professionally are forced to wish me!) I spent the day with My Best Friend (MBF). We had planned to go out for lunch, but we had already eaten out the previous night, and so on request, MBF made me some nice home cooked lunch. We then went to the temple, like I have done every year. Not because I am religious, but just because it is very peaceful, and I have now done it for so many years that its like a habit. For dinner, I had an important dinner meeting with a senior director on the client side, and my account Vice President. The dinner was critical, and I couldn’t cancel it. And so I ended up at Grill (http://www.grill.se/). Theme restaurant, exotic food, expensive wine, and no enjoyment. That’s another irony of life, when I go to these really expensive places for client dinners. The bill comes upto more than 800 SEK (roughly Rs 5000) per head, and I realize I have hated the food so much that I am tempted to go back and have proper dinner at home. I guess I am still very desi at heart!

And keeping up with my resolution to re emphasize the “definition of blogging” here’s a blog of another Cancerian. Its eerie what she says about Cancerian bloggers.. why do I feel that a lot of my Cancer friends who blog will be a bit taken aback ;) Check this one out:

Observations of a True Linda Goodman Fan!

Matter-of-fact writing style. Reminds me of MBF. I wonder if Wishes Galore and MBF would hit it off real well if they got together!!

A pic of the restaurant, even if the food wasn’t good, the ambience certainly was :).

And don’t ask me why I am putting this pic, Its just cute!

Lolcat picture references: http://icanhascheezburger.com/
Grill picture: http://www.grill.se/

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

2009-07-01T23:23:00.003+02:00

Ever noticed that your rate of making new friends decreases over the years? Yes, it is a cliché, but sometimes the realization just hits you, and its not a good feeling. Because its so difficult to retain your old friends given geographical distances and the rapid pace with which people change… and there is more people you are losing touch with than getting back in touch with. Till a point when I feel that with time will I just be left with one or two people I can call friends? Maybe some of you do not identify with what I am saying, I am more of a people person, and have always had a lot of friends around me. And feel a bit lost when I am not surrounded by a million friends. No, I am not cribbing, I am lucky to have my best friend always beside me, but its just a passing thought.

I am working on a strategy assignment with a senior strategy consultant who has been in Sweden for 2 months and will be leaving this weekend. We have developed a very good rapport and have discussed on topics ranging from politics, philosophy, life, marriage, children, career, consulting, company vision and what not. And yesterday he was telling me how strange it is… the way we meet people, gel well with them, have an amazing time, and then just “scatter”. I like the word “scatter” even though its probably not the most relevant word to use here. Because it signifies what I feel about friends I have had a great time with. We haven’t grown apart, we haven’t lost our friendship, we haven’t stopped thinking about the good times, we haven’t stopped craving to get back and recreate those magical moments. We have just scattered, and its just so tough to gather all the pieces and put it back together. And I am in the phase of my life where all old friends are getting married, having kids, going abroad and changing jobs with lightening speed. So it’s a bit weird when you find your engg. college friend on Orkut, and in the first pic it’s a single photo of him, and you think man, hes not changed at all, it seems just yesterday when we were hanging out at the run down “tapri” outside college and ogling at pretty girls. And in the next pic he is standing with his wife and two kids with the NY skyline behind. And there is a sudden disconnect. Have things changed SO much? Will we still be able to get back together someday and laugh at the same jokes. Will he be scandalized if I tell him the latest dirty joke I have heard, just like old times? Will his wife understand the bond we share, the extreme times we have gone together in college, violent ragging by drunk seniors, student politics and college romances? Will life ever be the same, or will all the memories also scatter like the friends?

Sometimes they find me a bit too sensitive and mushy, but I like holding on to the friends I have.. sometimes a bit too much. Maybe its because at times like these I understand their value!
Just a weird nostalgic thought!

City comparisons!

2009-06-29T18:30:00.014+02:00

Quote from my Swedish colleague "Yesterday was the hottest day I have experienced in the all the time that I have lived in Sweden". The temperature was 25 degrees, but in the sun it was probably really hot. Even an Indian like me, who has seen the 45 degrees plus temperatures of Delhi and Nagpur was sweating. Sweating was an experience I had almost forgotten. No, I do not exaggerate, I do not think I have sweated for some time now. And somehow it was a good feeling. No, dont even try to compare it with Indian heat... it was NOT that hot. But it was not chilly like normal swedish summers. Yesterday was like a warm winter day in Bangalore. Umm... I am now comparing too many cities.

So this is the idea for the day... the best city to live in. Inspired by a friends blog, which in turn is inspired by a Business Today article heres my take on some cities I have lived in:

Delhi (my duration of stay: 1 year): The song sums it up pretty well "Yeh sheher nahi mehfil hai". People who live in Delhi are somehow very passionate about the city and about their love for it. Ok, so we all are in love with cities we grew up in. But sometimes the passion really seems misplaced. Delhi is the most unsafe city amongst all the cities I have lived in, and I have lived in quite a few shady places ;). The weather cannot get any worse, it has extreme winters AND extreme summers. So there is no time of the year when you can really enjoy the outdoors. The winter temperature can dip down to 3 degrees, and there is no central heating anywhere, which is not a pleasant thought. The summer temperatures can hover slightly below 50 degrees, its very easy to get a heat stroke and be hospitalized because you stayed in the sun for too long. The culture is as different as it can be. When I went there, my cousin told me to tuck my shirt in from one side and let it hang out from the other side. I thought he was kidding, till I saw everyone else doing it. The next week it was supposed to be tucked in at the middle. People in Delhi follow fashion like religion. They are brand concious to the point where it borders on insanity. They do not think modesty is a virtue and your status in society is judged more by the phone you carry, the watch you wear and the car you travel in than the work you do or the person you are. People socialize only at their own level, are not very friendly, and believe in minding their own business. I stayed one year in an apartment where none of the residents every approached me to talk or said a hi, and seemed very unapproachable when I tried talking to them. There are some very good memories I have of Delhi, of my first job there, of my chacha and chachi, my cousin, of Dev and Jassi... of whizzing around on my bike on DND flyway at 3am, the cool breeze on the Delhi-Jaipur highway on a bike trip in the evening, of the golgappas and the sweet shops, of haggling at Palika Bazaar and lunch at Connought Place. But I dont see myself settling there in the near future, I wish I could somehow recreate the same good memories in some other city :).

Kolkata (duration of stay: 2 years off and on): If cities could have antonyms, Kolkata would be the antonym for Delhi. Things are as different here as could be. A city that believes in friendship, you can talk for hours with any stranger, and you wouldnt feel wierd. In fact he/she would not even feel like a stranger. I have had experiences where I have asked a shopkeeper the way to some place, and he has left his shop in the care of his assistant and walked me to the place where I wanted to go as he found that easier to do than to explain. Not to mention he loved talking to me during the short walk. On the flip side, people just refuse to mind their own business. Which can be not such a pleasant thing if you are looking for privacy. They believe that all issues in your life, whether it is regarding your childrens education or your sex life, should be open for discussion by neighbours and the small shops that are around your neighbourhood. If you take up a flat and move in, you can be assured that you will be visited by most of your neighbours within an hour. Some will get you lunch, others will get you sweets, some will drop in to tell you the cheapest vegetable market around. There will always be one neighbour who will drop in to say how everyone else is bitchy. It is also a city where the higher class lead a very different life than the majority lower class. I have somehow found the lower class life more interesting and diverse, and have felt more at ease there (My delhi cousin will be ashamed of me :P). I have fallen in love with this city in a way I cannot explain, I have driven around on my bike around this city much more than any other, I have loved the rickshaws, the taxis, the taxiwallas and their interesting conversations. I have loved the Park Street egg rolls, the "Indian Chinese" at the Park Street retaurants, the Kolkata metro, and the hustle bustle of Esplanade, and the crowds of Gariahat. I have such fond memories of City Centre (I virtually lived in that place!!), whizzing around on my bike on the EM Bypass, and eating at "Dhaba" at Ballygunge Phadi. Someday I will love to go back there, unfortunatly it cannot be in the near future, I do no think at this stage of my career I will fit into the work culture of Kolkata in the profession I am in. But someday Kolkata will see more of me :).

Bangalore(duration of stay: 8 months off and on): They call it the Silicon Valley of India, I feel that nothing could be more removed from that picture. When I first came to this city, I could not make myself fall in love with it, but somehow this place grows on you. By the time I left this city, it had already become my number one destination of where I wanted to settle in the near future. Yes, in spite of the fact that I cant speak the local language. In spite of the fact that the traffic situation is probably the worst here. In spite of the fact that its not one of the most "happening" cities around. The weather is a big contributor. The weather fluctuates between 18 degrees and 30 degrees through the year. I havent seen such amazing weather anywhere. The culture of the city is amazing, very casual and very genuine. You are not judged by the clothes you wear, the car you drive or the phone you carry. So you have really rich industrialists roaming around in lungis and chappals. Its not the most fashion concious city. Even the youth is not fashion specific, you can walk into any Barista or Cafe Coffee Day, and you will not exactly be hit by the fashion ticker. It is common to find sleepy IT professionals in their night clothes in restaurants and cafes. If Bangalore had veins then the blood that would run through it would be called IT. The city is a true cosmopolitan place, you have people from all over India in this place, and it shows in any office, workplace or public gathering. A city modern in thought, low on hype and driven by performance. Yes, the traffic sucks, but they say it is getting better. A city metro is also on the roadmap. I have watched the maximum number of movies in this city, been caught in traffic jams, listening to Kannada radio half of the time I was here, had the maximum amount of quality restaurant food and enjoyed working the most here. Not to mention about more "personal" connections I have with this city. A place where I certainly look forward to settling down in the near future. In the long run... I do not know, the city is still young, we have to wait and watch and see what it grows into.

I have also lived in Jamshedpur (17 years), Nagpur/Ramtek (4 years), Manipal (2 years) and Stockholm (nearly 2 years), but more on that sometime later when I am in the mood. Which is the city I love most? The answer is simple, Jamshedpur and Manipal, deep inside I am a small town guy. Who knows, 20 years down the line, I will probably end up settling down in one of those :).

Disclaimer: All views expressed above are personal and not intended to offend or upset anybodys feelings towards their hometown. I am not an expert on any city, it is an amateurs look at a city where he has stayed only for a short time. I have always cribbed about this, that I do not have a city I can call my own. I do not have a city where I know all there is to know. Jamshedpur comes really close, but I have not lived there since a long time, and it has changed so much that it doesnt seem like the Jamshedpur I grew up in. I have been a wanderer and a vagabond, someday I wish to settle down and call a city my own. Hope it happens soon.

Quote of the day: Everyone who wanders is not lost :).

Pic reference: http://www.indiabuzzing.com/2008/04/page/2/

A cribby crabby post

2009-06-26T09:25:00.003+02:00

Ever had one of those days when you felt that it was you against the whole world? The last two days were one of those days for me. It was weird. I always believe in the principle that the “Customer is always right” and yet I had to be a bit assertive with the two customers. It is tough when the customers themselves do not know the rules of the game. That everything can be done for the sake of customer satisfaction, except for unlimited free work. Should I put up one of those signs in front of my desk “Mujhse dosti karo, mere dukaan se nahi” (make friends with me, not my business.. don’t mind the grammar, it wont sound good unless it’s a direct literal translation :P) and “Aaj nakad, kal udhaar” (Cash today, loan tomorrow) There is nothing called a free lunch. Cliché? Yes, but why doesn’t someone explain this clichéd line to my customer?. Friends, roman, countrymen.. let me pause while my heart comes back to me.

To add to the frust… the escalations keep piling up. I hate trying to act all important and saying to people “Sorry, I don’t have the time to grab a cup of coffee” and “Can I call you back, I am in the middle of an escalation” and then never call back because I am on escalation calls all day. I said similar statements multiple times yesterday, couldn’t reply to people who pinged me, and returned home really late. Its fun being an escalation manager till the escalations come, after that you wonder why you ever took up the responsibility.

It didn’t stop there. On my way back a drunk man on a wheelchair tumbled on the escalator. I have noticed this before, in situations like this most (stress on most) Europeans are too shocked to react. My Indian colleague and I rushed to help immediately, one trying to stop him from rolling over and one trying to stop the escalator. And one other guy, seemed like a south American dude also came to help. We were able to stop the escalator, put the man back on his wheelchair and pick up the things. He was too drunk to know what is happening, and muttered some dirty expletives to all of us. Ah.. it wasn't exactly the most thankful day anyway.

And today morning I saw a small wiry framed lady, with Scandinavian looks, probably Swedish, trying to drag a bag at the metro station, which I could swear was as heavy as her. I couldn’t help it, and offered to help her, and she looked at me with shock and a not-so-pleased expression. “No thanks, I can do this myself”. This is not the first time its happening to me, I should just learn from my experience. This is gender equality at a completely different level. Women and elder people get offended if you get up and offer your seat in a crowded train. Its just that the instinct is too strong, the Jesuit school coaching is too deeply ingrained. Sigh, talk of chivalry being dead in this world.

I try keeping my posts non cribby, but all these had to be vented out ;). Now that its all been vented out, I hope the rest of my day will be good. After all it is a bright, sunny and pleasant day! :).

Picture reference: http://www.trygve.com/blog_2001_05.html

The hoax of daylight

2009-06-23T23:26:00.003+02:00

Its becoming more and more difficult to keep a track of time. I have been in Sweden for nearly one and a half years, and I have still not gotten used to this whole extreme daylight or lack of it. Its as if God told the scandinavian guys... you can either have full days or full nights, please decide. And they said.. ok, so give us six months of full days and six months of full nights and God granted them that wish. Its wierd, I dont think I will ever get used to it.

2 days back we had the longest day in Sweden, when the sun sets and then immediately rises. For those who remember their geography, its called the summer solstice. I was working on a presentation with a colleague late into the night at my apartment, and went to see him off at around 12 o'clock and was shocked to see it wasnt really night!! I had completely forgotten about the summer solstice. Damn, it takes a lot to get used to this thing.

So basically its daylight all the time. So the usual story is this. I get carried away and get extremely engrossed in work. In my subconcious mind I am aware of the high sun telling me its still afternoon. And then I have a casual look at the watch and notice its 8.30 p.m. Get a big jolt. Cross check the time on the mobile phone and the computer, and with sigh look at the sun shining brightly outside and realize that I have been fooled yet again. It doesnt matter however many times this happens, my body clock just doesnt seem to adjust. It still maintains its stubborn Indian instinct.

Today however it was slightly different. I started the day early, had meetings from 8.30 am and was out of my apartment by 7.45 am. Had some really rigourous and tiring meetings, then 2 conference calls and finally a confrontation with one project manager in my team who was not working in an efficient manner and needed to be given a stern reminder. I was tired, irritated and felt like I could drop dead. I looked outside at the sun shining brightly and wondered, damn, it must be 6 pm and looked at my watch... it was just 3.30pm. I sighed and somewhere in my mind gave up on trying to keep a track of time. I think I will now follow the way my Swedish colleagues work, reminders on mobile phone and calendar notifications on my computer. As for today I decided to call it a day early... for a change. Yet it took me another 2 hours to wrap up things and get out of the office. But it felt nice to get home early. Or should I say at the normal time :)!

To MBA or not to MBA!

2009-06-19T18:05:00.013+02:00

The tough times continue. Markets are stabilizing, but everyone seems to be making the same wrong assumption. About things getting back to where they were before as soon as the recession recedes. And I am getting kinda tired of reminding everyone of the economic cycle, boom does not follow recession. It goes some thing like this - Boom - Slowdown - Recession - Recovery - Boom. Hence there is a Recovery period, where things wont look as gloomy as the Recession, but at the same time will not be as rosy as the Boom as well. And by the way, nobody really notices when we go into Slowdown, if they would, recession would never come :P.

A lot of companies have announced salary decrements. Some have announced zero increments and no salary corrections (or market based adjustments or whatever other HR jargon you wanna use). My company recently declared me to be a "top of the line" performer in the last appraisal, which means that they will be obliged to give me some increment, even if it is an absolutely negligible percentage. The increment will probably be accompanied by a small note from my manager "Yes I know it sucks considering you did a terrific job last year, but lets just say that you should be happy that its an increment, and not a decrement like in some other companies". Well, I am not complaining. Most people find this weird, but money has never really been the biggest motivation for me. Yes strange but true. I am happy as long as I work with the right people and get to learn. Consulting is the best place I can be. Europe is the most balanced Geography to be in, a good amount of action with satisfactory stability, and lots of new things to learn. I can’t see myself getting such a kick out of work anyplace else. Hence I shall not complain and continue being happy.

Recently I have discovered a strange kind of inexplicable discrimination in the consulting line. It is with regard to years of experience vs. qualifications. Consulting, especially in IT is a game of skills, relationships and ability to be innovative, sharp and flexible. It is of course function of your years of experience and maybe qualifications but there is much more to it than just that. The recent discrimination works against me sometimes because I happen to have 2 less years of work experience because I left my job midway to pursue my MBA (as compared to peers who didn’t do a masters) and then got back into the corporate world post MBA. I have never really flaunted my MBA at any point in life; I really do not think that a single degree makes me immortal, especially in my profession. But then I am totally lost when people overlook and discount the two years I spent slogging to survive in MBA.

Agreed, the two years of my MBA were spent more in romantic pursuits than academic ones. But give me some credit for 2 years of compulsory 100% attendance, multiple rigorous industry seminars, summer projects in topline companies, no vacations, fear of being kicked out for the smallest of reasons, hundreds of presentations, thousands of group meetings, clearing subjects in Finance which can only inspire hatred in the heart, tolerating hours of HR lectures, digesting tones of management books and reading management theories and "merging their essence with my soul", 7 days of advanced jungle survival course (I will explain the relevance later) and an obnoxious amount of time learning Yoga. And for some reason people discount the whole deal when they count "years of experience". Why does nobody discount my engineering degree in the same way? Somehow the 4 years of engineering is supposed to be a big deal. To be honest, the 2 years of B-school, even with all my "extra curricular" activities, was more value addition to me than my 4 years of engineering.

Think about it. There must be some logic to 3,00,000 people applying for CAT in order to pursue MBA. There must be some logic in top corporate being ready to pay obscene paychecks to hire people from even second rung business schools. There must be some logic to the curricula designed by world industry experts in order to teach people management. There must be some logic to hundreds of thousands queuing up to get a seat in a B-school, even with the incredulous fees. How then can all this be discounted by certain biased individuals just because they didn’t take the decision to pursue the degree?

Ok I agree I am biased as well. You know which side of the debate I am on if you read my qualifications, I decided the side I wanted to be on when I left my job a few years back to study management. So I hear this question a lot... did you really learn enough in MBA to be able to rank yourself higher than non-MBAs? Umm.. tough one... because you can’t really give a politically right, diplomatic, "lets-not-sound-arrogant" answer to that one. I did my MBA from a second rung business school, and in spite of being the most insincere student in my class, I have to answer YES. Because however dumb you might be, just the fact that you left a good job or job opportunity, invested a considerable amount of money and got 95+ percentile in CAT means that you take your career seriously. The fact that you survived the rigors of multiple management subjects, hurdles designed to throw out students because of vague "ethical" reasons, summer internship and GPA cutoffs means that things were being drilled into you even when you were not really aware about it. And the fact that some firm was ready to pay twice or nearly twice the salary you used to get, in a position a few rungs higher than you were means that you have added value to yourself. If you did not get these, then maybe your answer to the fated question should be a NO. But knowing myself, and knowing most of my friends and batch mates from B School, I feel in most cases the answer will be Yes.

Ah, at last with so much of gibberish I have finally convinced myself that it was worthwhile spending those years in my business school. By the way, along with the degree, I also managed to get a decent "phoren" job, industry contacts and a girl for myself. Obviously the latter was the toughest one to get, and the most prized of all the other "achievements". For those who are still not impressed, let me tell you about our Outbound programme. It was a 7 day advanced jungle survival course in the rainy season. No dry clothes, new shoes getting torn, wearing rope on feet to be able to walk, limited rations, self cooking, drinking water from dirty jungle puddles, stomach rappelling, free hand 300 feet climbs, night trekking in wild jungles, 2 cases of broken legs and bones, 1 case of displaced joint, 3 cases of dehydration, cheetah attack, ... SIGH.. can I ever explain these things to someone who has not been in our Outbound??

Let us try with some pics:

You can see all the pics HERE ... I just dug these out because the current students at my B School refused to believe that we had a really rigorous Outbound, so these were to scare them :)

Well, if after this really long post, you still strongly believe that MBA is an absolute load of gibberished and gaseously modulated form of hypothetically jargoned virtual entity, then maybe you should be told about this really amazing book I stumbled upon. Believe me, if I had laid eyes on this baby before I started my preparation for CAT, my life would have been a very different game altogether. Whether for better or for worse I shall leave upto you.

Heres the book, the complete and perfect alternative to MBA:

A short day.. and a short post

2009-06-18T23:05:00.005+02:00

The pic is old (a month back), a small thing I forgot to talk about because I was busy about the bigger things. We played football with our clients. We lost 3-1. No, it was not because the client is always right and should always win. Last year we had won 4-0. This time they genuinely played better than us, and had a better team. I will practice and make sure we win next time. Or maybe next time we should play Volleyball, we have a much better team there, and we practice everyday, they wont stand a chance! :)

Day was good and short today. Not literally, days are really long now in the literal sense, it doesnt even start getting dark before 11pm. LOL. Remember reading about Summer Solstice? This is what its about. Soon, we will have the longest day.. when the sun sets (there isnt any night, just dusky for some time) and then rises in one hour. There is a long weekend ahead, its a Swedish festival called Midsommar. No plans yet, except relaxing and getting back in control. And hopefully some quality blogging :)

Marriage

2009-06-17T22:56:00.003+02:00

Is it true that guys have one preference when they are selecting (or trying to get :P) a girlfriend and a completely different preference when it comes to deciding on a girl for a wife?
I think they do. And I am generalizing here. Of course there are exceptions; I believe I have been one. But I am a Cancerian, I think all Cancer guys should be exempted from this discussion. They want to get married to every second girl they like (remember Ross Geller?). I just realized that I am starting to sound more and more like my girl by the day… talking about sun signs, I don’t even believe in them. Damn I never thought I would ever sound like anyone ever :).
I started thinking of this because lately I have noticed the dilemma some of my bachelor (and bachelorette) friends are going through. And I have formulated a new theory: From 13 to 25 years of age, it’s the guys chasing the girls. After that its more the other way round (true only in the Indian and NRI context).

I see a lot of heads shaking in disagreement. Let me refer you to my previous post HERE. Also, the logic is this, all girls in the age group between 25 to 30 years of age in India have been brought up with the concept of “good-girls-don’t-have-boyfriends”. Some of them have tried once or twice, but have been comfortable with the social trend that marriage is something that’s not ones own responsibility. But the world and society has suddenly changed. Love marriage (believe me this term does not exist in the western world, because every marriage is by default a love marriage) has become more the norm than the exception. And there is more fear in everyone’s mind about not finding the right one through the arranged marriage route. “How can I spend the rest of my life with someone I have known for only a month? What if he is repulsive? What if he doesn’t have a sense of humor? What if he is a super conservative? What if he suppresses my spirit” I have even heard concerns like “What if he is a wife-beater?”. They are all virtual concerns, you can say all those things for a guy who has been your boyfriend for a year, he might turn a wife beater after marriage for all you know. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but people change after marriage. They lose their sense of humor and they tend to become super conservative. There are no guarantees in marriage. However when you have a boyfriend and he gives you a lot of attention, you have the false comfort and security that he will make a good husband. A guy who sits quietly on the sofa while his parents talk about what kind of a daughter-in-law they are looking for might not give a girl the same kind of comfort. Though sometimes I feel the odds of catching a good husband is more with the guy on the sofa, at least you know for sure that he will marry you :).

And so, after 25, girls suddenly realize they are in a weird phase. The choice is to either find good marriageable material at the earliest, or be chained to one of the morons whose revolting pictures the parents keep coming up with. The situation becomes desperate. Hence every guy in ones vision turns to a potential husband. I am not exaggerating, I have quite a few bachelor/bachelorette friends who will agree. Hence my theory, from 13 to 25 years of age, it’s the guys chasing the girls. After that its more the other way round.

So now lets talk about the guys. They have suddenly started to get more attention, and more options. Most girls are scared of living the life of spinsters till they die, most guys are excited of living the life of bachelors till they die. As time goes by, girls are under pressure of losing their looks and other “attractive assets”, guys have suddenly started looking more mature, more sensible, more sophisticated, more stable, and more attractive. And I see sudden changes in these bachelor friends of mine. The classmate who couldn’t stop drooling about the ugliest girl in college and fantasize about teachers, and not even spare the cleaning lady, is now discussing about how a particular girl does not have the intellect, and does not know how to cook. I couldn’t help laughing. And wondering, ah.. so now he is looking for a wife. Guys who were desperate to see girls with skimpy clothes now look with scorn if a girl is wearing something even slightly provocative. Guys who would jump from a mountain to talk to any girl now get scared about being pestered and trapped into marriage if a girl even takes the initiative to talk to them.

One of my female friend remarked, as time goes by, the good guys get picked up real fast, and the ones that are left behind in the market are not the best of the breed. I do not quite agree, but maybe the number of eligible people (both male and female) start becoming smaller as age progresses. And combine this with the theory that guys don’t mind staying bachelors, and girls fear staying spinsters and you get the complete reasoning behind why the whole story turns around after 25. Moral of the story, GET MARRIED!! ASAP. I rest my case.

Back to mah space!

2009-06-16T21:42:00.007+02:00

I have not felt like blogging for a long long time now. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But I can take some guesses. Maybe its because too many things were happening in my life. Maybe its because I didn’t know where to start writing about all those things. I have been feeling guilty about it. It is not healthy. For me it is an indicator that my life has spun out of my control. It makes me feel that my life is running me rather than me running my life. There are things I love doing, blogging, reading, playing volleyball, spending idle time doing nothing (lol) and when weeks pass by without me doing these things, I get worried! But as long as this doesnt happen too frequently I am ok with it. Its ok for life to spin out of control as long as one can get it back to normalcy. In fact sometimes the excitement of the uncontrollable skid and spin helps it from becoming boring. Hence I shall not crib. The day is good and bright (yes it is bright and sunny even at 8pm.. this is Sweden in June!), and so is my mood.

There are 5 major things that have happened in my life in a very short span of time (Yes my life IS moving too fast, I was not exaggerating about the spin). 4 of these are good things, one is not. I shall not write about the “not-so-good” thing, it is already making me morose enough, I don’t want to stress its importance more by blogging about it. And I prefer pretending to be an optimist and paying more attention to the good things in my life. Although all the 4 good things deserve a separate blog entry, I have not had the time for that, but would still like to share a brief account of it, in chronological order.

1. Switzerland Trip: The best trip I have had till now. Also the most beautiful country, amongst the 12 countries I have visited till now. It is amazing, awe inspiring, breath taking, spectacular, It was a 5 day trip and I visited Zurich, Interlaken, Jungfrau, Luzrene, and Mt. Titlis. I don’t think I can find words to describe the beauty. I have heard about it, and seen our Bollywood heroes and heroines prance around doing silly but cute dances at those scenic locations in Switzerland. But the actual experience of being there is a hundred times better. Just like no words can justify it, similarly no amount of good photography can justify it. Even with the best cameras and the best cameramen. But I have tried capturing some of the beauty. You can check out the pics at my Blog album http://www.flickr.com/photos/merlins-world/sets/72157619731703206/detail/ . Some of my favorite pics are at the end of this post, I just couldn’t resist!!

2. My parents and my uncle and aunt came over to Stockholm. They accompanied us to Switzerland, then went on to go to Paris and Rome and then returned to Stockholm. One of the things on my “Things-to-do-before-I-die” was to have my mom visit Europe (dad has already been here a number of times), and I am very happy I could do it. It was also an amazing experience to have them over at my place, even though I have a small apartment and everyone had to accommodate. It reminded me of old times when a lot of us… uncle aunts and cousins would go for a family outing and everyone would have to accommodate. I played the host as best as I could, and took them around Stockholm as much as their stamina allowed (they were just back after a hectic 10 days, 5 cities trip) I also loved that I could show my parents what my life is like in Stockholm. And, the best part was of course that I got to have “maa ke haath ka khana” all the stuff my mom knows I love :).

3. This might seem really really weird, but I came third in the national championships of a game that I had earlier not heard about! It’s a game called Pétanque, sometimes also called Boule. If you are an Indian reading this, in all probability you haven’t heard of it. Pétanque (pronounced [pe.tɑ̃ːk] in French) is a French game where the goal is, while standing with the feet together in a small circle, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (jack). I participated in a corporate event a few months back where they played this and I won the match, and they gave my team (consisting of 3 people) a wildcard entry into the national championships. We were sure we would go there and make a fool of ourselves, there were 98 teams from all over Sweden. But we kept on winning the elimination rounds. Finally made it to the quarter finals and then the semi finals, and finally lost to some really professional guys. Phew.. it was an eerie experience. I was playing the game for the second time in my life, the other two had played it a few times. But as a team we rocked. And we got our share of the limelight though :)!

4. I got nominated for a job role in my company which is 4 levels above my current level. Of course I wont ever make it, but just the fact that I got nominated makes me feel honored! I have a mentor who is at the partner level, and he really believes in me, sometimes more than I believe in myself. And of course I humored myself by following all the formalities that come with the nominations, giving my acceptance, and time slots for the interview etc. It was fun. At least someone at my firm believes in me!

So now you know what I have been upto these past few days. Or at least most of it. I will keep away from travel for a very long time; I guess I have had enough of it. I have travelled to around 5 cities in 3 countries in May... It has been a travelling month. I have been completely overburdened with work, because work does not stop when I am gone, and a part of it accumulates when I go on vacations.

Now that I am more in control of my life I shall be more regular with my posts.. You will see a lot more of me on this space :)! Thanks to all of you who encourage me to write.

And now for some pictures of Switzerland.. :). Disclaimer: I swear none of these are postcards, they are all from my moronic amateur camera!! :).

Copy Cat

2009-05-23T19:41:00.004+02:00

Someone copied my last post about my Manchester experience without any reference links. I randomly ran Copyscape and it pointed me to the link. I was furious, and then had a close look at the webpage. And very soon I was rolling with laughter. It was the most hillarious thing ever. Whoever this person was had used a random software for word substitution and had ended up creating a masterpiece. Heres an example:

ORIGINAL TEXT "My google status reads "Parents, relatives, home cooked food, summer in Stockholm and a planned trip to Switzerland.. the best combination :)". Nothing cheers me up as much as family."

COPIED TEXT: "My google importance reads “Parents, relatives, exclusive cooked nourishment, summer in Stockholm and a planned disconcert to Switzerland.. the most seemly aggregation large-hearted:)”. Nothing cheers me up as much as kids."

For more amusement please read the copied stuff HERE. Please join me in congratulating this most creative person, who has mastered the process of screwing up the art of copying :). Although I admit that the purpose of the blog and the copying activity eludes me.

I have taken a lot of people around Stockholm when they have come to visit, and been the committed tour guide quite a few times. To the extent that I have started shying away from such trips. But I absolutely enjoyed showing the city to my parents, it was more a treat for me than them. There are some days we cherish, todays time spent with my parents was one of those. I only wish they had more time in Sweden for me to take them around :).

I leave for Zurich on Monday, will be back on Friday. So more from me then!

Photo Courtesy: http://www.8cat.net/copy-cat/

Manchester United: I am a fan!

2009-05-22T16:35:00.010+02:00

It was a game. More than that, it was an experience. Worth a lifetime. I came back and called all my friends and said, you gotta book a trip, it doesnt matter if you like football or not. Because its something everyone should experience at least once. I did not go to London to see the London Eye or the Big Ben because I believe this experience was better than those structures.

Earlier when I used to meet the loony football fanatics (my cousin in Bangalore included) rattling off crazy irrelevant football statistics, I would really think its ridiculous. But that has changed. I now have a Manchester T-Shirt which says the following (note the years written on the side):

It was amazing how nearly everyone came out of the stadium, bought one of those and wore it on top of whatever they were already wearing. It was almost as if this was a religion and the Almighty had asked everyone to wear this T-Shirt. My clients, my vice-president and me followed the trend.

And if anyone told you that football fever in Europe is equivalent to cricket fever in India, they are SO wrong. I have watched live cricket matches in India, it is nowhere close to the obsessive spirit which the football stadium had. As the ball got closer to the opponents goal, people rose from their seats in unison, almost like in an orchestrated dance. As Ronaldo missed the shot they all emitted the same disappointed..."Owww" sound and sat down with a thud. Or when Tevez was given an offside everyone stood up angrily together, though with a different combination of expletives aimed towards the lineman.

The organizers at Manchester do not pretend to be unbiased. It is actually hillarious. As the teams came running into the stadium the commentator announced the names. When announcing the Arsenal names, he was almost mumbling to himself, he just rattled out the names in a low monotone, hardly audible... "The Arsenal line up is Diaby, Nasri, Fabrigas.....mumble mumble mumble". And then, almost as if he had been exhumed and rejuvenated, he shouted out in an almost deafening voice "And now, ladies and gentlemen, walking into the stadium are the champions of England, champions of Europe and Champions of the World, Mannnchesterrrr Unnnitteeddd.. please welcome, Wayne Rooney (and the crowd went mad), Cristiano Ronaldo (and the crowd went mad again) " and so the madness continued 11 times. I was like, whoa... the organizers arent exactly hiding whom they support :).

The game wasnt the best. I felt that with Tevez, Rooney and Ronaldo playing forward, MU could have played a much more aggressive game. However, they needed to draw to be able to be champions of the Premier League for the third time in a row, and they were not risking that. So they were playing a bit on the defensive side. But all said and done, it didnt matter, the euphoria was still there. The match got over with the team lifting the trophy with some spectacular fireworks and then walking the field waving at everyone with their kids and wives/girlfriends. Ronaldo typically was cornered for an interview immediately after the game and we didnt get to see much of him.

Other than the football, I liked Manchester as well. It is a small sleepy town, a stark contrast to the hustle bustle of Stockholm. I managed to go to Piccadilly and do some shopping. Overall it was a nice trip.

The week has been busy, and it will be this way for some time. My parents are in town along with my Mausa and Mausi, and I am as thrilled as I can be. My google status reads "Parents, relatives, home cooked food, summer in Stockholm and a planned trip to Switzerland.. the best combination :)". I am really happy. Nothing cheers me up as much as family. I am a true crab, very attached to my roots. I am also trying to wrap up my work and trying to organize a football match between us and the client at the next regular team event next to next week. It is not easy and I hope I can get the 11 players on both sides. Yes, football is somehow on my charts.

And here are some quick pics:

The prize distribution

Some stuff I had been searching for...

2009-05-15T01:19:00.003+02:00

Do you have stuff which you see or hear, which makes a big impact on you, but which you do not realize till much later? I have a lot of such stuff.
Had been searching for some Peter Parker quotes, just found them:

"(Opening Narration) Who am I? You sure you want to know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody told you it was a happy tale, if somebody said I was just your average guy, not a care in the world... somebody lied. But let me assure you, this, like any other story worth telling, is all about a girl. [Cut to first shot of Mary Jane] That girl, The girl next door. Mary Jane Watson. The woman I loved since before I even liked girls. [Camera pans to Mary Jane's boyfriend, Flash Thompson]I'd like to tell you that's me next to her.[Camera goes to a fat guy in the seat in front of MJ, eating a jelly donut]Heck, I'd even take him.
No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try... the ones I love will always be the ones who pay.
(End narration) Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: 'With great power, comes great responsibility.' This is my gift... my curse. Who am I? I'm Spider-Man.
(When asked abt MJ) The great thing about M.J. is when you look in her eyes, and she looks back in yours, everything feels not quite normal, because you feel strong—and weak at the same time. You feel excited, and at the same time terrified. The truth is you don't know the way you feel, except you know the kind of man you want to be. It's as if you've reached the unreachable, and you weren't ready for it."

And a song whose lyrics I didnt remember and the tune was haunting me, realized google wouldnt help me with tunes, so racked my brains for 20 hours before I came up with the song. One of those senti ones you hear on your Graduation Day, makes me feel nice and warm even today. It is a good break from rock music :).
The song is HERE.

I fly to Manchester tomorrow for the Manchester United vs Arsenal match with my client. I am happy and sad about it. I know you dont understand the sad part. But thats ok. Everything cannot be explained. :)

CHEERS

And Life Goes On...

2009-05-13T10:42:00.006+02:00

I need to get in touch with Valorie ASAP. I need help.

The days have been busy and hectic. And I have had lesser and lesser opportunities to blog. I hate the feeling when life has complete control over me and I have no control on life and I just seem to be swept away with the current. But times like these happen and it is about how quickly you can get back in control.

Its one of those times when too many things are happening at the same time. There is a senior delegation which has come from India and I need to take care of them, in addition to my current work. It is an absolutely enriching experience to be in the company of consultants of the kind of seniority these guys have, but it is still additional full time work. I am enamoured, impressed and floored, almost in awe. Consulting as a profession is under-rated and the likes of Dilbert have undermined the profession no end. Yes, a cartoon does have a huge impact on public opinion about anything, especially if it is as popular as Dilbert. Tacky as it may sound, some of these senior level consultants who charge a bomb per hour do have the capability of looking at any given corporate problem and come up with solutions which make you say "Damn, why didnt I think of that before"! If you think thats a myth, take it from me, it is not. It is amazing how they do it, and I am in awe. For me it is aspiration value. What IS a myth though is that these guys are balding old men with no social lives who have sold their souls to work. Not true, some of these guys are young, funny and good company.

I have met a few of them before. What is different this time on is that the guy I am interacting with now is Indian. And it dispels my impression that Business Consulting is the forte of nations much more advanced than India. I will have to admit that the guy in question has spent 7 years in the US, but still, this is a guy who is now based out of India working for an Indian firm. Makes me feel that India has come of age. It now has the capability of attracting talent from across the globe. Someday I dream of that kind of life. I call it the "In-India-In-Demand" kind of life. I have a long way to go before I reach there, but someday I will be there :).

I am organizing a fun event for the Sweden team. It is tough in a multi cultural environment, the Indians dont want to go to an expensive Swedish place, the europeans wouldnt want to come to a more reasonably priced Indian joint. But I am managing, 20 out of the 24 people invited have accepted. The execs have sent tentative acceptance (dont they always?). I am juggling organizing this event (which is Bowling + Dinner) in addition to taking care of the Indian senior delegation and preparing for my parents trip and also trying to plan out the itenary of my own trip to Manchester. All this in addition to my regular hectic work schedule of client meetings, presentations, financial reports and more blah. Whew! Oh, did I tell you that I have planned a Europe tour for my parents and my Uncle and Aunt. It has not been quite the quick task I had thought it to be. It turned out to be quite a herculean task, especially as I insisted on using the travel agent ONLY for Switzerland. Now I feel I could have done that as well, considering I took care of Paris, Rome, Stockholm and the cruise. I admit it would have not have been possible without all the help from my best friend, she is so much better at all this than I am. Damn, with her help I could become a travel agent, I have planned too many trips around Europe. :)

I always ask the people I trust for their opinion of my actions and deeds and about me in general. I welcome criticism. I always ponder and chew on it, sometimes I spit it out and dismiss it, but not without appreciating the concern associated with the person who bothered to give it. Sometimes I digest and process it for better purposes. Heres two pieces criticism that has come my way in recent times, related to blogging:

1. "Blogging is about the thoughts, the flow of ideas, not about the way of writing." I think thats a nice perspective. But I do not agree. I cannot read a blog where the person cannot express him/herself in an interesting way. Or a blog where the language sucks to an extent where it is irritating. Even if the thoughts are very nice and he/she has amazing ideas and opinions. On the other hand I can... to an extent... tolerate bullshit if the person writes it in an interesting way. Its like stand up comedy. You can talk bull shit as long as the laugh track keeps up the impression that it is funny and you have the attention of the audience. Packaging, and the way of expression IS important.

2. "How can you avoid writing about people? There is only so much you can write about yourself, forget what people think, write about people". Again a very interesting people. Just to be cheeky, I am tempted to use Olive Oyls blog description "I write here only about myself. I know I am a narcissist." Umm.. but to be honest, I have been on a narcissistic trip and I have gotten some pretty testy reactions. It amuses me. But yes, I will write about people, just that they will always be related to me and just like in life, I will always be the centre of my universe. Isnt that true for everyone?

Yes I think a lot about what people tell me. SIGH! More about the people I interact with in the next blog. :)

Dinner Today..

2009-05-09T22:35:00.003+02:00

Home Made Masala Dosa, with coconout chutney.

Why is the size small?

Well thats the size of the biggest non-stick pan you get in Sweden :)

A Good Piece

2009-05-09T17:43:00.002+02:00

Here is something for My-cousin-with-a-new-car and the Cute-girl-who-nearly-got-married-to-the-wrong-guy and for all other youngsters facing Quarter Life Crisis. Secondary reference is from a blog I bumped across.

http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~shane/text/quarterlifecrisis.html

Short Attention Span?

2009-05-09T00:09:00.011+02:00

Pic reference: ironydesign.com. Check it out, its got some really funny ones :)

Someone told me I had a very short attention span. It was not a very flattering thing, my job requires me to be a very good listener, at meetings, at conferences, at presentations or just for my clients. No, short attention spans wont do in a client facing role in Europe. Meetings can be boring, professional lectures can seem like they are aimed to cure insomnia. But one needs to be attentive and sharp. And so I denied my "Short Attention Span Syndrome" for a long time. Recently I was talking to momma about something and my attention wandered and she sighed and said in a giving-up tone "Of course, you have always had a short attention span". So I guess I have to give in. Moms and wives (after they have known you for a long enough period) are usually never wrong about such observations. I realize I have trained myself to be alert and attentive professionally because its a part of my job, and for me it is a cultivated skill. But it is only limited to my professional life. In real life I do have a short attention span.

The SASS (Short Attention Span Syndrome, discovered by a wise man who runs a blog called Merlins world) usually affects people who have symptoms of the Restlessness H20N20 virus. No vaccinations are known and treatment is usually not known to work for severe cases. It spills over to nearly all facets of life and affects behavior severly.

I have phases for everything. And then I move on. It might seem a slight contradiction to my crabby zodiac, but not actually. I will cling on to people, relationships, jobs, cities, cars, bikes and apartments. But for other entities like hobbies, interests, internet behavior and other trivialities of life, I will move on. And it makes me wonder if blogging was also a phase. I am already losing interest. I find it more interesting to read blogs. Maybe I am just lazy. Maybe I dont find the creative independence because I cannot write about people, and I think most about them. I write and I cannot put it on the blog for fear of offending people. Not right. I dont want to offend people, but I also want to write.. solution stop blogging and start writing on more personal space. Shall think about it.

Remembered something really funny. Back during B School days, I was once in the middle of an assignment listening to Geri Halliwell, a long time favorite. One of the guys (the types who "claim" to be a good friend) passing by peeped in and said "I cant believe you are listening to girlie songs like that! Next you will be listening to the girl bands. Dude, be a man". I was too shocked to respond. I didnt know you could be chauvanistic about music. Some men I have come across will do anything to assert their masculinity, maybe because they feel insecure about it (?). Wonder if this dude knows that Timbaland and Timberlake were making music with Nelly, Madonna and Kerry Hilson? And if he ever saw Madonna perform live, I am sure it will shut him up forever. Cmmon, which kinda guy will not like Geri Haliwell in those cute shorts driving an air mobile (or whatever she drives in that Scream video)? Ok ok... I know thats like a century back, but which kinda guy will not find Britneys Circus catchy? I heard even the gay men think Britney is looking hot in Womanizer :). Why did I think of this today? Because the gentleman in question got married and I was going through his pics. I hope he lets his wife play Beyonce at home!

Songs of the day:

Nickelback: I wanna be a Rockstar (Get a front door key to the Playboy Mansion!)

Kid Rock: Sweet Home Alabama (She was anything but in between!)

Geri Halliwell: Scream if you wanna.. (Gimme some, gimme some gasoline)

Kids and Travel

2009-05-07T21:39:00.004+02:00

Lately I have been interacting a lot with people in the age group 21 to 23 years. Trying to understand their problems, trying to give them advice about their post adolescence issues. I realize it is a very delicate age.. and at that age people are very vulnerable. Everyone assumes that you are an adult and that you can take your own decisions. You are pushed into the adult world and are expected to fend for yourself. But you are new to the whole game. New job, job politics, nasty boss, tax filings, girlfriend wanting to get promoted to wife or boyfriend not wanting to commit long term. Marriage might be looming big on the cards, and a sudden realization that there is a world which is much bigger and larger and nastier than the college you studied in. It isn’t a very long time back I was there, so I know :). And I also know how close I came to making mistakes. Decisions you take at that age determine how you live the rest of your life.

The elderly tend to underestimate the post adolescence issues. I think that’s wrong. I try to be as much of a help as my job and schedule allow me to. My cousin, who is more of a dear brother to me than a cousin, is buying a car. He has decided to buy an Alto. I tried to persuade him to buy a Santro but it is out of his budget, he got his first job about a year back. He is determined not to take help from anyone and buy the car with his own money. I asked him to at least go for a higher model, you just cannot drive without power steering on Bangalore roads. I said I will be more than happy to pay the balance for the upgrade. My dear cousin declined, he settled to increase his loan amount and upgrade. I remember the time when he was in school, and I had tried to explain to him why he should study in a college where he got through by merit rather than go to a fancy college on a management paid seat. I think he has got the message. I am proud of him. And I hope that the youth of the country becomes more responsible and honest like him.

Also had some long interesting conversations with a young lady who was on the verge of deciding on a life partner within the system of arranged marriage. She declined the offer, and I think she did the right thing. I think she deserves much much better. The only problem is that she doesn’t realize it. SIGH.

Follow up from my last post. Ms. Anonymous commented that she has been to 14 countries. I was very interested in knowing which ones, so here they are: usa, serbia, slovenia, croatia, spain, france, italy, portugal, austria, holland, greece, turkey, hungary, Macedonia. (usa - 2 times, italy - 4 times, greece - many times)

As she rightly put it, it is not a big deal to visit numerous countries in Europe. You don’t need a visa and its all accessible via cheap airlines and low budget hotels. Most are safe for tourists. Ummm… but then how many people in India have visited more than 3-4 states, not for business or education, but for vacations? So, it still counts to have visited so many countries. I think I have visited and/or stayed in 10 states in India. But considering there are 35 states, I have covered just a quarter. But I was a student most of the time I was in India, I have promised myself that I will travel around when I am back.

When I came to Europe, I had a wishlist of the countries/cities I wished to visit. Here is the list, merged with the countries I have already visited:
1. France - Done, but want to explore the smaller cities once again
2. Italy - Done, but want to do one more trip to Venice
3. Czech Republic - Done
4. Holland - Done
5. Finland - Done
6. Estonia - Done
7. Sweden - I live here, but theres lots to explore, and its on the cards
8. Denmark - Done
9. Latvia - Done

Wishlist:
1. UK: Planned for next week
2. Switzerland: Planned this month
3. Greece: Certainly the next destination to be planned
4. Norway: Its SO near and I still havent gone there, shame on me
5. Egypt: They say its over rated, but I so want to see the pyramids!
6. USA: Not very keen, but have sooo many friends there, so maybe one day would like to see the famous US of A
7. Iran: Have been hearing a lot about it, would want to go there

In India:
1. Jaipur: I have always regretted not having the time/money/energy to go here. I now have a friend who lives there, hence its the next destination
2. Ooty: I know its a touristy place, but still, I would like to go to one of the isolated resorts away from the touristy hustle bustle
3. Kerala: I have been there, but want a prolonged trip to the backwaters
4. Darjelling: Once again, have been there, but its BEAUTIFUL, so a revisit HAS to be planned

Did I talk about the Travelling Crab who doesn’t want to travel. Cmmon, don’t tell me you believed it, did you? Of course I was kidding! :)

Back from Fairytale Land

2009-05-04T23:55:00.015+02:00

I am back from my first trip (of the series of 3 planned this month), tired, exhausted but refreshed and happy. There are trips that are good, and then there are trips that are perfect. This is my third cruise, the first was to Helsinki, Finland, and the other was to Talinn, Estonia. Each has been defined by different factors, mainly by:

1) The Journey: How is the weather when at sea (it can be rough sometimes)? How are the cruise programmes and cuisine? How are the ship facilities, the pubs, the duty free shopping arcade, the dance programmes, the casinos, the dancing floors and the crowd?

2) The Destination: How beautiful is the place the cruise goes to? Is it boring, is it similar to places I have already been to? Does it have interesting places to visit?

3) The Company: Last and most important, who am I travelling with? Are they fun people? Are they good company? Are they overenthusiastic or boring people who just want to sleep?

When I say this trip was perfect, it was perfect in all three aspects defined above. The journey was near to perfect, amazing weather, good sailing, no signs of a rocking boat. This wasnt the best ship I have been in, because it was smaller (the others had 13 decks, this had 9). It had only 3 pubs and 2 dancing floors and one shopping arcade, compared to the others which had more variety. But it doesnt really matter, at least to me. If I can stand at the front deck and feel the waves take me out to a perfect blue ocean in perfect sunny weather, thats all that matters. The destination, Riga, was right out of a Fairytale, the type I used to read when I was a kid. And this wasnt artificially created like Disneyland. This was real. A beautiful scenic, fairytalish city to take your breath away. And the company... just right. In short, a perfect trip!

I took 198 pictures, everyone of them a masterpiece I would like to share with you. No, I do not have one of the fancy cameras that some of my friends boast of, because I believe the most important aspect of a camera is that it should be handy, and should fit into my jeans pocket. I do not travel to exotic places to take photographs, I have seen too many people spoil their vacations (and sometimes the vacations of people they travel with) because of their obsession with their camera and photography. I have seen people not enjoying their honeymoons because they are too busy taking snaps. My vacations and trips to far away places are more beautiful than the photos show them to be and not vica versa. Because for me the pics are secondary. But the Riga pics just came out well, even with my dumb automatic camera.

I decided I would share 2-3 pics with my blog, and started selecting some pics from the 198 pics I had taken, but ended up selecting 33.

I strongly urge you to have a look at these 33 pics HERE

Why? Because it is a VERY affordable holiday. It cost me 750 SEK (thats 4,500 INR... Yes.. I am talking Indian Rupees) for the complete trip, which included the cruise tickets, really exotic meals, coffee and desert (excludes shopping). Yes it is actually THAT cheap :). It takes an Indian to figure out the cheapest way to have the perfect holiday with the cheapest price tag. Proud to be an Indian :).

And now the 7 best pics... but I still insist you see all the 33 other pics HERE

House of the Blackheads. Reminded me of the Astronomical Clock at Prague

One of the beautiful gardens in the city, the lush green took my breath away.

Another lush green garden, near the Riga Freedom Monument

The Riga Castle, reminds me of the castles in Prague. Yes Prague remains one of my best trips ever and I kept remembering Prague when I saw the Riga churches and castles

A canal with a Fairytale bridge near the Riga Freedom Monument

I am a foodie, and no tale is complete without telling you what I ate. So here is the desert of the day. Cost me some good money, but worth every penny :)

I blog, therefore I am..

2009-05-01T22:35:00.013+02:00

The line is borrowed. So I will not take credit for it. Someone asked me what my interests are. I said blogging. So he said, ah, so you write on a blog? I said yes I do, but even if I didnt I could still say that. That my interest was blogging. My audience was confused. So I explained. Blogging is not only about writing blogs. It is also about reading blogs. There are people who only read blogs. They like it and for them it is an interest. My audience was still confused. So I said, you dont have to be an author to enjoy a good book. Similarly, you can be a blog reader, but might not write on one. The frown on my audience's face remained. I realized that this is a case of multiple intellectual sclerosis. And I gave up. The guy in question thinks I am a random guy with crazy definitions. Everyone is someone else's wierdo. I have my own set of 'someone else's'. I can learn to live with that.

Resolution: I will promote the overlooked aspect of blogging. That of reading blogs. Sometimes I come across an interesting one. I will include it in my post. For the benefit of those who read blogs. The first one to be included is at the bottom of this post. Every blog does not have to be fancy. Some can be simple. There is a mother in Canada who blogs. She only writes about her two kids. The variety is amazing. Are you someone who only writes blogs and does not read any? Then you are a... umm... Lets not talk about it.

It has been a leisure weekend. I want to catch up on my lazing around. It is very important for me. And knowing of the hectic times coming up ahead (Read HERE about my travel plans in the coming month), I want to relax. Sounds funny. Catching up on lazing around. But to me its important. Participated in a volleyball tournament today. Lost. Did not play well. I am not exactly proud of my game right now. Have to improve. Resolutions, resolutions, resolutions. And while we are at it, one more. I shall join a rigorous gym regime. My office is being shifted to a new part of Stockholm. There is a fancy company gym 100 metres from my work place. Hence the new resolution. I shall also endeavor to restart playing table tennis. I am just looking for a partner.

And heres the first blog referral. Read the blog HERE .

Why this? For one I like the description:

"I write here only about myself. I know I am a narcissist.(There shall be a lot of grammatical errors. Don't point them out to me. I am not keen n losing my self confidence at present. )"

Also like the profile About Me section.

The name of the profile is Olive Oyl. About Me says simply "Popeyed. I wear specs."

I learn. Therefore I am. I try to learn from everyone around. My seniors, in age, profession and intellect. My peers. Also my juniors, they have a hell lot to teach. We always underestimate our juniors. Someone told me that my style of writing is very complex. I write long sentences. I derive sub sentences and go on and on. I use complicated conclusions. I wander in my thoughts. I agree. There is a beauty in simplicity, I have not been able to imbibe it in writing. And that is the reason why I liked the blog above. This girl writes short sentences. And makes a big impact. Compare her About Me with mine. There is a stark difference. I am proud to be me. I wouldnt change for a million dollars. But it doesnt stop me from appreciating others. And learning from others. So here is a 18 year old student (school? college?) who has taught this 27 year old "veteran" management postgraduate something about writing. I have tried to be different in this post. And have tried to write in a different way. No, I do not want to change. I am what I am. (So damn.. Thats a quote from the Lou Bega song Tricly Tricky :) ) Just want to experiment. It is fun to experiment. Else it gets boring. And me does not like boring. Hence the short sentences in this post :).

Interesting follow on from my last post: How does a cancerian travel? By hating the journey and enjoying the destination. And trying to recreate his "home" everwhere. How does a Gemini blog? By changing her blog template every 2 days, her blog every 4 days and her content every week. No exaggerations. I am a Cancerian.

Cheers!

Photo Reference: Taken by a friend on my camera. This is todays volleyball tournament, a small victorious moment and some action.

The Travelling Crab

2009-04-30T21:13:00.008+02:00

I am a Cancerian. No, I am not a frantic believer in astrology, but I find the definitions amusing enough to ponder over them once in a while. I have a few friends who have deep interest in astrology, so my generic knowledge is pretty good, even though I am not a follower of the faith (ah, believe me, it is pretty much a cult). Hence I have read about my sun sign, which is Cancer, symbolized by the crab, and surprisingly a lot of people (including me) think that I pretty much embody the description of a Cancerian to the letter. There is not a single thing written there which doesnt match my behavior, and it amuses me. Someone once told me that its the way the astrology people write the stuff, you can read any one of these and think its you. Ummm... maybe not. Even if it is that way, well its a nice muse, and I let myself indulge in it once in a while.

And sometimes it is a bit of an irony. Cancerians are known to be clingers. They cling to everything in life. Relationships, possessions, people, jobs.. and even cities. They love the concept of home. It is supposed to be a very important thing for a cancerian to have a "home" and go back to it everyday. Cancerians in effect make bad vagabonds and bad gypsies. And it holds true for me. Cancerians love the security of home, and are not fit for travelling jobs. Holds true for me. But it seems Someone up there wanted to have a good laugh at my cost. And hence wrote the script of my life with that in mind. Out of my home at age 17, I have lived in 7 cities since then. And have travelled to more than 10 states in India and 8 countries in Europe... Finland, Estonia, France, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Czech Republic and one in Asia. Dont get me wrong, I am not complaining about the wonderful opportunity I have had to see new places. I love seeing new places, its just that I dont like travelling to get to see them. Ok, I know it sounds ridiculous, but maybe its not about cancerians, its just plain simple me.

So the reason why I am writing about this? Well, the list is going to get longer.. here goes:

2nd-3rd May: Travel to Riga. The beautiful capital city of a beautiful country called Latvia. This is to celebrate a very special day in my life (those who know me, please do not ping and ask me what, the powers of Merlin shall be nullified if the answer to this deep secret is revealed). I take an A-Class Classic View cabin on a 9 storey cruise liner which takes me from Stockholm to Riga, and back the next day.

15th-17th May: Travel to Manchester. I escort my client to watch the tussle between Manchester United and Arsenal live at Manchester. Some of my football crazy friends would kill to be in my place. These are some of the few perks of being in a client facing position of one of the largest and most respected consulting companies in the world. In my profession after a certain point, playing golf, going to business dinners and networking on the side becomes your bread and butter. Yes, it seems enticing, but I have been told by some wise men that a regular 9 to 5 job is much more relaxing and rewarding. The grass is always greener on the other side.

25th-29th May: Travel to Switzerland (Zurich, Interlaken, Lucrene). A mini vacation I have promised my parents for a very long time. Planned and executed by yours truly. My parents continue to cover Rome and Paris and the seasoned traveller, yours truly, who has already visited these places returns to Stockholm.

I know I am lucky to have these opportunities. But once, just once, take a moment to think of this guy who would give anything, literally anything to have a simple unchanging life with a "home". And he ends up having all that he could ask for except this one khwaish. You have to admit, Bhagwan kuch leta hai aur kuch deta hai, so this is the deal that I have got. Well, I am not complaining.

P.S. If you are a cancerian, or know a cancerian who travels, you might be interested in reading this interesting article about the Cancer Travel Profile HERE!!!

An Evening Walk in Stockholm

2009-04-26T21:34:00.014+02:00

Took a really pleasant evening walk yesterday with my best friend.

Heres a snapshot of the places we walked by. I am no photographer unlike some of my dear friends.

Camera specifics: An old worn out Nokia phone camera 2 Megapixels

Cameraman: A man with a sharp eye for beauty. Beauty lies in the eyes of the cameraman, and not in the lens of the camera.

Spring in full bloom... the vibrant pink colors covering the trees was amazing. And it matched so perfectly with the blue of the sky at dusk. God was surely a fashion designer before He (or is it She?) became God :)

The fountains were speaking a language of their own... mirroring the color and joy that Springs brings with its flowers and beautiful weather!

The perfect road for a pleasant evening walk, made more pleasant with wonderful company!

The Royal Theatre, more beautiful than most other buildings in Stockholm... looking pretty with the Golden toppings. Plan to see a show here sometime..

One of the more expensive apparel mega stores in Stockholm, if you have a lady friend/gf/wife in tow, the English translation of the above Swedish sign means, Warning, Keep Away :) !!