Back to the future

India went back to its old form in the West Indies series - having lost three of the four matches played so far. That's Damn Right..the series is already out of hand. Atleast what they can do is to win some respect back by winning the last match to be played in a couple of days.

What went wrong, everyone seems to be asking? I frankly don't know..but I do suspect complacency - of being number 3 in the ratings, of playing against number 8. But, as the line in a movie goes (from "Any Given Sunday" ) - On any given Sunday, you can either win or loose.....

Test Message

This is just to test some new changes that I have made.

Start to a slow week

Come Saturdays, and its time to start a new week. I am not suddenly so fond of saturdays anymore. It used to be my favourite day of the week before coming to Dubai.

But, I will like this week, I think. The big boss on our floor is not in town, and that means our floor will start behaving like a bunch of school kids without a teacher. Its good and its a welcome change.

Another piece of good news is that i will soon be going home for a short visit, That will give me some time to rest and catch up on things.

I have also been thinking about my college a lot lately. I really miss those days. As bryan adams song goes - those were the best days of my life. Things just spiralled out of control, when i left the institution. Suddenly i was part of the coporate ladder and worse still, part of its food chain. I should write something about those days at college. Life looked much more meaningful then.

I am pretending to work since morning, since i realyl dont have much to do today. Everybody else is also pretty relaxed, so why should i bother anyway? Negativity, you call it? Huh.. like i care.  ;-)

Also saw another couple of movies recently. My movie streak is still continuing. Will post updates on them pretty soon.

Signing Off..

The Gym Finally..

I finally managed to join a nearby gym last week. And whats more, I have been regular in visiting the place for the last couple of days. Not bad for a start, eh ? :D

But, things have to come to an extremen, before I took this step. My weight has been increasing constantly, and I needed to do something about it. I just hope that I can sustain this enthusiasm.

This new gym is locatd inside a hotel nearby. Gym-wise, its not the best gym I have seen. But, its pretty clean, and is well aired. The cooling is good and its got a decent host of machines. Four treadmills, one cycle, and one of those nautilus monster all-in-one pack of a machine in the center, with levers, wires, and pulleys all over it. I am still learning how to operate it to its best.

The advantage in joining this place, is that its also got a suana, a steam room and also a swimming pool. The pool is nothing great, is in a weird shape at its boundries. Its maximum of maybe 25 meters wide/long at its best. Its not great for doing hard-core swimming, which by the way, I used to do in college in a 50mX25m pool.

But, coming back to present times, this sort of arrangement, I think will help me in atleast maintaining the rythm. I can mix and match, do the gym on some days, the pool on others and the steam/sauna once in a while.

Lets see. In the mean while, as they say - to health !!

Long Movie Time

Lately I have been catching up on some movies, that i had missed out earlier. So, i made a couple of trips to the local dvd rental place and the nearest theaters, and over the course of the last two weeks, have been busy.

So, here goes the list (in no particular order) :
The Chronicles of Narnia - The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Failure to Launch
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Wallace and Gromit - The curse of the Were Rabbit
Chicken Little
16 blocks
Ice Age II - The Meltdown
North Country
Wedding Crashers
Jarhead
Yours Mine and Ours
Lord of War

I think thats about it. Not all of them were a joy. Some of them were passable and worth their time and money spent. Some worth more than that - and some outright good.

Let me just try to classify this list again in the upcoming posts.

Long Movie Time : The Good Ones

North Country
Def. the best one in that list. A wonderful movie to watch. Dont miss this one out. I could see why Charlize Theron was upset on not getting the Oscar on this one. I would love to see what Rachel Weisz performed in The Constant Gardner (been trying for its dvd, no luck so far)

The Chronicles of Narnia
Another pretty decent movie - for its sets, scenes and ofcourse, makeup and costumes. Good story too...

Jarhead
I dont think many would agree with me on this one, but I liked this movie. Kind of reminded me of Full Metal Jacket - no, i am not comparing - just reminded me of it. But all in all - a good movie and has got a catchy tune throughout (I loved it!!).

Long Movie Time : The The Decent ones (Passable)

Wedding Crashers
Nothing great here - some good movie and some good looking girls. :) But worth one watch and is a good time-pass.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
I am a Harry Potter fan - more of the book than the movie.

16 Blocks
Hmm.. was ok sorts movie. Nothing worth remembering though. Am putting it here because it was not hopeless neither was it any better.

Lord Of War
A pretty interesting movie - takes you into the underground gun-running business. Nicolas Cage throws a good performance and makes u wonder sometimes where the world is headed with so many weapons.

Yours, Mine and Ours
Okay, 16 or 18 kids (i forgot the number) in a household - what ??? wtf?? are you crazy. Well, thats what this movie is all about. Some good comedy though. Watchable once.. only once! :)

Ice Age II - The Meltdown
Among the toppers in this category. Was good to see manny, sid and deigo back in action. Its a good movie and it does not dissappoint this time again. I thin they manged to pull it off pretty good, after Ice-Age I.

Long Movie Time : The Forgettables

The remaining ones are all probably in the third category :D

No list here - why??? Dont you get that from the very title of this section ??


By the way - i am posting the "Long Movie Time ..." series posts by editing their posting times, just to get them in the correct sequence when displayed.


Signing off...

Google Trends..

Google has come up with a new launch - called Google Trends. From what I understand, it gives you a couple of graphs and breaks down the search and news traffic into languages, regions, etc. So that should give you an idea about which searches are popular with what city/region/language of people.

Its interesting to try out. But, what it also tells me, that google has been tracking searches for a long time now. I bet they have a record of very search done using their engines. Every single one of them, including millions of details, like region, city, ip address, isp,maybe even personal information etc..etc. Thats a lot of information in one place. Kind of scary, if you ask me. Yeah, their philosophy is about no evil and all that, but that doesnt comfort me. We have all seens organizations, which started out in the best of interests and intentions, but lost their way and did manage to do a lot of harm then. I just hope that Google doesn't become one more of those cos. Such a massive amount of information can be very valuable and can be mis-used.

My paranoia apart - here is a shot of an interesting search I did on Google Trend. Interesting that the second and third spots for the search word "india" are held by UAE and Pakistan. :)



Btw - try out the tool at Google Trends. And the specific search that i mentioned here.

Time is indeed relative

Everyone knows that - time is relative. It passes differently on different days and while doing different things. Things that you enjoy and things that you dont.

Its the weekend here - and i managed to nearly sleep the entire day off. Imagine, I only get two such in a week, and I have already wasted one of them sleeping it off. I went to sleep late last night, at about 3.30 am, after returning from a local pub, where a couple of us had grouped up. But, I woke up at 9.30 am today morning, that way most of the day was still in my hand. Btw, its wonderful to wake up on your own once in a while, and not to the shrill and disturbing sound of an alarm. They say - that the first things in the morning goes a long way in deciding what your day will turn out to be. So, you can guess, what sort of days, I must be having I am waking to the sound of the alarm everyone. Even the world is not sugar-coated -its the ALARM, indeed!!!

Anyway, coming back to today - i got up at 9.30am and went about the usual things that I do on weekends. Logged onto the net, caught a couple of friends online and chatted for some time. EVerything went well, till right after lunch time. I was reading a book and i fell asleep for nearly 3-4 hours. See, 4 good hours gone. :(

But, I did wake up with a good and amazing relaxed feeling of laziness and idleness. Maybe it was worth after all.

A Cup and a Trophy!

Imagine what could be so much of a privilege that it needs to kept under lock and key away from the common eye and the access of lesser mortals like me.

Come..on.. take a wild guess!!!

Now, if you have guessed it right, I can only imagine that you have either already identified my company and its ways, or you have been working in a similarly pathetic place.

Coming to the secret closely guarded - these are paper cups. Yeah, there it is - its out in the open now... paper cups - which you can probably buy for like a pack of 20 for the cost of two diet cokes.

These famous Paper cups (given their celebrity status - I shall write those as names complete with caps) are kept under lock and key in a cupboard in our kitchen in the office. Now these are only given to the senior managers of the company when they want it. Most of the managers luckily use their own cups for coffee and tea. 'Others' like me have to live with cheesy and 'cheapest of the cheap' plastic cups. These are so thin that you can't hold it hard, without distorting or nearly mutilating the poor cup. Pour in some hot water - (you cannot avoid this, unless you make coffee with cold water) and thing nearly melts - you can see it actually. There would stretch and shrink marks all over the cup after pouring in some hot water.

Now, I am not much of a tea or coffee drinker and so, I haven't brought my own cup to the office (which I regretted, just this once). But I felt a sudden urge to drink some coffee (I missed breakfast, and the coffee; I thought would hold my hunger till lunch). While I made the coffee, another senior guy came in looking for some coffee himself. But, when he say the normal plastic cups, his look changed to a mix of revulsion and disgust (aren't they very close anyway - hell - I just put it in for the effect). So, he called the guy who is in charge of the pantry and asked him for the better paper cups....oops, sorry, Paper Cups!!!

Mr. Pantry-Incharge came and he takes out a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocks one of the cupboards - to take out a pack of the paper cups, casually takes out one, hands it over to the Mr. Senior and then starts putting the remaining back. So, I ask him politely - can I have one of those?? - I am still stirring my coffee and my plastic cup already looks like it has been exposed to fire! He gives me an amazing look - which I cannot decipher - and then says "hmmm.." then "ahem"...and then "very few cups...(cough)....mainly for managers - You can use the plastic cup". And then he quickly avoids my  look, locks the cupboard and rushes out.

Mr. Senior looks at me and says - "wow..he didn't give you one" - and my brain goes "yeah..did you notice that???.. how nice. Do you want my plastic desolved coffee..GUESS NOT, eh??!!!". I just manage to blurt - "Yeah, Paper Cups are a privilege here.". And I walk out, throw the coffee in the trash. My hunger was gone anyway.

Seriously, I didn't see this coming..even in my wildest dreams. Paper Cups - the coveted Paper Cups..Damn!! Looks like I might not be making my own coffee in the office for a long time to come.

This place never stops surprising me. It can spring one, when you least expect it.

White it is...

I managed to watch Memoirs of a Geisha a couple of days back. Its definitely one of the better movies, that I have watched in some time. The locales in Japan are really beautiful and really blends in and suddenly the make-up and the way of dressing up as a geisha doesn't look so odd anymore. Think about it - i am not talking about the kimono or the hair-do, but the way the face is made-up. All that white paint (what exactly is that??) would look so ghastly (or ghostly?? :D) in a more normal setting. Why, it could even scare the life of some kids (also some adults), if you happened to bump into one in the middle of the night on a lonely road? It would be funny, isn't it ?

But, in Japan and in such a setting, it only looks very familiar.


Btw - the movie is pretty good. I know there was a lot of hype around it, and the fact that it was factually correct etc..etc..and that it had glamorised etc.., no comments on all that. But, as a movie, I liked it and definitely one of the better movies of last year (it came out in 2005, right?).

Another week passes by..

And as another week comes to a close, life goes on as usual. In fact, it has become so monotone, that I am not sure, what something 'exciting' feels like. I haven't felt that way in a long time. Don't you feel that sometimes? As if, if there was something that you could do to feel that rush, that excitement.

Coming back to more mundane things, there is nothing much going on. Work at the office, is a little hectic, with lots of presentations and excel files that I seem to be meddling with from morning from evening. Actually, there is one big meeting coming up in a couple of days, and our team is presenting something during that - and I have been working on preparing the slides and getting the data for the slides. But, you know, there is just one annoying and bugging thing with presentations, specially when you are making them and then gets reviewed by your boss, and then his boss :) Its this thing - the presentation never gets finalized till the last hour. Your boss will ask for some cosmetic changes - change the colour here and change the comment there etc..etc. and the way things are presented. Funnily, when he shows it to his boss - big boss will revert some of the changes and suggest some of his own. :D

So, you have revisions and then more revisions and then even more. More than often, you start numbering them to keep track of versions and revisions, and soon you will reach from "Final Presentation XXX 1.0.ppt " to "Final Presentation XXX 12.2.3.ppt". You get so tired of the numbers that you then start calling them "Later Presentation 3.2.ppt" and then "Latest Final Presentation5.0.ppt". You can see whats going on here. It doesn't end here - the worst part is when, lets say, after a couple of weeks you need to pull this same presentation out again, you just cannot locate the last one which was finally presented.

Anyway, lets see how it goes- but I expect I will be busy for another couple of days due to this presentation.

See, how pathetic my life has become, this is all the excitement that I am having in my life and am writing about them !! Damn.. whats come of this world and my life.... ???

Ooh Meee Gaawd..Its May DAY!!!

With shock, as I accidentally looked at my mobile and noticed the date, I realised that we are into the fifth month of the year. And why do I have this feeling that I am still at the beginning of the year?? Why is that feeling lingering on and not going away??

I have nothing against the feeling, just the consequences are scary. Suddenly I realised that this year is nearly about half-done. One more month and we'll be in the sixth month and there are only 12 months in the year. Its the number 5 of the month May that scared me today morning.

It also tells me, that time is running out and very fast at that. At the beginning of this year, I felt that this year, I should do something about where I am headed in my career. I have ideas of doing a MBA, or an advanced degree in some other area that I am related to, or going back to the academia for doing some research. All of these were thoughts and still are. That's why, the date on the mobile, scared me so much. The year is nearly half gone, and I have not even started on anything.

Its scares the very daylights out of me !!!

People Are Strange..

Of course, they are strange. They always have been. That's why they are so interesting.

Why am I putting out all this? Well, a small sequence of events have just proved that above statement to me again. I was just reminded of it, and wanted to write on it.

So, lets back to the story of what these sequence of events, as I call them, are ?

In the past, I have more than once ranted my frustration on my company and why I am beginning to dislike working here. Most of the reasons, have not been very clearly said, mostly because they have been written in fists of rage and desperation. Of course, reason abandons you at such times, and passion takes over. So, I have ended up writing things about my boss, my particular profile of work etc. But, there are things that cause these things. An organisation has its own identity and its own distinct culture and a 'way' of doing things here. That's what I am not so comfortable with here. The rants against the boss, and against my work are all specific instances of what is a bigger problem.

So, anyway, as you can guess, I am not the only person who has faced these issues. Others have also faced it, sometimes much more than me and have voiced their concerns to whom it should have mattered, and when they started turning a deaf ear, to friends over mugs of beer and pegs of vodka and whiskey.

And thus, I shall introduce my central character for today's' post (apart from me...hehehe:)) - lets just call him "U".

Now, U is a good friend of mine and he was one who had been in this place for long enough to understand that things were not so great with this place. But, since he is more patient than I am, he continued in his daily work, without a lot of complaining or whining. I would have turned rebel a couple of years ago, if I was in shoes. But, that's not the point - his shoes are not mine and vice-versa, our shoes would not fit anyway!

Gradually, U reached a stage where he started feeling that enough was enough. And that led him to what it has already led me to. The first step and stage of changing your job - the ceremonious event that we shall call "the CV updation" routine. I am already there, even though, I have been this place for only about 1/4th the amount of time, that U has been here. Let me just remind of the 'shoe' thing to stress why it took his x amount of time, while it just took me x/4 amount of time. I am not more smarter or anything, its just that we are different people. He had more patience and perseverance, which I lack.

Without digressing too much - with purest of intentions, and a couraged heart, U started his job-hunt. He sent out those mails (with CVs as attachments) into the world. He, being a good natured guy, kept us updated on every turn of events. (see, that's one more difference, I would keep it all hush-hush, till one day I could finally drop the bomb and say I was shifting jobs next week :D). Oh..sorry, back to U again. The first couple of weeks for U did not go well. He did not get the number and kind of calls for interviews that he would have liked. It slowly started getting to him - to the extent that he started having doubts over his abilities. But, then a tide came and with that a plethora of calls, interviews, so much so that he had to put off and reschedule a couple of interviews to avoid clashes.

As good luck would have it, he got a couple of offers soon. Good news, eh.!! End of story, you guess? Hold on...

U finally got a very good offer with a good organisation in India, and whats more, very close to his home-town. Jut to digress again, in India, the concept of a home-town is very important. Families are important and your hometown is just the haven of all your relatives and your parents. Additionally, this place is also where you would have spent most your childhood, schooling etc. So, the place always holds a special place in your heart. So, I considered this guy, very lucky to have found this new job. It was well-paying, it was close to his 'home-town', and it was in India. He had been looking to go back to India also for a while, because of his plans to get married sometime soon. It all looked as if, it was working like clock-work.

But, then something called a retention strategy started work. Simply put, the company wanted to retain him. Enter my next character - whom I shall call FUB (for Future U's Boss). FUB was not U's boss, but knew him through work. Now, FUB wanted to expand his team and when he heard about U's move, he swooped in and asked him if U would like to work with him. Of course, U was flustered and confused, because FUB was a powerful figure in the bank. To make things more attractive, FUB also mentioned that he could increase U's pay and designation, if needed. Now, this put U thinking - and U made some strong demands in terms of a pay-hike and a designation.

Now,as I hear from U - they have agreed to the increase in pay, but the designation thing is still under discussion. From how excited and happy he seemed - it looks like he has already made his decision to stay on and move into FUB's team. I am happy that he is excited and happy with this. But, he made me wonder - he didn't not want to move because of a salary issue or a designation issue. He didn't have to resign to solve them, if he had a issue. Yeah, haggling after resigning gives you a lot more power and he might have got a better deal this way. BUT - he did not resign because of these issues. His reasons were more of the company in which he worked and his idea to move back to India, and plans about marriage. Of course, all this seems irrelevant to him now and i wonder why.

If I had been in his shoes, (i am sure, you must be getting tired of this shoe!!) - I would not even have thought about a retention offer. The job change was not for due my role, it was bigger than that - it had to do with the company, its culture, about returning back to your own country and working there, marriage plans. I would not even have thought once about the retention strategy. And in general, I think he is getting himself into a fix now by taking the retention. People know that you had jumped the boat once and will always think that you will do it again (NOT GOOD!!). Then, even if due to some genuine reason, you have to quit very soon, they are all going to blame you for stabbing them twice (argumentative sakes at least).

People are strange. Not just him, but him, me, you and everybody. We all think differently. That's what is so interesting...see, in this case, I could write about all this, while sitting at office! :D