When Reel Life soaked my Real Life

Long time back (enough time for me to forget the name of the movie) while watching an Amitabh starrer on Doordarshan, Amitabh died in the movie. The scene made me believe that there would be no follow on movie of Amitabh and THAT WAS IT. I cried and only an assurance from my parents that it was REEL LIFE and not REAL LIFE made me wipe off my tears.

Red Light

Road Rage has been on the up in Delhi. There have been numerous instances of people hitting each other because of traffic problems and most of the problems happen at the red lights when people are waiting for the lights to become green.

An idea struck me while driving yesterday. If the Red portion of the Red / Yellow / Green parts in the Traffic light could be enhanced with a Smiley, then it would remind people to take a break, sit back and smile.

Just visualizing it in my mind made me smile, so I think executed with the help of Traffic Lights would definitely make millions smile.

Bharat Ek Khoj

My wife has a bag, the bag has many things
In those things, there is a key without a keyring (just to rhyme it right :))
The key goes inside the bag in the morning
And it needs to come out in the evening

This need of the key starts Bharat Ek Khoj
And my biwis hand goes inside the bag roz roz
Out it comes with the key in the hand
Like she has just discovered a needle in lots of sand

Price of a guarantee

Post Office of India has a scheme where they give you around Rs. 1000 a month if you deposit with them Rs. 1,50,000. It is around 8.5% interest per year. If you put the same money in the stocks at the same time as you hand it over to the post office, the worst of mutual funds nowdays give 15% returns in an year i.e. around Rs. 1800 per month instead of Rs. 1000.

Why does the Post Office do this?

Its the price of a guarantee. Post Office pledges you that they will keep your money safe and give you 1000 per month irrespective of the market conditions. Thats their Price of a Guarantee.

Taking Interviews

Taking interviews is an experience in itself. Different companies place different requirements for recruiting candidates. We need to check out different things. The question is: How do we check those?

Here is my guide on how to check out different aspects of the prospective candidates:

Stability: Ask the candidate about his future plans. Whether they want to study further or not is enough for fresh candidates. For ex. if they say they would go for MBA after 2 years, then check your requirements whether two year is an enough interval for them to be helpful to the company. Past record can tell about experienced candidates.

Gets stuck: Keep on increasing the standard of the questions till the candidate gets stuck. For ex. Ask them what is 5 * 5. Then ask them what is 7*7. Then 11*11. Keep on increasing this level till they are unable to answer. Lets say they get stuck when you ask them 59*51. Does the candidate give up without thinking? Do they try something logically like 59*51 = 59*(50+1) = 2950 + 59 = 3009? If they do, then they are a Thumbs Up on this one. They got stuck and they managed to get their way out.

Seek Help and Move forward: Grill them on one of your favorites. For ex. take them out for a treasure hunt where each next stage depends on the answer of the previous. Check how many stages they are able to cross themselves! Once they get stuck, do they remain stuck forever or do they ask for your help? If they do, do they do it immediately without thinking. If yes, Thumbs Down. If not, then give them hints. Are they able to understand the hints and work logically forward. If yes, Thumbs Up.

Team Work: Tell them that they have to answer a question on How much is 11*Z. Z is an input that they require from a team member but the team member is a little slow and thats why your dates are getting slipped? How will they solve this problem?

Confidence: Try and test their skills on how sure they are about what they speak. For ex. Ask them how much is 5*5. If they answer 25, ask them Are you Sure? If they say it with confidence, ask them again. If they are again sure, they are one up. Then look out for a question where they are wrong. For ex. Ask them how much is 9*11. If they answer 98, ask them Are you Sure? If they say it with confidence, then they are Thumbs Down on this one. They would be putting bugs here and there without bothering to ask whats right or wrong. If they rethink, then they are a Thumbs Up on this one.

Communication Skills: Ask them to explain something which they are very comfortable but you are not. If you are able to understand, it means the candidate can explain what he knows well to a person who does not know it. Then ask them to explain a thing they do not know and maybe you know. For ex. Ask them to visualize how Alps look like? If they explain it well, they are a Thumbs Up when it comes to explaining both things they know and things they might not.

Treasure Hunting with the Freshers

I have been involved in training freshers joining my company for the past 3 years. For the past two years, I was doing it in my previous company and this year I am doing it in my current organization. One of the most useful things which I have been able to do with the new freshers is helping them get the basics right. It is very important for them to understand how things flow in a project. For ex. how things flow from specification to design to coding to testing. It is almost like a game of Treasure Hunt where the answer to each question provides a clue to the next step. Without completing the first question, you cannot jump to the next one and this is very important for the freshers to understand. If they do not understand the specification, they cannot understand the design and so on.

Now in most cases it happens that the puzzle has already been solved by some experienced guys who have been playing the Treasure Hunt game for quite a few years now. In these cases, it is important for the freshers to understand how the puzzle was solved.

One thing (both theoretically and practically feasible) which I work on with freshers is to help them map the specifications onto the code with the help of design. It consists of the following steps:

1. Start reading the specifications and give a presentation on it to ensure basics are properly understood
2. Read the design document to understand the clues on how to convert specifications to code.
3. Prepare a document which maps the specification line by line to the code.

In doing so, they understand how everything is linked together and help in finding problems in the existing code helping in getting a better product.

White Coat Hypertension

Wikipedia gives the following definition of White Coat Hypertension:

White coat hypertension is a phenomenon in which patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in a clinical setting but not when recorded by themselves at home. It is believed that this is due to the anxiety some people experience during a clinic visit.

I got to know this phenomenon when my wife and myself went to the doctor to get my BP checked. The first time the doctor checked it came out as 140 / 87. The doctor then asked me to rest of 5 minutes. The second time the doctor checked it came as 120/84 and the third time too it came almost the same.

The medical reason for the above behavior, as the doctor explained is White Coat Hypertension (even though she was wearing a black jacket at that time, but still I knew she was a doctor).

My wife asked the doctor why her comes 120/80 the first time if there is really something like White Coat Hypertension. It is because this is individual to individual.

And as my wife had said just before we went to the doctor: It just happens that the Doctor has done his / her MBBS and is sitting there to give you proper advice. Take it or leave it.

Thats why her BP is 120/80 the first time and mine is 120/80 the second time.

Team Management

How to arrange your team? This is one question which drives all top shots in the industry nuts. There is no SINGLE RIGHT answer to this. Well not really. Actually the ONLY SINGLE RIGHT answer to this is the TEAM MATURITY. But it is normally only there in the wish-list of everyone and never ever in execution.

Before we get into the details, let us understand briefly how most product companies are. A product is made up of parts and the same part can be used in different products. So Product and Part form a N x N matrix between themselves. For ex. Salt, sugar and water are three parts and sweet water + salt water are two products.

Now there are two broad ways of management in a product company:

a) Different Product Owner and Part Owner: We have an expert who knows the exact quantity of sugar that should be mixed in exact quantity of water to get the taste which sells. So this EXACT guy becomes our Product Owner for Sweet Water. He is worried only about quantity and does not spend too much thinking about quality. Quality has to be ensured by the guy from whom this EXACT guy borrows sugar and water from. These guys form the QUALITY guys. Now if a customer comes in the saying water is too sweet, the EXACT guy goes to the SWEET QUALITY guy and breaks loose on him. But it could be that water quantity mixed was less. So this EXACT guy was not REALLY EXACT. He pretended to be EXACT.

HOW CAN THE EXACT GUY DELIVER A QUALITY PRODUCT WITHOUT QUALITY PARTS? He can only if the same QUALITY PARTS are being used in some already proved QUALITY PRODUCT.

WHY WILL THE QUALITY GUYS BELIEVE EXACT GUY IS REALLY EXACT? They will only if the EXACT guy proves it time and again.

b) Same Product Owner and Part Owner: Now there is this ONE guy who knows EXACTLY how much sugar and how much water goes to form SWEET WATER which sells. And this ONE guy knows which QUALITY SUGAR and WATER will get him QUALITY SWEET WATER. Well, this is possible. BUT WHERE IS THIS ONE GUY? Nowhere most probably.

And if he is there somewhere, WHY WOULD OTHERS BELIEVE THAT HE IS THE ONE GUY AND THAT THEY ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING? They will if this ONE guy proves time and again that he is THE ONE GUY.

What is a mouse?

Couple of weeks back a new office boy has joined our office. He has come from Chennai and does not know Hindi. We have 16 people in our office right now (including two office boys) and 13 of us know Hindi, 14 of us know English. Now if we need to recruit a new office boy, what would be the requirements:

• Should be ready to do office work
• Should be ready to do misc. stuff (may or may not be part of his job profile)
• Should have a good integrity so that things are safe in the office
  
• Should be able to understand what needs to be done

But the only language our new office boy knows is Tamil which 12 people in the office do not know. I am equally amazed how he got through as some others in my office are. Maybe because he knows the language of the master. Anyways, I got a feeling of how important sign language is when early today morning a mouse came to say hello to me in the office. It scared the wits out of me. I had to explain that we have a new unwanted guest to our new office boy who was the only person around. I could not because he does not know Hindi / English and I do not know Tamil. I told him we had a mouse. He told me it is in the drawer. A little more brain tuning and I could make out he was talking about the COMPUTER MOUSE and not the MOUSE MOUSE. I tried to show him by hands that I am talking about A MOUSE WHICH WALKS. But I could not get through. I talked to him about a lion and a tiger and then suddenly RAT was the WORD OF THE DAY.

Monday morning blues

Early monday morning. Nice songs in the background. Chatting with a friend in the US. And an unwelcome guest.



Yes, this is one of the immense joys you HAVE TO enjoy in a startup (all pun intended). It suddenly jumped onto the cubicle wall, said hello to me and then in a flash I moved back and in next flash it went back to where it had come from. All pleasantries exchanged phew.....

Next began the cat and mouse game. But we were not able to house the mouse in a mouse trap. We have a new office boy and explaining whats a mouse to him was the icing on the cake.

The Hindu is for sale

BUT I WOULD NOT BUY IT. WHY?

Early Sunday morning on a cold winter day in Delhi, you can be only doing one thing happily: Sitting inside your quilt and enjoying tea. If just then, someone knocks on the door, then it better be something important. On one of such a cold Sunday morning, someone knocked. I opened the door. The person introduced himself as being a distributor of The Hindu. I continued talking to him without opening the door but he insisted I open the door with his hand movements. I opened it. HE HANDED ME A COPY OF The Hindu and started asking questions. More stress was on his English than the questions he asked as if he had just returned from those theoretical Learn English in 30 days and was not doing the practicals. He asked me my name, qualification and so on. He then asked me my phone number. I said I had none. He asked for landline etc any number. I kept firm and NO was the answer. AS YOU LIKE IT, he again tried his practicals on me.

Finally he came to the point. Start taking THE HINDU from 12th was the message this whole conversation was meant for. I told him I would be informing my newspaper wala if I needed it. He said something which only he could understand and then said would come again next week. WELCOME was something I could not utter and I DID NOT WANT TO ALSO.

Finally he almost snatched the copy of The HINDU he had given to me saying that it was a reference copy just to show. Even if there was half a chance of me betting on buying a HINDU, that was the last one.

Mere Filmi MiyaJi!

This is what my wife has to say to me everytime we talk. A lot of this can be credited to me for my incessant use of Bollywood dialogues on every situation with her.

a) I love long hairs BUT today morning I happened to tell my wife to get a BOB cut. Why? Actually every second is precious in the morning when we are fighting the WAR TO CATCH THE BUS, and if she goes for a BOB cut, it would save us a couple of precious minutes. But my wife was ready for it. Pat came her reply: BUT you told me you love big hair. Pat came by filmi dialogue:
Movie: Lakshaya
Dialogue: Agar mali banna hai to sabse acha ghaas katne wala bano. Agar scientist banna hai to sabse acha scientist bano. Agar bal bade karne hai, to sabse lambe baal karo. Phew....

b) Later in the day she asked me how to copy and paste certain text while chatting. Bollywood set me thinking and out came my reply:
Movie: Sholay
My Reply: Woh to main usi tarah sikhaunga jaise Dharmendra ne Hema ko gun se shoot karna sikhaya tha

Stay informed!

Stay Informed, YOU WILL HAVE TO EVEN IF YOU DO NOT WANT because they would leave you with no other choice.

I had applied for an IPO of Edelweiss. I was allocated 8 shares and I came to know about it in the following ways:

1. SMS from NSDL
2. SMS from ICICI Direct
3. E-Mail from the Registrar
4. Money refunded to my account was lesser than what I had applied for

Needless to stay, the same thing was said to me in 4 different ways and coming back to my favorite topic of Bollywood, it reminded me of Amitabh singing this to his beloved:

Angrezi mein kehte hai ki I love you
Gujrati maan bole tane prem karun su
Bengali mein kehte hai Ami tomake balo bashi
aur punjabi mein kehte hai Teri taan, ke main tenu pyaar karna waa

Now I wonder had Amitabh said it in only one language would he have won her heart or was it love at first sight, so he did not know what language the lady spoke and hence he tried all of them one by one. Anyways, at the end of the movie, he had won her over and I ALSO KNOW FOR SURE THAT I HAVE RECEIVED 8 STOCKS OF EDELWEISS.

Catch it if you can!

Moneycontrol put up this article on their website with the heading "BSE to suspend 37 companies on non-compliance issues". Here there are some bullets where they talk about when suspension will be removed from companies.

• In case, the company complies (to the satisfaction of the Exchange) with all the provisions of the Listing Agreement on or before Thursday, December 20, 2007, trading in securities of the company will be suspended for 5 days i.e. upto Friday, January 04, 2008.
• In case a company complies (to the satisfaction of the Exchange), with all the provisions of the Listing Agreement on or before Monday, January 14, 2008, the trading in securities of a company will be suspended for 30 days i.e. upto Tuesday, January 29, 2008.
• However, in case the company fails to comply with the provisions of the Listing Agreement, to the satisfaction of the Exchange on or before Monday, January 14, 2008, the suspension will continue till such time the Company complies with the procedure prescribed for revoking suspension in a scrip, or upto Tuesday, January 29, 2008 whichever is later.

In case of bullet 2 and 3, it is interesting to note on what will be the action by BSE in case a company complies with the provisions between January 15 and January 28.

Some wierd things which you immediately relate to

Which Bollywood fan does not remember this famous scene from Sholay!

Gabbar: Kitne aadmi they
Kalia: Sardar, do
Gabbar: Wo do they aur tum teen, phir bhi laut aaye, kya soche sardar khus hoga, sabasi dega

And then he shoots the three of them one by one.

Today I was reading some quotes and came across this one from Adolf Hitler:

If you win you need not explain ... But if you loose, you should not be there to explain

How to win a proxy battle?

Around 4 years back in my old company, there was a huge hue and cry over the caterer who used to provide lunch to our office. The quality to say the least was pathetic. We all wanted it to change and requested the management for the same. The management decided to conduct a poll. The poll question was:

Please send an E-Mail if you want the caterer changed. No E-Mail would be considered that you are happy with the caterer.

As with any rebellion, there are a few leaders and the rest are followers.

In this case, the leaders of the revolution sent the E-Mail but the followers did not follow as it was not too important a cause.

The caterer continued, the stomach-ache continued BUT the hue and cry died. Only the leaders decided to go and eat outside more often than before.

Vari Varsi

Vari varsi khatan gaya si, khat ke lyanda ladoo
Ek tarf hai soni bedi, to dooji taraf hai Navjot Siddhu

- Baba Sehgal on a show with Mandira Bedi and Navjot Sidhu

Arz Kiya hai

Aaine ne jab tujhe dekha, hua teri tareef mein shaamil
Bola woh roop ko tere dekh kar, uff hai yeh kitna katil

Pehle Dharti Hili, Phir Biwi aur Finally Main

First the earth shook, then my wife and finally me. This basically summarizes my earthquake experience that hit Delhi today morning at 4:45 pm. As my cousin put it: Woh to bhabhi ne balance kar diya nahin to aaj to bas :)

My friends experience was a little different. First the earth shook, then he shook and then his wife finally had to scold him to stop shaking. Only if he had the power to shake the earth :)

Another colleague of mine who has come here from US for an year remembered the tips he was given in US in case an earthquake happens. They were requested to hide under something wooden so that nothing falls on them. Only in this case, his dining table would have been the first thing to break in case something happened.

Managing Relations between a customer and your product they own

I have been thinking about the different management ways which the companies use to manage the relations between a customer and one of the companies product owned by them. I have till now come up with three different ways of management which I call:

• Multi Password Way of Management
  
• Password Way of Management
• Token Way of Management
• Cobbler Way of Management

These ways of management are basically different in the way they relate a product owned by the customer to the customer.

To summarize:

If I go to a cobbler and give him a shoe to repair and later someone else goes to collect it, the cobbler uncle would be unable to recognize. He relates the product directly with the customer.

If I go to a parking lot, then they give me a parking ticket. Anyone who has the parking ticket can take the car.

If I go to an ATM, anyone would need my card and PIN-ID to get money from my account.

If I call up the Customer Care of my credit card company, they ask me a few queries to establish my identity.

Do you know of any thing which falls outside these categories? If yes, please do leave a comment.

Multi Password Way of Management

Lets say I call up the customer care of my credit card company. Before interacting with me, the customer care would ask me a few queries to verify my identity like:

• Card Number
• Date of Birth
• Mothers Maiden Name
• House Address
• Mobile Number

After I have given satisfactory answers to these questions, they would consider my identity proved and answer my queries.

You create a many-to-one relation between the customer and the product. If the many is verified by the customer, then he / she has got the access to the product.

This way is used when you need to ensure with a good probability that the product is being associated with the right customer, so instead of having a single token, there are multiple different tokens associated with the product.

Password Way of Management

I need to withdraw money from the ATM using my debit card. I go to the ATM, take out my card, swipe it in the machine, enter my PIN-ID, enter the amount I need to withdraw and I got money. This is the ATM Way of Management. You create a one-to-one relation between the account, the card and the PIN-ID (anyone can withdraw money provided he / she has the card and the PIN-ID). It is normally used for some amount of security is required. It is commonly followed in:

• ATMs
• Internet Banking
• Using Railway / Airport Tickets using Net Banking (where you need an identity proof in addition to the Railway / Airport Ticket)
• Using your credit-card where in addition to your card, your sign is matched with the sign on the card
  

Token Way of Management

If you go to a big retail store, they would request you to keep your baggage in the store house and hand you a token-id. Anyone who gives the token-id back to the store house would get the baggage back (be it you, your wife, your friend or your friendly pick-pocketeer) . For the StoreHouse, the token-id represents everyone associated with the product they are safe-guarding. The StoreHouse creates a one-to-one association with the token-id.

This is commonly followed in:

• Store houses at Retail Stores, Theatres etc.
• Parking lots
• My office where they have given me a card to swipe and the door opens
• You go to a courier company to send a courier and they give you a receipt
• You go to a dry-cleaner and give your clothes. They give you a receipt.
  

Cobbler Way of Management

How does a cobbler manage his business?

Today morning I had gone to give our nearby Cobbler Uncle a footware that had broken. He told me to collect it from him sometime later in the day. In the evening, my wife and I went to the cobbler to collect the footware. We went in a car and my wife got down to collect the footware from the Cobbler Uncle.

The Cobbler will associate the footware he receives with the image of the person delivering the footware to him. Now if another person goes there to collect the footware from him, his association rules break down. When I got down from the car and went in front of him, he remembered the footware that was given to him in the morning.

This is the Cobbler Way of Management. You create a one-to-one association between the product and the customer which has the risk of breaking down in case the customers friend goes. If instead of this, the Cobbler Uncle associates the footware with the address of the house, then even if another person goes to collect the footware, the association will still work. This is the StoreHouse Way of Management.

I have got a courier!

OR MAYBE I HAVE NOT. Early this year, when I changed my company, I got the addresses changed for all the correspondence that used to happen at the address of my old company. I changed it to my home address, which does not change as often as my companies :). Early today I received a SMS that a courier to me was not delivered as no one was at home. I was also given a number to get in touch with. I called them up and inquired about my treasure. I was told that it has been sent to Noida to my office address. Well Well Well. It was fine till now but as soon as he said that it has been sent to my office address, I smelled something wrong. I have not given my new office address to anyone till now so this one had gone to my old office address. So my courier has no address as of now. I told the guys that I can collect the courier from their office address. But they do not allow people to collect couriers from their office (which is rather bizarre). If I can show an identity proof which is well known (PAN card, Driving License etc.) then why should they not allow me to collect courier from their address.

OneFamily and Google Earth

A friend of mine has joined an Internet startup. One of their websites OneFamily allows you to create family trees. You can neatly arrange all the members of your family and add their snaps to the tree.

Now Google Earth allows you to create Placemarks. Placemarks is a technique to mark the place where you live on this Earth.

If OneFamily and GoogleEarth can combine the two features together, you should be able to associate the family tree with a map created through GoogleEarth and where different leaves of the tree are residing.

Sounds cool when you need to send invitations out to all the people in the family where the latest information would be placed at one place.

ARZ kiya hai

Ho agar khata humse bhula dena usko samajh kar udta dhuan

Kyunki khata bhi hoti hai wahin dher saara pyaar ho jahan

Lagta toh nahin koi khata hui hai aap se
Bas mood-mood ki baat hai jaanu, pehchano usko dhyanse

Main Ser to biwi sawa ser :)

Financial Queries I have

I used to work for a US MNC. I sold shares at a loss in US market. Can I balance that loss against the gain I have in the Indian Stock Market?

Lets say my income is Rs. 9,00,000 from salary and I earn 2,00,000 from stock market (Short-Term Capital Gain) in the financial year. Now will I need to pay the surcharge on income when it crosses Rs. 10,00,000 or is income from salary only factor while calculating surcharge above Rs. 10,00,000?

If I am calculating the tax on the Short Term Capital Gains I have from the stock market, then can I reduce the gains by showing the expenditure such as Internet expenses from the gain before calculating the tax?

Lets say I bought 1000 shares of company X at Rs 10 per share. My total Cost Price comes out to be Rs. 10000. Now the share price is at Rs 20. If I sell 500 shares at Rs. 20 within an year of purchasing the stocks, then I earn Rs. 10000. Now is my profit NILL for the purpose of calculating taxes or is it Rs. (500 * 20 - 500 *10) == Rs. 5000?

Guesstimate

A search on Merriam Webster Online gives the following result for Guesstimate.

Etymology: blend of guess and estimate

It is a very common phrase while doing planning in software projects. You have to make your best guess to estimate how much time the human brain would take to complete a certain task. At the start of the project, it is just a guess. Slowly as you get on top of the things, the guess part of the estimate goes and it becomes the real estimate.

This whole process often reminds me of a game I played while attending a birthday party as a child. We were shown a bottle that was filled with lots of same sized pebbles. We were to guess the number of pebbles that were there inside the bottle. It was an easier job because the bottle size was fixed and the pebbles were same sized unlike the current software projects where the brain of each individual involved has its own complexity.

Om Shanti Om

*ing: Shahrukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade

Director: Farah Khan

The movies tries to link the 1970s with the present day cinema. Good in parts but average as a package.

My take on the movie:

If you love Om Shanti Om, then you love Bollywood.
If you love Bollywood, then it is not sure that you will love Om Shanti Om.

Google Earth and Making your Mark on the Earth

Google Earth guys call the process of Making your Mark on the Earth as Placemark. To get started visit this link: How to put Placemarks on Google Earth?

I also managed to mark our Home on Google Earth and save it. I am not sure how to post it but I have it in my collection now. Google Earth creates a file with the KMZ extension. If you have Google Earth installed, then you should be able to view this file anywhere and get to the saved location.

Business Models

While reading about WiMAX (technology I am working on currently), I came upon many posts which said that one major factor favoring Sprint is that it is open to embracing an open business model unlike traditional cellular companies which embrace a closed walled business model. This led me to do a little Googling and find out what these business models are.

Closed Business Model:

You buy a product at a discounted price and you sign a deal that you would use that product for at-least some time during which the company would recover much more than the discounted amount. For ex. For ex. I buy a Mobile connection from a company where I get a SIM for Rs. 1000 and a number. If after 6 months I find company is NOT GOOD, I cannot SWITCH easily as I have given the number to almost everyone. Cool for them but I AM STUCK.

Open Business Model:

You buy a product at a price from the market with no strings attached. You are free to go anywhere, as and when you desire. For ex. I buy a Mobile connection from a company where I get a SIM for Rs. 1000 and a number. If after 6 months I find company is NOT GOOD and other companies support NUMBER PORTABILITY, then I can go to a vendor whom I find is good. Cool for me as I AM NOT STUCK.

Open Business Model is the best for customers. They owe their allegiance to anyone who provides the best services according to them and encourages COMPETITION. It gives them the freedom to try out different options before freezing their likes and dislikes. I would hate it if a company told me before recruiting me that I would need to sign a bond to stay with it for 2 years. Chey......... They are themselves laying the foundation for me to resign sooner than later!

Yeh Hai Stock Market Meri Jaan

Todays episode was interesting, rather very interesting. The steel sector has been very hot for the past 2-3 days and for the past few months we have observed that there have been strong sectoral growth. First it was Banking, then Media, then Energy and now we thought it would be Steel seeing the data for the past two days. So we bought some steel stocks yesterday and my friend bought some today. The stock was already 18% up when he managed to buy it. The steel stocks were unavailable in the market today. NO ONE WANTED TO SELL. Then within an hour of his order getting executed, the price of the stock was 10% down. TO CAP IT ALL, there was a notification that the company is buying the shares back from the market for a sum which was much below than the one he had bought for.

All our data was proved wrong, some precious money lost, but THANK GOD WE ARE SMALL FISHES and 2 or 3 zeroes do not mean THE END for us. BUT Yeh Hai Stock Market Meri Jaan, so be careful.

WiMAX + Android + Ad-Based Revenue Model

WiMAX + Android + Ad-Based Revenue Model

What do the above three things have in common?

Google!

Google is the master of Ad-Based Business Model. Google is partnering with Sprint for providing a portal for WiMAX customers in US. Google is the key force behind Android which is the open source OS + SDK targeted at Mobile Software development.

Google has become synonymous with success during the best part of the decade gone by. If this is not enough to guarantee success for the WiMAX + Android combination, then following are the technical factors that I think would guarantee success for this combination:

• WiMAX network would be open network unlike cellular networks till now that are closed to third parties. Any operator would be free to develop applications and the best will win, unlike current cellular networks where you need to give a good part of your revenue to the cellular operators.
• Android is open source. You would have the power to change anything in the mobile phone and there would be infinite companies that would come up to develop applications on Android. What this means is lots of competition and it is no hidden secret that competition means win-win situation for customers.
• Ad-Based Business model: Would you mind if your call rate is cut to half if you agree to receive an advertisement after the call you have made? Half the cost you pay and half the cost of your call is paid by the company giving the advertisement. This could completely change the cellular world.

Mere Doston Mere Pass Aao (Continued)

In the previous part of Mere Doston Mere Pass Aao I had discussed how Bollywood relates to our day to day life and what different scenes in Bollywood can teach us. The same stuff continues:

Deewar

In the scene from Deewar where Amitabh Bachchan is going Ga Ga on all the things he has managed to achieve in life, Shashi Kapoor says this single line which is arguably the most famous line in Hindi cinema:

• Mere Paas Maan Hai

In one line, he is able to teach millions of young people running mad after materialistic things that there is much more to life than money etc. Count the number of blessings you have and not the money (as they say).

Sharaabi

Amitabh invites Jaya Prada to his birthday party. Jaya Prada has lost a necklace worth 9 lakhs that was gifted to her by Amitabh. She reaches the party late and crying tells Amitabh that she has lost the necklace.

• Do aansun is aankh se gire, phir do us aankh se, phir do is aankh se gire, phir do us aankh se, phir do us aankh se gire, do is aankh se. Kitne hue? Nau lakh ke haar ke liye barah lakh ke aansun. Daddy hote to kehte: Vijay tumhe to business karna bhi nahin aata

Some things money can't buy, for everything else there is mastercard. Okie, no mastercard was there when Sharaabi was released, but in front of the his beloveds tears, even the best believe that money is worthless.

Things that have all right answers

How many times have you come across debates where everyone is right? Many. Just today morning, I was having a debate with a colleague on what is the right way of distributing work among the people by a manager. There were two approaches which we debated on:

a) Give all the features to the individual and let the individual decide how he wants to plan.
b) Give a single feature to the individual and after he has finished with it, give him second and so on.

Approach A: If someone loves to plan for himself, then he would love approach one. He would be interested in knowing what is expected of him for the next three months and he plans it accordingly. This has a good advantage in projects involving peoples brains as the brain might not be working every hour at the same efficiency. Also, you might want to balance your work with other personal things and so on. As long as you can commit that in three months work would be done, the manager would (or rather should) not be concerned whats going on in your life. This has lots of assumptions:
a) People commit and meet their commitments
b) Manager does not like to interfere a lot
c) Manager has faith in the employees
d) People raise concerns whenever they see them, instead of waiting for three months.

Approach B: The other approach is nice if you do not know how much time the different features will take. In this case, if you are giving multiple features to an individual, then instead you can ask him to work on one feature. If another individual becomes free, then he can pick up the second features instead of the first individual. It helps in delaying decisions till the right moment comes. This is also helpful because normally individuals finish the study phase for each feature before starting work on them.

We had lots of discussion on which approach is better. Finally it boiled down that there is NO SINGLE RIGHT ANSWER to this. Instead, it depends on the Manager-Individual chemistry and what suits a combination of them.

Following are the different options that can follow depending on the Manager-Individual chemistry:

Manager: Plans
Individual: Does not plan

Approach B

Manager: Gives Freedom
Individual: Plans

Approach A

Manager: Does not give freedom
Individual: Plans

Approach: ???? Will be cat and mouse where the manager will always try to pounce upon the individual.

Manager: Does not plan
Individual: Does not matter

Approach: Does not matter because your team is anyways screwed in this case.

Fifety-Nine or Unsath

A friend of mine took his dad for a heart check-up to a famous cardiologist (around 75 in age) in New Delhi. The cardiologist started asking questions to my friends dad:

Cardiologist: Whats your age?
Friends Dad: (A little confused) Fifety-Nine (a little pause) Unsath
Cardiologist: Fifety Nine Or Unsath. Bahut difference hai dono mein.
Friends Dad: (Lost in words) Fifety-Nine
Cardiologist: Do you smoke?
Friends Dad: Nahin
Cardiologist to Friends Dad: Lie down on the bed
Friend to his dad: Papa, bistar par late jaaiye
Cardiologist to Friends Dad: Remove your shirt
Friend to Cardiologist: Doctor, my dad does not know English.
Cardiologist to Friend: Mujhe pata hai. Tum chup chap kursi par jakar baith jao. Tabhi maine poocha tha Fifety-Nine yaan Unsath. He replied fifety-nine. I have been in US for seven years. No one speaks Hindi there. Aur hum yahan par bhi hindi bolne mein sharmate hain.

Narendra yaan Yogendra

Early last year I had bought a flat in Faridabad from a property dealer Narendra. I had booked a flat in Triveni-Ferrous (a combination of two groups who were building a society in Faridabad). I was personally keen on getting a booking in Triveni as it was more famous then (infamous now :)). When Mr. Narendra landed up in my house, he came with booking forms for TFI (Triveni-Ferrous Infrastructure). I wanted him to confirm that the flat would finally be booked in Triveni. He said "Worry not!" Some months later, I came to know that I have been allocated a flat in Ferrous (instead of Triveni). Mr. Narendra told me that Ferrous is equally good. Mr. Narendra had promised me that he would be giving me 4% discount on the booking amount. I was foolish enough to believe him. Some months back, I asked him for the discount. He stopped picking up phones and then one day he asked me to talk to Yogendra. Now this Mr. Yogendra (whom I have never met) and Mr. Narendra (whom I will never forget) have come up with this lovely business philosophy of "Here and There Everywhere but Indirectly Nowhere" which states that "Narendra and Yogendra are two good hidden friends who are enemies in front of the world. If you go here, he will refer you there and vice versa and in the end you will land up nowhere". This is a good business model if you are in it for a short term. It works somewhat like this:

1. Two good friends work up a deal beforehand on how to split the benefits
2. They form a team and come up with a business
3. They get lots of customers and sell them something
4. They suddenly fight one day (over anything doesn't really matter)
5. They create lot of confusion. More confusion the better it is for them in this model.
6. Customers run Here and There Everywhere
7. However they reach Nowhere because narendra yaan yogendra, sab ek hi thali ke chathey bathey hain

Its Quiz Time

You are sitting in a room with three switches. 3 bulbs in an adjacent room are connected to these three switches. Now you need to tell which switch is for which bulb. You can go only once in the other room.

A man dies and goes above. There he finds two doors - one to Heaven and other to Hell. There are two persons standing - one each in front of the door to Heaven and Hell. One of them speaks a lie and the other speaks truth. Now you can ask only one question to any of them and you need to tell which is Heaven and which is Hell.

A king gives a horse each to his two sons and tells them that they need to race to city X. The one whose horse is SLOWER will win. The sons are wandering over for many days. When they are dead tired and have no hope left, they meet a wise man. As soon as both of them have talked to the wise they, they jump onto the horses and start walloping towards city X. What did the wise man say?

Duniya Gol Hai Mere Dost

Once upon a time, when we used to go to school, we used to study Geography. The name of our Geography teacher was Mrs. Purewal. She was very strict but she used to take us to wonderful places near our school so that we could learn things. Once while we were having our Geography class, she asked us to open our Atlas. She took us to the page where the map of the world was drawn (something like in the shown image). Then she decided to test us and our intelligence. She asked us to pick the shortest path through sea from Japan to the West Coast of America. Some answers:

a) Japan to India to SA to US
b) Japan to India and through the Mediterranean Sea to US




I won't mind if you cannot stop laughing reading the above answers. I also laugh at it, but it was tough to remember this simple thing back then:

Duniya Gol Hai Mere Dost

Thing of the day

While going to my office in the morning, a policeman standing at a traffic light asked me if I was going straight. I said Yes and he asked me for a lift. I welcomed him in and we started talking (rather he started talking :)). As soon as I mentioned that weather has become old and in the newspaper there was a report yesterday that it was the coldest day for the past 5 years, his stories about the press began. These guys need to fill in all the pages. They need some stuff to write. Some of them just call the policemen and ask them about what happened and they would get a story sitting at home. They ask for a Crime Report which is published by the police everyday and make their stories out of it.

This reminds me of the famous saying:

Is duniya ka kya hai sabse bada gam
Ki uska gam hai mere gam se kam

Even if half of this negative energy could be converted into positive, India would march ahead at double its current speed.

Ga Ga Ga Ga

A colleague of mine has a one and a half year daughter. As she is growing up, she is learning new things and this includes the mobile phone. She has managed to learn to play with it and accidentally dial a number using the phone. On one such occasion, she dialed the number of another colleague of mine. When he picked up the phone, he started hearing voices of a small baby going "Ga Ga Ga Ga".

Similarly my wifes sister has a one year old son. He is also enjoying the world of mobile phones and thinks about it as more of a toy than a thing used to communicate. If you put a phone on his ears and someone from the other end speaks, he would listen for a couple of seconds and then remove the mobile from his ears.

A little older kids love the ring tone of the mobile phone. They would start from the first stored ring tone and keep playing each and every one of them.

Thing of the day

I had gone for the monthly hair-cutting ritual to my nearby barber shop. After the usual wait for a few minutes and enjoying the sun for the first time this winter, my turn came to get the hair cut. As I was getting it done, a young man was getting a massage done on the nearby seat. It was an interesting process. The person doing the massage took a machine, put it across his hands (like a glove which is open at the fingers) and plugged it into a socket. When he switched on the power, the machine started vibrating and so did his hand. He then used that vibration to do the massage on different parts of the body of the person. Saw such a machine for the first time....

Tagging my posts with labels

On last Friday, I was busy tagging all my posts on the blogs with labels. It seems easy but it is not. Arranging yourself and your life is one of the toughest jobs. Anyways, I managed to do it this time for at-least the posts I have made. Following are the categories till now:

1. Bollywood: My all time favorite category.
2. Finance: One of my favorites these days.
3. Humour: My kind of humour, which only probably I can understand. And now my biwi too because she has to laugh at it :)
4. Information: General information that I want to share
5. Learn One Thing: Tag the thing which I learn every day into a separate category
6. Personal: My personal life information
7. Philosophical: Kind of person I am, this category will beat all the others in its numbers.
8. Professional: Tids-bits from my office life
9. Religion: Not one of the most interesting categories for me, but I do believe in that force which makes us all follow the right path
10. Sports: Wowwww

Thing of the day

While watching Navjot Singh Sidhu on Aap Ki Adalat, I was amazed by the changes he has gone through his life. If he really changed the way he portrays, then he has done a great job. One incidence, about his meeting with Shahrukh 25 years back when Shahrukh was not a super-star, which was striking was:

I do not compete with anyone. I compete only with myself.

Call this comment arrogance of Shahrukh or his supreme belief in his abilities, the place where he sits today is really appreciable.

It also completely cuts the negative energy that might be present in your life totally.

As Sidhu puts it aptly in his own style:

Duniya ka sabse bada kya hai rog,
yeh soch ke mere baare mein kya kahenge log

Diwali Get-Together in our office

We had a Diwali get-together in our office. A small one from 4 till 4:30. The invitation for it said that we need to come prepared with Diwali stories from our past. Hmmmm.......

Anyways, some interesting tid-bits from it:

• It is used to celebrate victory of Good over Evil. That is the easiest one.
• Some use Rangoli to decorate their house during Diwali
• As a student, some guys used to hate Diwali Homework.
• Diwali Wishes change with years
• When we were young: New clothes
• Mid Age: Celebration through crackers
• Now: Sleep - Agony of engineers
• In south in some places, first diwali after marriage the guy goes to the girls house. He is treated like a King there. WoW or Duh
• You are woken up at 2 in the morning by the elders who put oil on you and then you bathe and so on - happens in south
• Time to thank for everything you are gifted by God with
• Time to thank God for so many people whose blessings are with you
• Lots of sales at lots of places
  

Thing of the day

While coming back from our walk after lunch, I noticed a person having a Tata Indigo get out of his car. When he got out of this car, the windows of the driver seat were half open. After he was out, he started walking towards a shop nearby. Then he pressed the Auto Lock button on the keys. As soon as he pressed that, the windows also closed. This was something I did not know. I always need to check manually the windows of the car when I go back home. Sometimes I need to come back at mid-night to confirm that windows are closed.

Try these good things out

Some good habits which we should incorporate in our everyday life:

1. Develop a habit to look at a list at the start of the day and end of the day
1. This will help in putting things which are in your basket immediately to this list at any point in the day and get you a reminder at the end-of-the-day
2. Try to learn one good thing everyday and note it down
3. Learn to tell good things to others if you think so
4. Try to concentrate on the thing you are doing and put it to a logical end to carry it on at a later stage, if there is a need to take a break in betweenPlan your financial in terms of targets to achieve twice an year
5. Do a small review of your financial at the start of the month
6. Spend some time during the week on how to build your wealth for short term

Mere Doston Mere Pass Aao

Mr. Natwarlal

This famous song from Mr. Natwarlal (An Amitabh Blockbuster release in 1979) reminded me once more of the enormous things one can learn from Bollywood.

Mere Doston Mere Pass Aao, Ek Kissa Suno

Amitabh calls on the kids to come and what follows is a brilliant story, only in a way Amitabh can do. Sung by him, it reminds me of the kisse kahanian (stories) that Grandmothers have in store for the younger ones and they need one every night.

Deewar

Similarly a scene from Deewar wonderfully summarizes how adjustments in relations can be equally happy for both parties. Amitabh is shown as a person who does not enter temple but always goes with his mother to the temple. He would stand at the footsteps of the temple. His mother offers him prashad from the temple. Amitabh is reluctant to take it and what follows is a dialogue from Shashi Kapoor which I can never forget:

Shashi Kapoor: Bhai, Maa isey prashad samajh kar deti hai, tum bhi mithai samajh kar kha liya karo.

Bluffmaster

Scene from Bluffmaster which defines love.

Abhishek to Priyanka: Na hasata hai, na rulata hai. Iska matlab abhi tak dil par kuch bhi asar nahin kar paya hai.

Love without emotions and its high and downs would be so cheyyyyy

There are numerous other scenes from the Bollywood movies, each of which has a story to tell. Love Bollywood and love the stories it has :)

Guru

There is a scene in Guru where Aishwarya is expecting a baby and standing in front of the mirror. Abhishek keeps his head on her stomach. Aishwarya asks "Kuch sunai de raha hai?" Then Abhishek (who is more fatter than usual in this movie, maybe for this scene) stands in front of the mirror and Aishwarya keeps her head on his stomach.

Abhishek: "kuch sunai de raha hai?"
Aishwarya: "Bahut kuch"
Abhishek: "Kya?"
Aishwarya: "Ismein mujhe bahut se logon ki awaaz sunai de rahi hai jo keh rahe hai ki hamein kaam do"

Talking about an inspiring scene for someone who wants to open a company for the well being of the nation. You cannot beat the above one.

My personal guide to Investing In Stock Markets

Are you planning to invest in stock markets? Thinking about making money and doing well. Here is my personal guide which I use to invest:

Divide your money into different funds at the start of the year. This will help you in setting targets and achieving them.

Planned Equity Fund: Money that you plan to invest into Equity at the end of the year. For me, the first year end target was 75,000

Planned Mutual Fund: Money that you plan to invest into Mutual Funds at the end of the year. For me, the first year end target was 75,000

Shopping Fund: Extra money that should be ready to be invested when market goes down. Keep a cap on it and do not be greedy when the market goes down.

Non Performing Assets: Take a regular look at the non-performing assets in your portfolio. The duration after which you review these assets would depend on how much time you can spare for your portfolio. Try to remove the non-performing assets and replace them with something which grows faster.

Year End Target: How much do you want your money to grow by at the end of the year? For me, I wanted my money to grow 15% at the end of the year. Conservative by todays estimates, but as a fresh entrant to the stocks, I wanted to play it safe.

Now the strategy is simple:

Invest in stock market through the shopping fund when market goes down.
Refill the shopping fund when the market goes up.
Keep the shopping fund constant.
Do not worry if Planned Equity Fund exceeds Planned Mutual Fund as long as the combination of two is below your limits. Equity is better if you know basics about stocks and have a good GUT feeling about stocks which you can back. For ex. My Equity Fund is more Loaded right now that Mutual Fund but I have a little more faith in my equity skills than choosing mutual funds.

If the planned fund goes above limits, then get it back to planned levels as soon as you get a chance. You will always have funds in your portfolio that are not giving returns as expected. Take a decision and get rid of them. DISCIPLINE your investments.

This can change the way we work!

The thing which we discussed (and I will go into the details a little later) today can completely change the way we work, only if we execute it. We have tried doing it some months back and it fell flat. The adrenalin flows for a day normally for these things and then everything comes back to the same level. Anyways, its good that we find the courage to discuss it again because if we are able to win this one, we would have what we call a "World Class Team"

What we did today was come up with a list of positive and negative points about the way we work? We are a bunch of guys who wanna work hard, do some good stuff and make money. We have been working together for around 3 years now and know quite a few things about each other.

Positive:

1. We are very fort right with each other. We say if any other person is doing wrong at his face and that is the hallmark of a good team.
   
2. We are almost at the same frequency.
3. Koi angrez nahin hai humme se, no doc / ppt only guy
4. We all want to work technically even after 5-8 years experience, so we can be very efficient
5. None of us is a politician
6. We have trust in each other
7. We are open to sharing our knowledge if the other person asks
8. Despite of cribbing and criticizing everything, we continue to work hard.

Negatives:

1. We speak in hindi even in meetings where people who do not understand hindi are present.
2. We are negative in our thoughts.
3. We look to criticize everything.
4. We do not focus.
5. We talk a lot and waste time.
6. We mix emotions with logic.
7. We do not show interest in meetings in which we are not interested.
8. Somo of us do not want to do Docs / testing
9. We do not take proper initiatives, we want to be managed by someone.
10. We want that every decision should be made after asking us, which is not possible.
    

People with Time Vs People with Talent

Karwa Chauth

October 29, 2007 was the day when the moon decided to play hide and no seek with the ladies in India. Karwa Chauth is a festival in India where the married ladies keep a fast and pray for long lives of their husbands. One of the infinite reasons why I love my wife :)

Some sound bytes from this festival:

Couple of years back on Karwa Chauth, the moon was not shining bright. Question asked: Why does the moon not shine so bright on Karwa Chauth?

Because there is so much demand for the moon, the voltage drops :)

Interesting ways to teach

We had a presentation from one of the new persons who has joined the team on a topic. He is going through the specifications and he had to explain one part of the specification to us. There are two things which are kind of blocking his speed of progress:

1. He is a fresher, so everything is new for him
2. He is reading a specification which assumes you have some previous knowledge about things and he has none

After the presentation, there was a look of exasperation on his face - I start at one point in the specification and end up somewhere else.

Now how to you make his learning process interesting?

It is always good to relate some new thing to something you already know. For ex. A person who has been for 5 years in the industry would relate a new project work to one of the older projects he has already worked on.

What does a fresher relate to?

He cannot relate to anything because he knows nothing. So it is important for his mentor to help him relate to things he might already know. For ex. he asked a question during the interview which was: What is preamble and how is it used?

Now preamble are certain bits of information which are used to separate two frames from each other. When we switch on a mobile, it might be switched on within a frame but we need to know the start of the frame. So mobile keeps waiting for the preamble to know the start of the frame.

Now the fresher knows neither preamble nor is right now comfortable with the notion of a frame.

BUT he knows cricket. Now how does cricket come in between all this?

To answer the question above, an over in cricket is like a frame and preamble is like taking a break between the overs.

When we switch on a mobile, it might be switched on within a frame but we need to know the start of the frame. So mobile keeps waiting for the preamble to know the start of the frame.

CHANGES TO

When we switch on the TV, it might be in between an over but we need to know when a new over starts. So we keep waiting for the break to know when a new over starts.

I BET HE WILL NEVER FORGET THIS ONE :)

Its does more bad than good

We have been taking interviews during the past few months for recruiting people to our company. There are many things we test people on. In addition to the technical details, there are lots of inter-personal things which come into play when you are being recruited to work in a team. In all these things, it does MORE BAD THAN GOOD to all who speak what they do not mean. For ex. We generally ask a person how comfortable he is on a topic before asking relevant questions on the topic. Based on his assessment, we then start from a certain level of questions and then go into easier or difficult ones. Now, if a person rates himself 7 out of 10 and then is not able to answer questions that I expect a person at rating 3 out of 10 to answer, then either I am expecting too much or he is thinking too highly for himself. Anyways, at the end of the day it is the other person looking out for a job. Being open on what you know and what you do not know is the BEST way to behave in an interview because there would alway be things which you would KNOW and things which you would DO NOT KNOW. So whats the harm in admitting it. Follow it up that you are more than willing to learn things which you do not know (of course only if YOU ARE READY to do this).

As the Aussies team have repeatedly said throughout the series:

Your words should be backed by your actions. It leaves a bad taste if only words flow and actions do not follow.

How tough is it to manage?

Day before yesterday we had our weekly status meeting. A fresher has joined our group and he is reading the specifications to get to pace. As he is a fresher and because he is reading any specifications for the first time, he is bound to have quite a few questions. So our manager assigns a person to help him in his queries. There are four persons in our group who could be assigned as freshers. While asking the fresher to be proactive and ask wherever he gets stuck, he asked him to collate all this questions and ask them once a week to whoever is his mentor. Huhhhh. Once a week :) By the time a week passes, things would be all confused within his brain. Ofcourse, if he starts asking whenever he wants to, that also is not the best way.

So what could be the best solution?

Ask the mentor how much times a week he would like to get interrupted?
Would he like fresher walking in without notice, with some notice or at some fixed time in the day?
Any other concern he might have!

Ask the fresher what he would be comfortable in?

Would he love to ask whenever he has a doubt?
Would he like to consolidate questions once a day / few days and then ask?

As a manager, the next step for you would be to find a middle path that makes both of them happy. Going by past experience, you would definitely be able to find one.

Ek Bhi Nahin

A friend of mine has two kids. Once when they happened to be out of house, a guest came to their house and they were received by the kids. The kids invited them to drawing room and made them comfortable on the sofas. Those were the days of KBC - a popular game show on TV where Amitabh Bachchan used to play a game with the people where he used to ask them questions and give them four options to chose. The kids were impressed and decided that it was time they played KBC. So they asked the guests:

Aap kitne gilas paani piyenge? Inmein se ek chuniye

1. 1 Glass
2. 2 Glass
3. 3 Glass
4. Ek bhi nahin

The guests said "2 Glass" (The husband and wife had come and both were thirsty). The kids (in Amitabhh style):

Bilkul Galat Jawaab. Sahi jawaab hai "Ek bhi nahin"

Performance Metrics for kids

Performance Metrics for kids - yup, thats true. They do exist, at-least in India. A colleague of mine is going through the admission process for his kid (2 and a half years old) in school. Following are some of the expectations schools have from a 2 and a half year kid:

• He should know the different colors
  
• He should know counting (more he knows better metrics he has)
• Should know A for Apple....

How do they test it?

They gave him a sketch to color which had a shape of mango on it. Now with this test, two things are tested in the kid:

• Whether he is able to recognize that the thing drawn on the sheet is a mango
• Whether he is able to remember that mango is yellow in color
  
• And if he does manage to pass these two, whether he is able to color it properly

Wew.......

As soon as the kid becomes one year old, it is common practice to start teaching him A for Apple, 1 to 10 etc. Everyone who will pick the kid up in their arms will try to teach him at-least one good thing. Its nice but its a little worrying. As long as you find innovative ways of doing it, great, otherwise, take care.......

Chote Bache (Kids)

There is a popular saying in Hindi - Chote Bache bhagwaan ke samaan hote hai (Kids are like God). This is True. And kids are funny too. Just watching their actions can be an experience in itself. A friend of mine narates great stories about his kids behavior at house. Some instances below:

• Ok, bye, thankyou - This is his ending statement after he is done with his talk on the phone.
• Chup ho ja nahin to bhaga kar shaadi kar lunga - This is the effect serials have on kids today. One of my friends tells that his nephew uttered this to his teacher. There wasn't anything funny after he said that though :)
• One of my nieces has a wonderful style of sleeping. She will put her legs in the air and sleep. Just looking at her makes it look funny.
• Ofcourse you cannot beat the kids at anything. One of my relatives son was shouting. I thought I could beat him at that. You bet. He beat me hands down.
• Papa, party: A colleague of mine used to take his son to the marriages they attend. Once they took him to a birthday party and now his son has changed his request from "Papa, shaadi" to "Papa, party"
• Try teaching A for Apple to them....... Send me a message if you are able to teach them without loosing your cool
• Bhaiya school jaayega - That was mine favorite when I was a kid
  

Different people, different reactions

Different people have different reactions to the same piece of news. This is quite common knowledge and I also completely endorse this fact. This was proved once again after this press release from CISCO declaring that is is buying Navini. For a brief background, CISCO is one of the biggest players in networking domain. Navini is a startup working on WiMAX (a part of Networking).

My reaction: Thats good for the technology. It has found an important supporter in CISCO. It is good for me because I am working on WiMAX and CISCO buying Navini means I am most probably working on the technology of the future.

A business friend of mine - his reaction: CISCO bought Navini for $330 million. Navini is such a small company. $330 million sounds cool - huh.....

One on One

It is a great learning experience to be in a Team. You know so many different ways of thinking about a thing that it amazes sometimes. Human Resource has always been an interesting aspect of management and more so in the world of Technology where everything is in the brain. If you cannot keep your employees happy, you are not tapping the potential of their brains to create value for your company. It is AS SIMPLE AS THAT. As part of ensuring you turn out fire before it spreads, managers and top management have what is known as One on One.

One on One is basically a meeting where an employee sits with his manager and discusses (almost everything which falls into the realms of discussion). It is meeting where in general it is assumed that there will be focus on things which are contentious, things which might be negative about you. This knowledge about what could be in hold for you prepares you in advance. There is nothing wrong because if you do not know you are in a hole, you will never get out of it.

So I had these one-on-one meetings with my top management some days back. Now as it turned out, it was different from one-to-one. It was two-to-one, as top management and my manager were both sitting there to discuss the things with me. There can be both negative and positives about this move which form the basis of a different blog post, but here are some excerpts from the meeting.

1. The Top Boss set the agenda for the meeting saying that he wanted to hear more of negatives than positives so that we can improve. Positives are already there and so nothing special to discuss.
2. My manager spoke about me - well he spoke nothing but positive things about me. I think this is not quite right considering this is once a while opportunity to tell what can be corrected. My fault I did not go out of my way to encourage him to do that.
3. My turn and some things which I think we can improve:
1. We are involved in decision making too late. It is common knowledge in software world that the later you change a wrong decision in a project, the more costlier it is.
2. We should get the buy-in of the stakeholders. I read it somewhere and I think it holds true for all teams - For any deal to be successful, it is very important to have buy-in of all stakeholders. If people feel it is their decision, they will go to any extent to make sure it is successful.
3. It is not a coalition government. You need to think what is best for the company. If everyone agrees, it is ideal. If some agree, it is good. If none agree, then change your decision as it will never work.
4. Everyone loves good work, so be careful while taking decisions. Different people have different mindsets, so you need to balance it. Managing people is almost a full time job if you want to do it well.
   

Theres something wrong in Google search!

There is something wrong in the way Google is returning my search results. I gave a string of 'VaibhavMadan Ladoo' for Google to search. It came up with two results - one of them was what I was expecting. So far, so good. Now I open the search result I am interested in and go onto that page. I expect my search keyword to be present in that page. But IT IS NOT. I am not sure what search algorithm Google used, but whatever it was it did not give me the perfect answer. Now my gut feeling on how it worked:

I read somewhere that google also indexes the links within a page. In the search result I got in my example, the keywords are not directly present on the page returned by Google but they are there in one of the pages for which a link was there. Now I think that Google also searched those links within the pages and happened to return this page. Because I knew exactly where the keywords are, I was able to go to the page where the intended result is. But if I do a random search (and that is what happens most of the time) I would never be able to guess this.

GOOGLE GUYS, ARE YOU LISTENING?

Or maybe, a chance for a competitor of Google to distinguish themselves from Google.

I would not really be happy if the keyword itself is not present in the page I open after a search result. RIGHT PATH TO THE WRONG DESTINATION ......

Pilot Project

I tried to search the web to understand the meaning of Pilot Project. I could not a satisfactory answer. But somehow this term has found its entry into the dictionary of our office as something which is being tried by a person for the first time. To elaborate, it is something which you are trying your hands on for the first time and it is not your forte till now, but you would like it to be. For ex. A software engineer who has been into testing and wants to move into development would consider his / her first development project as a Pilot Project which would launch him / her into the world of Development.

Not sure who is responsible for generating the term, but it has consumed a major portion of our lunch time discussions and has been the centre of lots of our office humour.

Kehat vaibhav suno bhai entrepreneur
Pilot Project ki leela se bacho dear

It is very funny!

We had gone to see Bhool Bhulaiya yesterday. As we had some time left for the show, we started doing some shopping and bought a T-Shirt for me. We took it along with us to the cinema hall. We were greeted at the cinema hall entrance by an employee of the hall who refused to allow us entry as we were carrying a poly with the T-Shirt in it. He requested us to go to the Basement and come back as we still had time for the movie (He had not looked at our tickets till now and yet he knew we had time left for the movie to start. I must admit he was a smart guy - all pun intended). We were in no mood to go 4 floors down to the basement just to put a T-Shirt at a counter and come back. I took the T-Shirt out, put it on and we moved inside. All this happened in front of the guy and he managed a small smile on his face. Seems funny and it is - however the purpose is all lost and suddenly the decision to not allow people to carry polythenes inside theatre seems absurd. They should put up some machinery to check that out. It is not that tough, I believe ................

What certain time means to someone?

I happened to call an Indiabulls representative at 3:25 in the afternoon. Following is an excerpt from the conversation:

Me: Hi Dheeraj, I am Vaibhav calling from Mayur Vihar.
Dheeraj: Hello Sir. (Thinks about a few seconds and then remembers)
Me: I was thinking about opening an account.
Dheeraj: Sir, Can I callback you in 5 minutes. Markets are closing

3:30 in the afternoon is the time when markets in India stop trading, so 3:30 has a special significance in Dheerajs life.

Similarly, in the good old golden days when we used to go to the school, 1:30 in the afternoon was something we waited for. After all, it was the time school closed. This time changed to 2:15 in the winters when the school started late.

People who used to work in the mills waited eagerly for the BELLS to sound at 6 in the evening. You could see bicycles in plenty coming out of the big doors which never seemed to be big enough.

Times of day at a multiple of 3 used to be of significance to movie goers in the past. Shows used to start in theatres at 12, 3, 6 and 9 before multiplexes came in.

After I turned into a Software Engineer, these times have lost their significance. There are not BELLS ringing for me to go home, no time for market to close :)

The Ladoo Principle

Whew! What all does a manager have to talk about to convince his reporting band. Ladoo is a sweet in India. The Ladoo Principle states that if a child is making noise, then offer a Ladoo to him and he will be quiet for a while. Repeat this everytime the child makes noise. Almost similar corollary can be drawn to the world of Software Engineers.

One of the favorite Ladoos which a Manager offers to the employees in the Service Industry is a chance to go abroad on a long term project. In the first half of first decade this century, traveling abroad used to be very lucrative - good exposure, nice money, chance to visit new places etc. I am not sure how much this still holds good with all the Re Vs Dollar ho halla. It used to work earlier.

The above Ladoo does not really work in the Product Industry as chance to travel abroad is almost next to Null. Most of the things you will do outside the office can now be done in the office also. So whats the alternative. Work :) You are doing one of the most critical components of the project. WOW, did I love this one! People in the team would love to do the module you have your hands on, but I believe in you and thats why I offered it to you.

Another Ladoo is to praise the employee when he cries. You are the sole person on whom this whole project depends, a leave won't move without your consent, you are one of the best performing employees, we can give you anything you want except money as you should not be money driven :) Gotcha...... He is talking about a Free Lunch.

With all these Ladoos being exchanged in every place you go, it becomes very important for a Manager to make sure he / she earns the credibility before offering the sweets.


Kehat Vaibhav suno bhai Software Engineer
Kahin too many Ladoos se ho na jaaye Diabetes Dear

What can a game of helicopter teach you?

Helicopter is a game that involves flying a helicopter through various hurdles which keep changing their positions and shape. As you move the helicopter from the left of the screen (if you are facing the screen, then your left) to the right, the hurdles will keep coming towards the right and you need to survive them. Game ends if you touch the hurdle or any of the top or bottom of the tunnel you are flying through. So what does the game teach you:

1. Life is full of hurdles and the fun is to keep escaping them unhurt.
2. Concentrate - The more you do, the farther you reach.
3. Never say die - There would be some hurdles which would seem impossible to cross. If you concentrate, then there is a good probability that you will cross them. But it is important that you do not loose hope. Many times my game ended as soon as I crossed the hurdle which I never thought I would be able to.
4. Keep trying - Of course some hurdles in the game can NEVER be crossed because there is no space to fly. BUT then it is not your fault. Keep trying and next time you might just by lucky.
   
5. Expertise is not developed in a single day or a couple of tries - You need to learn the game and it will take time. Do not loose patience.
   

Whats my Managers Manager upto?

Are you interested in knowing what your Managers Manager is doing?

If the answer to this question is YES, then either

a) You have been having lots of free time lately. If yes, then instead pick up a good book and read it.

b) Or You are concerned with where your company is moving. If yes, then turn the concern into action. Type the resignation letter and post it.

c) Or You are killing your free time. If yes, then just FORGET IT. You are in a hole and till you realize you need to get out of it, no one can HELP.

Bheja Fry

Director: Sagar Ballary

Theatre: Waves, Noida

Date: 13th April, 2007

Mast, Must Watch :)