PC!

The relevance of PC still eludes me. And for those of us whose acronym quotient has been dimmed by old age (me included) I should advise that you should add this term to your vocabulary if you already don’t have it there. PC doesn’t have a specific definition. I have always aimed to keep this a universally readable space, hence I shall overcome my temptation to use more appropriate expansions of the acronym and settle for Polite Conversation. Its the conversation you have when you meet someone and you don’t know exactly what to talk about. So you have to fill up the silence and you ask him questions whose answers you are least interested in knowing. Yes.. and the relevance of PC still eludes still me. Maybe because I wouldn’t really call myself a champion at PC. I would rather suffer the unease of silence then carry out a inane and impotent conversation.

You do PC when you meet your boss, colleague, client, competitor or the person you hate most at work. I am not good at it. I am good at GC (Genuine Conversation) but not so good at PC. The limitation of GC is you can carry it out only with people you genuinely connect with. I admire people who are highly skilled at PC, (some even make a living out of it in my profession) and I try making up for my lack of skills in PC by connecting with most people I come across so that I can carry out a good GC. At least I can admit frankly that when it comes to PC, I suck. There are some who are not good at it but who just won’t give up. And sometimes it backfires. Like the time when a guy from the competitor firm who tries hard to be good at PC asked me the reason for a cut on the bridge of my nose, and I had to tell him that the reason was too scandalous to tell in front of a formal business group. The shade of red on his face was the most interesting one I have ever seen.

A close friend today got a call from a recruitment consultant who said he had got to know about his profile from LinkedIn and would want to make a job offer. I was impressed, this is what I call applied technology. Connecting the right people across the world. Being able to get job offers without even applying for jobs, just by the virtue of having your professional profile on a portal. It is probably the best solution to the age old problem of finding the right people for the right role, across boundaries of race and nations. I logged in to explore LinkedIn (I have one of the most updated profiles on the portal, I really believe in LinkedIn as a professional network that adds value). And it was interesting to see that even Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have their profiles up there, which I think are genuine profiles. More interestingly, Barack Obama is a second level connection in my network :). Well, now I guess you can call me a well connected person.

The Barometer shows “High”

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!

The Youthful Sojourns of Life :)

I am always apprehensive when I try to mention this to anyone as inevitably they think that I am boasting. But what the hell, I am perceived to be a show-off anyway, so let me write about it.. especially as I have been thinking about this the whole day.
I am too young for the job I do… to the extent that it’s the first thing people notice when they meet me at work. To give you a rough idea, I am the youngest person in my team and the person who is second youngest is around 9 years elder to me. And in case you find it amusing, or think it’s a nice situation to be in , let me tell you, it’s the worst thing that can happen to you if you happen to do the kind of job I do..
Well I will admit it’s a flattering thing to blog about (ah, I just told you in my last post that I was successful dude didn’t I.. yes I am such a narcissist), but in the real world, well lets just say it causes a lot of issues. I run the risk of not being taken seriously, of being labeled as immature, ‘too young’ to do a high profile task or being included in a high profile team and lately ran into a guy who told me that I was an “angry young man” and cant be taken seriously because I was a bit assertive at a meeting.
“Ageism” can be as bad as racism. But everyday I realize that being young gives me such an edge over people who are elder to me. And so I never really complain about being the youngest in the team. But it also makes me wonder.. will I feel insecure as I grow older and there are younger Merlins vying for the wizards position in Arthurs court? Maybe, but who cares. I am still at the age where I can shrug and say ‘who cares’ :).
Apart from the serious effects it has in my job role, there are some very amusing incidents related to it. Like the first time I joined this role and uploaded my photo on the company portal (its kinda mandatory.. I like it actually, its like having facebook on ur company portal). It is then that my new Swedish manager called me. Swedes are extremely polite. They are soft spoken and very refined. This manager was someone who adored me and had a very good opinion of me, so he took extra care to not offend me. So heres how the conversation went:
Manager: Isnt it a better idea to put up a semi formal picture?
Me: But the one I have put up is semi formal.
Manager: Yes it is, but you have short hair and a t-shirt
Me: But you are also wearing a t-shirt in your pic and how does the short hair matter?
Manager: Umm.. its not abt semi formal actually, I was thinking a different look would make people take you more seriously
Me: (confused) Different look?
Manager: Yes.. like you can wear a suit, take a pic now with your longer hair, maybe wear specs
Me: Ah, you want me to look older?
Manager (blushing): Yes.. I mean.. I don’t want to offend you but you look pretty young don’t you think, especially as you are in a role where you make decisions and influence senior managers on the client side
Me: Not really but that’s ok, I will change the pic

So I have a pic in a suit with a serious growl on my face, and I hope now it doesn’t remind people of Cerelac anymore. SIGH!
Another one was with a lady colleague who belongs to a different team. I exchanged e-mails with her for nearly a year on formal matters. And then there was an escalation and we had to meet up to decide how to address it and so I went to the pre-booked meeting room.
Her (As soon as I enter): I am sorry but this room is booked
Me: I know, I booked it myself, you must be Rachel.. I am Merlin.
Her (shakes hands with a surprised look): You are Merlin??
Me: Yes, you seem to have a doubt?
Her: No.. er.. you seemed totally different in mails, you don’t look like Merlin?
Me: And how should Merlin look like?
Her: Er…. Maybe a bit older?

At least she was honest. Most people aren’t, but I know the look which says ‘You are Merlin??!! you gotta be kidding’.

My gtalk status reads “Mid month resolution.. I will blog everyday :)” and I get a lot of sarcastic comments on that (Some have commented in the posts below) because for some reason I have given the image that I am a very busy guy. I don’t deny it, but I firmly believe that every man should have the time to love his girl (if he has one), talk to friends (he should have some), spend time with his parents/kids, and blog. If he cannot do these very basic activities, he should reconsider his job, maybe take a sabbatical and spend a year being with his loved ones and blogging. On a serious note, I want to blog everyday because I like blogging. It makes me feel that I can think of things beyond my work issues (and being the youngest in the team is not really a work issue). It makes me feel freshened up just putting my thoughts down. My dad practices Yoga. My mom believes and spends time in meditation. My best friend writes morning pages. I blog. It is an equally spiritual and refreshing exercise. For those of you who are bloggers, I don’t need to convince you, for those of you who arent I will say.. try it. For those who have tried and given up, well, even yoga and meditation are not meant for everyone.
Today was a sunny day and it was positive four degrees. One of the brightest days so far. Hence I have forgiven fate for bringing all the escalations and work related tensions in my life. As long as there is sunlight, a nice home to come back to, some interesting people to chat with, and space to blog in, I am a happy man.

Quote of the day:
“"I worry that all of my wisdom is derived from bad analogies."
"Ratbert, sometimes a good wine has to age before it is perfect."
"So... I'll get smarter over time?"
"To the extent that you are like a grape."
- Ratbert and Dogbert in Dilbert