Idle Reflections

Conditioning -1

2026-06-24T08:12:49.832+05:30

26-Apr-2026

First a disclaimer regarding the title of this post - what I mean by conditioning here.

I have been feeling quite low off-late due to some personal and professional setbacks. After wallowing in self pity and bitterness for a good 5-6 weeks. Now I'm in a relatively calm state of mind. I hope writing this post will help me further in clearing the cobwebs from my mind and allow me to focus my chain of thoughts. So here we go.

As I was dwelling in the dark space, it was taking toll on my mental and physical health in a big way. I have talked (actually written) a lot about the physical aspect of fitness. Recovering from a bad Covid, I have been considerate about my health even though I'm guilty of lapsing into unhealthy patterns time and again. But I have shied away from the mental aspect of it. Even though my COVID experience had told me that the mental aspects were far more scarier than physical hardships (Brain fog, cognitive decay and insomnia to name a few). My recent foray into the rabbit hole gave me a rude awakening about it. Hence the focus (and post) about Physical and Mental Conditioning.

So what triggered all this, As most of the things in my life; It started from my work. As we were winding on first quarter of this year and side by side analyzing actual business achieved in last year. It become clear that the business across the group is under-performing in a big way. The geo-political situation and simmering tensions between USA and Iran was having its effect and our business is a global business and a big chunk of order in Indian operations has always been overseas orders. We managed to scrap one order in India at almost no margin to "keep the lights on". But it is not enough from sustainable or profitable perspective.

In business profitability is everything, so if the business is in bad shape, you can say your chances of growth bye bye. And the irony is that the same geo-political events which cause the business to under-perform. The same events will ensure that your household expenses will sky-rocket. squeezing you from both sides. As money is still a necessary evil for everyone, when the reality hits you and you see it reflecting in your bank account. Your mental calm is the first casualty closely followed by your physical fitness. And it keeps on spiraling from there onwards.

So I find myself gaining weight (work from home means you are more prone to stress eating as kitchen is always well stocked with snacks), having irregular or very minimal sleep and constant headaches. I had the realization that I need to work on my physical and mental fitness but not able to find necessary willpower for the same.

The communication (or rather the lack of it) from management does not help at all. The formal communication that your bonus / variable salary will not be disbursed this year is a very bitter pill to swallow. But the uncertainty regarding this is even worse. As you continue to hope that you may get it after-all. The continued suspense does not do your moral any good.

2026-1

2026-03-18T04:20:00.003+05:30

So, first month of this month was over before I even know it.

And like every year in my life so far, Some things are same and yet others are quite different.

February is as good a time as any to take stock of your new year resolutions. Or whatever is left of it by this time. And in that context, its again a mixed bag of sorts (which I don't mind actually). Great consistency and momentum in some (staying away for too much OTT, movies, daydreaming), Scattered progress in others (Health, new Skills) and falling short in some (Mindfulness, focusing on only one thing at a time). And there again, life can be as complicated as we make it. I can choose to focus more on resolutions where I'm doing great (as they say, strengthen our strengths) or put all my focus on resolutions where I'm failing so far (working on weakest link in the chain). Or which is most probable in my case, just go with the flow.

In fact, the same template is present in corporate side of the life as well. Where unlike my personal life; I don't have the freedom to do whatever I want. And also I'm more dependent on external validation (appreciation, acknowledgement, promotions). At senior leadership level, there is always a tussle for control. You may be very keen to get involve in a particular initiate and may have the prerequisite experience and skills for that as well, But if in the eyes of "Top Boss" you are not the right person for that role, nothing else matters. And its very hard of accept and reconcile with this (I'm still struggling to let it go)

So even if I believe very strongly that my core strength is customer interaction and communication, And I can add a lot of value in business development, the owner does not think so and wants me to concentrate on operations and cost calculation of products that we make.

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Adding to this post in mid of March. As I manage to sneak in a moment when the house is dark, cool and quiet in early morning, And I'm wide awake (though its more a result or my erratic sleeping patterns than a sign of healthy lifestyle). I'm sort of battling the "Mid-year" crisis (similar to mid life crisis which I'm experiencing as well). The month of January was great in terms of relative consistency. February was okay..ish and first half of March, almost everything stalled. Gradually and painfully, I'm trying to bring it back on track.

Starting march, we had an annual get-together, which is an yearly ritual in my company for last three years now. In this, we take the complete team out for a day and play some sort of sports and adventure activities. I never visualize myself as the most active or fit kind of person. But I had built a self made perception that I'm making slow and steady progress to improve my fitness. But I was in for a rude awakening, the progress was more slow than steady. I'm making some adjustments in my daily routines now that I have seem that walking or trudging 10k steps at a snails pace is not going to take me anywhere. I'm adding small section of sprints (at the same time keeping my heart rate in check) and also adding (very) small sets of weight training to complement the daily regime.

Having a travelling job does not help, As the momentum breaks when I'm travelling. And regaining it is not always easy. (the fact that my travelling involves taking red-eye flights at ungodly hours, doesn't help at all)

Lastly regarding the company that you keeps, I read a very cliched saying "you become average of five of your closest friends". By that token, I should be very fit as all my friends are super-fit enough to give me FOMO. So now, my friends are racing ahead in their fitness journey and I'm lagging behind (PUN intended).

Wrapping up 2025

2025-12-28T07:42:00.003+05:30

27 Dec 2025 : The date when I started this post. It’s (relatively) early morning, the house is dark and quiet. The family is sleeping as it is Saturday. The kind of setting which offers you peace of mind. The setting that I like for blogging.

Peace of mind. You can call it by different names like mindfulness but it’s the mental state that I crave. But first a disclaimer. I have no intention of listing out the events unfolded during the year in this post. One year is a long duration and I'm far too lazy for this initiative. I'm keener to lay out my current frame of mind as 2025 is drawing to end.

I have managed to resist the temptation of making long and elaborate list of goals and objectives for new year (so far!). Next in line was the usual dilemma for me this time of the year. The dilemma regarding how to spend (or effectively utilize) the few remaining days of this year. On one hand there is temptation to indulge in so called non-productive but rewarding activities of binge-watching OTT content, eat out to your heart's content and you can get rest of the gist. Basically, enjoying our life to the fullest leaving the boring grind to new Year. As alluring as it sounds, I somehow end up choosing the other option, which is to utilize this time as a launch pad to build momentum for next year. Once that decision is made, I have to deal with another one of my long-time enemies, try to do too many things and in the end do nothing. All the usual signs like embarking on a new habit or initiative, but the minds start drifting off on first sign of something which looks hard or monotonous. And then you start chasing the next goals, Goal which looks fantastic till the time you realize it also involves hard and monotonous steps only. Which brings me down to the current topic of my fascination (after taking a long and winding detour). MINDFULNESS.

To say that I have struggled with Mindfulness or in simple words "living in the moment" will be an understatement. As highly neurotic personality, I take too much stress imagining worst case scenario some of them never materializing. On the flip side as well, I have tendency to indulge in daydreaming as an escape route. Because of this I come across as a very serious, upright person whose face always shows lots of stress. Too an extent that I have never really enjoyed occasions like family functions, socializing with friends or vacations. Because to enjoy these events, you have to be fully present in those moments; both physically and mentally.

In fact, I have realized that having too many goals is not the problem and it’s different from multi-tasking. Problem is that I start planning my next task without completing the one in hand.

So, as I wrap up this year (Actually the year is drawing to its end on its own due to cosmic events). The mental state that I want to be in is the state of Mindfulness. As has happened in last few years. The plans will fail next year as well. Life will keep throwing curveballs. And most of the time my time will not be in my control. But whatever small pockets of time I find and control and next year. If I could achieve mindfulness in those instances. I'm sure next year will be more rewarding than this one.

A post on "no posts"

2025-12-21T19:52:00.002+05:30

Ah the irony! A post on not posting enough (lately)

I feel so clever just on the idea of this post. Its like the neurons in brain has started firing again after a sort of hibernation of two years.

the funny thing is ever since I started started this particular post (on 21st Oct to be exact). I have managed to write and publish two posts utilizing the looong weekend (actually it was almost complete week off due to Diwali). And I have beaten the grand record of last year (when I has published only one post). I have demonstrated my resilience to continue my legacy (of posting which nobody reads) from 2012.

So even though this post serves no purpose now (like most of things that I do or maybe like the life itself). Why not continue riding the momentum and see where this post leads up to. Whether it will eventually materialize into a published post or it will languish in heap of my drafts which could never see the metaphorical internet sun.

The issue is unlike my standards posts (where I languish in self pity), I intend for this post to be clever and witty, traits which gel with my personality like chalk and cheese. One of the idea that I was contemplating quite seriously was using prompt "write a funny and witty post on procrastination" and essentially use that as reference material. But to my credit, I have managed to resist the temptation of doing it so far. So the post upto here is as original or unoriginal as my thought process. And the poor LLM models has no role to play in the same.

As the post matter is increasingly resembling the speech of current POTUS. I should focus and look at the topic of the post to remind myself the original topic, which is "NO POST".

So why these blogs post has hit a road block from last two year ?

Why I seems to have time for every trivial thing that I could think of but not blogging ?

My blog or speech style is always more on colloquial side. The flow state as its called sometimes, whenever I do manage is to get into that state, the conversion flows easily. And generally I feel good about myself. In some aspects its like meditation as I'm in present "in the moment" at that point of time. Off late that state is missing. Too many distractions and that familiar sinking feeling to trying to do too many things and in the end achieving nothing. The timing (its 21st December today) doesn't help as well as New year resolutions generally means long list of aspirational goals.

So why no posts!. As either I was contemplating too many things, getting frustrated with my jobs. Or whenever small pockets on relative calm I could find, I was devoting on other aspects like fitness or working on technical skills (Not to say the progress on both these aspects has been very dismal as well).

so resisting the temptation of making a long list (which includes the goals of more blog posts next year as well). But working on controlling my mental distractions. Lets see how I fare till New Year !

How to be Assertive

2025-10-26T07:46:00.000+05:30

How to be assertive. First a disclaimer, the post title is incredibly cheesy and clichéd. I will be very disappointed if this is final extent what I could think of creatively. However since I'm trying to be back on track after a long hiatus in blogging, I would focus more on the post right now than fretting about the title. (Plus going with latest trends. there is always AI to lend you a helping hand :) )

So why I'm venturing into this rabbit hole now. Because at different stages of your personal and professional journey, your focus area shifts as it should be. Sometimes you are trying to reinforce your relative strengths, to leverage them for better growth. And other times you try to work on your relative weaknesses as your find them dragging you down. In last few year ;my professional growth has been really good and it rubs off on your personal aspects as well as subconsciously you find subtle changes in your personality while handling bigger and bigger responsibilities. I have decent communication and technical skills (humblebrag alert !). Strangely contrary to conventional wisdom (which says you need to focus on communication and motivational skills when at senior leadership level), My major focus was on hard, technical skills only. I acquired certifications in Project Management and Functional Safety and recently was looking in area of Artificial Intelligence. My current role gave my liberty to focus on any area that I wish (as the company is evolving) and I choose to see myself as a CTO.

But that is changing now, I'm beginning to focus more on Business development aspect (as we are seriously lagging behind in sales). And at the very top level, everything is about numbers. So there is pressure to deliver. Another factor which accentuates the situation is that I'm working in this company for more than five and half years now, And in the Indian team, I'm the oldest as well as the senior most members. So I have to carry the baggage of all failures, lost initiative, missteps by previous management. Based on my previous experience, When the organization is under-delivering on the whole. The owner starts looking for "superstar". The prospective candidates who promise the moons and stars and everything in between, More often than not, these people are smooth talkers and sly as fox. So unless you can communicate assertively, There is no saving you from decline on slippery slope from where there is no coming back.

So here I am, getting increasingly less and less chance to speak and participate in core leadership group. And whenever I do get a chance to speak, its like walking on eggshells. Anything that I say seems to trigger the top boss (who is incidentally the owner of the company as well). Its not doing my confidence a world of good and I have no option but to be walk the fine line between assertiveness and aggressiveness. As becoming a passive spectator and letting things take their own course is not an option.

I'm an introvert person by nature so blessed (or cursed) with trait that I'm a better listener than speaker. The group interactions, where all other senior manager jostled for attention of top boss, are not my favorite events. My natural cadence or pace of speech delivery is also on the slower side (based on feedback received from multiple people.

The exact situation and struggles before my company; is a subject that merit another post as it will be too technical and specific to international business and packaging automation. So I steer off from that topic for now. This post is more on the communication part.

So to form the vague outline of plan, I divide the communication into two parts, Tone and the content. As I need to work on both the aspects. I believe I need to add a third element of context here as well.
First the third one, broadly I speak on three type of occasions. Explaining something to customers or giving presentation, the kind of occasions that I enjoy. As I wear the technical hat (not sales or commercial). More often that not; customer is keen to hear what I want to say. So I have no problem in communicating even though I encounter a whole spectrum of customer and it a good challenge to vary your message depending upon the occasion.

The second type of occasion is meeting within India team. Here also I have smooth sailing mainly because I'm senior most person (that is about to change very soon..) and us being a very hierarchical society; other team members does not oppose my views openly. In fact these kind of occasions are easier for me to practice assertive communication skills.

The third is the most challenging and difficult one, My interaction with core group which is senior leadership group that takes most decision. And it includes owner of the company as well who has headstrong personality and dominates most of the discussion in the group. This is the platform where I have to be at my assertive best.

Now coming back to other two aspects, tone and content. First is about content. The major part of it is about the homework and preparedness. When interacting with top boss, you are supposed to be on top of all things and have every information on your fingertips. The owner would love to catch you off guard. So he will change the pre-set agenda and ask some vague information that is not relevant and not expected. More often than not, it tests your confidence and on the spot thinking. If you fumbles for information at that instant, you are gone.

Regarding the tone, I have a very monotonous tone by nature. I had enrolled into Toastmasters (https://toastmasters.org/) more than 10 years back which is like a club focused on public speaking. I manage to complete the first stage of certification (which includes 10 speeches). The feedback was very consistent on few aspects. One that I have a serious expressionless face while delivering the speeches and I looks very stressed. And Second my natural voice tone is very flat. Not much modulations so I come across as very emotionless (Not sure if its a bad thing in high level business interactions though)

As I still don't have a action plan other than having more conviction in my ideas and show more confidence (which is easier said than done). I don't have anything to add on that front and should conclude my post here.

PS : I tried to look online for any solution and did not find anything great apart from some generic advise.

2025 Post -1

2025-10-22T07:41:00.001+05:30

19th April 2025 :

What about Title of this post, lack of creativity or writers block or plain laziness ?
Perhaps all of the above or I'm not sure if I'm going to write more than one post per year now (the way things are going off late)

And what's with the date as the title of the post.

Its the day I'm writing this post, Perhaps it will be weeks and months before I could conclude and post it. So a nice litter reminder regarding how many days it takes for me to write a post.

Plus its my parents 47th anniversary; And birthday of one of my best friend (at least we were when in college). We have drifted apart now and its almost impossible to repair the relations. Its sad but inevitable as don't have many common interest area and we are separated physically as well (both the factors are important as my experience shows with other friends)

21st October 2025 :

The date above is a giveaway that I'm opening this page now in October after April. Which means almost a whole year gone by just like that.

This is the second year in a row where I have spent spent almost no time on activities that I used to like and devote time quite regularly; reading and writing. And coincidently, this is the second year of my so called promotion. (I was promoted in November 2023). So probably I'm paying the price of growth. Anyway more on that later (in another post maybe...)

Since this post is more like a diary entry. So first few lines on why this date. Well first of all 17 October was my birthday followed closely by Diwali festival which was yesterday. So here I'm; on very next day after Diwali, in relatively early morning when the house is nice and quite. Weather is usually nice this time of the year and I could hear birds chirping outside. But I could also sense horrible pollution as a consequence of firecrackers burned last time. AQI is close to 350 and I could feel minor irritation in my throat.
Partially because I don't feel like exercising due to this pollution and partially because we have holidays after Diwali so I don't have to attend some urgent senseless official meetings today. I could spend some time in writing this post. Not to say I'm perfectly capable of wasting time on not doing anything, So this should count for something.

My birthday has been a trigger point for my writing for a long time time. You could find a lot of posts on my birthday or new year where I try to introspect, plan for future and the post serve as a platform where I try to put my thoughts into writing, A brain dump if you may call it so.

So the broader trend looks something like this, I write a post on birthday, ruing lost momentum and opportunities in last year. Reaffirming that I should get serious now. And this mood continues till new year which is resolution time for most of the world. There I make plans on how this year will be different and my personal milestones that I wanted to achieve. Sometimes these goals includes no of posts that I wanted to write as well. This time was similar is some ways yet quite different in others. One I was feeling quite tired and jaded, I was trying to build a fitness routing and included brisk walking so partially because of that. But there were others reasons as well that I cant really put a finger on right now. I actually forget how many years older I'm now. Maybe the sign of getting older that birthday gives you more guilt than joy. The guild of wasting one more year and seeing your life wasting away on the whole. And your constant feeling of tiredness in part physical and part mental. On Diwali as well I'm was unusually bitter, I had a bad episode on office; an usual case of office politics but it was not the trigger point. It was more like the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I was feeling bitter before this episode as well and this particular incident just added oil to fire. When your mind is not really into it. These activities just feels like a waste of time. And I'm getting drawn into concept of "Time rationing" off late as well. So I sort of went through the motions and today morning my relative calm is more from the sense of relieve that its over now. So much for the occasion of Diwali which should rejuvenate you and fill you with positive energy.

Continuing the brain dump for second day as well as the pollution from Diwali is still very much there, with AQI is the range of 400 to 500, Exercise is not advisable and as I'm still in Diwali break so I can spend some quality time in rummaging thoughts.

I have written so many times regarding planning the goals and objectives that I actually have nothing to add to it. Though we can argue that situation every year is different and unique which should be factored in while tailoring the plan. After so many years, one thing is certain that the new year resolutions just doesn't work. Perhaps its due to my tendency to do so many thing at same time that I end up getting overwhelmed, or perhaps I can't sustain my focus and motivation at consistent basis on long term.

So Maybe its better to sort of "live in the moment". To take thing as they are. And see where we end in the end. New year is around 8 week away. And even if I could sustain these minor changes for these 8 weeks, there is still hope...

posted on 22nd Oct.

2024 Diary -1

2024-01-01T23:22:00.002+05:30

1st Jan :

So, we are well and truly in 2024. Even though we can’t take much credit for it as we have done nothing except staying alive (which might count for something in present scheme of things). It was the natural progression of thing, the earth completed one more rotation as per its pre-defined natural order and because of that the calendar dates shifts by one more day. So here I find myself. physically in Pune as I was travelling from Delhi to Pune on the first day of this year. As the very cliched saying goes that you are bound of repeat the activity that you did on first of Jan for the rest of the year; I see myself shuttling between Delhi and Pune more frequently. As far as physical fitness goes not in the best shape by a fair bit of margin. My pre-declared objective of becoming more fit in this year cannot have a worst start that this (pattern of sedentary lifestyle for last two years coupled with irregular sleep pattern and a Spain trip just before Christmas where I managed to catch a severe bout of cold). Now that I'm on the wrong of wrong side of 40, time is catching up with my biological clock and I'm already late on this journey of getting serious about my health. After hitting rock bottom as I had a severe bout of Covid in 2021. I'm recovered after battling with its side effects aptly called "Long Covid". But I was guilty of not taking my health seriously at all. I went down with Covid in May and had my second daughter in October. Even since then, my sleeping and eating schedule is in total disarray. I had made it one of my major new year resolutions for this year to get back in shape. Let’s see how this goes in coming days and years.

Professionally I found myself in a good space. After a long time, I'm keen in retaining my place rather than thinking about further growth. I was recently promoted in November last year. And I’m coming on terms with added responsibility and how best to manage it. Though I was aiming for this position for many months and in the end, it was a quite dragged-out affair (which did not help my motivation for later half of last year), I don’t have any false sense of entitlement here. I’m very clear in my mind that this is one of biggest challenge in my overall carrier spanning around two decades now. Performing in this new role will not be easy for me and I need to be at my productive best to do justice to this role (And frankly to avoid getting fired).

Intellectually (as the mind seeks new challenges and you want to see yourself growing holistically), I had always identified goals and challenges for me. Majority of times I had failed in achieving them or sometimes even to make even a small progress towards them. But it has kept my mental outlook in a stable frame of mind (As I’m high on Neuroticism personality trait and tend to slip into overthinking leading to depression time and again). Again, taking my Covid illness as a starting point (as it’s a good benchmark personally for me). I more of less recovered in June, then enrolled in a course called “Becoming a morning person” in July / August, basically it was sort of 5am club habit building course. I could retain the habit of getting up at 5am sharp for a few months after this course, and had few other takeaways like gratitude journalling, habit tracker to name a few. In October I had my second daughter (which again is a good person benchmark) after I was forced to let go of this habit as my sleeping and eating schedule went for a toss.

In April 2022, one of my friend and ex-colleague suggested to go a PMP certification and as typically of my impulsive nature, I had dived headlong into this without thinking in detail. It clashed majorly with me personal life (due to small child at home). However professionally I was not doing great as my company was in a great turmoil and we are fighting to survive. PMP certification is not easy and the more time and energy I poured into its preparation, the less time I had for overthinking and undue worrying about my company and my professional future. I managed to clear PMP in staring of 2023 (Even though I had to renew this every three years). I allowed myself couple of months to relax and enjoy this achievement. But I was on constant lookout for my next step or next level of skill enhancement or professional certification to collect. Coincidentally at the same time, my company’s fortune changed dramatically as I become more and more busy. I could figure out the next certification after some time (CMSE) and finding out the way to acquire this certification still took bit more time (as getting these certifications or any academic degree for that matter is a process and a big part of success is to figure out the correct process including resources to consult). But the problem was that I was very busy and was not able to spare time required to study. Also as stated earlier, my mental motivation was not high which did not help my case at all. In the end I had to postpone this plan for 2024.

The last missing link was learning new language. I become really interested in this aspect in last few years. I had always held polyglots in high esteem. Unfortunately, due to my background and upbringing I’m proficient in only Hindi and English unlike majority of Indian who can speak at least three languages. My mother tongue is Punjabi but I’m very limited in the same as my education was in Hindi only (another reason why I’m a big advocate of primary education in local languages). Ever since I joined my present company (around 3.5 years back). I become interested in learning Marathi (as my company is in Pune) and Spanish (as our head office is in Spain). The progress is not great at all and its more of start and stop (ironically like all my other goals) but I’m still stubbornly clinging to this goal. I do get selective opportunities to immerge myself (when I’m travelling to Pune or to Spain). And I had colleague to converse with me in that language but I need to be more disciplined about it, and let go of initially reluctance to speak in that language and make mistakes but not worry about it.

Travel to Spain - Dec 2023 - Part 1

2023-12-24T13:29:00.001+05:30

This is my third trip to Spain as I’m working with a company (for around 3.5 years now) that has offices in Spain. Writing travelogues has been a struggle off late. In any case business trips leaves you with very less time to indulge in general site-seeing and immersing in local culture. Still as its almost end of the year and ‘writing’ has been a constant in new goals, objectives for new year resolutions all those years. I will try my hand once again and see if I can write a nice travelogue (in my own eyes) about this visit.

So, here I am in Spain on a week preceding Christmas, the official agenda is to participate in annual business meeting for taking stock of last year progress and deciding next year’s objectives. The unofficial agenda is that company top management does not want to travel to India so close to Christmas, and they would rather have us travelling Spain. The added cherry on top is that there have been some recent top-level hires at group level. And this visit gives us a chance to meet those guys face to face. Plus, I have been partially promoted and I’m now expected to be a part of these events.

Though I have had my fair shares of overseas trips in the past (courtesy my job profile). The novelty of the experience starts right from airport itself (specially if you are travelling to Europe which is much away from middle east. Total flight timing of around 11 hours plus airport lay overs in between are not a joke, specially if you are wrong side of 40 and has food limitations. The only thing breaking this pattern is horde of Punjabis’ (I’m myself a Punjabi too) queueing up in lines at Airport check-in counters. We are sort of like global travellers and there is a unique class of persons travelling at airports. Normally these are aged parents travelling to be with their children settled abroad. In our culture and society, the parents send their wards abroad by spending their lives saving in the hope of a better future. Then if they become settled enough, they call their parent to live with them. Hence you will find old people from remote places in Punjab at airport. They are very limited in English communication and probably are travelling outside their state for the first time. My flight was from Turkish airlines with a lay over in Istanbul, which is apparently a convenient place for travelling to Canada which is like a mini-Punjab outside India.

My flight timing was 6 in the early morning, considering international flight and state of rush in the Delhi airport. I had to be at the airport maximum by 2 in morning (or night?). So, it was almost an all nighter for me on the day before I travel. As my travel frequency has increased lately (for both domestic and international travel), I have been trying to plan my schedule to makes it less hectic on my body (enough of early morning and late nights flights for me as I’m not getting any younger now). But I don’t have much of options this time around. Generally international flights are scheduled at an ungodly time in India. Also, my total flying time was around 11-12 hours and adding 2.5 hours of layover and accounting for the time difference, it means I was landing in evening in Madrid and my hotel was further 2.5 hours away in Burgos. So, I was reaching my hotel just in time to catch enough rest before reporting to office next day. I was flying by Turkish Airlines this time and the layover was in Istanbul. Both the airlines and the layer airport were new to me.

I had an windows seat for first leg of journey, and I was looking forward to it. As it means more comfortable journey where you can use the windows as head support, and nobody to disturb you in sleep for bathroom break. But as the luck would have it. I find one old lady already occupying my seat in plane. Apparently, she was travelling to her family in England and as She was in a wheelchair. She boarded before everyone one. She was more comfortable in the window seat, and I don’t have a hear to ask her to move. Even if it means spending a long flight of 7 hours in uncomfortable middle seat. The layover was uneventful even if I can’t find anything to eat and I reached Madrid without any major issue only a bit hungry and tired. The driver was there to pickup us up, his car was as comfortable as you imagine it to be but there was a strange smell of smoke in the car. Either it was some peculiar brand of tobacco or some other drug (I decided that I don’t really want to know). As a result, when I landed at hotel in Burgos, Spain. I was already feeling a bit ill.

That time of the year

2023-10-17T08:58:00.004+05:30

That time of the year.

I have mentioned this in many earlier posts as well. About this so-called time of the year. In financial terms, you can call it the last quarter of the year i.e., from October to December. For people like us who live in an area prone to extreme weather conditions. The onset of winters comes as a big respite after months and months of scorching heat. I feel it’s more than sheer coincidence that all major festivals in our religion happen to lie in the period of pleasant weather. In my case, I have added incentive that my (and for that matter even my wife and one of my daughter’s) birthday falls in this period as well.

So, it culminates in a period of reflection, introspection and ultimately planning for next year which coincides with new year eve on 31^st December.

08-Oct-2023

The major milestone is my birthday which falls on 17^th of October. This serves as a reminder for me to spend some time in introspection. More so as I will be officially on wrong side of 40s after this date. It’s very natural to have this feeling that life is slipping by, and you are a failure or under-achieve at best. Even more in my case as I could have gotten a promotion just before my birthday which would have sweetened the deal a bit more. But the decision was put on backburner for some time due to a bit of corporate politics (a topic for another post when I’m in relatively calmer state of mind). So, to avoid digressing further, I had reasons to be resentful (as anyone will always have). But there are reasons to be happy, content and grateful too, even if it’s not really apparent. Some months back, I decided to work on a smaller set of goals lest I get overwhelmed by the big list of so-called objectives and very litter progress to show. So, I selected only two major objectives if my memory serves me right. One was to focus more on my fitness, it’s still a work in progress but slowly and gradually, I’m building on my consistency on this. The second objective was to learn Spanish. It’s not easy at all, but here again I’m taking baby steps in its direction. Now I feel I can be bold enough to embark on my third objective, which perhaps is going to be toughest compared to the previous two but will help in achieving the previous two objectives as well if I could even partially achieve it. And that goal is...

Discipline against distraction, on social media and elsewhere. Mainly time guzzlers like Facebook, Quora, YouTube, OTT and general random scrolling on chrome.

14-Oct-2023

Getting close to the D Day now. And so-called Fate or destiny has found a nice way to assert themselves and bite me. As I was getting a bit ambitious with my plans and all. And I hit a roadblock in the form of variety of ways. First, I had minor physical discomfort like body pain and tiredness which persisted for the better part of the week. Then my daughter who is not even two years old. Start showing some tantrums (maybe it’s a result of change in weather conditions) But She was not sleeping soundly from last one week. As a nuclear family without the support of grandparents. This effectively means that me and my wife can’t sleep either for the last week. And as if all these things were not enough, I had some urgent official targets as my workload is increasing day by day.

So, it all resulted in a sort of daily routine which was very different from how I want it to be. Waking up late in the day. Feeling sleepy for most of the morning and working till late night to finish the urgent work. So, my so-called daily routine which I had built very painstakingly went down the drain. And the positive momentum is all but lost.

Now I am feeling a bit better at-least physically (I think partially it was due to so called intermittent fasting that I was following to lose excess weight, as you are not in best of the spirits when your stomach is empty. So, I’m trying to recalibrate my approach. Ensuring that I’m well fed and well hydrated most of the time. And slowly increasing my intensity towards the shared goals again. It’s quite frustrating to lose the momentum and start all over again. But still, it’s much better than wallowing in self-pity.

So, I had a very little workout in the morning today (even though I literally had to push myself and my body and mind was screaming to get away). And Now I’m penning down (or typing to be more accurate) these thoughts to ensure that I continue to write as well.

My goals remain the same as before.

Physical Fitness

Proficiency in Spanish

Less Distraction (Phone and PC)

17-Oct-2023

So, the D here is here ultimately, the weather seems pleasant today after unseasonal heat wave for many days. The year gone by has been quite eventful to say the least but ultimately more good than bad. I generally avoid spending too much to dwell on the past too much. I would rather utilize my time in planning for the future. Still spending time in introspection and reflection is a necessary evil. Perhaps I will do that on 31^st December, which is also not very far way by the way. Today I will indulge myself and take it a bit easy. There is a full one year ahead (at-least I would like to think so even if life is very unpredictable.)

My objective as stated above remains fixed, I’m not going to add any other names to that list. At least not officially. You can make the list of your so-called goals as long as possible. But unless you have a small list of priorities. You will find it difficult to focus, and it high time I get really serious about my health (No 1). Also, I’m working in a company with head-office in Spain for around 3.5 year now. And If I really wanted to learn Spanish, I need to achieve this target within next one year. The third target is also not going to be an easy one to achieve as it’s a sort of an intangible target.

02-Dec-2023

This is the time when you can claim that end of the year is officially here as we are into the last month of the year. Based on my experience and observation, different group of people behaves differently as this time of the year. Some are in the mode of enjoying their life to the fullest, throwing caution to the winds convincing themselves about enjoying one last time before they will turn up all disciplined and focused come 1st of January. However more often than not, it becomes even more difficult as discipline is something that builds up gradually. Another set of people who are actually in minority, use this time to prepare themselves for easing into the new year routing that they have envisaged for themselves. A third and even rarer group is the one who had actually plotted and selected goals for themselves last year, And are actually tenacious enough to not to let go of their goals and try their best even when they realize that time is running out very fast. I cant be in the third group but I definitely aspire to be in the second group.

Solitude

2023-10-06T08:16:00.001+05:30

Solitude is a very alien concept to contemporary Indian psyche. Its partially due to the sheer size of population that we have and partially due to the innate curiosity to meddle in the affairs of other person. Its a strange contradiction of sorts as we are supposed to be the pioneers of mediation which can be loosely defined as contemplating and focusing in solitude only. On perhaps these are two different aspects co-existing in our society. Even human personality is actually an amalgamation of big five traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Still we are not really new to concept to solitude on mental level thanks to spirituality and meditation. Drawing on my personal experience, my mental state is like a pendulum which swings from one extreme to another depending on various factors some tangible and some intangible. As this multi-variance analysis is beyond my cognitive abilities right now. I'll avoid the temptation of delving into probable causes for my so-called mood swings. But the fact remain that sometimes we really crave solitude (mainly when we have realization that we are running in circles in this rat-race), On the other hands its really difficult to draw the line between solitude and loneliness. On the other extremities we felt lonely even while surrounded by tons and tons of people. The contrast is right there when you look at empirical data and find that being burnt out and depression are two common factors affecting mental health today.

Ironically, one of the major areas for me where I need solitude is the one that I'm focusing on right now, writing. For last few weeks. I have outlined few areas where I'm tying to be more consistent. And reading and writing both figure quite prominently on that list. Out of these two, reading is considering as the easy part more-so if you don't set your expectation too high and compromise a bit on the quality, In other words, searching for good book to read can be quite a challenge. But if you lower your expectation, Than there is no dearth of matter to read.

Writing on the other hand, is far more complex and demanding endeavor on my part. I do run into the very cliche writer's block. I start writing on something and after first few lines, run out of ideas to explore it further. Also the strains of personal and professional responsibilities is making it tougher and tougher to find solitude as a certain degree of mental piece is required for writing anything worthwhile. Even 5-10 minutes are enough for me to read few pages at least every day. But I need longer slice of me time to articulate my thoughts and put it on paper.

As I have indicated few times already in previous blogs, I'm prone to neurotism aspect of personality types. I'm guilty of indulging in overthinking or day-dreaming in the past. One of the option to keep this tendency in check is to keep yourself busy. But when you are trying to find time for meditation, then there is a risk that you can fall back to these habits.

The other part which is quite pedantic compared to first one is pure laziness or sleepiness. I have a little one a half year old devil in my house who neither sleep herself nor allows others to sleeps. She wants to play with me (and her mother off-course) at 3am in the night. I have prided myself as a early riser for a long time (I even have tried my hand at so-called 4am club for a while). As the body conditioning does not happen overnight and even it does not deteriorate overnight too. I still can wake up early in the morning without much of an issue. But... the cumulative lack of sleep shows after a while and you tend to feel sleepy all the time. So sitting in a relaxed posture and closing your eyes is not a good idea at all when your body is craving sleep.

As I touched earlier too, both physically and mental fitness is required to keep up with an increasingly demanding job and in a way, both of them are actually related to each other.

Pune - Gurgaon and Back

2023-10-03T07:10:00.000+05:30

Actually the correct title should be Gurgaon to Pune and back. Because that's the title of an email that I write monthly to travel agent for ticket booking purpose.

However my relationship with Pune City goes beyond my first company. So as a (im) famous politician has said. You have to understand the chronology. I started working after I completed my education in 2004 (a good 19 years back). And since 2006 I'm associated with project based job which involves fair bit of travelling. Apart from some abroad visits (which generated quite a buzz in my personal circle), My major travel used to be in Delhi NCR or Mumbai. So though not directly to Pune, but I had started traveling to Mumbai region quite early. I always had a funny feeling even back then that these places are my so called karmabhoomi in future.

I moved jobs and shifted to Gurgaon in 2011. Which I now relate as my actual home. So one of the wishes come true.

"Back on Track" or "Finding your Way"

2023-08-24T20:36:00.008+05:30

The dialogue "I'm back" has such a nice ring to it that many movies, novels etc. had look to use it. Strangely we find it much more powerful than lets say a dialogue like "I'm here" or "I got it". Mainly because the story of loosing your way and than making the comeback is the universal story that appeals to everyone.

Okay, to come back to the main point without further digressing. I'm in a short of comeback mode from last few weeks. That is, I'm trying to restart the activities that were put in a standby mode. The reason or should I say 'excuses' were the usual ones. No free time, No mental peace, I'm not that interested or invested in this anymore or I have got a new and better plan, objectives. Even though I should have known better, still its easy to fall back to this line of thinking.

Anyways, now that I have at-least succeeded to get my immediate attention back on the original objectives. I have been trying to build the momentum and side by side trying to learn from my last failures (and there have been many, a bit more than I would have liked). So that I try different ways of attacking the same problem and see if I can succeed this time.

PPS : One of the main challenge that I face whenever I embark on this endeavor is how to make effective use of my time. Based on my experience and one of the book that I'm reading right now (12 rules by Jordan Peterson). I have realized that total active time available to you in a day (excluding of sleeping time although you can cut on your sleeping time to inflate your active time for short-term), Can be divided into 3 major groups. Time devoted to your official endeavors (basically the time which pays your salary), Second is the family time (your obligation and responsibility towards your family). Third and the last slot is so called Me time (which is actually a very cliché word and most often than not a very misunderstood and abused concept.

Now all the activities and task that you plan for your holistic growth will eat up this personal chunk of time only. So either you compromise on your official time.

I have experienced that at the starting point of my carrier and upto some extent I still experience it, I had friends who were pursuing distance education side by side while working in full time job. But very evidently, this education was equally important for them as the job. I, on the other hand, was into this education thing a bit half-heartedly, As my main focus was on my job. I was working longer hours even eating into family time (there was almost no me-time for me at that period of my life). In the hindsight and after a good old decade has passed, Its interesting to see how that experiment went for me and any friends. Initially I found good success in my present company and I was ahead of the curve slightly, then the work-related pressure got to me and to add to that, I had serious personal issues cropping up in my personal life. As a result of it, I was asked to resign from my job and I came very close to having a nervous breakdown. My friends on the other hand, were initially growing at a smaller pace but later on they managed to clear their exams and went on to get high paying jobs leveraging that degrees. I agree that this is not a multi-variant analysis and should be taken with a grain of salt. There were multiple factors at play like my and their personality traits. Our family background. There is so much I don't know about them and off-course there are some thing within my psyche that I don't even know about me either. Still I can draw some conclusion from this episode. Number one conclusion sounds very cliché but its actually true that you should love your job, not your company. Secondly more often than not, its your job insecurity which forces you to work longer hours at-least you want to be perceived as someone who works longer hour than others. And last that confidence is supremely important in your corporate life, Imposter can be pretty successful in the long run.

If I have to define myself back then in terms of personality traits. I was very high on Neuroticism and Agreeableness. Which is a recipe for disaster ever. And to make it worse, I was very low on Extraversion. Even if I was high on conscientiousness, it was not going to save me. I'm not really sure, where do I rank on Openness scale.

PS : Very recently one of my friend (we are from same college) has enrolled in a reputed institute in Gurgaon to pursue his executive MBA. I think it was a big and brave step on this part. We are on same age (40) and finding the time to invest is a major challenge. Not to mention the financial aspect of it which is also an substantial amount. This further motivates to work harder on my goals. I know he has to attend classes from Thursday to Saturday every week which runs till 10 in the night. His job is quite easy and like me they also have two small kids. So I know its not easy to manage this for the period of 2 years. I also know from my personal experience that if somehow if you could bear and manage through this period. You only stand to gain in longer run.

Another friend and ex-colleague of mine has moved into software and control system (He was selling conventional printing solutions for many years). He is around 6-7 years senior to me if I'm not wrong and to be able to pivot your job at that age and side by side maintaining / increasing your salary is commendable in my books.

My travel experience to Philippines - part 1

2023-08-15T10:29:00.005+05:30

As someone who loves to travel. I consider myself reasonably lucky to land in the job where travelling is part of my job profile. And to add to it. I'm based near Delhi (Gurugram) and my company's India head office is in Pune. How we came to arrangement is topic of another post. So to cut long story short, I have been travelling a lot off late, Mainly within India but sometimes overseas too.

Recently I had to travel to Philippines for some office related work. The duration was around 1 week. My past experience with such business travel proves that these kind of trips are very hectic. Generally the only places that you see are airports, your hotel room and customer factory. But this trip and the background related to it was quite eventful. So here's what happened.

I started working quite young in 2004 as I travelled overseas for the first time in 2006. At that time, things were not so user friendly. To apply for VISA sometimes we need to come all the way to Delhi (I was working in Chandigarh then) and to reach embassy in the early morning. The era without stuff like online banking, Ola Uber etc. seems really ancient whereas its only around 10 years in the past. Now we take getting the VISA for granted. So I was not really prepared for the teething problems that I was about to encounter while applying for the VISA. Seems like government of Philippines is making conscious efforts to discourage people coming from other countries, specially South Asia and Africa. When I heard their conditions from my travel agent like original copy of the invitation letter from the inviting party which should be verified by Notary. I was surprised to say the least. On top of this, initially it was planned that our top management will also join us there. So there was added pressure on me to finish the documentation related formalities at the earliest as I was perceived as the bottle-neck in scheduling the trip. For getting Philippines VISA, I need to go to their embassy directly (they don't have facilitation center). They have made one small make-shift office for VISA application in the main embassy itself. Few weeks later when I will be in Philippines itself (no this story has a happy ending in a way that I did managed to get my VISA and travel to Manila), I realized the this country is still quite close to Europe or America in the pop culture which is one area where I find my country quite different. So in VISA process itself they are special provision. And there I'm not talking about the privileges' bestowed to European nationals to visit Ph without any VISA requirement. That's purely a case of how strong your passport is in my mind. I found out that if I have US or Schengen or for that matter even Japanese VISA. I can travel to Philippines without any further additional documents. Other remarkable thing is the number of people from my home state (Punjab) applying for this VISA. I very well know that we people (Punjabis) do travel a lot and are a sort of global expats. We have almost reverse colonized Canada and Australia but even Ph seems to be quite a popular destination for us. Some of the poor souls who were probably travelling to meet their children and grand-children were like deer in front of headlight there. Understanding English was already a challenge for them and to add to it the Pilipino accent was making it almost impossible for them to decipher the questions.

I also had some minor issues as the original letters that I have already asked our agent in Ph to share, has not reached me yet. I had to convince the lady in counter that I will duly submit the original at the time of collection of VISA. Also I wanted to process the application in fast track mode but apparently my agent has paid for normal mode only. Anyhow this issue was settled (I paid the extra amount in cash). And I got my VISA just in time for my travel to Manila.

The whole trip planning was done in a great haste and I was not really in sound state of mind when the travel agent booked my ticket and itinerary for the visit. My stress subsided a bit on receiving the VISA. And then I realized that my ticket to Manila (with a halt in Kuala Lumpur in between) has the half of only 75 minutes. As I have lived in Kuala Lumpur for 7 months, I know that they have two terminals connected by train. So I asked our agent to reconfirm that both arriving and departing flights in my case was from same terminal only. Still I had a bit of stress on my mind when I boarded the flight. And, as the luck would have it, the flight take off good 15 minutes late. Even though flight carriers (even in domestic circuit) has lot of in-build buffer to cater for such delays. Still, somehow the flight landed also 15 minutes late. Just before the flight was about to land, I asked the air-hostess if the flight to Manila will also depart from the same terminal. She replied in the negative. And I was left with no option but to stand up the queue in aisle anxious to get off as soon as possible (I used to laugh at people who has no patience and start queueing up as soon as the plan lands (perhaps, it was karma getting back at me in a way). Murphy law was also in play on same day (my queue was moving slower than other). As soon as I got of the plane, I asked for the way to get to other terminal and started running.

Few other Indian guys who had a same connection started following as we Indians are quite good in following other blindly. Last time when I went to Malaysia (a good 6 years back), they used to have train coach connecting one terminal to another. For some reason those were out to operation and instead they were using buses to ferry passengers between terminals. So I had bigger distance to travel and also had to ask for directions time and again so that I don't get lost. Somehow I landed at the right place and get into the bus in time but alas.. I had to wait till the bus in full before it started moving, In a funny sort of way, It reminded me about back in India when I used to go to my native village from Chandigarh (I used to live in Chandigarh back then). I had to use the infamous state transport buses to reach the last mile stop. These bus operators want to earn as much as they can so they use to cram passengers into the buses like chicken. If the bus is rated for 50 passengers, they will load at-least 200 to 250. People who have already boarded the bus used to get annoyed and anxious. So here I was getting really anxious and annoyed as the bus-driver was waiting for the bus to get filled in. My Indian companion who were trying to follow me while I was running without giving them full instruction also managed to get in and were giving me wicked smiles when the bus moved out to parking slot. I would still reached my boarding gate with good 10-15 minutes to spare but had no time to eat. Fortunately I was carrying some snacks in my bag. So after around 2 more hours, I landed in Manila but I had one final adventure to undergo before setting feet outside the airport.

I have had my amount of run-ins with the immigration officials, both in India and outside. The last major one was few years back in China in my previous company. As I had to travel to South China, the most convenient part was to travel via Hong-Kong and take a ferry to Mainland China. Somehow because of this fact or any other point, the lady at immigration was downright hostile. She makes big point of the fact that I don't have details about the taxi driver that will pick me at airport (I told her that my host company is arranging that and that driver will be ready will placard showing my name at departure). She almost threatened to deport me back before relenting.

That was sometime back and I could attribute it to various reasons. I don't really think much of this episode. After that I had travelled to Middle-east and Europe without any major issue. However the atmosphere at Manila airport was quite different. I was also hungry (the last connecting flight from Kualalumpur to Manila has no vegetarian option for me) and a bit cranky.

There was a really long queue at immigration desk which did not helped my case at all. On top of it, the lady at immigration desk has a really strong accent and I was having difficult deciphering her statements. I had to ask her to repeat herself which did not improved her demeanor. She wanted to know where I will be staying in Manila. My office colleague (Who was coming from Spain to join me) has already booked room for both of us. So naturally I showed her the email exchange between my colleague and the hotel. But the lady was objecting that the mail only says room for two but did not mention my name. It was a precarious situation as my colleague was probably in the flight at that time and not available on call. Anyways somehow she relented and at-last I was out of airport and in Manila at last.

Continued in second post...

Some reflections

2023-07-10T08:34:00.004+05:30

This is not my standard time of the year for reflection. But off-late life is not really following the standard template either. Generally, I reserve these ramblings for my birthday (when you feel the pressure to make some meaning of your life) or in the starting of year (when you are fueled by adrenaline of new year resolutions and stuff). However, I realized that it’s almost two years since I have last written any blog post. Writing helps to clear the cobwebs in my mind and like any place which has not been cleaned in two years. My mind is also in total disarray and perhaps putting these thoughts on paper will give me some clarity.

So here we go.

If I look into the past few years. I had these episodes of restlessness before. The most dominant feelings during those episodes have been of stagnation, of getting stuck and not really moving ahead with my plans. And this applies to both my personal as well as professional life. But this time it has been different in so many ways. The change has been drastic. Personally, I'm in the post Covid phase now. And for me, Covid has been a life altering (almost becomes life ending) event. I had my second daughter in October 2021. And my life will not be the same now as it was before these two events. Professionally, even though I'm in same job for a bit more than around 3 years now. Still our journey in India is reaching the tipping point. I have found success and growth in the company too. My last promotion involving a bigger role was at the starting of the year (it involves monetary benefits as well). I also added a professional certification to my name last December.

As we are full of contradictions as part of basic human nature, it’s very difficult to pinpoint a a specific reason which caused me to reflect and introspect. Perhaps, it’s a sign that my mental state is a bit disturbed now. Just like an average common person only remembers God when he is in trouble. Else he is too busy in this life to bother about it. Similarly, perhaps my life was too smooth and rewarding last year. And now that I have hit a roadblock, I need to recalibrate my mental balance and writing is one of the tools available to me to achieve the same.

Or Perhaps, It totally different case. I was too busy in this mindless rat race that I had no time to indulge in the luxury of introspection. I have experienced that too much work can have that effect on you. You work like mad at ungodly hours and often, you don't even feel the impact of this rush, this lack of time on your mental and physical well-being.

Anyways, irrespective of the underlying cause, the fact remains that I find myself in the zone of self-reflection and introspection. My experience says that I tend to get really stuck up in this zone even at the cost of taking actions. So, after a nice break of a few years. I'm again going back to the metaphorical drawing board and chalking out my plans. Let’s. see how it goes as far as this try is concerned. As always, time is very limited and you feel overwhelmed just by the thought of things that you want to achieve, Practically I want the whole world when it comes to my personal and professional goals. A very natural consequence of this is that you try to do too much of everything at the same time and end up achieving nothing. No matter how cliché it may sound. The way forward is only through prioritizing and focused work.

Leaning Spanish: As cliché as it sounds, this was the goal I had chalked out for myself when I last tried my hands in setting goals for myself. My progress has been disappointing to say the least over the last 3 years. I was full of enthusiasm and curiosity when I joined what is my present company now three years back. As our head-quarter was in Spain. I was very keen on learning Spanish. However, the air released out of the metaphorical balloon pretty soon. I have tried and retried enough different methods to learn Spanish that I can write a blog post on this topic. Unfortunately, I still cannot write or speak even basic conversational level Spanish.

Fitness: Again, this has been my default goal for many years. As fitness is difficult to objectively measure. I can’t really quantify my progress or rather the lack of it. Going back 25 years back, I was a wafer thin, almost malnourished boy in school with no interest in outdoor sports of any kind. In my limited ways, I have tried to be more fit and increase my stamina. I had episodes of frequent illness; chronic lower back pain and I have flirted with border line sugar as well. I have a family history of diabetes and heart problems (which I have used as excuses on more than one occasion). But I have some of my high points as well. I used to cycle from home to school in advanced classes, which I continued even in my college as well. I had tried my hands in some adventure sports like rafting, rappelling, bungee, paragliding and some trekking. I participated in the half marathon (technically 10km run) twice and managed to finish it. And very recently, I had a severe bout of COVID and survived it. Still its an ongoing journey and I'm trying to build some consistency here. I'm not getting any younger and COVID has given me long lasting aftereffects.

I'm going to draw a line here. As I have stated before. It’s easy to fall into this trap and make listing your goals a goal in itself and spend majority of your time in only planning and doing nothing. One of biggest achievements in my life is just doing it again and again without focusing much on the planning.

My Travel experience to Spain

2022-03-09T08:09:00.003+05:30

As a blogger I’m always in search of interesting topics. Combine that with my love for traveling; and travel related blogs or travelogue seems like a very natural choice to write upon. When I started blogging a good 10 years back, I tried my hand on travel blogs. However off late I have not written any post on this topic even though I’m still travelling a lot, courtesy my job. I even travelled right in the peak of pandemic.

Probably as most of my travelling is work related, it means a very hectic schedule with no time to observe the place, assimilate the unique culture around. I used to joke around that even though I claim to have visited 11 countries, It actually means 11 airports and 11 hotels. But this time is very different. Now I must spend almost a month in a new place away from my country. And I think I am well positioned to observe and pen (or type) my thoughts.

So here we go.

I landed in Spain on 9 of January 2022 and will be flying back on 6^th of February. That is almost one month (or four weeks to be more exact). This is my first visit to this country. Even though business visits generally are very tightly scheduled leaving very little time for recreation or fooling around; 4 weeks is a lot of time and more importantly, it also means 4 weekends. Plus, I get the opportunity to interact with my co-workers who are native of this country. Hence, I hope to get some reflections about Spanish society and overall, about Spanish culture from my visit.

I joined this company right in the first wave of Pandemic, Due to the travel restrictions and general fear associated with COVID, it was not possible for me to attend the induction training in Spain. We thought (like everyone else in the world) that the COVID and travel restrictions is just a matter of few months. But now it’s clear in the hindsight that this indeed is the new normal. Hence, we resumed our normal business travel and after a roller coaster ride of company restructuring (It need another post). I landed up in Spain for my introductory training full 1 year and 9 months after I had joined this company.

To put things in perspective, my company has two offices in Spain, One in Castellar de Valles (near Barcelona) and second near Burgos. I had no prior idea before, but this fact has lot of relevance as in Spain also there is some under-current of resentment between two regions.

I’m not a history major, so not sure if I’m the right person to write on history of even my native country India. Leave aside Spain. But whatever I could gather with my interactions and after a quick study on Internet. I understand that Catalonia or Cataluña as it’s called in the native language is an autonomous community inside Spain. Way back into Middle Ages, this region has its own distinct culture and institutional system including courts and constitutions. In 1960s, it revolted against a large and cumbersome Spanish army and was briefly proclaimed as a republic under French protection

For some periods, its unique culture and language was supressed, and Spanish was declared as its official language. During the Spanish transition to democracy (1975–1982), Catalonia regained self-government and is now one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain. However, as I have experienced in India also, these kind of separatist movement does not die totally. Some small spark always remains deep buried in the psyche of people which is fanned by politician (Politicians, it seems like are cut from same cloth everywhere). I also understood the movement was again rekindled in 2017 when Catalonia parliament conducted a referendum and declared independence unilaterally. The Spanish senate in turn, termed this referendum illegal, they dissolved the incumbent government and conducted snap election The Spanish supreme court even imprisoned seven former ministers and convicted several ministers including then president of Catalonia region, who fled to other European countries.

As per initial planned itinerary, I was to stay to 2 weeks in Sabadell which is town near Castellar, then travel for a week to Burgos. After then come back to Sabadell before returning to India. Burgos lies in separate autonomous region of Castile and León. It has a very rich historical and religious significance. I will not dwell into this part much as then the post will be long. It was comparatively a smaller city and has more of small town / countryside kind of vibes. It has more native Spanish European population compared to Barcelona which is more international and urban.

My experience in Burgos was very different than in Sabadell / Castellar del vales. One we were travelling with colleagues rather than on our own, secondly as it’s a smaller town and we were staying here for a much shorter time. Our hosts were more cordial to us. The town was very picturesque even though much colder. We used to roam around in the evening with the complete group most of the times. For a smaller town, Burgos has many places to see including famous Cathedral and Museum of evolution. I understand it has been a site of excavation too. We were travelling as a group of around 7-8 people out of which me and my colleague were only two Asian. We were a bit of exotic animals for others with all our idiosyncrasies like vegetarian foods (they were quite amused by difference between vegetarian and vegan).

In Sabadell we were more on our own. We were only two visiting guests there and barring two team dinners, we were eating out on our own for full three weeks. The local population has more proportion from other ethnicities compared to Burgos. In Barcelona which was 45 min drive from this place. We could find many Indians and our neighbours across the border (Pakistan)

This difference also shows in my interaction with colleagues in both the offices. The Colleagues in Burgos has probably never interacted with Asian person before and were more limited in communicating in English. However, the interesting thing is that they were more open to us compared to their colleagues from Barcelona.

My return was from Bilboa as the direct connectivity between Burgos and Barcelona was not very good. Bilbao is an important port city in northern Spain and is capital of Basque country. So, I had chance of visiting three different parts of Spain although Bilbao was just a stopover to be honest.

PS: My return was postponed by around a week because unfortunately my COVID test report has turned out to be positive. Apparently, I’m a COVID magnet, my hide and seek with this virus needs another post on its own, so for now it suffices to say that I’m going to experience bit more of Spain even though I will be mainly confined in my room only for this period.

I have personally experienced that how people are quick to stereotype or pigeonhole anything. So, I will refrain from generalizing my impression of Spain or Europe based on my limited interaction with people here. Also, most of the people that I interacted during my visit to Spain were my colleagues at work. So, the company relations between both the business units, the power dynamics and the relative hierarchies also plays a very important role. I have tried to observe everything around me with an open mind as far as possible without any conscious bias or prejudice on my side.

My first visit to Europe was way back in 2006 when I went to Austria. It’s a big gap of around 16 years and these are two different places so perhaps I’m comparing apples to oranges, but I noticed that I lot of things has changed. In my first visit we were like exotic animals in these places but now I could see many Indians and our neighbours across the borders, Moreso in big / tourist cities like Barcelona but even in interiors of Spain and in cities of religious significance where there is even less likelihood of seeing any Indian person. Heck, we even could find Indian restaurants in those places, so maybe India has done a good job of pushing their soft culture around (Yoga, cuisine, Bollywood etc). Another thing that I could notice is that now gap between India and Europe is decreasing in two of the most noticeable area at-least in my book, cleanliness, and road etiquette. When I last toured Europe, there was such a vast difference in general cleanliness that I felt like I have landed in another world altogether, everything was squeaky clean. However, this was not the case this time around. Even though generally it was clean, I could still find trash on places like public parks, on my hotel roof as well as downtown market area. India is still more dirty but when you factor-in the abundant dust here due to topical weather and lack of greenery combined with our humongous population which is almost double than that of combined Europe, the difference does not feel so stark anymore. For sure, it’s much greener than the part of India I live in, but here I’m talking about general cleanliness.

Second part is about road etiquettes, When I last toured Europe. I was staying in a hotel at riverside with only a road separating the same. One fine morning, I was just standing outside my hotel gazing at the river. I realized after some time that good 3-4 cars had stopped on the road waiting patiently for me to pass. All the cliches regarding rarely using horn were indeed true in that region. However, this time, the situation was different. During my full stay of around a month; I could observe multiple instances of people jumping red lights, Not giving right of way to pedestrians. Off-course compared to the absolute nightmarish mess that we have here, it is still much better.

I don’t know how much I have left in this company, considering the uncertainties in our business. We are in post-pandemic times now. It may very well be my last visit to Spain. But it gave me good insights about people from another culture and I realized that we are so alike yet so different.

My experience with "Becoming a morning person"

2021-09-02T06:03:00.003+05:30

16 August 2021

Today is exactly one and half month since I started this new routine called “Become a morning person. I understand this name might be a trademark of Habit Strong who run this program and I took their subscription for one month only. But still, I relate to this new routine with this name only. Hence, I will use BMP program in this post for sake of relevance.

I enrolled in this program in August (last month). I had the option of extending the subscription further at the end of the month, but I choose not to go for it. My rational behind the decision was that I don’t want to be dependant on the program for ever. I had a experience with some amazing programs that its very hard to shake your dependence on these program later. I had to test if I had the discipline and will-power to continue this new routine and to actually make it a habit. Midway in the month without this subscription. I found this to be an apt time for some reflection.

First about waking up on 4.45am which is one the criteria. When I joined this program, they have two morning modules starting at 5.00 and 6.00 am respectively. I went ahead with 5.00am option as I thought that I can wake up at 6.00am without much effort. My normal waking time hovers around that mark only. If I’m trying to inculcate a new more productive daily routine, then better to take some stretch and go for 5.00 am routine. Plus, during my Covid illness in May-June. I was waking up sometimes at 3.00am also more due to insomnia but that is a discussion for another time.

So, I selected 5.00am option. I faced problem right away in my first month only as I can’t set my evening routine to ensure that I sleep by 9.00pm as my family watches tv as late as 11.00 to 11.30 pm which is in our bedroom only. Only because of my new routine, it was not possible to shut-down the tv before 9.00 pm. So, I need to figure some other way out which frankly I am not able to do even now. Sleeping in other room is not a possibility for some reasons. A natural consequence of sleeping late is the tiredness that you feel immediately on waking up. The first activity on waking up as per new routine is mediation session. I could not get maximum results out of mediation as very seldom I was not feeling sleepy. I kept on pushing with the hope that my body will get adjusted to this routine. I have some partial success in the sense that now my biological clock is almost set to 4 to 4.45. But my quality of sleep is far from perfect. I still keep on tossing and turning in the bed and as a result I am not totally refreshed when I wake up.

There have been very rate instances when I feel really sleepy in the night before I hit the bed. But when it happened, I wake up more refreshed and had a much better mediation session. I am still not being able to decode the exact activity I did differently on those days. One major area to focus on is the last one hour before sleeping time. Fortunately, I had dinner well one hour before the sleeping time. I had tried both the approaches regarding how I should spend this hour. Approach one was to immerse myself into Lecture on Robotics (completing introductory course on Robotic is one the target that I have chosen to track daily), The course content was so over the top and immediately I felt sleepy, but unfortunately it happened only once and did not repeat when I tried second time. I also tried to utilize this hour in other important activities / tasks that I had earmarked for the day. But nothing seems to work. Secondly approach is trying to relax in this last hour, preparing yourself mentally for sleeping, this is actually what Habit strongly recommends too, I was not able to implement it as regularly as I want as there are so many things circulating in your mind at the end of a long days that I’m not able to relax, when on rare occasions when I could do it. I felt relaxed. You could say that my evening routine is still a work in process. The only progress that I had made is that now the fact that television is on when I’m trying to sleep does not bother me that much. Earlier I used to have the pang of guilt if I’m not in bed by 11 o’clock as ideally, I should be asleep by 10 itself. But this guilt only used to make this worse. Gradually but surely, now I am not really bothered by this fact as much.

PS: When I started tracking tasks daily to form a habit. My emphasis was more on ensuring that I complete all the task / activities listed for that day. Ticking all the boxes on daily basis was giving me a sense of accomplishment. However later I realize that this tracking sheet cannot ensure if I’m spending quality time on any activity listed or just going through the motions as a formality. I can indicate one activity as complement even if I spend barely 5 minutes on the same. Second problem was that this program mainly focusses on mindfulness which for me is being in present and focussed on your current task in hand. In my case, I was so focussed on completing all the tasks listed for the day that I was doing one task and my mind was drifting on the other task that I also must achieve on the same day. Whole purpose of this exercise was getting lost. Hence, I decided to change my approach and focus more on the current task in hand. As a result, I’m slipping on some of the activities lately, But I’m consciously ignoring it and putting all my focus on the current activity. Its not easy as my mind is used to working on the multi-tasking mode, most of the time I’m distracted and overwhelmed by the mountain of urgent works which are pending. This was one of major reason why my daily meditation sessions are not as effective as they should be as apart for apparent tiredness and lack of sleep, most of the time I’m making the list of urgent activities pending since last day. I’m working on the concept of mindfulness and being in the present to improve my mediation session.

30-Aug-2021

As we are near to end of this second month after BMP program from Habit-Strong. I think one quick review of what happened in last two weeks is in order as I had some good learnings out of it. On 19th and 20th of this month I had to travel to Pune for some office related work, we had a sales review and objective setting session. Hence, I had to leave one day before and come back one day after. Immediately on my return I had to go to Delhi on Raksha Bandhan. In the nutshell I was away from home for almost one full week. And specially in Pune, the daily routine was like a typical sales conference which essentially means cocktail dinner till 12.00 or 1.00am in late night. Combined that with the food available in the particular resort. I had issues with digestion combined with lack of sleep. After coming back from Pune, I had to spend around four days in Delhi. As a result of this, there was a good break of more than a week from my daily routine. For these 7-8 days, there was no waking up early morning and mediation, workout sessions. And I was not eating right either. I felt weak. But since my whole momentum was gone. I had to again start from scratch. As I had mentioned earlier, I had enrolled into one month course called BMP from Habit-strong and decided to continue the momentum built into the course. But now I don’t have the option of guided BMP course to fall back into the routine. I always believed that physical and mental fitness goes hand in hand. The fact that my physical fitness has gone down a notch also played a role and I had difficulty in going back to my old regime for one and a half month. Last full week was spent in gradually coming back to track. And today on Monday I has again some resemblance of sanity after chaos filled two weeks.

So, what did I learned from this episode? Let us see.

First forming any new Habit is a long and slow process and you need patience and perseverance. Its like your new year resolutions. You start full of energy for a few days. The main test comes when there is a break for a few days (or a week as in my case). Once you loose momentum and had to start from scratch again. Its very easy to feel down without any motivation to continue. Its imperative to come out of this zone as soon as possible. Personally, what really works in my case if to focus on small – small actionable. To be in the moment and let go of lofty long-term goals for some time. Ultimately one of the major objectives of all these activities is to practice mindfulness. Keep your ultimate objective in back of mind. But focus and concentrate on your current activity, one task at a time. Else its very easy to be bogged down. I have managed to start the daily routine again and I’m hopeful to be back on track, gradually but surely.

To work hard or not

2021-08-15T06:29:00.003+05:30

In corporate life or in personal life as well, there is one question that I often ponder upon. Is hard-work over-rated or rather is hard-work enough. What plays a more important role in shaping your carrier. Your hard work or the opportunities you got.

I have always been a believer into the fact that most of us can work hard. Sometimes it’s an obligation as your job demands you to work hard. Some jobs are inherently tough than others. But I’m concerned about another scenario. Where you have the option of fooling around as there is nobody to micro-manage you. You can afford to take it easy if you want to. In these kind of cases, Hard work is more of a choice than on obligation. When you are motivated internally rather than by some external factors.

For me opportunity and appreciation are equally important if not more than hard work. As I stated earlier, most of us can work hard. What is sad is that we don’t get appreciation or acknowledgement for working hard especially when the hard work is by choice. Another important aspect is the opportunity to work hard.

I have completed 17 years of working experience this month. Even though I found this concept of total experience being a parameter of your growth, a bit overrated. Sometimes we have just passed the time going through motions rather than evolving. Still, it’s a good time to reflect.

On more than one occasion, I have found myself at crossroad when working hard is concerned. It started by taking initiative, by going above and beyond my standard job description. At first there is appreciation but then it gradually dries up. Either other person (peers, superiors) starts taking me for granted, or become insecure that I want to steal their thunder. But gradually they stopped acknowledging that I’m taking the initiative. Often, I also had a motive behind taking this initiative which is related to transitioning to a different role or overall growth. So, when the other person refused to acknowledge your efforts or conspicuously denies you the opportunity for transition / growth. You are faced with a dilemma and have two options.

One option is to stop taking these initiatives. It’s very easy to do as they are not even acknowledging these initiatives in first place. Plus, you get more free time to fool around. It definitely looks alluring.

Second option is to keep working on the initiatives. To build on the foundation you have made with your hard work. Sometimes you feel down and wronged upon, but you keep pushing yourself.

Here is why I feel second option is the correct thing to go. Firstly, inaction is the worst thing when you are feeling down and out. It adds to your sense of helplessness. It will start eating you out gradually and makes you a bitter person.

On the other hand, if you own this initiative and keeps on working on it regardless of lack of acknowledgement. You will have internal satisfaction. It’s imperative to seek your validation inside not outside. You cannot let go of your hard work just because someone is not appreciating you for it. The main aim should be to get new experiences and insights. With no pressure you can focus on quality of work rather than quantitative part of it.

My movie recommendation

2021-08-01T06:58:00.000+05:30

I have been avid book reader almost whole of my life. And where movies are concerned, I inherited this from my mother as she is a keen movie buff. I watched lots of movies with her and later courtesy OTT subscriptions. Since I have consumed so many books or movies, it’s very difficult to pinpoint a single book or movie. But I will try.

I watched this movie in a training workshop organized by one of my previous companies. You would normally expect some motivational movies to be screened at such trainings, but this movie was different. The title of the movie was 12 angry men. It is an old classic and one of rare English movies in black and white that I had chance of watching. That training itself was very different and unique which probably amplified the effect the movie had on me.

Putting concisely, the movie is about how our prejudices and inherent biases cloud our thinking. How every man relates an incident differently depending on his past experiences. This movie is about a jury of 12 person who must decide whether the convict is guilty of murder or not. The main protagonist is the only person who believes that the person is innocent. How he managed to convince fellow jury members forms the crux of the movie. The main premises is it must be a unanimous decision hence the protagonist has to reach out and convince every team member through different tactics. It was an engrossing watch.

I specifically remember the character of a old man and more particularly one scene where he was putting across his point of view. Some cough very loudly he just stopped talking. I don’t know why what I found that scene very impactful. I categorize myself as a good listener. When I am explaining something, I give total attention to what others are speaking and stop to let them complete something. Whereas almost all the other person I know seems to have this limitation that they can only either listen or speak at the time.

I had many take-aways from this movie. First if that I have many inherent prejudices and biases in me due to various reasons. And it’s very difficult to us to admit and see our biases and we normally surround ourselves with people who says only the things we want to hear. Everyone likes to think himself or herself as a balanced person only.

Secondly this movie also teaches about how a team works and there are lots of lessons about leadership, teamwork, and assertive behaviour in the way the main protagonist goes about convincing everyone. True to real life, everyone is closed and rigid about their decision.

Sub-consciously I had many take ways form this movie. As on reflecting, I have realized that I am also very rigid about my opinion and outlook about others and very reluctant to change them. Secondly there is very fine line between being assertive and being dominating, aggressive and no matter how hard I try, Invariable I do cross over to becoming aggressive or else I become totally passive and disinterested in the proceeding. If you truly to study how a leader should work. This movie is worth watching again and again.

PS: Interestingly, this movie was also later made in Hindi too with the name “Ek ruka hua faisla”. It was a decent attempt and had good actors like Pankaj Kapoor. But I liked the original one better as it was more subtle.

My experiment with Robotics course

2021-07-25T06:59:00.003+05:30

I don’t like indecisiveness. One of the qualities that I really admire and try to inculcate in myself is decisiveness. Taking any decision is only the first part towards achieving any goals and if we dither right at the first part; Then achieving the goals is almost impossible. I have been very big into setting big lofty goals for myself during new year. I followed this practice for some years, but the end results were not as per my expectation. One major problem with this process is that once you lose momentum or there is break in continuity; it’s very difficult to start again as New year is gone and more often than not, you wait for next new year to again start the process. However, I had this realization off late not to link my goals or objective with new year. But to strive continuously towards my goals. Be prepared that I may not achieve it in first time. There will be breaks and gaps, but I need to pull myself together, learn from last experience and start afresh.

One of the objectives that I have set for myself is to learn Robotics right from the basics and earn some sort of accreditation for the same. I decided to act on this plan in first lockdown that happened last year. I enrolled into one online course covering basics of Robotic offered by IIT. Part of the temptation was the brand value of IIT. Unfortunately, I started on the wrong foot as I missed the starting date of course and when I checked the deadline for first submission was already upon me. It was a quiz that I need to answer, I had no other option but to search for the answers on google without going into basics. Immediately once I enrolled in this course, I realized that I am out of my depth here. Plus, the professor teaching style was also not very conducive. It felt like they are just parroting their lines like a Robot in a Robotics course. I tried very hard to keep up with the course and managed to probably finish it too. The last and final stage was a examination to get the certificate. I choose not to appear for the exam as it was clear that I was not able to grasp the course completely. I still believe that professor teaching that course was also equally responsible for my decision as his communication was not very clear.

After a brief hiatus, I found another course on same topic and again enrolled in the same. The starting was much better than previous course, but I got stuck in some urgencies. Got disillusioned as the course was again increasingly becoming tough for me for follow and I left it midway too. I admit that professor teaching this course was a big improvement over the previous one. In both the courses, one major topic that I struggled to grasp was advance mathematic and abstract concept related with the same. Even though I had studies mathematics in school. I was never any good at it. Plus its good 20 years since I had left school and most of the things are forgotten now.

Then around one month back, armed with my new motivation post COVID recovery, I again enrolled in one more robotics course. One immediate realization is that Professor teaching this course is again like the first one in the sense that his communication is not very clear and easy to understand. I had almost made my mind to leave this course but then the big question is how to achieve my ultimate objective.

Finally, after some reflection on this topic, I reached two conclusions.

1) There is a serial lack of quality in our educational institutes and I’m kind of disillusioned with brand IIT now. As a diploma holder, I always carried this impression that IIT is the cream of educational institutions where engineering is concerned. But after personally experiencing the teaching method of some of the professors in IIT. I am forced to change my opinion. I can give some benefit of doubt for the point that online teaching mode is new for them also and its very much different than old physical mode of teaching. But the other points regarding how easy they made the concept to grasp for their student is equally valid. Perhaps their thinking is that the students they get is already cream of the creams who can grasp these complex concepts. But this online course is designed for anyone who is interested to learn robotics and not everyone will be really sharp or bright. If these teachers can only work with exceptional student. Then I would rate them lower that the teachers in tier II institute where professor can make even average student grasp the basic of engineering aspects. Other important aspect is regarding basic communication skills where I find the teachers severely lacking. If you are not able to form simple coherent sentences that the listener could understand than your communication skills are really poor, and you need to work on it.

2) Whether I like it or not. The quality of teaches that I am going to encounter will be just like these only. If I still want to achieve my objective than I need to look beyond them to understand and grasp the concept. With the wealth of information available at hand courtesy YouTube and google and other means at my disposal (Books recommended by these teachers). It is possible to understand the basics of this subject even without the help of these professors too. And it looks like that this is only way forward. I need to temper my expectation that these teachers will actually makes me understand the concept. The onus is on me and frankly I have been guilty of not devoting enough time on this topic. The key to mastering any subject is investing sustained effort and time.

Hence, I have decided to give this course one more tries. This time give my best efforts and if still the results are not up to my expectation. Then I will start looking for options outside India other than IIT. I already have one options available with me in form of CourseEra but I find it much more expensive compared to NPTEL that I am currently using which is free for the course and charges only for the exams and hence the certification. Perhaps that is the reason I’m so casual about it as it does not cost any money to enrol and then to leave the course. Maybe I need to invest my own money to reach level of seriousness required for achieving my target.

Before I opt for option of CourseEra. I will give one final try to my current course to the best of my abilities.

My experiment with mobile Detox

2021-04-25T11:58:00.000+05:30

I would like to start with an honest disclosure, even though I had the realization that I am spending too much time on my mobile phone with all warning signs like itchy eyes, disturbed sleep pattern and headache; I have not taken any conscious step towards reducing my time on mobile. I had convinced myself that the problem has not reached alarming status yet. It is purely due to certain circumstances that I was away from my mobile phone for a few days.

So, what happened!

I accidently dropped my phone and the murphy's law took care of the rest. Even with protective cover around it, I broke my screen and the phone stopped working (so did my heart for a few moments!). As replacing it with original Samsung screen was damm expensive (almost 50% of phone cost itself), I got it repaired with a local screen with some apprehensions and as luck would have it. That screen also stopped working after two days, I just lied down a bed my mobile in my pocket and apparently the local screen could not withstand this pressure. Ultimately, I made peace with the fact that I need to shell out some bucks and get myself a brand-new phone. However, I was in another town plus I need to wait for my salary to credit before I could buy new phone. With the new phone, I got the sermon from home minister that I need to buy protection case with flip cover for increased protection. Hence, I had to wait again for few more day before I could use the phone again.

All in all, I was without my phone for a continuous stretch of few days. So, I could get taste of this so-called Mobile detox for a few days.

So how did the experience of forced mobile detox worked out for me!

At first, I thought that it was no big deal. I carry this hidden superiority complex that I have managed to stay away from the lure of Instagram or mobile games like candy-crush. I do not feel this inexplicable urge of checking WhatsApp status of other people all the time, in fact I do not check WhatsApp status at all. Most of the time, I do not have any OTT subscription on my phone. I have enough constructive habits like reading etc and most of all. I have my laptop which almost feels like an extension of my body.

I came to realize about my folly in matter of few hours only, how something which looks totally innocuous like taking out my phone to check some random question on Quora consumes so much of your time because it has become a second nature to do it once after 10 minutes. Another big-time killer are suggested videos on Facebook, it was an eye opener for me as I thought only posting random updates or stalking profiles of other person on Facebook was addictive. Once I stayed away from phone; did I realize that suggested videos are perhaps the most addictive thing on Facebook, and they have a complex AI algorithm which tracks and monitors the videos that you watch and present a heady cocktail of more such videos which are hard to resist.

Subconsciously checking the phone has become a compulsion, a habit which is very hard to shake away. As a result of this, my attention span is limited to few minutes only. Gone are the days when I could at least concentrate on task in hand for a few hours. Now no matter how urgent the work is, the maximum uninterrupted time I could devote to it are few minutes. Few months back, I had an epiphany to add some academic certifications to my resume, taking advantage of variety of online courses offered by universities. I zeroed in a course in Robotics offered by IIT. It started with great pomp and show. I even bragged about this to few of my close friends hoping that would create positive pressure on me. Heck, I even wrote one blog post on this topic (My first blog posts this year incidentally.) Few lectures down the lines and I found myself struggling. My first conclusion was that course content, and the teaching method were not up to the mark and most of the students for this course would struggle. Other excuse was that I started the course on last moment, almost missed the first assignment date and played catch up for much duration of the course.

After some time, I enrolled into another course by second IIT. The teacher and course content were much improvement over previous course but ironically the net outcome was same that I left this course also midway. In fact, this leads me to very uncomfortable episode in the past when I left my correspondence degree in the midway at the last step as I was almost burnt-out.

Obviously, there were any other factors responsible for this, but one primary factor was my attention span. I was really struggling to maintain concentration during the duration of one lecture of 60 min. The conspicuous social media is a big distraction which is not helping in any sense at all.

The experience of forced Mobile phone detox taught me that in todays hyper-connected age. Its very difficult to limit your exposure on unproductive application. Time management sound like a very boric archaic concept but its more relevant in these times.

I had uninstalled Facebook from my old phone but forgot to do it on my new phone and in no time, I find myself spending more and more time on Facebook. So, I uninstalled it again relying on browser-based model to check some update once or twice a day.

Though not related to phone usage, I also removed Quora password from my laptop as it was also proving to be a distraction.

Though a great devours of books I had almost stopped reaching books for past few months. Hence, I reactivated kindle and started reading a book after long time and as luck would have it, the main protagonist also switched off her phone so that she could focus on her work.

In the nutshell I could surmise that this action is not something that can be done successfully in isolation, you must be constantly on guard as subconsciously we replace one app with another, even innocent looking, or so-called productive apps can get you hooked. The temptation of checking your phone time and again is hard to resist. It like a lifestyle change.

Yayavar mode on - Again

2021-02-27T14:08:00.005+05:30

My family is really into Astrology and zodiac signs etc. All the family members have their janam patri listing the prophecy and predictions about our lives.
Personally I am a bit confused about its veracity, but I don't dismiss it completely either. It does make for a casual fun read as it mostly says only good things about you. I also believe that people writing daily horoscope has a serious psychological writing talent as majority of people relate with it. Obviously, there is some scientific logic behind this which is maybe too obscure for us right now.
Anyways one of the predictions made about me was that I will be traveling a lot both in India and abroad in my future life. For a typical Punjabi family for whom greener pastures in Canada and Australia are always alluring. This was no big deal.
I had memories of long travel since a very young age. My father was in army, so we use to shift the house after every 3-4 years. Majority of my childhood memories at that time are from cantonment in Goa where I did my schooling from 2nd to 5th. As our native village is in Punjab. We used to travel from Goa to Punjab in train in every summer break. It was a three-day journey which involves changing of train too. It is a whole world taking long duration train journeys in India. After my father retirement We settled in Chandigarh which was a biggest city near my village. We were living in south end of Chandigarh and my school was in north end of Chandigarh even though it is a very small city. So, on daily basis I used to take school bus from one part of city to another and later I covered the same distance on cycle at the end of school and beginning of college.
As I have no intention of writing my autobiography here, we can conclude in a nutshell that I have been traveling most of my life one way or another. However last few years have been very interesting in this regard. I come to Gurugram (then it was called Gurgaon or Gurgawan in local colloquial terms) in 2011, the decision was primary because my company was in Gurugram only. In 2014, my company shifted to Connaught place, Delhi. My office commute increased by around 1 hour in morning and evening each. The only solace was that I was travelling by metro, so it was not so taxing. But even this relief was also short-lived. In 2016 I changed my job to a company based in Greater Noida (I live in Gurugram by the way). Initially I had some training and was deputed in Malaysia, but I came to India in last quarter of 2016. Then onwards for 3.5 years till the time I left my job I was commuting from my home to office which is around 80km one way. That too in peak office hours in Delhi traffic. It seems my biggest achievement in that company is not the exposure and knowledge I gained but rather the feat of surviving this mad traffic for 4-5 hours on daily basis I could write blog post on this topic.
Like any other job; there have been good days as well as bad days in my previous job, the bad days could be due to extra work on hand, some inadvertent mistake by me or it’s just that I was not feeling well. But whatever the reason maybe, the long car drives back home used to become a struggle on those days. In the hindsight, this daily suffer in Hindi and English, my boss who was like a big banyan tree and the recent perception by top boss in my previous company that I am up to no good was instrumental reasons behind my leaving that company.
Though I am saved from daily office commute in my current job as I am working from home only. Business travel or official travel is much more here. Most of the places are new for me where I have not travelled much in my previous jobs. Thus, slowly, and gradually I am trying to rekindle my love for traveling. This life has its own charm and I have always liked it. Spending time at airport or hotels, living out of suitcase, trying new local cuisines while on travel, as a sign of current times, getting RT PCR done or evading quarantine at airports exit. I have always been enamoured by people who are well travelled and well read. Now I am trying to inculcate the habits in myself.
However travel is much more than moving from point A to B. Its having your me time which can be used for introspection, testing your discipline and willpower, getting exposed to new experiences, Meditation bundled into one.

PS : In our society, the janam patri also serves important purpose in match making as it's used to match planetary alignment between prospective bride and groom but that is a topic of another post.
PPS : Yayawar is an Hindi work which means travellers or more accurately someone who is addicted to wander lust. I read it in a story in college some 15-16 years back, but I stayed with me. Strangely one of the other stories that I remember was titled “Neelkant ka Safar”.

My Experience with Academics

2021-01-17T08:17:00.001+05:30

1st Jan 2021

I'm starting this blog post on first day of new year. With positive intent and high Hope that this momentum will continue throughout the year.

Just to set the background for this post. I passed out of college in 2004. It was a Diploma college so I received an advance diploma on completion of course. I had campus placement in college itself so I joined my first company after 2 days and thus begin my professional life. Even during college I had this inkling that a diploma holder gets far less than a degree holder unless he is outstanding which quite evidently I was not. Partly because of that and partly due to peer pressure I had enrolled into correspondence degree course AMIE. Many of my other friends were also pursuing the same course and many others were doing BA, LLB, BCA etc too. Some of them managed to clear it in the college itself and some others in the initial years of job after college. I could neither clear in college nor immediately after joining my first company. To cut the long story short, ultimately I had to give up on the idea of acquiring a degree or higher education and make peace with the fact that I will remain a diploma holder only.

Now its around 16 years since I passed out from college. Even though I changed many jobs, department and roles randomly, sometimes due to factors beyond my control. But for many years now, I have some order in this chaos. In some way or other, I'm associated with packaging and Robotic automation which remains constant while job change. Plus the fact that I have more spare time than earlier due to working from home and many universities are offering online courses due to pandemic. I felt that time was just right for me to enrol into and get the degree of Robotics. And the cherry on the cake was when I found out that even IIT is offering online course on Robotics. I grabbed the opportunity with two hands without any second thoughts.

I enrolled in this course from NPETL through IIT Kanpur. It was taught by Prof DK Pratihar.

Unfortunately I lost track of exact date when the course was starting as it was postponed a few times. As a result of that I was late in very first assignment and thereafter only playing catchup till the very end. Like a stereotypical engineering student, I was submitting the assignment on last dates. Nonetheless I went through the motions and completed all assignments. There was no way I could have cleared the exam required for a formal certificate so I skipped it. It was a sobering experience for me which made me realize that I need to study more and focus on basics not relying on practical experience at all. Secondly it was Deja vu moment for me after more than a decade as I remember that I used to give up on exams when I was pursuing degree while in college.

The good thing is the courses are of 8 to 12 weeks duration so I could again enroll in similar course with different teacher this time as each teacher has their own unique method of teaching. In fact I have already joined another course due to start in around 2 weeks time. Hopefully second time will be a charm.

However I need to pull myself by the socks if I want to succeed this time. It around 16 years since I set foot outside college and there too it was more practical based approach in my college. It requires constant effort with Discipline to master any new skill or gain mastery. I have been known to fall short in these aspects

Now is another chance to set things right. I could feel that my discipline will be severely tested as cracking the exam will need daily studying. The subject selected is also pretty complex one.

I got reasonable results on writing blog post in early morning even though the arrangement is only few weeks old. Hence I'm thinking to allot some time in the morning to study on Robotics subject too. The problem is that I want to utilize morning me time for exercise and physical fitness too. Combine that with freezing winter mornings where you do not want to come out of cozy bed and you get a perfect recipe for failure.

PS : My second course has started too and I'm already having thoughts of leaving it as I find the first assignment too tough. When I planned on having a go at this course, I thought it will be relatively easy as the concept will not be totally alien to me. But I underestimated the fact that generally it's more difficult to clear any exam on second time if you are not mentally strong and demons from last time will raise their head at any opportune moment and remind you about the futility of whole exercise.

Plus last time I took some shortcuts which affected my petty badly. I have to avoid falling into the trap of going the same way again.

My reading glasses Evolution Cradle

2020-12-31T22:22:00.000+05:30

I took a book for reading after a good gap of more than two months which is pretty unusual for me actually. As I was not able to built a tempo for reading. I took an easy gratitious pick. A combinaton of thriller and mythfiction. So how it goes. Lets see.

One of the first thing I noticed even before staring the book was that this is a new author for me. I have a tendency to compare all these authors with Dan Brown as that was my first brush with this genre. Subsequently I ready Ashwin Sanghi a few others but never quite had the same kick. Personally I find that Dan Brown has more tension in the plan typical of a thriller while enfusing the book wtih tid bits of history and religion. Whereas Ashwin Sanghi and others (including this author too) does not have same tension in the plot plus they have more mythology than history which does not tie as well.

The main protagonist Chad who is a scientist trying to create a cross species with his team of three more scientists. After a chance discovery leds them to a breakthrough. They were referred to another scientists related with Hitler himself who also tells them about a secret and sinister society with plan for world dominance (Vril Society). I would not spoil the plot by going into more details. But the scientist duo embark on an adventure across India

So as per me, what works for the plot.

There is a nice colloqial quality to the plot and story keeps on flowing nicely. There is understated humour in conversation without overdoing it which I appreciates. It was a nice spin on Indian mythology that the authors linked mythological characters as half human half animals cross species experiments. The multiple and parallel narratives in the story are also well handled compared to some of the other books that I have read. As for the main twist in the end, the author do tried to throw some breadcrumbs foreshadowing it.

But somehow I have more complaints than praises for this book and a bit of disappointment as this genre is close to my heart and I feel that its a golden oppotrunity squandered by the writer.

So what does not work for me in the plot.

First I firmly belive that there should be some basis for flight of fantasy. Its always good to include some sort of disclaimer in the book and list the body of references in the end for further reading if ther reader is more interested. I found that sorely missing.

The first chapter itself included some wild theory to form basis of Cow worship in hindues. The theory propogated is that "cow was probably the first complex multicellular organism after the Ice Age. So, basically, the dinosaurs disappeared but the cow magically appeared right after that. Cow never followed the basic principles of evolution like we humans did. It was as if it just appeared out of nowhere." Without any scientific literatur to backup it up. I found it as a cheap shot to appeal to a certian audience.

Secondly I feel there are too many concepts forcibly squeezed into a single book. such as

"Kauravas in Mahabharata as an example of embryo splitting and cloning "

"Reverse Aryan Migration"

"Divine weapons from Mahabharata"

"Ajanta and Ellora Caves made by gods"

"Nuclear weapons used in Mahabharata"

"Yetis in himalaya"

"Hidden city of Sangri-la"

"Zoroastrian religion practiced in Afganistan"

If only author would have let go of the temptation to include everything in the same story. It would have been more coherent and compelling read.

Also I was expecting that Author would touch upon a bit on the moral and ethical dilemma involved when men tried to be God or interfere in natural order.

There were four scientists in the team but Fourth member is not mentioned at all once the story took place. Even in the end She was not mentioned, forgotten?

Its funny how less we know about our ancient civilization apart from some made up claims to boost our ego.

PS : Not only I took to book reading after big gap. I'm writing a book review after an even bigger gap. I had this problem of immediately jumping to my next book after one read leaving very little time to get my thoughts in order and write a review of the book.

Sales and Entrepreneurship

2020-12-31T22:20:00.000+05:30

24 December 2020

I’ll start the post with a useless trivia first as off late I'm fascinated by these useless tidbits of information. The information is that I'm writing the post in the morning on my mobile one day before Christmas. This is important for me as I have been struggling to post blogs for quite some time now and is under extended writer's block currently. Hence this small effort to break the shackles.

Okay now to the main topic, Sales and Entrepreneurship. I'm neither in Sales nor an entrepreneur right now. So why do I want to write on this topic. My current profile can be termed as product management or application engineering or Sales engineering or Proposals or technical sales. The very fact that we have so many names for the role makes it amply clear that my job can be viewed at many different angles. To separate wheat from the chaff. I'll like to define it as a crossroad, from where one road leads to Sales and second to Machine designing. I have been always more inclined to Sales than design due to various reasons. And this job is giving me opportunity to transition into Sales gradually (at least for now). Entrepreneurship on the other hand is always a long-term solution or dream for me. Hence this post.

To give some insight into my current company, it started only in this infamous year of COVID 19. Is an Indian arm of newly formed group. Hence, we have very limited visibility among the target customers. We have a very lean team hence not many people in Sales right now. As part of application team, I am present in all customer meeting, attest for serious customers. In other words, the situation cannot be riper for my transition into Sales.

I'm trying to remain focused and don't try too many things at once as its always a good thing to start with basics and built a solid foundation

Firstly. I'm mentally preparing myself to be ready to front customer and give our company's presentation at short notice (I already had an experience where I was asked to present about the company at last moment and I struggled). Obviously like everything else, its getting better with more practice.

Secondly, I’m reaching into my network to collect relevant information about prospective customers.

Thirdly, I’m working on improving company's corporate presentation (which I target to finish in this year).

Fourth, I’m going to write my elevator pitch which I'd like to keep a bit longer.

Fifth I'm going to listen to all the company's presentation for my company on YouTube etc, I understand there are not many of them plus even less in English, Hence I will look at our competitor’s presentation as well to understand how they present their company

I could have done on and on and one. But I know that execution is my weak point compared to planning. Hence, I'll stop here and focus more on how to implement the steps listed above.

Now coming to the second parts. Enterpreneurship. All the points listed above on sales are relevant for an Enterpreneur too. As broadly its always better to have Sales related orientation for running any business. But its not only about sales. There are various other factors too like risk taking, reach out to team. Leading not only your peer group and sometimes your superiores as well. Building your personal brand with prospective customers and network. Gathering business intelligence. Working more on presentation. And last but not the least, self discipline and will power to finish the task even if its monotonous or something that you didn't enjoy. It starts with setting small small targets and putting max effort in achieving them

As my current company is in a start up phase, I'm gaining the experience of various challenges involved in setting up a company.

Also I'm trying to gain some insight into the financial matters as well for which U have no prior experience.

In the nutshell, I need to have visibility about all aspects if business If I wish to fulfill my dream of entrepreneurship. I have started my journey with baby steps in that direction.

Birthday - A day to reflect

2020-12-22T21:13:00.000+05:30

20 October 2020

When I started this blog good six years ago. The occasions like Birthday, New year etc were my favourite topics since it was very easy to write on them. Plus out then; I was very keen on planning anything and everything. I used to think that writing about the goals was a sureshot way to achieve them. I was consuming lots of self-help books and was also a member of Toastmaster Club back then which is a sort of non-profit organisation for developing your leadership and communciation skills. Gradually reality dawned on me that discipline, will power and constant, sustained efforts are more important and planning is just the first stop towards acheiving your goals.

Gradualy I came out of that vicious circle. First I let go of my reliance on self-help motivational books. Regarding toastmasters; I finally it in 2014 after crawling to clear the first level of 10 speeches( I had joined it in 2012). I wrote last blog post on my Birthay in 2015 as I could not see any positive results regarding acheiving goals. In fact, I stopped writing about so called goals on occasion of New Year too.

22 December 2020

The date stamp should give an idea about my struggle with blogging. Seemls like my birthday and new year post will be combined into single post now. I'm going to go out on a limb and after eating the humble pie; I'm inclined again to make some sort to plan with goals and milestones to follow in coming year. The next year is special and unique in more than one ways. firstly, we are well within the age of COVID virus. Secondly I have more than enough spare time on my hand right now unlike my situation some months back. Right now my challange is more on putting the spare time to good use rather than finding any time out of busy schedule. One thing I'm very sure is that I need to change the very approach from last time and it will start from the goals itself. Even though my idea remains same of personal improvement but I dont want to rely on cliche goals of reading more books, more blogs, reducing weights etc. All of these are actually a process, not the milestones I wish to pursue. Some of the goals I have in mind are as below

Learning new Language - Spanish

I always treat polyglots with admiration. In our hyper-connected world, knowing more than one languages is one of most relevants skills to gain. Its all the more relevant in my case as my current organisation has its head quarter in Spain. Moreover Spanish is one of the most widely spoken language perhaps after english and hence it makes good sense to learn it. I also found useful source in terms of YouTube channel to learn Spanish. But now I need to follow it religiously. My target is to look for any official certification course in Spanish and pass it.

Upgrading the qualification and skills - Robotics

I have been fascinated by Robotics and Simulation for quite some time now. It looks magical and appeals to my childhood sense of wonder. Fortunately both these streams are part of my job and hence I have been motivated to master these fields from a purely professional point of view too. In spur of moment at startingof year, I had enrolled into a Robotics course offered online by IIT. But it did not end well for me. From the vey beginning, I was late and not prepared for this course and was playing catch-up only for the most part. In the end, I did not appeared for the exam as there was no chance I could clear the exam and earn the certificate. The only positive gain from the exercise that I had made one small beginning into Acedemic Robotics. My target is to enrol into another course and this time, actually earn the degree.

The last thing is to ensure that I incarporate my effort toward achieving these goals in daily routine. Else this activity is limited to another blog post only. I have always been an early morning person but the unseasonal cold wave is testing my resolve to leave cosy blankets early in the day.

PS : I realized that my car is also around 6 years old now. It means that I started this blog at the same time I bought my car. Just an useless trivia but I found it interesting.

I'm adding this section of blog post from my phone in the morning. It's just some edits in terms of correcting grammatical errors plus I added few lines here and there But nonetheless, it's a small step in right direction.

Hope I could continue this