excitement in the new financial year

Had a planning meeting yesterday at work...quite fruitful, I must say. Well, planning is all fine...the implementation and course correction is what we've really to take care of. As Mary Poppins would say: "A thing well begun is half done." So, I'm hoping that our planning is half the work done. We plan to make posters of the plan and put it up for the BD team so they can constantly use it to check the progress of business: course correction will hopefully be much easier with this sort of display.
On a different note, I think my English has really degenerated.....thanks to the three days that I spent onsite with a trainee group earlier this week. My grammar is all over the place, my spellings are messed up, and I appear all the time confused about correct usage. Well, this really shows that the group you work with has tremendous and often times, subconscious/unconscious influence on you - in terms of language, thinking, behavior..the works!
I am as usual waiting for my chief motivator - Ratnamma with her cup of coffee post lunch - it kind of wakes me up and puts me back on track...so until then, will continue to pretend that I'm lazing somewhere in Kerala, amidst coconut palms, backwaters, and silent boats.

Culture and tradition

Oops, three months and it's like I've disappeared from the face of the earth. I guess I just had a ball all this time, what with my son visiting us for a whole 3 months, and business picking up, and so much other stuff happening at home....didn't think it mattered whether I blogged or not.

Our American associate is here, today, and as usual, we talk a lot about the cross-cultural differences between Indian and American cultures. Mmm, I'm travelling on work next week and I am quite excited that I'll be meeting a bunch of young people and interacting with them over three days....something I'm looking forward to.

Oh, I wonder what the significance of 'poonal' is in today's world? For those who don't know what it is, it's the equivalent of the Jewish bar mitzvah...a sort of 'coming of age' ceremony that all Hindu Brahmin boys go through. At the end of the rituals, he begins to wear a thread across his left shoulder and down to his right waist....in a sort of diagonal manner.

Well, coming back to the actual ceremonies, is it to show off their son or their or is it blind adherence to tradition? In olden days, it made sense to do all this for it had multiple objectives - it was done at a tender age of 7 or 8 when the young boy was deemed fit to begin his academics. So, he had to go and stay with his teacher for years before he graduated. The thread also was a constant reminder to the boy that he is now in the 'brahmachari' stage....a phase in life when hormones can rage and yet you remain sober and level headed. The thread also reminded him that all the women he met were his mothers. It kept his ego down coz he had to now beg everyday for his food - 'bhavathi bhikshaam dehi' - in Sanskrit, it means 'Mother, give me some bhiksha (food).' This is really poignant but in today's world, I just think it's hypocritical or just letting the world know that you are a (fake) traditionalist.

Anyways, the recent one in our family kinda gave me an opportunity to meet up with a lot of my clan and have some yummy traditional food.

Oh, the Nithyananda affair's sort of shaken me up quite a bit.....what on earth was he thinking when he behaved the way he did...I'm just appalled by it all and really dunno whom to trust - the media or the godman!!

Gotta go now...will hopefully blog more frequently going forward.

long time, no see

Well, it's been over a month since I lost blogged...and what a tumultous month it's been...so much of stuff happening both in the personal and professional front....I did this new training program on 'Supervisory Skills' which in turn gave me an idea of how I want to develop a bundle of programs. It's an exciting time at work...new ideas, new strategies, new people on board, and a whole lot of enthusiasm and energy all around....our feedback scores were analysed at great length and we discovered that we are doing better than our best....our clients love us for this and I'm sure that we'll have a lot more work coming our way in the future. As for the personal front, some ups and some downs...but nothing worth fretting about, really!! My homefront is sort of settling down, got a new housekeeper.....dad's well on his way to recovery after a severe bout of respiratory infection....Rana is perhaps the sunshine at home...he's all the time hanging out with us and I've this strange feeling that he's been possessed by Kaiser's spirit coz Rana behaves just that way....eating everything, lounging inside, not barking, and just being naughty as ever. Someone told me that blogging should be all about professional life and musings but I just think that that's so boring...my unique style would be a mix of professional and personal. So world, know that I exist and I love you one hell of a lot.

haven't blogged for quite some time now....it seems like I was waiting for life to move on but now looking back, I realize that life has 'happened' in this time and I have to capture its highlights here!!!

Let's see....I made an interesting trip to Trivandrum to do some training...it was fun, challenging, and I think I discovered new aspects of Indian culture. I did an interesting workshop on 'Emotional Intelligence' and another one on 'Personal Productivity.' The E.I. program was for a bunch of senior professionals - mostly managers and project leads...it was interesting to see how much we neglect or have forgotten of our emotional world....for them, it was a revelation of sorts to realize that behavior is an output of one' s emotional world....when we are happy, we dance and sing; when we are sad, we sit and brood. It's just unbelievable that even in our workplace, we bring this inner world and it has a huge impact on the way we interact with our colleagues, our clients, etc.

The P.P. workshop was equally interesting...this was for individual contributors....lively group that participated well and sort of did self-evaluation to see where they could change. The incredible part was how the entire group set about concluding the workshop by 'teaching' each other something new.....we learnt to meditate, we learnt to de-stress when at work, we took up community service projects; we learnt about new facets of MS Outlook; wow...for me it was indeed a highly satisfying workshop.

I must say that it was very difficult for me one particular weekend - I lost one of my pets - Kaiser....he was a Weimaraner and had been with my family for almost 9 years. It is so difficult to accept death, no matter how often you've encountered it...it still hurts....I think I knew that it was time for him to go, I was schooling myself to be practical and objective, yet when it did happen, emotions took over. One of the most challenging things I had to do the very next day was to go and train for a bunch of seniors, and all I could think of was Kaiser. Anyways, I lived through the day, survived it, and have moved on. Rana, my other pet, has really taken charge of the healing process for all of us at home. He's there all the time, giving unconditional love, a huge bundle of never-ending energy and playfulness.

How does one survive competition in the professional world? How does one grapple with reality and still choose to go on with determination and optimism? When you hear about people surviving professionally even though they have low or no ethics, the easiest thing is to mourn about it and say 'life is unfair.' I wonder if there is final retribution of sorts...I would like to see whether 'what goes around, comes around' is true, after all. Professionally, we've been creating a whole lot of new stuff and diversifying at a good pace. That keeps my spirits up!!!

Well, I think I've sort of covered my life in the last few weeks...so much more has happened, but I think I got the highlights in this post, and that should do!!!

The world is a beautiful place to be in, our lives are wonderful gifts, our family and friends are the best that could have happened to us, so what more could we ask for? Nothing, absolutely...and that's final!!!

Something new!!

'Sharpen the saw' - said Covey...how true, blogging is my way of 'sharpening the saw.' Every year, I promise myself that I will learn something new.....every year, I've done it. This year, I've learned to blog....I've this tech whiz in my life who's helping me remotely to get my blog in shape, just the way I want it. Thanks, AD. Blogging is a great way to put your thoughts together. It's a great way of having leisure: 'What is this life if full of care, we don't have time to stand and stare?' Blogging is my time to stand and stare...at the world, at myself, at others, and generally talk about it. Does it matter that somebody should read your blog? Not really....it's fun to do it for yourself...so I say to all of you out there who get into your shells when you hear about 'blogging'....don't be intimidated.....it's fun. Enjoy maadi!!!

Mmm hmmm....haven't blogged in the past few days....performance management of people is so tough. You tend to look at all the positives and yet the negatives can't be infinitely ignored. Somewhere, feedback has to be given....and no matter how gently or indirectly you say it, it still can be taken wrongly...it's a double-edged sword - damned if you say it and damned if you don't. When you hire someone on the team, you are well aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Do you simply 'tolerate' the weaknesses? Do you talk about it and re-set expectations? In the act of ignoring the weaknesses, you invariably end up disgruntling the ones that are good in those areas. How do you balance this? i guess one needs to be an excellent communicator, use loads of emotional intelligence, and do as objective an evaluation as possible before embarking on the sticky journey of giving feedback.

Musings on a rainy day

Well, I've been spreading the word around that I've my own blog....I ain't sure though if people do want to check it out....I know mine ain't all that jazzy or whatever; but for me this is a big, big step. Today's been a sort of gloomy day weather wise....life takes on an entirely different dimension when a stranger becomes part of your family.......that's what's happened to me the last couple of months. We are hosting a lovely person from the US and our lives have been enriched by her presence. As I mentioned yesterday, change is constant...people come into our lives, touch us in so many ways, and then move on. All we can do is to have good memories and live life to the fullest.