Bachelor housing

The house is good & the 6 of us do whatever we wanna do. Sometimes, the freedom goes way beyond the expected exploitation. There is nothing stopping me and I am damn vulnerable ;-)

I just shifted to a place in Thiruvanmayur , near RTO a month back & it's a bliss there, its basically the Indian IT bachelor housing- 2 guys from Wipro Tech, 3 guys from Cognizant Tech. & one poor chap doing his M-tech in Sathyabama University (sad but true..lolz). I have become this "happily ever after" type of guy after shifting here.

Just a random day at home

• Mornings I rise early and am game for a good 'SP Tea' (Special Tea) at a nearby outlet with a smoker buddy ;-)
• Then back home to some half an hour of uninterrupted shower, coz everyone else is sleeping and I am doing what I do best- singing my metal tracks in the bathroom (what did you think? ;-P). Sometimes, I take a newspaper and my player while I take a shit coz that's a good environment to read, really you need to try ;-)
• Head to a place I hate (so called office); not by choice but by force, actually life cant be perfect, gotta kill some time and who knows, I might like it as time passes by.
• Back home after a hour of Table Tennis with my colleague. Good 14km ECR (East Coast Road) biking with my earphones playing the random radio tracks.Sometimes, I stop by for a good 'Aruna soup counter' for a vegetable soup.
• Again a quick shower and ready for dinner, walk to a place nearby and have fabulous food (I never think of money when it comes to food). Then we take a sit out at a nearby park, have a 15min chat and another 'SP Tea'. Tired back home with enough time to do whatever we wanna do. We usually listen to music, read books, pull someones legs (not literally) and finally crash at around 12 or 1 am.
• On weekends- sure shot movies, shopping, outing, family visits & other 'have to dos', our life is not mechanical at all, things are going good and hope this just gets better

Cheers to all that I'm experiencing and all that is nothing but bachelor like. Be spoilt and just take everything as an experience.

Bulls eye.

PS: off course, being in relatives house was too much fun...I miss the fights with my cousins & the TV time with Air Conditioned rooms & not to forget the homely, nutrient rich food. But you gotta loose some to have some.

My CONCERT quotient

Just been from the Woodstock of India. Our Oscar winner a.k.a A.R.Rehman performed with his JAI HO gig, it was a class apart. Around 70,000 people turned up for this show which was for a social cause, just imagine the funds generated (Hopefully, its all in good hands). Around 15,000 car's in the parking lot, so it was like the whole of Chennai was driving in ECR ;-).

My Concert quotient

1. Concerts are best on TV unless you get a free ticket or your buying the costliest one- We got a decent 300 rupee ticket (the costliest being 10,000/- ... only ;-)) and guess what !!...A.R.Rehman was just a moving dot for me from where I was standing ;-), but the projection screen was good enough (no problems).
2. Advertise on Parking lots, Tolls & other stops- I seriously feel, its so damn worth the penny. Where on earth you get to advertise yourself for free to 70,000 people. Just printing around 50,000 booklets for free distribution can do wonders to a business.
3. If you are giving a performance somewhere, you should make an effort to understand the management- lame line, but a guy of that Stature should know how things are organized. The management was good , no doubt, but it could have been better with some good refreshments, parking system & mainly toilets (how can you expect 10 piss pots for some 45,000 penises (no comments for ladies toilet)..lols ;-D)
4. Crowd Positioning- you know its gonna be a big ticket show, Why not surprise the viewers with something they dint anticipate. A little more expenditure on the crowd placement would have really made a difference.
5. Know the exact venue, not where its near to- really, this "near to mahaballipuram" was a total turnoff. We started and our drive was never ending, really I pity the guy who drove us (thanks man). If people knew its 30kms ahead of Mahaballipuram, the crowd would have cut down by half (but, on the other side...its a good tactics to mention the address as "near to so & so place")
6. Song Choice- The concert was in Chennai (no actually it was Pondy ;-)) and people expected him to sing his Tamil hits but everyone got to hear his Hindi hits (Tam guys were blinking for a few). Around 80 percent was Hindi & rest Tamil. Who's the winner? guys like me who enjoy both Tamil & Hindi ;-).
7. It doesn't matter how much ever you dress at home your going to be dead tired after 3hrs of drive. Its better to carry a perfume/deodorant (man!! I missed it ;-P).
8. Want an experience, that's the place 2 be- once a while, do go out and shout like fools, its real fun when you get 70,000 fools to shout the same things as you.

No matter what, I just loved it. Shakti Foundation is doing a great job and I am game for the next concert which is coming up next year. Happy Diwali to all those who read it this far ;-P. Ciao

PS: what a fab office, m getting paid for blogging about the concert I attended. hehe

F.Y.I

Some bullets from a week full of weakness, Nah! If you see it, its just learning all the time. Humans evolve, Funny but true- It takes examples & real life encounters for us to understand some of the very easiest & the obvious things in life.

1. Boomeranged- I was running after a few things for over 2 months now, my run might have transformed to a marathon or a long walk but truly the effort never goes waste & it comes back for sure, you just need to give it a little more time than expected. Now, I find myself being surrounded by it all the time. It reminds me of a wise line "You get what you give to your life"
2. It's good to hide certain facts- People go nuts over issues which they consider as ill mannered or a taboo. Of course, "When in Rome, be a Roman" but sometimes its just oh k to let go of what's uncomfortable to others. Lesson learned: Hide facts which others might not like to listen from your mouth. For instance, telling your boss about you going for a smoke/drink is really not a good idea coz during job hours you might surprise yourself with her change of attitude with you.
3. Just ask man! - Its so true, I tried to implement a principle from a book. It say ASK ASK ASK. I asked for what I wanted to a person and guess what! they have no problems in helping me out. In general, we are afraid to ask a girl out, but why? in the start we don't have her, after asking her out, if we get a "NO", still we don't have her (we don't loose anything, its just from where we started), but what if we get a "YES"...Sigh.
4. Don't get terrorised by expectations- As dull as it sounds, you don't need to be what others expect of you. If people don't like my beard, that's fine with me even if it looks awful...I am not growing it for them. Just ignore comments which gets in your way. You are expected to be what you wanna be.
5. Help people make a choice- If I have my product or my idea which I need to sell to someone, I know there are a lot of others doing the same, So, Instead of telling them what my product is all about, Its better to tell them what they are gonna get out of it. I was car shopping this weekend; I visited Ford, Hyundai, Tata, Honda, Maruti & Chevi dealership; For the price range we were looking for, everyone had a good car for sale. But of all the cars i.e. i10, i20, Chevi Spark, Chevi U-va, Indica Vista or Indigo or Punto...Everything is more or less same for buyers who don't care about what German technology is or what engine efficiency is, right now I'd go for Indica Vista (higher end) which I hated in the beginning...Why? coz he (salesman) helped me make a choice & also explain me on how that car can make my life easier (unfortunately, no funds, so drop the car idea).
6. Easier done than said- just get out of your comfort zone, you will find all that you were missing. Call back a person who you lost in touch with, initiate a thing which you screwed up, face a person who you always wanted to avoid & meet people you hated ;-), try the things which your age group finds childish. You know what? I went out of my comfort zone to experience things which I'd never have experienced. Nobody is evil for long, people change.
7. Money means a lot to the world but not you- again a dull topic but when I was gambling with all senior citizens/oldies last to last week, We were playing "3 carder", One women said "You don't wanna be the richest in the graveyard, So, Why don't you increase the stakes". . Risks are so essential, but make sure you know how much your gonna loose before you make a move coz that's what is know as calculated risks ;-).

That's about it, its not 7 points in 7 days. Its just random and hope to get a lot more things out of what I am doing daily. Do what you love to do not what comes to you or what you can, coz satisfaction is what you want at the end of the day.

OMG its Monday tomorrow, Shit job!!..;-), K then, heading for a concert from an Oscar winning chap.

PR Weds Reporters

PR is a good move for those who'd like a mix of presentations/content writing & a lot more on those lines. No doubt, Reporters are news hungry not coz they love news(may be) but coz its their job, they have deadlines.

Who comes to a reporters rescue? The PR people. They are made for each other coz they both make each other's work simpler, they complement each other in all ways.

HOW?
PR: Gets a client ? Say: xyz company
Reporter: Working under a beat: Small & medium enterprises
PR: Needs to build content for xyz company
Reporter: Ready to build content but is looking for resources
PR: Gives the resources to the reporter, suggesting xyz company as a news maker
Reporter: Gets to it & builds a good story/content about xyz company for publishing (scope of getting some bribe from PR ;-), you know why)
PR: Job's done as they are getting other people to talk about their client
Reporter: Job's done as he gets the story for reporting before his deadline

Happy Ending!!

Other things picked up on the way:

1. Straight jacketed reporting- just go to resource/news makers and write all that is being said
2. Multi jacketed reporting- go to the resource, look into other relatives for getting a wider view and then compile a story (these guys succeed)
3. Magazine & Newspaper- Newspapers break news, actually News channels do it before them; Magazines write research articles on the news which is already talked about, it needs to add a little more information than what the newspaper is giving
4. PR- Public Relations, these guys make other people (i.e. media people) to write about their client, they don't buy column space instead they make clients requirements as news and expose to the people (advertising in a way), it's needless to say that the news is always tweaked to how the clients needs
5. You can copy paste articles from other newspapers/magazines or even Internet but you cant sell it, instead you can make it as a free circulation material and earn with advertising
6. Whatever news is published, if it says wrong about me and in reality, it ain't; then, I can go and raise it on court (that was already known)
7. If you sit and try it out, you can easily find what product (newspaper/mag) sells what i.e. everything is a different product, functioning differently and giving different perspective to news (believe it or not, it's not how things really are, news is to be read not understood coz news might not be facts).

Whatever it takes, it's just too complex to actually carry out a process in any god damn job in this world. Every job has complexities to it coz if it dint then it no longer qualifies to be a job.

Good luck, need a lot more research on PR/Publishing.

PS: Had a 1+ hour meeting with a PR agency CEO (name withheld), truly gyan dispensing

Deccan chronicle- A Visit

Instead of thinking about it, I finally made it in person to the Deccan Chronicle office to see how things function & its needless to say, I only got an overview of newspaper operations (that too a basic overview ;-)). Its really an exiting job for people who like to track particular sectors of news, for instance if I am guy who loves cricket, I can start as a sports (cricket) reporter and die as one (well, I am doing what I love...that's the juice to the job/life).

Everyone working for a newspaper is a reporter, they need to report news which belongs to their beat (that's a term for department/domain as we say in IT). I am not a cut for being a reporter but still the job seems interesting as its exactly what journalists do, I discovered a very silly fact that journalism is not what I like; I am into Publishing and the two are very very different (that's what the editor told me).
Keywords to publishing/journalism- creation of content (from my visit)

• News hungry people- assigned beats
• Following TV, Radio & All the possible newspapers (from English to local languages)
• Deadlines with submission
• From Reporter to Sub Editor to Editor to Chief Editor in Hyderabad (I think so)
• Lots of Facebooking, Twittering, Internet research & of course millions of phone calls
• No job hours, news is made every god damn minute, so, be there when required
• Contacts run the business, reporters need to build a rapport and always be a people person coz they (people) are the once who are making news

PS: Thanks to my mom's contact for giving me a good lead to reach the right people.

PS: It's given me a wider thinking to what my start up can be like and how to fine tune my plans to make it a little less risk prone, so, overall it was a good meet.

Plans need time

People are all cracked up about noticing the need of the hour, but the main juice lies in the power of execution. We tend to come across a lot of things which might really be an invention or some out of the box thought, but until & unless you broadcast it to others, it remains a thing in our head which is deprived of exposure.

The first thing you need to do about a plan is to summarize it somewhere so that even if it skips ur memory, u have a good document to refer and refresh. You cant judge the power of that plan & u don't want to see some other guy being successful doing the same.

Lately, everything I am going thru or everywhere I've been; I somehow try making some business sense out of it & unless I don't find any, it seems lame and fit for nothing. I have made around hundreds of plans sitting just besides my friends thinking its some million dollar idea but never have I tried to communicate to others and get to action.

I like writing (miserable at grammar, cant proofread though) and digging facts to get to a conclusion is a cake walk (at a rookie level ;-0) but the actual thing which I am chasing is not writing, its writing business on the whole (so just fuck grammar, I dont need it). I don't see myself writing things, instead, I'd like to make a running differential model in publishing and try for some innovation there (everyone thinks the same, but who on earth does it).

You will really astonish yourself when u find out about all that you can do & most of the times we aren't even chasing what we need, giving excuses is a day to day affair. All that we need is ready for the talks but never in our actions, that's just like giving a blind eye to our wants and letting it go to the dogs.

I will always be writing blogs
unless I try to
collaborate & come up with my own creation (say, a
book).

I will just be talking to others
about my business
plans without having any idea of how to execute
it.

I'll retire a IT professional and
end up loosing on my
so called business
plans.

Executing the plan is the IN THING, knowing that something dint work is way better than thinking about how it would have worked out.

JUST GIVE IN TO YOUR PLANS & A LITTLE MORE TIME WOULD MAKE THINGS A LITTLE MORE INTERESTING, Y WAIT!

Still dependent

I can sense the change of behavior in people who actually don't have anything to lean on, from the kind (like me) who actually have all sort of backups. Just because most of us have their folks at home (parents) as a backup; we seem cool/confident/easy going, but what about those who actually serve as a backup and know that they cant relax as some people have good enough stakes on them.

In the office, In person, anywhere you see, It's really easy to differentiate a guy with a backup and a guy without one. It just seems so unreal when you gotta do all that your doing and know its the last resort. I am shit scared of reaching that state & know that a lot of people of my age & some even younger to me have loads of responsibilities to weigh before they do anything.

It's simply "being Indian" when I spend all my cash & look for luxury which I cant afford (unless my father gives a push, u know what I mean). I'd really like to put an end to it & go on myself. Taking favors do not account for dependence but its just a feeling from within which will make us realise on how dependent/independent we are.

PS: When I hear people like me saying "I m broke", its just being stylish and childish at the same time. Actually when people are broke, they don't broadcast the fact with a happy face.
PS: I cant bring in this change overnight but slowly I need to let go of all my dependence over others.
PS: Backups would be great and I hope to build plenty of backups who would hold me but only temporarily (who else, my friends ;-))
PS: Some statements really upset me today which made me write such a sad post...lol. But, I ain't complaining.

Pre Travel emotions

Going back home after 3 long months, it gives me the opportunity to get back to a lot of things which got sidelined by the day to day activities over here.The travel day i.e the hours before pre-travel sucks big time, the gamut of emotions would be:

• I already feel at home & cant think of anything else
• It doesn't matter If I've work or not, just cant wait to start
• Travel time is no constraint but somehow it feels sick to even get back to the routine
• The day always seem to piss me off with all that I don't expect
• The change of mindset is the real turn off

And a lot of other things which has made a big dent on my calm & cool mindset ;-P. The same things will repeat on the day I start from Hyderabad to Chennai. Its just natural, no one to blame.

Only one solution for not screwing up the pre travel day is to keep travel destination a surprise till the last few hours, so that everything from packing to commuting goes without any shitty anxiety. The above idea is just foolish coz if we know where we are going, a lot of things can be planned but what to do, sometimes whats obvious to the world might really not be the obvious for us.

PS: I fear travelling & to top that, today I got email forwards on plane & bike accidents. shit happens.

School seems lame

Schooling is our birthright, we are what we are because of our education (to an extent). But as I am already out of school & even college to that matter, I understand the deeper meaning of our education (& I know I am not the only one).

BTW...

How many of us are doing what we like in the industry we belong too?
How many of us have had change of plans, after graduating & being academically custom fit for a particular industry?
How many of us wait for a Friday night on every day of the week?
How many of us just work as there is no other alternative i.e. some other job or studies?
How many of us are confused of what we want even after a good 16yrs of education?
How many of us wish there were competence based interview and not experience/academic based?

Not necessarily everyone falls in the YES I DO category but the point is most likely people do it. Try tutoring kids from 5th-8th standard, the content seems to the point & right on but the way they are examined is so not wise & justified. Learning some definitions & vomiting the same shit out in the answer paper to score well is not the conclusion to our schooling.Instead making it more flexible for people to remember the facts irrespective of what the textbook/teacher suggests coz when we turn 20 we need to know in general about what is an ecosystem or what is matter or the green house gases, not that we require the exact definition. I was going through a lot of things & was teaching my cousins for their quarterly, all the questions seem perfect but the answers are unnecessarily 2 page long & that's what makes a small concept look like an invention of bulb. I remember the time when I was at school & struggled with these basic/simple concepts, thinking its some rocket science...man! I am not built for this race at all.

Our education ministry has done a great thing by scrapping the boards for 10th graders but now it's time they look into some revamp of what's been taught to the students. These changes are not drastic nor we expect them to be but just as we have Nandan Nilekani for UID, we can get great expertise of other industrialists, actual research people & guys who are determined to bring change on how they would like a student to proceed with his schooling/education.

PS: Schools are so crucial, now I understand as that's what has brought in a good amount of change in my life. Even if some of them ( I ;-)) are academically week, their intellectual capabilities would really surpass those with the so called 1st in the class credentials.
PS: Education systems needs flexibility & some great tweaking for producing some class apart generation of students. An engineer should be allowed to carry with something other than technology & a law student who shows interest in science should be allowed to the enter the field with proper evaluation...m drunk!! ;-D

9 to 6 phenomena

Food for thought: when I have all the time in the world, I end up doing nothing & when I know I only have a little time, I sandwich all my tasks to get things done & keep moving. On the way, I finish the most important tasks and cut down on extras...that's like the basics of time management, isn't it, happy to be doing that. ;-)

9 to 6 has been a big pain in all wrong parts, not that I don't like going 2 work!! Who would not like my work environment, its great to be there but again when I am the resource left doing nothing, I feel why cant everything be quickly dealt with for me to take a break from the 9 to 6 jinx; I know that's being illogical, but I am just spending time in the office than working in it. Hardly working hours consume a 25% of my 9 to 6 phenomena, rest goes in doing my own stuff. I am not complaining as I am getting paid for this phenomena!! but still is it worth it.

Keeping the trajectory of being busy & getting things done, I tend to keep busy even at the time of joblessness (WHAT??). Keeping oneself occupied brings in enormous amount of satisfaction of having done something...:-)

I was working for one knowledge group, guess what! they dint pay me for what I was doing. Pissed to that, I had to leave it & make sure the time spent on their service had not been a waste of time; So, now I am diving into the world of freelancing, affiliate marketing & of course my second or third or fifth love of life "Blogging"..;-P. That's precisely, recycling/repairing the event which were meant to be productive but turned out to be a little disappointing.

All's well that end's well : problems on the way don't matter as long as the outcome is fruitful