Sarah and I went ice skating today. For the first time, I skated in the true sense- well not perfectly but I will get to it after 2 tries hopefully. It felt so good after falling 2 times and hurting my palm :) - it wasn't fun having skated in the past without falling. She held my hand and helped me skate. And then some 2 cute kids held one hand each and we went around the rink once real fast and bang I fell :). We went shopping later followed by lunch. We did a lil crazy thing at the garage as the parking ticket did not work. Nevertheless the afternoon was really fun and I enjoyed so much. Hope she did too.

I watched this movie Baghban today. It is a very emotional one and definitely worth watching for Amitabh and Hema Malini - she looks so beautiful even after all these years. Its been months since I watched a Hindi movie - felt really good and at home.

My tryst with perfection

-- the journey continues and I forget along the way that expecting the same from others is unjustifiable.
Note for me - Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

I wanted my partner at work to learn all the tasks and open up and gain confidence. So I assigned him a task. I watched him agreeing to what he didn't believe in. I watched him accepting changes to avoid confrontation and delays. I watched him avoiding follow ups because of lack of understanding. I watched him succumbing to a situation. I wanted him to make his own mistakes and learn in the process. But was caught in a quagmire of responsibility and giving him time to learn. I offered help much earlier than I should have and regret having done the same. It wasn't right on my part to get frustrated for his acceptance. But I also realize it isn't right for me to step in now and point out what is wrong. I'm just going to ride the tide.

Birthday Luncheon

I met R for lunch today at the Star of Siam. I always let him decide the place because he is good at it. It was funny what he wrote in his e-mail abt deciding the plac. His email read "places-I-know-to-be-good-where-you-can-find-something-vegetarian-but-that-aren't-Indian-food-because-taking-real-Indians-to-American-Indian-restaurants-is-silly".

He is such an adorable man. I enjoy meeting him and we talk of out-of-ordinary topics. Today we discussed for almost an hour about Genealogy and how he went tracing his family tree to the 1430s - unbeleivable. He got me cute lil birthday presents and the card read - A Birthday Question - are we getting older and wiser? I sure am getting older, but don't want to comment on the wiser part :)

And a good part of the afternoon was spent in meetings with T and H - I just love working with these 2, though they think I'm a lil slow in catching up with their fast and evil ideas - the quick and the evil duo :)

We send/rcve links on AIM all thr the day. However I have started exercising discretion on what links I should send and talk these days. Its tough but I'm getting good at it - making progress on my Feb 19th resolution. Chk out this one

My 15 second interests : I'm not interested in anything for more than 15 days - be it eating corn, reading books non-stop, watching movies, playing cards or the urge to travel. And then I get so tired of it that I don't do it again for years. I've always thought that V was just exaggerating when he used to say aquareans are crazy - but I guess he is right. These days he just smiles when I talk of something with so much passion as though it has been my childhood dream. Reminds me of Joey (Friends) saying in one episode that if they win the 3 million dollar lottery, he would want to spend the money by buying Knicks. Chandler turns it down. And Joey says it has been his dream and Chandler says "Yes, for the past 15 seconds". The only recent long lived passion I can think of is Ice Skating - it will come to a sad ending when the rink closes for this season this Saturday. I watched Along Came Polly, and going to see Insomnia. Would like to see "The Passion of the Christ" next weekend.

This weekend was pretty boring but Ice walking and visit to Barnes and Noble. I love the company of books. How I wish I had become a librarian or worked at a book store for a living.

Recommended Reading:

1. Harvard Business Review - February Edition. The article titled "Success that lasts" peaks of enduring success. Many of us don't feel contented even after achieving something. Why ? The article explains it happens if one of the four components - happiness, achievement, significance, legacy are missing.

2. What Smart people do when dumb things happen at work - talks about quick temper, fat egos and self centered actions.

Nostalgiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
I was writing an e-mail to someone and I'm missing Bangalore, Bahrain...missing family and friends and home food....

A touching fwded e-mail I recd. this morning....It ended with...

FAMILY

Are you aware that if we died tomorrow,

The company that we are working for could easily replace us in a matter of days.

But the family we left behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives.

And come to think of it, we pour ourselves more into work than into our own family, an unwise investment indeed, don't you think? So what is behind the story?

Do you know what the word FAMILY means? FAMILY = F)ATHER (A)ND (M)OTHER (I) (L)OVE (Y)OU

Violent Culture

This Sunday V and I watched this program on Showtime called "Bowling For columbine" by Michael Moore. We both were instantly drawn to it. This documentary was speaking our thoughts and we couldn't believe it. Our perceptions, not exactly on the gun/violent culture but on various other aspects of the American society. Why is it that the kids are more spoilt here than the other developed nations..why so much violence, prejudice, nepotism etc etc. Humans are media made..we believe what we see. And its a fact that atleast 2 out of every 4 channels in the U.S show programs on reality shows, court programs called Judge Mathis, Judge Brown whatever. Cases of child molestations, abuse, parent abuse, drugs are all that is ever addressed. Maybe it is reality but showing it all the time does not teach a kid not to do them..it just influences all the more.
....to be continued

"I barely survived yesterday and it is already today." Every day is a survival. Perhaps I don't have a diversion now, that makes me take work so seriously. You give too much damn to work, and all you get back is bs. I'm attempting to learn English language better - I'm not good at it or perhaps I read between the lines too much. Some people have a way with their words - chk out this harmless sentence below..
"Can we redirect the .......... page?"

There are 2 ways to interpret this...Either respond in monosyllable answers with "yes" or "no" or just do it. If you respond with "yes" and don't get an answer, the question next day will be ..well it was asked to be done yesterday. And if you do it then the question is, I was just asking if that was possible..I didn't ask you to do it. Whatever... did you know
10 managers/1 developer is the new ratio. This sentence I read in the Tribune the other day might sound funny but is true - 3 people out of every 4 in a cubicle are expected to think out of the box :)

So resolutions from today for me -

1. Don't take an initiative.
2. Take it easy when there is a fire...Don't offer to put it out. Firefighting is not a part of the job description.
3. There is a night for everyone in every part of the world - respect it.
4. Job ends at 5:00 unless there is an emergency.
5. It wasn't a coindence that there are 2 ears and one mouth. So I have to listen more than I talk.

This is really cool if I can practice it even for a day.

Bday

It was a nice start today. It feels good to grow old, doesn't it? P called up at 1:30 a.m. to wish me. I bet he didn't know what the time was here. This morning after V left, the team called up followed by my parents. What more could one ask for. However yes, except Sarah no one at work remembered. She wrote something else too on the card..indeed very nice of her. Doesn't matter..all the people that matter to me the most made by day. I'm a happy person. I'm going to get a cake and celebrate all by myself :)

Yesterday's lunch with T @ big bowl was very nice. Though I don't know how T or V felt. T made my day on Friday by his nice gesture and words. I was acting like a lil kid showing off to her parents. I called up my parents, told V and called up V's parents and didn't stop telling that T appreciated. I can't believe it meant so much to me. My mind was very agitated until then because of the stress of the past few weeks. Any no. of hours of sleep did no good. But after that lil conversation with him, it made me feel so so so good. Thanks T.

It is 11:00 P.M. now and I'm at work. There have been similar nights with similar expectations, excitement - once in October and once in November, only to be met with disappointment the next morning. We got better every time but none of them were good enough to last forever. The journey continues - hope its the last one today. Back in October, the urge to make it work was high since it was my first project here and I didn't want to be a failure. So was the commitment. And frankly I was disappointed and couldn't accept failure with grace. I believe I'm more prepared now for whatever the outcome of tonight is (though silently hope that it is a success - don't want the stress on others to continue for it means much more to them).

I'm really thrilled now. We solved something that might have been the bottleneck. db rules :)
Performance tuning is so much fun. I wish I could do trouble shooting all the time but need a partner with very high common sense (which obviously I lack :) )

I had a great weekend. People who know me really well sense something is wrong if I'm quiet for more than 10 mins. And it was so unusual to be quiet the whole Saturday. I just didn't speak. But I knew V was observing and analyzing and calculating his next move. It reached a point when he could take no further and confronted what was going on inside my lil head. Obviously work of the past week was bothering me so much. Frustration gave way to anger which in turn made me use profane language that I generally don't. A strange feeling that I was probably estranging more people hit me hard. I wasn't coping and managing with the situation well at all. After a good talk with him, I started feeling good. Two things he said made a lot of sense. One - never fight a man's ego, you're never going to win the race. Two - have you ever wondered why America has never had a female president? Why are there fewer female CEOs? The fact is I wasn't fighting anyone's ego. Yes if pointing out facts as they are hurts someone, then it does make sense. And that was probably what was happening.

Sunday, we went ice skating. No actually ice walking. It was an improvement from last time. I didn't hold on to the rails this time. Hope to do it better this weekend.

Despite the tremendous stress at work, it has been fun to get to work every morning. I love working with people who talk sense and T is one of them. So its not surprising that my adrenalin rush to solve the problem together is very high. Once I get back home, there is a vacuum after the frenzy activity and db digging of the whole day. Wonder how it will be once the problem gets solved!

Lousy days

I'm really craving for an uneventful day now. Its been weeks now since I'm living under this stress. A typical day starts with e-mails that start with the line "Please no more mails on this... just kidding :)" and end with the line "please don't feel free to ask questions :)))" . And when you get atleast such 2 e-mails everyday from atleast 2 people you know it was not lightly intended and "just kidding" was just a diplomatic way of saying a harsh thing. I have been time and again advised not to take my job personally. Thanks to all such people and I gladly invite them to live my life for a week and then see how it feels to be there.
Would you feel glad -

- to ask sorry for a serious blunder committed by someone else and on a bad day atleast 4 out of the 9 people that work with you can commit such a mistake and then pretend as though it wasn't all that serious at all.
- to cover up for someone's negligence in doing his/her work or not keeping up to the committed date
- to try and put up a smile in a meeting when you feel otherwise

And after all this get blamed too.

Dammit - I'm not going to ruin my life and get a headache everyday because a bunch of 20 people on either sides decide to throw me around like a ball and use me like a punching bag. No more mails, let hell break loose for once. I'm tired of controlling things and keeping everything in order.