Officially Personal....!

I have not been drawn to updating my blog with new posts of late. I am not sure of the reason. Probably my pre-occupations at office and home have left me with little time to reflect and write down. Today I read a short interview on Scott Adams - the creater of Dilbert. I think I learnt a lot. This guy has been just another normal guy - trying to do his best at office and trying to get ahead in the corporate world when a remarkable idea strikes him and catapults him to a different league. His philosophy and thoughts are remarkably very simple and clear and very different. I just realise you need to differentiate yourself in some small way in one's life.

When I think about some of the things that have been happening in the office, I just cannot help but laugh. Absurd ideas floated and passed off as great ones; Common sense being termed as strategy; Mismanagement; misjudgement and just plain poor work output due to very poor skill - all these makes me a little nervous at times ! We need something - a goal post - an inspiration to lift ourselves up and learn new things. On the other hand I realise is that I have been trying to UNlearn a lot of things and not learn new ones ! The reason is perhaps due to relative benchmarks that I was replying on to look up to. I realise that it would be better to focus on certain absolute benchmarks so that such trivia around you do not distract you from being happy..

This is appraisal time and promotion time and I find it very interesting listening to people, their aspirations, demands, judgments etc. It is fascinating to say the least..

Another fad these days is "Innovation". Everyone talks about it; I wonder what this is all about. Isn't it part of every organisation's goal / objective to offer something new to its customers to keep them ? This has been around for a very long time under various labels. When I started my career I remember attending workshops teaching us on Kaizen. That was supposed to be reducing waste - by new ideas - innovation - isn't it?! I attended a program on the six thinking caps - seemed like a very powerful tool to develop a structured way of thinking differently. I also got on TV and participated in a music program. That occupied me for a few months. I just realised such cute diversions made me better at work ! That makes me think - Is work really interesting? or is it just a sophisticated way of passing time...?!! Time to think more..

The year that was...

It has been almost a year since I wrote in this blog. Either it is sheer laziness or I have been too busy to sit down and update ! I guess it is more of the former. November and December 2008 were good fun. I got an opportunity to travel to Richmond, Virginiain the US for a 4 week assignment. This was the first time I got to spend some time in the eastern part of the US. I liked the place a lot. Richmond has a lot of history behind it. 4 out of 5 past presidents of the US were from Virginia and a small sleepy town called Williamsburg was apparently one of the landing posts for Britain when they first came into America. One of my cousins - Sudha stays in York Town which is very close to this place. I was meeting Sudha and her husband Murali after a gap of almost 5 years and this was the first time I spent some time with them since their marriage way back in the 70s ! Both of them work for NASA and I enjoyed my time there.

My stay at Richmond was great. The weather was pleasant and I had a couple of guys with me for company. Since we stayed for about a month, we rented out a car and drove around ourselves. So after my Muscat days, I was enjoying driving in highways & freeways. If only we had such roads and space in India !

I shall write more on our trip to Goa and later to Munnar shortly.