The Greatest Gift

Yes, this is going to be philosophical per se. I just can't help myself. I love to think, over think sometimes, but yes I do. 

People long for gifts. So much that they would exchange pleasantries and wait for the guests to just leave as quickly as possible, of course, after having a dinner or a lunch, that, to show some social courtesy and all. 

I never cherished material goods. Yes, as a child, I wanted few toys here and there, only because I was curious to know what is that toy all about. But now, when I am an adult, not only legally but also mentally, I don't even buy a new pair of jeans unless I am completely out of anything to cover my lower body. Yes, that type. My mom and dad have been asking me to go for some random shopping, but I have been procrastinating it. Well, let's just jump to the main point. 

Today, I got the greatest gift of my life. And as you might have guessed it, it is not some precious and expensive stone, toy or the type. My gift is priceless. It will not perish till my death, and no one can take it away from me. But I will say that I was lucky to receive that gift, because there was every possibility that the gift could have vanished in thin air, and no one would have known. Tonight, before I close the door to my room, I heard a simple line that completely changed my attitude towards life. My grandfather said - "Apai is the best of the lot". Within nano-seconds, a flood of emotions engulfed me. Lots of memories, full of accusations, mistakes, glories and set-backs started rushing through the mind gates. Finally, someone understood me. Finally someone was in resonance with me and appreciated me in the right way. This was genuine, right from the heart, from the most experienced person of the family, which has no dearth of talented or professionally successful individuals. But he chose me, not because of those worldly glories, but because of the inherent me. The actual me, who is hidden there inside, away from the world, suffers in silence, and smiles with humility. I find it tough to be honest about how I feel about someone, but all doubts vanish when it is him. When all failed, even my own parents, he understood me. He amazes me. I guess that is what true life experience is. I salute you, Dadu. I pray for your long life, and wish to see you holding my child in your arms.

Save me

I am pretty damn fucked right now. I feel like my life is just moving along and I just can't do anything about it. I feel aimless. My eyes have become weaker. I have stopped going to gym and so I even feel physically weak. I spend the whole day in my room, watching mindless movies and occasionally worrying about MBA. Whenever I think about it, I go blank. I have failed so many times that now it seems that it is something I am not meant to do. It is just fucking up my brain. In addition, I have no one to discuss all this stuff with. No friends, offline or online. No one. Occasional meetings with random people from TIME is not what I call actual friendship. They don't know that I am going to appear for CAT, the fourth time. I have heard them made fun of a guy they know who is also going to attempt for the fourth time. I didn't respond then. Presently, I am an addict. I wake up everyday, brush my teeth, and just start watching movies. Random movies, which may not even have seen the light of a theater. I hate myself right now. I could use this time so effectively. I could work on my essays, get done with TOEFL, get my transcripts from the college, apply to various other places, learn web application programming, enhance my Unix shell scripting and what not. But here I am, just losing my way and focus. I need a mentor who can hold my hands and lead me to the correct path. Someone who would drag me out of my bed and give me hope that I can. 

I seem to have become someone who has forgot what is human touch. I analyze so much that everything seems useless. My confidence gets a big big hit when I can't decipher the codes of life, and when others who were not that great once are now achieving great heights of glory. 

Am I alone here ? Is there no one here who is facing the same problem as I am. Why can't I find anyone who is like me and can understand me. Well, I am a loser. I just don't want to get better. People don't think too much and are not always judging their actions on a moral scale. I do. I do it every time and hence, I lose focus and just start thinking instead of doing. No one will remember the things I thought, every thing that they will remember is my work - my actions. Action speaks louder than words do, yes, but they do so even more than thoughts do. I lost a friend recently. No he/she is not dead, but is not going to talk to me anymore. Things became complicated and finally ended. It was abrupt and I was fine with it for few days, but I realized that he/she was proving to be good distraction from all these thoughts. I was enjoying the TIME classes but my recent failures in solving simple math problems have brought me down to my knees. I am trying to get up but I can't. I am just tired of failures. I don't know when this slump will end, but I hope it does soon. The child in me has already committed suicide, and now I see negative in every aspect of life. Fear has taken over my soul and I just can't do anything without shaky hands. Is it the effect of excessive internet/computer usage or am I really mentally sick right now ? I don't know the answer, and presently, I don't want to know. I go to sleep with dreadful thoughts that I am going to die a virgin, and I will never get to love anyone or receive love from anyone. Even if someone loves me, I will drive him/her away as I am this skeptical bastard. I have forgot to trust people, and to share thoughts - my thoughts, not my neighbor's thoughts. I can't talk to people. I fear the crowd. I just like to watch them from a distance.

I fear my past. Still, the waste of my college life, supposed to be the golden years of my life, has been haunting me. I can't call myself an engineer. I regret that I didn't pay attention during my college days. My actions during those time were horribly disoriented and there was no one who could tell me that I was not doing the right thing in a right way. I lost my sole strength - my intelligence. My innocence was brutally killed and it has been buried very deep in the corners of my pitiful life. My stream has changed. I have become a non-innovate salary crunching individual who has apparently lost his individuality in the crowd. I used to do things because I loved to do those, but now I feel I am not doing those things any more. I used to play, I used to sing, I used to create music. All that is gone now. I will not say that the music in me is dead, but it is not able to come out due to all the fucking shit in my head.

I see my brothers and sisters, and I feel jealous. I see joy and focus in their eyes. They have somehow figured out the code of life. They are enjoying friendships, failures, successes, and are doing it with great attitude. I wish I was one among them, and could share my life with such great cousins. Being the eldest, I am alone at the top and everyone hides stuff from me and don't really care for me that much. I was once the golden boy of my family, but I am the rogue boy who always fails.

My eyes hurt now, bye.

Appraisal of my company

Year-end blues are here again, and everyone is being robbed of his/her savings, when he/she realizes that it is high time that one should invest in something to avoid paying heavy sums as taxes to the government, which apparently has developed a habit of wasting public money in corruption scams and inefficient fund allocations. But, this post is not another blog post which one can archive as a proof to the non-governance of the government, it is about me and my company (X). Before the managing director of my company can decide on my appraisal, I would like to stack up my opinions on my company,which I joined 1 year back. So, here it goes.

Overview:

To begin with, my experience with X has been absolutely beautiful. Right from day one, I always felt that I am learning something new and exciting, and more importantly something different and exclusive from others. The dynamic nature of a start-up coupled with individual independence resonated with my vision, and with time helped me bring out more strengths from within. I grabbed this rare opportunity and delved deeper into both the technical and business aspects of each client I worked with. Being a quick learner, I not only delivered much more than what was expected from a resource with only 2 years of experience, but also developed strong relationships with clients, who recalled us for further phases of the project. I have been part of all major projects and even extended my role to recruitment when the time arrived. But, of course, even such a beautiful experience cannot be perfect, and is embodied with scars which are few in number but brings down the rosy picture, slightly.

In the next section, I would analyze my contribution, my potential to contribute in future engagements, studded with examples from the last year, and then put everything into the performance framework which has been accepted in our company.

1. Attendance: 

The very first aspect of the performance is office attendance i.e. being physically present in office. Yes, I totally agree that I lay way behind the norm in this regard and hence have been the victim of ridicule from my peers, but I am absolutely sure of the fact that my physical absence has in no way caused any loss to the company. To start with, there are various reasons which can be cited for my absence. First, my place of residence. I live so far away from the office that travelling encompasses 5 hours of my daily life. It seems profligate and inefficient when the tasks you are working on involves utmost urgency and proactive response. At times, the tasks are individual in nature and do not need help or guidance from team members. If I take the example of the DOE project, even though many of the tasks were not individual in nature, the delivery time would have been adversely affected if I had to visit the office every day as it would have taken away valuable 5 hours from my day. Also, there was a time when there was apparently no work at all - not even the internal projects. That time saw the most of my physical absence. Further, the time spent alone at home helped me recall and revise many concepts and experiment a lot more with the technology than would have not been possible otherwise. This brings me to the second point - the environment at office. One thing that I have observed is the efficiency of my working capacity at both home and office. At home, I am disturbed by nothing and by no one, and hence my efficiency is at the fullest. But in office, various distractions (not the doubts or clarifications asked by team members) are prevalent which reduce the smooth flow of thoughts and hence increase the implementation time of things that do not need concerted effort. That said, I have not missed any important part of team building which took place, be it project work or otherwise. Thirdly, on a more personal front, I had to attend to some important responsibilities at home. I had to accompany my mom to regular health check ups since my dad was out of the country for some time. But this was only temporary and not the major reason.

To summarize and to propose a strategy, I would say, rather pledge, that from now on, you would not face any complains on the attendance front whatever the situation be. If I falter beyond the allowed limit of 20 holidays, you are free to deduct my salary on day to day basis. And this limit would not hold true in case of tight schedules during client engagements when my contribution is more important than my physical presence in office. Also, this limit would extend in case I work extra days, in form of Saturdays or Sundays or both.

2. Quality of Work:

I can say, without a doubt, that the solutions or the code that I have delivered throughout, be it client engagements or the internal projects, were of epitome quality. Given my range of experience, I have used all my analytical and interpolation power to learn the best way of delivery, be it code or even a video demonstration for internal project. I feel that this point brings no debate to the table.

3. Time:

This parameter basically means - how much work is completed? Is time in office well spent or is it wasted? As per this definition, I believe there are no instances of incomplete work from my side, and I have never "wasted" my time in office, in fact, my focus has always been on increasing my value, and hence many a time, when there is no internal or external project work, I solve programming questions so that I develop a new skill or a new way of implementing things. This feature has helped me a lot to translate knowledge from one domain to other, and understand the back-end of various tools in place.

4. Client Relations:

It is another point which is non-debatable, as both of us know how the clients have responded to my work and the my work ethic. Never have I hesitated to go an extra mile for them, and hence maintained a very good rapport with them.

5. Profitability:

Well, this is something that is not in my hands. Yes, to some extent, I can deliver new ideas, new methodologies, etc but this is something which depends entirely on the value of the project I have been put into. Bringing projects for the company was never in my job profile, although I never mind bringing them. But again it is something that is not in my expectations list, and so cannot be used against me for my low profitability, if any. Whenever I have been on projects, I have been extremely valuable and hence the profit margin that I bring to the company is huge.

6. Training:

This is yet another point where I have left no bounds. Right from day one, I have been training on various tools, which are uncommon and have no trace on the internet. But my training was never restricted to the technologies in which we had projects. I started capturing the basic concepts of JAVA with the help of the book which you had in the office. I even participated in few online contests where I applied my concepts and solved the problems successfully.

The points mentioned above were my justifications, reminders and examples of the value that I bring, but there is another part to the whole appraisal framework, that is - the 360 degree feedback, which essentially includes my feedback to the company. The next section will deal with it.

Positives:

As I have said above, X provided me a lot of opportunities to enhance my growth and increase my value. Firstly, one of the most important aspect has been the exclusivity of the technologies in which we are dealing, and also the in-depth training of it. This is a very big positive. Secondly, the exposure to Informatica's environment, be it technical details or the marketplace, has been a boon to me. Being an inquisitive person, I always like details of everything, and that's what the in-depth training of Informatica has done. The marketplace products boosted my confidence. It placed me in an international arena, where the products developed by me can be seen by professionals worldwide. Thirdly, the independence of thought has been liberating and hence I always feel special and being valued. This aspect provided me a lot of opportunity to explore and experiment, and being an opportunist, I never procrastinated in grabbing them.

Negatives:

Although positives steal the show, still there are some negatives that are embedded in the picture. They are just some observations or opinions from my perspective. Firstly, the promise of an incoming project with transparency. I agree that there are uncertainties involved in the field of business, but giving a sort of false hope/promise that we are about to land into a client engagement is something I didn't like. This is not a one time phenomenon. This has happened many times and we all are frustrated with this aspect. It becomes difficult to bring the element of trust in such promises. Yes, there were projects and we worked hard on them, but for the last 6-7 months, we have not applied our working knowledge on the niche tools. This could easily bring our value down as a resource and erode our existing knowledge. Also, it becomes very tough to keep oneself motivated only through training and not actually applying the concepts and tricks that we learn. Training, I believe, is just an introduction, the main conceptualization starts with experience. Secondly, team work is not unilateral. This perspective applies specially to me. Before you hired the trio, if I may call them so, there was no problem with team integration as such. But since then, there is an obvious polarity in the team. I, being the odd man out, have ,almost on all occasions of team work, either being ignored or being not informed about important advancements/learning irrespective of my physical presence in office. This happens even now, and it is I, who keeps on checking with them to get updates on the projects/training. I am not blaming them for this, but this is what it is. They know each other well, they live together, they go out together (even during office timings), so there is a natural cohesion among them. They are bound to share things naturally among themselves. But they never do it with me on a person to person basis, unless I am at the source of that issue. Also, there has been an unfortunate incident where one of them messaged me, by mistake, where he was back biting against me for my unnecessary mails to you, stating that I am trying to gain some extra points from you by sending more mails and stealing their idea, which in fact came up after an discussion, and hence I mentioned "we" in the mail instead of "I". I completely ignored it, and let it go for a better future. Since that incident, I reduced my interference so that any one doesn't get a chance to say such things about me. So, it is not that 'team-work' actually happens when I am physically present. I try my best to inform them of my learning, but they never talk to me in first person. I need to capture all their learning/opinion/views in third person. 

So, this concludes this blog post, and just to be clear, this is not something I actually mailed/said to my managing director. This is something that I feel inside and may never come out. So, blog is the way to capture such things. May be one day when I move on to some other place, I get to say a final word.

The Newspaper Battle

Before I go further, this post is not a write-up on which newspaper is the best or worst in the market and neither it engulfs any supreme or high court ruling involving any newspapers.

The word "battle" here, is not enough to explain my situation here. Well, to give a short background, I have been reading (at least trying to) a lot of newspaper lately. It includes both the paper form and the pixel form. My day starts with Economic Times. It builds on Times of India's e-paper and ends with Hindu. The class on Reading comprehension stressed a lot of reading editorials. So, I try to make sure that I read at least those. Now, what has happened within these few weeks can be deemed as both amazing and frustrating. My politically ignorant brain has suddenly developed a skill to detect the nuisances behind the manipulative comments by our politicians. A more close look into the economy of our country has helped me understand some aspects of budget and its terminology. My chauvinistic anti-government opinions are now misplaced with fact based and well informed judgments. Not only has my patience with reading reached a new height but also the knowledge gain is turning out to be helpful in igniting discussions with Ankit, my colleague, who has a good running knowledge of general finance. This new found ability to judge the actions of raising service taxes, custom duties and excises have changed me. Now, I don't waste much time in repenting my past actions, in fact, I don't get the time now. But, then what is the battle ?

Well, every coin has two sides, and unfortunately, there is another side to this rosy picture too. With so much information at hand, my intuitive part of the brain starts rejecting new information and becomes over confident. Instead of deep and inclusive reading, my brain starts the surface reading and this leads to dissatisfaction. Being someone who has to know every tiny detail of everything, cheating oneself is the biggest crime that I can commit. May be I am too hard on myself, but this is who I am. I like details, specifics, and to know that how the things add up to a bigger picture. Whenever I skip an article in the newspaper, I kick myself hard for not reading that. I become paranoid inside. "May be there was something very important which would be immensely useful later" - this is what every article brings to my mind. But realistically speaking, reading each and every word and article of a 20 odd page newspaper is no joke. I try to read most of them, but have managed an efficiency of only 30% till now. This is the battle. Trying to reach the full potential. One bad habit I have is that I prefer quick results, and hence the pressure on my mind is immense under such circumstances. The only way to reduce the pressure is confidence, and confidence can only be achieved when I perform well - not according to the world but according to me and my norms. Till then, the battle continues.

It's T.I.M.E

Well, I joined T.I.M.E almost a month back. Quant has been an undisputed leader among the topics that have been covered, but verbal is slowly picking up. Meanwhile, I have made some friends among the lot. Before I go there, let me take into account the demographics of the class. Most of the students here, are in the first year of their job or in the last year of their college. I, being the eldest and with more than two years of experience, belong to a different clan altogether. Many of them haven't written the exam before, and hence are facing the questions for the first time. Despite all this, my quantitative skills have helped me create an influence and presence in the classroom. Also, the revelation of me being an IITian has furthered the cause. In the midst of this influence, I have been able to make some new friends, if I may call them so. The difference here, unlike the other recent friend groups where the motive was competitive, is that the gains are mutual, and the whole group can act as a potential support and reconciliation group. Earlier, when I prepared alone, various thoughts and doubts crept up in my mind but they went answered or were lost among the daily chores of job life. But now, I can connect with similar minded or rather similar focused people who would help me get over those doubts or questions. Also, my long lost weapon i.e. intimidation by knowledge or power of mathematics is slowly gaining raw material. Although, the road ahead is steep and full of multi-dimensional challenges, this new stream has added some dynamic to my otherwise dull and insular life.

Before I forget to mention the names of some of them, here is the small list - Shobhit, Apratim, Vishak and one guy whose name I will ask tomorrow :)

Let's see how this phase unfolds. 

Life Changes

Well, yes, life does change. Reading some old blog posts from my other blog and watching some old videos, I realized that I have become a diffident slave to the most universal master, i.e. Time. Well, literally speaking, I have joined the TIME classes and the journey is too nascent to be of any significance right now. The "Feasthunt" project is moving at a snail's pace and has now become more a burden than an achievement. On the job front, lack of projects have given me ample time to match up with many of the TV episodes. Although, the recent training and labs have transcended me to another level of maturity in handling our main software, Informatica, the setback in securing a seat in ISB has humbled me below par. Apparently, the most striking achievement of them all is my weight reduction (14 kilograms).

The journey I started with this blog has not ended yet, and may not end ever. After all it is the journey of "being myself". How can I ever stop being me ? It has just changed its course.

Recently, I read somewhere that the person whom you can fool the most is "yourself". These words struck me immediately. Not because I have learnt something new, but because I suddenly realized the reason for my recent failures - I have been fooling myself. I have been trying to mold myself into someone who would like to get accepted somewhere. I forgot the basics and focused on the shallow dynamics. Depth is the key, the deeper, the better. Clarity is the elixir, the clearer, the better. Time is the alibi to some astonishingly simple questions of life. The only struggle is to find them in the archives of our experiences. Those who fight this struggle, win, and those who don't, struggle.

Now, at this point of time, I am already in the middle of that struggle - a new beginning, powered by the golden archives of my life, when basics were focal points and dynamics seemed natural. As I am moving on, I am slowly realizing what were the things that were lost in the middle. Now, I just need to go back, fetch them, and continue being myself.

Diary 224: No Office and No Tv series day

Yesterday I slept at around 3:00 am. Today I woke up at 9:30 am. I brushed my teeth, and then helped my mom to set up the room before the workers came in for further renovation work. After that, it was all news and news. I read the news articles from various backgrounds and tried to grasp all the things slowly and steadily. I was not in a hurry. Also, in between, I started working on the Code generator user guide. There was no TV series now, because of all the megavideo block thing. I came to know that one of the owners of the site is named Dotcom, who is a computer genius. He has a history of hacking into major sites including famous banks, pentagon etc. Anyways, after all this, I wrote the third entry in my new blog. Let's see how that blog spans out. I spent most of the time after that on TV and youtube videos. Then, I had some Tea, and later  had my dinner and left for Gym. I came back, watched the TV for a while. Then, I wrote this diary and now I watch some more Youtube videos and then sleep by 2:00 am. I plan to wake up at 5:30 am to watch the India Aus test match. It is a pride saving match, so let's see what happens.

Diary 223: Mess at home Day

Yesterday I slept at around 2:30 am. I was finishing off with the last few loaded episodes of Parenthood. Today I woke up at around 10:00 am. There was work going on at our home - some wall repairs and tile placements. So, the rooms were messy. There was dust all around and we had to relocate few of the things to other places. Most of the day was spent in front of the TV. Later in the evening, we cleaned up some of the mess. The workers were very efficient and completed two of the rooms in one day. The new tiles were looking awesome and somehow changed the acoustics of the room. There seems to be an echo now. Anyways, mom, dad and sister left for saraswati puja in CBD and I left for the gym. Nowadays, I work out everyday in order to build up my arms at a more rapid pace. I walk on the treadmill too, but for lesser duration and at faster pace than before. My present weight is give or take 74.5 kg. I came back, and opened my laptop after 18 hours. Somehow, today I was reluctant to sit in front of my laptop. Also, I came to know that ISB has started to call Mumbai applicants but it seems that even that number is now coming down. I watched the TV again for a while, then wrote this diary. Now, I plan to review the hungrydost software and then sleep by 2:00 am.

Diary 222: Return of Diary and Updates

Well, it has a long time since I posted something. I came back today mainly because megavideo.com and megaupload.com were banned by US feds, creating a panic among other video host websites, leading to no free TV episodes anymore. I realized that a significant portion of my day was spent on watching TV series and all. I guess, now it is going to change after all. Over the last few weeks, a lot of things have happened - mostly bad. 

I will start by saying that I scored only 60 %le in VA in CAT and hence didn't get calls from any IIMs other than IIM K stage I. I know that I will not clear stage II. Also, ISB has not invited me yet for an interview and it seems that it will not as the deadline is quite near. To add to my frustration, there are apparently no projects on the job front and so I am totally out of work, and time is not being utilized properly. Although Gil has asked us to get our UK Visas done, I don't see any project in the pipeline. My parents are kind of frustrated that I am not able to get into a B-School yet. My mom is worried about my marriage age and all. I still couldn't tell my parents that Rishabh is getting married. Presently, I am totally alone and I have no friends at all. I am perfectly alone and it feels bad because I have to face all the worries alone. Janani seems to be going through the same phase of her life, and so we talk or message sometimes. I am losing hair at an alarming rate and I fear that my bad looks would soon be accentuated by baldness.

On other front, more recently, I have tried to keep a positive approach towards life and promised to change myself for the better. I am planning to join guitar classes, so that I can get more social interaction rather than sitting idle and watching sitcoms all day. Also, once I get the rejection letter from ISB, I will go on full throttle towards my MBA goal. I plan to approach a education consultant to help me with my applications. Also, I will join TIME full time and try to bell the CAT. I am keeping hopes up by trying to understand myself. I came to know that my personality type is INTJ, which indicates that I am quite rare and intelligent, and that I should be proud to be one. I am trying to overcome my weaknesses with the help of that and also further my strengths rather than wasting time. Also, it seems that Akshay is also leaving Feasthunt and so it is all me now, but I am not distracted and will continue to move on. I reviewed the software on a preliminary basis and it was quite good. Website is also looking much better and unique than before. I am using this link to understand myself in a better way and move towards success. Let's see where it all leads.