NETWORKs and beyond...

Venue – Home sweet Home, Place – New Delhi, India, Date – Feb 29th, 2008, Day – Friday, Time – 0830hrs. The day started with the usual cup of tea and the newspaper. The newspaper is full of thoughts from all section of society wanting to get some respite in taxes from the budget which will be presented by our Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram today. But, suddenly the phone rang and the message is that my kid’s school van is not coming. Next is the responsibility to drop him at school. By the time I returned, my wife was ready to leave. Suddenly, I am alone at home with no one even to serve me a cup of tea. No issues, I switched ON my mood, lifted my spirits and straight away headed for kitchen. The tea is ready, it just takes 2 minutes to prepare a cup of tea, and I don’t understand “why the wives makes such a hue n cry while making tea?” Now, I am on my own for next few hours till my naughty kid returns home after his exam, its computer basics today and it’s the last exam for the session. So, definitely he will land up with all kind of plans for the next one month, including no studies n lots of trips to market for dinners, shopping n also some trips to Fun n Food Village. He loves the water swings even those, which I do not dare to attempt.
After finishing the tea, still the time is not ready for my office network to start. My office is sealed for last few months and I am working from home. So, the Network starts at 10am and operates till 7pm. Besides the limited availability, the Network is so slow that sometimes you feel like going for a walk or taking a nap in between replicating the mails. It’s a mess but I have found a way to keep me busy and keep me interested.
So, whenever my Official NETWORK jams, I switch over to my Professional NETWORK. Thanks to my Professional Network “ Linkedin”, I am able to find out at least 35+ ex-classmates from my institute “Indo-Swiss Training Centre, Chandigarh” and revive the contact besides reviving the memories. Its Batch of 1985 and we started our career in 1989, and so most of us are talking after almost 18yrs. Some of them are part of Linkedin and a few are adding up but finding out about so many people in so few days is really an amazing experience.
I know this is just a start, but sky is the limit. All of us besides having memories now have individual success stories and already the talk is on “ how to benefit each other from all this cumulative experience and the practical knowledge we have, which is immense by any standards. A good percentage of people are settled abroad including Australia, New Zealand, China, US, Gulf,…. One of us just floated an idea of sourcing something from this Global Network & Trading at other end, which looks very easy with so may known faces and identities available instantaneously. Seems a great start.
So, this is the world today. Use the available technology. Depend on the NETWORKs, official or professional or personal and learn to use them to benefit all the possible identities that are attached with it.
Enjoy the Network, …Enjoy the Life!!!

Reduce the Levels of Stress.

Venue – Hotel Adithya, Place – Chennai, India, Date – Feb 23rd, 2008, Day – Saturday, Time – 0630 hrs. I am writing this while waiting for my cup of coffee. On one side I am missing my home, my family, the cup of tea made by my wife, the early morning hugs available, the daily chores which start every day to ensure that my naughty kid catches his school bus. On the other side, there is no one to disturb me, no one to tell me that it is not the time to write a blog, it’s a complete freedom to do whatever I like and the way I like.
It is an official Holiday but I am here at Chennai to attend a Meeting with a customer, that is way world goes nowadays. On one hand, I can crib about the way the Life is going because I am traveling on a holiday; I am working on a holiday; I am away from my family; my life is affected; …. On the other hand, I can control these emotions and start the day coolly by having a good cup or may 2-3 cups of coffees at leisure and then start thinking about my meeting, brushing up the points to be discussed at the meeting as it makes a whole lot of difference when you do your homework well before the actual start of work, a meeting, a project, a presentation, an interview, anything…
It is all about managing your thought process and more importantly, it is all about managing STRESS in one’s Life. The moment you start thinking about the negativities, you start putting burden in your head and you are increasing your own stress levels. It is always good to remain positive and try to shape up your thought process where in you think about what best you can do in the available circumstances and how best you can utilize this available moment. This is a sure shot way to reduce the stress initially and finally when you get accustomed to control your thought process, you can easily live a Life with absolutely zero level of stress.
I do the same and I can claim to be the person with minimum stress. Also, in addition to shaping up your thought process, it is important to depend on the small simple Basics of managing your work and your Life with it. One of the most important works in your daily Life is to make a list of pending work you have at hand. Always keep a pen and a piece paper handy, Start the use of pen and paper, Start writing it down, if not paper open a note pad file on your desktop, open a memo on your cell phone, do whatever suits you and start jotting down the work at hand. Believe me, the moment you start jotting down your thoughts, the thoughts starts shaping into a poem. A poem stands for a well shaped up thoughts. The Life is about setting priorities, and you can set priorities only when you know each and every small piece of work pending at your hand.
So, list out the pending work, set the priorities, understand the time reqd to finish of each work and so allocate time accordingly to each piece of work. Believe me, once you reach this stage, you will be able to commit about the time of your arrival at the meeting more effectively, you will be able to commit the time when the work allotted to you or the project you are working on will finish in very much true manner rather than making vague commitments.
Also, one more thing, in addition to writing down the pending work, at the start of every month start making a list of dates for the payments you have to do, like the school fees, the electricity bill, the credit card payments, the LIC premiums, the telephone bills, the list is endless. We pay so many bills on a monthly basis, it is very hard to remember each and every bill pay date, so it is better to write down and follow on from there, set a pay date for each bill by keeping a buffer of 2 – 3 days to avoid the last minute rush & anxiety and the stress of not able to pay on time besides paying the penalty. If you are too busy, start using the online options more to save time and the stress attached with it. Never wait for the last day for the payments, better to pay on the day you receive a bill. These are some important small basics to reduce your levels of stress, try it and enjoy the stress free Life… Enjoy the Life!!!

Learn to Accept Defeat

Yesterday the newspaper started with a headline “AGGRESSIVE SREE SANTH BREAKS DOWN AFTER SRI LANKA MAULING“. Surely after the reading his bowling statistics “3-0-48-0”, anyone will say he must have bowled very badly, but its not his bowling but the extra-ordinary explosive batting display from Sanath Jayasuriya which made all the difference. Sanath’s batting not only ruined the bowling figures of Sree Santh but also ruined the chances of Indian Team and so won the match easily for Sri Lanka.

Life is like that. One has to learn to accept Defeats along with the Wins and not lose heart after every Defeat. One has to understand that when you lose, you do not lose only because you chipped in badly, many times the winner has done exceptionally well to outperform you. So, despite the loss, one has to learn to understand that he/she has to perform with consistency to be able to reach on the top and to end up on the winning side more often. The basics of Life teaches us that it’s the circumstances that matters the most and one has to learn to adapt according to the circumstances to be able to come out as Winner more consistently.

I still remember in my early days at Kodak, the company started an award for providing feedback for the work you attend. This was awarded just for two months and somehow the same was discontinued. Both the times, I was the winner with ratings of 92% and others achieved an average of merely 48%. One of the VP asked me the basic reason behind the success and the difference between others and me. My answer was that this is a company’s standard policy of filling the feedback for every call attended and everyone must do it 100%, so if I achieved 92%, I am also not good at my job, by achieving 92% I am still short of 8% but no one will question me about that deficiency because others are not doing their work properly and so I will be seen as a Winner.

So, winning and losing is a relative term. One has to try to work hard and chip in his 100%. Winning is important but losing is not the end of the world. Work hard…Enjoy the Life!!!

Life is a Journey

It is been more than 20 days that I had posted an entry at my Blog, as I was busy traveling all these days. First, it’s a trip to Shirdi and Mumbai along with my family starting 26th Jan 2007. Then the official trip to Goa to attend the Service Workshop.

I like traveling. Most of my trips start at 3 am in the morning and end well past midnight, as I belong to the group of people, who depend on first and last flight available for the journey. The first flight to reach the destination and the last to reach back home. This gives me ample of time to devote to the work for which I am traveling and rarely I postponed my flights because of time constraints at my disposal.

Similarly, the personal vacation with my family started by catching the first flight from Delhi to Mumbai at 0650 hrs. This really gave an ample understanding to my family, the hardship of beating the early morning winter blues to catch the first flight, which I go through regularly for my official work. From Mumbai, we caught a Bus from Dadar for Shirdi. But, it took us to wait for at least 4 hrs before getting into the Bus because due to holiday season all the buses till 2 pm are completely reserved. Although, we utilized the time by hiring a taxi for a short trip to Hanging Garden, Girgaum Chowpatty, Marine Drive till End Point, Aquarium, Gateway of India and return. We got the Good Value for the amount of Rs 350 paid for this taxi trip, and above all the taxi driver double hatted as the guide all along the route to these places.
The Bus trip to Shirdi took almost 8 hrs including the two stopovers in between for short breaks of Tea & Snacks. But, the view all along the route is quite good, with a mix of mountains, valleys, temples, remote villages, railway tracks & windmills. This is the first time in my Life, I had seen the Wind Mills, the whole scene of umpteen windmills running slowly in the fields in the backdrop of mountains makes up a novel view at least in India. I had never expected such a scene in the villages of Maharashtra. Also, the exciting views of Railway tracks entering a tunnel or coming out of tunnel gives you a feeling that you are living in a comic world as a small child. We reached Shirdi at 10 pm in the night; the amount of people present there really showcased the belief of people in Baba Sai Ram, we checked into a Hotel straight away to start the journey afresh in the early morning for the Darshan.
Next Morning, by the time we positioned ourselves for the Darshan, the queue was almost 4 Km from the gate, but the crowd management team did a fantastic job, we finished the Darshan within 4 hrs after covering 4 Km outside plus almost 2 Km inside the temple. It’s kind of a great satisfaction after we came out of the temple; it’s like a feeling that we had left all our worries there at the sanctum sanctorium of Baba Sai Ram’s Samadhi. Afterwards, we visited few more of temples nearby before embarking on to the journey back to Mumbai.
At Mumbai, we visited ESSEL World and Elephanta caves to add up the itinery of our vacation. Both ESSEL World and Elephanta caves are really good trips to be remembered for a long time in the list of very few family vacations.

We returned by Rajdhani to Delhi to finish the vacation on 31st Jan and again I started on 3rd Feb for the official trip to Goa. Really speaking, Goa is not the place to be for any official work, but we tried to enjoy the atmosphere as much as possible by spending the free time on Calangute beach, our Hotel’s Swimming Pool, etc. the most I enjoyed was my early morning walks on the beach all alone in the lap of nature getting a glimpse of waves, sea shells, fishers with nets, ships in the background, etc. Nothing much about, what Goa is famous for. But, I do remember the occasion as I got the Trophy for the Best Service Revenue Achievement for 2007 across all Kodak BU’s.

Life is a journey for me. I do travel a lot and learn a lot from all the small things I come across at every moment, at every destination. Enjoy the learning...Enjoy the Life!!!