"Short term" vs "Near term"

I had some senior person proof read some work documentation that I wrote. I was told "short team goal" has a negative connotation and "near term goal" is the phrase to use instead. Interesting!

Also, I thought "enables us [insert any verb here; e.g. drive]" and "enables us to [insert any verb here; e.g. drive]" were both right. Wrong! The "to" is needed after the "enables us". Oh well...

So much that I dont know even in a language that I speak fluently!

Minesweeper

Played the game minesweeper? Its this game where there are mines and you need to discover all the mines without clicking on them.

Hubby said something profound today: "Dealing with some people is like playing the minesweeper game"

Tadaa!! :)

Is this my "problem-solver stage" in life?

Once, not very long ago at all, I used to cringe when friends tried to offer solutions to my problems when I cribbed to them about random issues in everyday life. I never used to crib to people in an effort to have them help me find a solution - that is not what I needed from them. I just wanted someone to hear me out. I just wanted an avenue to vent. Once I had had my vent session, my head would clear up enough for me to think through the issue rationally and come up with a solution myself. Or maybe I wouldnt even bother finding a solution. I could live with those issues as long as I had an outlet for my expressing my discomfort with them.

No more. I have become the person that I used to cringe at - the "problem-solver", the "solution-finder". A friend cribs to me and I HAVE to "help" them out by offering solutions. Issues in my life are "bugs to be resolved", "open items to be closed" or "ship-stoppers". As a close friend put it perfectly, is my work now re-modelling my personality?

Genghis Khan and I

I just started reading this interesting memoir of Genghis Khan. I am only about 20 pages into it, but for some reason it has started sparking thoughts into me about the ways in which a history-changing khan thinks and acts differently from someone like me. And I had to write down what to me were interesting observations.

One of Genghis Khan's strategy to scare tribes and kingdoms into surrender was to brutally kill his captives in public - burning them alive, using them as cannon balls, just to list a couple. Now that is superlative of cruelty by any standards. But at the same time, he was highly supportive of teachers and doctors and craftsmen, to the extent that he did not even tax them! I wasn't able to wrap my head around the kind of person that he was - did he suffer from MPD? How else can one be both barbaric and thoughtful towards fellow beings? Just as I was about to dismiss him as a confused personality, I realized that his thoughts, principles and priorities were at a totally different plane than mine. With goals as lofty as wanting to unite the world for the greater good of mankind and to reduce tribal feuds, one cannot afford to focus on lesser principles that do not hold any value towards the bigger vision. If brutal murder of a few human lives is what it takes to reduce further bloodshed and is what takes him closer to his all-human-race encompassing dream, then so be it!

Genghis Khan also played on the religious beliefs of common man in his elaborate ploy to earn their loyalities and turn them against those he did not like. This obviously indicates that he himself did not believe in those religious beliefs. What do we do when we do not believe in the religious practices of our families or our clan? We crib about it, refuse to follow them, argue with the folks who hold these beliefs and talk about how we would abolish these baseless beliefs if we got a chance to rule the world. What does this leader do? - he quietly realizes that these religious beliefs or practices were created for a social reason; and uses them to his advantage without creating a hullaballoo about it. If that means he has to act like he holds the same beliefs as the people he is trying to manipulate, then so be it! Participating in a few rituals and following a few pratices that holds no meaning for him is a small price to pay for the large win that it gets him.

The difference between an average human and a history-maker seems so small, but yet so large.

Language

Being at an agency and as a strategist for various client companies is so different from being a techie (even if as a Program Manager as opposed to a pure-bred-techie like a s/w developer) in a typical software company. In many expected ways... but in one unexpected way: because of the kind of people I interact with each day (the "cool" creative folks, the marketing folks, the people who pitch ideas to C-level executives at client companies etc) the language I get hit with is so much richer. Its a boon and a challenge - of course I get to learn these new flavors of the language, but at the same time getting to a point where this flavor becomes your own takes a while and until then I spend ten humble words in the place of one sublime one.

Anyway, this is neither a "oh-look-how-much-new-stuff-I-get-to-hear" quip, nor is it is "oh-I-need-to-catch-up" crib. It is just that I sat through one such meeting where beautiful (or at least interesting) forms of the English language spewed left-right-and-center and I am just in awe :).

Going the extra mile

Now THAT is what I mean by going the extra mile :):-

Subjects we should have been taught in school but werent

- Basic human psychology: Irrespective of what your profession is, all our life is spent in dealing with other human beings - many of them who are the tough-to-deal-with kind. So what an important lesson this would be!

- Professions of the world: When I chose my elective in 11th grade and even when I chose my major for my Bachelors, I had very little insight into the breadth of options available. Most of my education was without a vision into what I was studying towards. If I had known, maybe I would have become a millionaire matchmaker instead :p

- Privacy: No dearth of privacy related issues today, causing serious harm to numerous young lives. This should proove reason enough to have text books on the subject.

- Dating etiquette: A lot of us know from personal experience that a huuuugeee number of people have unbearable dating habits and don't really have the common sense to learn from experience :).

5 years of 8 hours a day-5 days a week and 3 companies later...

I've worked at 3 companies in 5 years. Everytime I changed jobs, people ask me how I like my new gig. I reply with a mundane and abstract "I like it, it is interesting". Here is the full story:-

My first ever job search, which was towards the end of my Masters graduation, lasted about 4 months. I went through bouts of the usual job search frustration and depression during those 4 months. I now know that 4 months of job search isnt much at all - but how am I to know that then, I was far less experienced. Anyways, at the end of the 4 months I got a job as a software engineer at Google. At that time, Google was THE celebrity among companies. And so, I almost became a celebrity too! - my university invited me to write a column in their alumni magazine; the first question most guys I dated asked me was - "so what is it like to work at Google?" (and they didnt stop at that... all they wanted to talk about was the free food and the perks and what not. oh, yes, I rejected them all :) ); when my aunt introduced me to her friends, her introduction always ended with a special emphasis on "she works for Google" (as if that was what defined me... hated it when she did that). I am sure my parents had their share of boasting about it among their circle. So well, yes, it did make me feel proud of myself.

I worked with a team that developed a platform for testing user's satisfaction of search results. The idea definitely sounds fun and it is! My work did indeed start out being fun. So when people initially asked me how I liked my job, my "I like it, it is interesting" was an honest response. But work soon turned out to be not so much fun because there were seniors in the team who took all the fun work. While I had brilliant ideas, I wasnt good enough at professional coding (I was only used to "research coding" until then, which is basically writing crappy code that is all over the place) to take complete ownership of my idea and code it efficiently all the way through with no help. So the work I ended up finally getting was pretty boring and I had to work long-long-long hours on things I didnt enjoy working on (yes, the free dinner comes with a catch ;-) ). I had no clue how to make the situation better - (1) I did not know how to get much better at coding; (2) I had no guidance either: because of Google's flat hierarchy, my manager had sooo many reportees under her that she had no time for me. (And to top it off, she was a bad manager - and I did not even realize it at that point because she was the first manager I ever had. You know what is bad and what is good only if you have seen them both before, right?).

After 1.5 years at Google, all I can say is my next MS Program Manager role was God-sent. I wasnt even looking for Program Manager roles then - I did not even know such roles existed. It just so happened that one day the opportunity presented itself and I grabbed it. I will get to why I now think that the job was God-sent, but before that, I have to tell you that the transition wasnt a bed of roses. In fact, it was pretty much a bed of thorns.

Most people around me only had this to say about my transition -"Why would you give up Google? Are you insane? Do you even know to make decisions?" I gave them a long-winded explanation about how I quit Google because I wanted to become a Program Manager and Google did not have a Program Manager role. It wasn't true. The truth was that Google was past because I couldn't handle staying there anymore. Why didn't I tell people the truth? - because they wouldn't understand it... why ever would anyone give up on what in everyone's eyes was a dream job in THE dream company.

Now for the God-sent part: I took up the PM job at MS because it seemed like the best option for me at that point. I was happy about my new role, but didn't think it was God-sent until about a month into my new role. That is when a few things dawned on me that made me realize the transition was perfect after all:
1) I realized I wasnt carved out to be a software engineer in the first place. I was never actually interested in the nitty gritties of writing good code. Design Patterns bored me. I loved coming up with lofty product ideas, but when it got down to actually implementing it, I floundered. Dont get me wrong - people who write code well are very very smart people (in all likelihood, smarter than me IQ wise) - I am just saying that it wasnt meant for me.
I realized that I did not have inherent interest in writing code and that explained my impassiveness in getting better at it. Yes, my Google manager was totally unavailable for guidance, but if I were really passionate about my job, I wouldnt have let that be a blocker.
2) My first manager at MS made a great manager - and that was the first time I realized what it means to be a good manager and how much of a difference it makes to have one. My new job taught me how NOT to put up with a jerk of a manager by showing me one who is not.
3) Many of us from India are software engineers just because our parents thought studying computer science and becoming a software engineer would result in the best ROI (good salaries, great opportunities to "escape" to the US, perfect for putting on the matrimonial biodata...). Frankly, that was my story too. I succumbed to my parents wishes and ended up being a software engineer at a large company. With my new PM job, I had managed to cut myself free finally and do things that actually made sense to me. How many people get the opportunity to change their careers at this stage without needing to pursue another degree first?
4) I learnt what roles work for me. I dont know how good or bad my IQ is, but I do have a good EQ. Consequently, roles that use my EQ work better for me. For example, customer empathy comes naturally to me - I can step in the shoes of the customer and fight for a feature I want. I can argue for how performant the customer would expect the product to be, but I am not as good though, at actually tweaking code to achieve that performance (which is probably more an IQ thing).

After Google and Microsoft, I have now moved to a much smaller company, one that most people havent even heard about. Joining this company was also about grabbing an unexpected opportunity that came my way. I was only looking for the regular Program / Product management roles, when this option presented itself. I had 2-3 other job offers apart from this one, all of the others being the regular Product Management roles. I decided to take this up just because I felt this was the time and age when I had the flexibility to try something different - something that I woudln't have once I became a mom or once I had travelled far enough into my career path. In my current role, I consult with client companies to help their define their business and product strategies. I'll use another post, another day to write more in detail about my current job, but for now, let me just say that this is one more step closer to what I have fun doing.

When I met my aunt a few weeks back, she asked me -"What kind of a company is that? No one seems to have heard of it". I dont care... I am at a happier place :).

The point of this blog post isnt to deride one company or job role and hail another - not at all. The point is 3-fold:
1) It is a mere exclamation at how long and how much it took for me to even realize what kind of a job satisfies me. A lot of people realize their passion much sooner in their lives; some others dont need to go through multiple job changes to realize what I came to realize - it is all just basic common sense to them. But I am not them and I am what I am.
2) It is about how much I have come to realize that life is made more fun by going slightly out of your comfort zone now and then, to grab opportunities. That is what "God-sent" is all about.
3) Most importantly - it is a reminder to myself about how I once judged myself based upon how others saw me, but have since then realized that true freedom is the ability to judge oneself and the ability to use that as the only means of judgement.

How much tolerence should one have?

I have lived in the US for 8 years now. I have my own life now and this is the life I know and am happy with.

I am unable to tolerate when my parents or in-laws interfere in how I lead my life and how I get my things done. For one, they do not know how life works here in the US. And even if they did, I am more than an adult now and they should just let me be.

Am I mean in not wanting them to interfere? Do they get the rights to interfere given they spent a whole number of years providing for me and bringing me up? Should I be more considerate because they live many many miles away and so have a more-than-usual concern about our well-being?

I agree parents can interfere if their son or daughter were doing something as grave as taking drugs, even if that son or daughter were 40 years old. But where does one draw the line about where they can interfere and where they cannot? Is it now our time to train our parents to our ways, just like how they trained us to their ways during our growing-up years? How do I convince them that this is the stage in their life where they should try to not worry over their children, be stress-free and enjoy the world around them with the money they earned over the past many years? Or would that be too much to expect from Indian parents?

Will I understand their concern only when I become a parent myself, at which point, I will behave exactly like they do?

Do you people also face this dilemma?

Seeing your loved ones struggle + thoughts on evolution

Even if you have gone through the similar or even far more struggles in life, it is hard to see a loved ones struggle with something. My brother is in his post-graduation-job-hunting state, and is going through the typical frustration and depression that comes with it. I feel bad seeing him go through it, and I feel helpless. I know it will pass soon. I have been through that state twice or thrice in my life so far and know what it takes. I also know that it is these struggles that makes one a man.

And it is not like he is a kid... he is old enough to be able to deal with such struggles himself - so I am not too worried, even though I feel bad for him. But I cant imagine how stressful it must be for parents to deal with the struggles their kids go through!

This makes me think - doesnt life get progressively harder as we grow up (you just need to compare your school life to your current life to realize this)? Why is that? It is not the case for other animals. It wasnt even the case for stone age men. We just evolved to make lives harder for all of us - what are we progressing towards by making life only harder? Are we really evolving towards destruction as opposed to betterment or stability? Or is it that all this hardship is part of a process of evolving into a being greater than the human, who once evolved will live in peace?

(No, I am not depressed or worried, I am just thinking logically :) )

Recommendations from recent experiences

• Book: The Great American Bathroom Book (2 page summaries of all time famous books... best way to know which book to buy to read the full version)
• Movie: Inception (2010) (a brilliant concept, a complex but gripping storyline with numerous undercurrents, giving way to lots of interpretations)
• Place: Mendocino, CA (a wonderful showcase to the breathtaking pacific coast)
• Food: Sayur Lodeh (an Indonesian dish that is a lot like avial); tofu skin salad (looks something like this; is cold and kind of bland, but I love it!)
• TV show: Good Eats (loads of trivia about food - one ingredient per show)
• Online shopping: thisnext.com (has some really fun and cool designs; great for home decor and for gift shopping if you are looking to buy something that is really unique)

Keeping track of achievements

There was this project that I worked on, for which I worked a lot and the results turned out pretty good too. But I only worked the regular hours - did not burn the midnight lamp or go without lunches on days etc. Because it was relatively smooth that way, I did not feel like it was a big achievement or anything.

Soon after, I was asked to write a case study based on the project. Only when I got down to writing it - detailing the journey, listing out the achievements etc - did I realize that the accomplishment was pretty huge.

Lesson learnt - It really really makes a huge difference to take the time to write down your achievements to both reward yourself with a sense of accomplishment for what you did and to give you the confidence to talk in pride about all you've done.
And most importantly, you have something to look at and make you feel better when things arent going that great.

Other people's lives

- I just came to realize that this happens to almost everyone, not just me: There comes a time in life when you walk away from all the pointless drama and people who create it.

- You see so many people around you - colleagues, friends, friends of friends. You hear their stories from them, you read stuff about them on their blogs and facebook profiles. You monitor their activity on twitter. You analyze their careerpath on linkedin. And then you think you know what there is to know. The thing is - you dont. What you hear and see is only the mundane stuff. What is never told is the real story. Everyone's lives are more complicated than you think they are.

5 years of professional experience

I just realized - 3 months ago, I reached the "5 years of professional experience" mark. Not that it means much... it only means I have grown 5 years older from when I started out on my first job. But still, I remember when I first started looking for jobs and noticed the "5 years experience" requirement in many job profiles and sighed. Just gives me a cheap thrill that now I have that "qualification"!

Conversational English

I don't want to sound "peter-ish", but I do speak English far better than I speak Tamil, my native tongue. My vocabulary is very good and so is my diction.

But when I converse with native Americans, it makes me realize what not being a native English speaker means. They play with words in a manner that doesnt come naturally to me.

Here is an example. This is an email from some guy in my company to a graphic design intern: "I'm attaching the presentation I showed you. I’d love for you to take a stab at reformatting it, and cleaning up the graphics so it tells the story. I’d encourage others on the team to similarly send you any internal presentations that might need similar graphic love."

That 'graphic love' part....I would have never thought of putting it that way, but it is such a nice way to put it, albeit simple! And this was just one instance... I hear such bursts of word-plays very often from native speakers.

Point of all this being that it makes me feel there is no language that I can speak "really-really" well :).

Yet another start

I was pretty apprehensive about the whole move thing initially - just the regular inertia towards change. But once I actually moved, life has been busy enough to keep me from worrying. Like, I dont have the time to miss my Seattle friends, or reminisce about my life back there etc.

Things have been pretty smooth otherwise (oh apart from my handbag getting stolen in between!). Likey my new job. Moved to a new pretty 2-bedroom apartment. Don't have a new set of regular-hang-out friends as yet, and haven't started doing all the extra-curricular stuff I have been wanting to do. But I guess I'll get there...

Pacific Coastal Road trip - WA to CA

We drove all the way from Seattle to the bay area in my car this past weekend.... a 2.5 day long journey. Except for actually deciding we would do the trip that weekend, we didn't plan anything else about the trip. We didn't pre-decide any of our stops, we didn't pre-book any hotels we would be staying at during the night. And that made it really really fun. We drove for as long as we could each day; we stopped where ever we felt like stopping; at night when we were exhausted from the driving we just randomly found a hotel nearby to stay in. Being unplanned led us to accidental fun discoveries... nothing stupendous or breathtaking, but still fun all the same, just because it is unexpected.

Check out my flickr for a picture story of our road trip (click on the trip set so that you can browse the pictures in sequence of the story) :). And do have yourself logged-in into flickr... some pictures are only visible to friends and family.

Packing is tiring...

.. even if it is only stuff contained in a single bedroom apartment. Especially tiring when you planned to allocate only 3.5 days for it. Not just is it tiring physically, it is also a very analytical process. You need to run through all the inventory in your head to figure out what to pack along with what to maximize efficiency, firmness of packing, storage space and cost. Also, packing is not just packing - it is also numerous trips to (1) dispose off the trash, (2) sell unwanted stuff, (3) give away unwanted stuff to charity, (4) maybe buy more packing material and (5) get food to eat since you need to pack away the kitchen stuff and clean up the fridge.

I am making up for all the bending-and-stretching I did not do over the past year or more, in 4 days.

The pluses - Having a chance to dispose away all the unwanted stuff is a good feeling. Having an opportunity to donate your old clothes, handbags, shoes, household items to a shelter for battered women is a great-great feeling.

The hub of exciting epicurean experiences

SFO, it is! Some interesting eateries I found:-

1. A restaurant where you eat seated in pitch dark, served by blind men!: http://sf.darkdining.com/
2. Restaurant with cross-dressed waiters/waitresses: http://www.asiasf.com/index.php
3. Restaurant with foreign films shown during dinner: http://www.foreigncinema.com/home.html
4. Underground restaurant with a ghetto like feel: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/22/MNGOOGRA241.DTL
5. A cafe where the menu item names are like "I am beautiful", "I am committed" etc: http://www.cafegratitude.com/cafemenufeb08
6. Organic Indian bakery: http://spicevice.com/products/product-list.html

Eat-Pray-Love, the movie

When I read the book Eat-Pray-Love, I couldn't stop raving about it. This in-spite of the fact that I could never articulate why I fell head over heels for the book - it wasn't like it had a dramatic storyline... it didn't. For that matter, it actually doesn't have a storyline - its only a bunch of the author's travel experiences (to Rome, Mumbai and Bali) compiled together. I think the reason it fascinated me was because it drew me into the author's world and made me sense how wonderful such travel experiences could be.

Anyway, now its being made into a movie. Pretty sure it won't be half as good because the best thing about the book was its narrative and the very interesting tidbits of information, which is of course the hardest to translate on-screen :(. Saddens me much when a book I love gets made into a movie that doesn't capture its essence. Its not that these people don't know how to make good movies - they do! Its that there are certain books that *cannot* be effectively made into movies and such books should be left alone to live solely in their textual world, however popular they might be.

Talking about book-to-movie translations, you know what book I think should really really be made into a movie? Kalki, by Gore Vidal. Gripping storyline and super unexpected ending - that's all I can give you without letting you in on the suspense :). But I recommend you give it a read if you get hold of it.

Enabling career directions

A cousin of mine did his Bachelors in music, his MBA in Finance and is now a Systems Engineer. I was once interviewed for a position in a tech company by the company's President - he had done his Bachelors in liberal arts and then studied law before moving on to working in a tech company! Look up Allen Blue, VP of Product Strategy and Co-founder at LinkedIn. He did his BA in drama, and then started his career as a theatrical scenery and lightning designer. In all the examples above, what I want you to notice is the drastic change in career paths.

The question: How come and why then, did I and all of my friends choose to stick to what fields we picked when we were 17?

At 17, I knew to speak English well, I knew some basics laws of Physics, I knew some math theorems, I knew about a few wars that were fought by the various kings in various parts of the world, I knew to write a program to generate Fibonacci series in Cobal and Fortran - and that qualifies me to decide what I would be doing for the rest of my life!!?!

What is my point? - Am I saying one should not be allowed to decide one's career path at 17? No. I am saying (1) one should be equipped better to choose one's career path at 17 and (2) should have the freedom and avenues to change it if he/she wants to and has the capability and passion for it.

How to achieve these is a separate debate, but the point is that this problem exists - the issue that there are numerous software engineers out there today, who never got the opportunity to explore if they would make better/happier psychologists or wildlife researchers than software engineers.

E-Volunteering

I am done-done with my life just being work and home. I want to be involved in multiple other things. Why? I am not really sure. Maybe because that will make my life feel more satisfying and meaningful. Maybe because it will give me that one or two extra things to feel proud about. And that one or two extra things to talk about. Maybe because it is a way to open myself to new opportunities.

Anyway, thinking I will start small with e-volunteering. What is that? Well, it is volunteering that you can do by just sitting at your desk, before your computer. Here are a couplr really cool way to do that: http://www.in2books.com/school/penpals.html ; http://www.infinitefamily.org/.

Search for more such opportunities here: http://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/vol/index.html

I will keep you updated if I end up pursuing any of these :).

The Boy Paradox

http://www.hookingupsmart.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Boy-Paradox2.jpg

Not too far from the truth, I say :p

Honesty - going the full circle

As with most of us, my parents brought me up reiterating that honesty (or rather, smart-honesty) was an important quality to have.

Into my teenage and early twenties, I started having doubts about this - looking around me, lying seemed to help achieve many things that honesty couldn't - from bunking school to catch a movie to hiding/faking past life/work experiences to fit-in with the 'norm'.

Then came early adult life. Life got more complex, and because of that, lying became too complex to keep track of. Lying didn't die, but diplomacy took over as the way-to-go.

Now, I am seeing that most hugely successful people are downright direct and in-your-face. The books that sell most are the ones that have a truly candid portrayal. The management that is most respected is the one that is frank and transparent. Products that do great in the market are the ones whose initial ideas faced a barrage of direct criticism. So maybe the way-to-go is a full circle back to smart-honesty after all. I am on my way travelling from diplomacy, trying to take-root in smart-honesty...

Cooking

I've started cooking again - an artifact of having someone to cook for. Haven't been cooking for quite a long time now. I am kind of rediscovering the fact that you can make good food with not so much effort at all.

I am remembering the times in grad school when my roommates and I took turns to cook each day - and we cooked for anywhere from 3 to 8 people. Quite a feat, considering my cooking standards today! I no longer remember how to cook for that many people. Each of us roommates (most of us, not all, to be outrightly frank :) ) was good at coming up with something new to cook every time, and that too working only with ingredients that fell within the constraints of our poor student budget. And they tasted pretty good too (this is coming from someone who was a VERY picky eater pre-grad-school days) - I even remember the day when we had a potluck at our professor's home and P's vadais and my more-kozhambu turned out better than prof's much-self-touted dum aaloo :D.

Sometimes I hate to think all that talent of mine has vanished just like that. But anyway, I am starting to cook again. I am feeling the need - (1) because I am now officially a 'family-woman' and (2) because of my deteriorating stamina and health. I am hoping to be this person who can quickly make healthy, tasty food and at the same keeping it very varied meal-over-meal. Any suggestions for good recipe blogs that feature non-Indian vegetarian food?

The perfect job

Given my new opportunity to move jobs, I was hoping to find that "perfect" job, that would suit my interests and skills to the T. This hope somehow was stressing me out a little. Then I read this - http://www.manager-tools.com/2009/11/perfect-job - and it made me feel better.

And then there were three

10 months of no offers and suddenly I have 3!

Soon it will be a new place, new people, a new job, a new apartment, a whole new life.... I think I am more apprehensive than excited.

One more silo to sexuality

Objectum Sexuality

Neural/hormonal imbalance or evolution's way of reducing the exploding human population?

I am aghast at this condition but I cannot help but sympathize with these people for their struggle to have friends and family accept their 'abnormality'. This condition is incomprehensible to me, but maybe this was the same kind of feeling people had when they first started hearing about homosexuality, many years back.

My very first negotiation

I was involved in my very first offer salary negotiation today (yep, I am guiltily admitting that I hardly did any negotiation for my first 2 jobs). Tough work it is! Had to plan and write down the "workflow" to my approach, and also had to plan and write down the exact wordings to how I would put each question and statement. And then execute it according to the plan. Its like dealing with a complex project!

Anyway, it went alright... not great, not bad. I guess it couldn't be the greatest, given it was my first.

I have to take classes or do some committed self-learning of negotiation skills - it is a handy skill to have for use in many facets of life. If we happen to move back to India, I need these skills even for shopping! ;-) - I am pathetic at bargaining :).

It can all be learnt, they just dont teach it.

I am known to be diplomatic and I am known to be convincing. I have heard it multiple times from friends and family. Even then, the parts of my PM job that require diplomacy and convincing and negotiation skills are challenging and there is a lot to be learnt. During my initial years as PM, I wondered if these skills only come innately and cannot and are not taught. Like, which school teaches diplomacy and how to be confidently convincing etc? I never came across any such classes during my schooling!

Now, I am beginning to think otherwise. Situations involving your diplomatic skills are a very different kind of problem to solve than a technical problem; but just like technical problems, they can be broken down into steps to follow too. Which in turn means, they can be taught! Take an (albeit weak) example: negotiating the salary and benefits after a job offer. Some people just seem to be automatically geniuses at doing this kind of negotiation. But it can be learnt and proof is this document here that outlines a step by step process on what to say and do during a negotiation.

Too bad that our schools don't teach these essential skills that are required to succeed in the corporate world. For example - why do schools NOT have classes about conflict resolution or dealing with difficult work peers etc? Why do they not consider this as important as say learning database concepts or learning particle physics? And for that matter, why do they not have classes for 'dos and donts on your first date' or 'what not to post on facebook / how to make your facebook profile private'? Schools should not just teach the technical stuff required for work success, but rather, what is essential for an all-round success, which includes achieving happiness on the personal front too.

Ryan Seacrest inspires

Never thought much of Ryan Seacrest until I saw this on Oprah - http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Ryan-Seacrests-Success-Secrets
7 jobs in 1 freaking day!! and here I am with just one, and not even being the best at it.

Isn't like he is an innate genius at what he does... he says so himself. Just hard and smart work. That gives me some hope. I am telling myself I will strive to follow a super busy and effective routine, once I settle down. We'll see...

To be frank - I really haven't actually figured out yet if I want to do super-duper things in life, be awfully passionate about them blah blah... or live a smooth, boring, routiner-than-routine life. I guess I will try for the former but be ok with settling for the latter.

Yes yes, propose to me with rava idli any day!

And with a sprinkle of carrot shavings on each idli, please!

http://neoindian.org/2009/11/21/what-happens-in-vegas-ends-up-as-a-wedding-ceremony-in-chennai/

Being a NRNINA

NRNINA - Non Resident Neither Indian Nor American

"I don't know what's with all this confusion among us NRIs about whether we want to settle in the US or go back to India. I know exactly what I want to do - I want to go back to dear motherland some day" - that was me, until about a year or so back.

One three-week wedding ceremony in India later, I still know exactly what I want to do - I don't want to go back.

I remember this lunch I was having at a Pakistani-Indian restaurant with D and other friends, where I lifted up my fisted right arm and proclaimed that I would have my India vacation and my wedding go exactly my way. It didn't at all seem like a daunting challenge, given how over-doting S is and how super open-minded my parents are. D warned, "In most Indian weddings, that is a near-impossible claim... but I wish you all luck with all my heart".

My "I dont want to go back" declaration should have given you the gist of how it turned out :). Should have listened to D and kept my expectations in a bottomless abyss. But no biggie, I have resolved the my-kind-of-wedding issue with yet another proclamation :D - for all non-practical purposes, I will consider myself to be in an un-wedded live-in relationship until I have a MY-way-wedding. How 'bout that, huh! :p. [Yep, that was the only pathetic come-back I could come up with].

Thankfully for me, S feels the same way about moving back, but if circumstances force us to seek shelter in motherland, this wonderfully entertaining biographical-blog about a Newly-Returned-Indian is my inspiration to take it all with a pinch of salt and a whole deal of humor - http://neoindian.org/about/

Heres to the ongoing, relentless, long-running process of interviewing

Know how long it's been since I started looking for jobs in the bay area? - About 10 months now.

How does that make me feel? - Frustrated and sometimes doubtful of my capabilities. And also a little confused - because I still don't know what I am not doing right - I usually breeze through the interview questions (most of them are open-ended questions anyways), I ask smart questions to my interviewers, show interest in the company/product and also give good product ideas to the team. When I hear back about a reject, I ask feedback from them every time - but I am given feedback only 10% of the time and even those do not point at my interview performance. In fact one of the recruiters at a company that "decided to go with another candidate" said, when I asked for feedback, that here was no specific feedback but that the hiring manager liked me a lot and said that he would definitely recommend me to other teams.
I dilute my rattled feelings by assuming that this economy has made it a hirer's world and people with much more experience than I are just falling into their nets left-right-and-center.

Anyway, I am the kind of person who has this need to come up with a "all-the-good-that-came-out-of-the-bad" story, just to assuage myself that the bad happens for a reason. It gives me the satisfying hope that my life is progressing for the better. So here's all the supposed-good that came out of the ongoing, relentless interviewing:-

1) I've talked to so many CEOs and CTOs and VPs of so many companies. It feels good! I guess its some sort of a cheap-thrill - it's like meeting a lot of averagely-popular celebrities - celebrities of the tech world as opposed to the entertainment industry :)

2) The lazy-bum that I am, I usually do not carve out enough time away from [work + silly-TV + eat + sleep] to read up about what is happening in the tech world and try out all the cool new products. Having to interview with various companies, forced upon me the need to read up about them and play around with their products. It's given me the drive to make it a routine to do that myself from now on, without needing that shove from upcoming interviews.

3) When we are in stable jobs, me and most others, do not venture out to see what else is out there. And we do not have the guts to question if our passions align with what we are currently doing with our lives. If it is only times like these that nudge us to think along those lines, then bring it on!

4) I am sooo looking forward to the time between my jobs to do the things that routine life hasn't afforded me in a long time - read, write, find organizations to volunteer for, be a temporary foster parent for animals in need, and find a better routine to settle down into...

So here's raising glasses to bad times that bring us fresh new experiences and insights! :)

An "Aha!" moment

Hung out with the friends gang this weekend, after a really really long time. And oh what pleasure and oh how relaxing! And oh how I miss them :(.

Anyway, at one point we were discussing about what was that one-two-three-.. things that made us give the nod of approval to our spouses when we were dating them. We humored each other and joked about it and said random things and finally realized none of us could come up with that list. Mr B then said "Well, that's a very good thing then. Imagine if you had 3 reasons you were with your spouse for. Would you leave your spouse if those reasons weren't true anymore? That would be a pretty sad state of affairs."

Aha!

At a career change juncture

This is the second time in my professional life that I am at the juncture of making a career change to a new job / a new company. The last time it happened, I was so thankful for it. Despite the stress I had to undergo when making the change, what I landed up in was the next best thing that could happen to me - I was so much better a Program Manager than I ever was a software developer.

I am hoping this time around too, where I land up next, is as good as it can get.

Given that I now have the time and chance to explore my options, I am thinking about getting into non-profit. I also took the next step and applied to some Program Manager positions at non-profits. As expected, I haven't heard back from any of them. And why would I - I don't have the kind of background or experience that would suggest I would be super passionate about their cause (even if I actually am).

I am also thinking along the lines of what kinds of products I want to work on next; and if I want to work at a large company or a mid-size or a start-up.

Well, to be frank, the most pragmatic thing to do would be to take up the first offer I get. So I'm not sure where all this thinking is getting me anyway :).

I await, sometimes nervously and sometimes hopefully, the next thing that life is going to bring me.

Evolution and the woman's body

Did you know evolution has caused a change (for the worse) in women's menstrual cycles? Did you know that a hundred years ago, a woman, on an average, had her first period only at the age of sixteen and that from menarche to the age of twenty, she only averaged seven periods a year? Did you know more menstrual cycles means increased risk of cancer?

Read some interesting stats and anecdotes from Malcolm Gladwell here: http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm

Bill Watterson, I bow to thee

Don't you think Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes) is a true genius? How many comic strip writers can come up with cartoons that are fun for kids and at the same time have profound insights for the grown-ups?

Calvin: "How come grown-ups don't go out to play?"
Dad: "Grown-ups can only justify playing outside by calling it exercise, doing it when they'd rather not, and keeping records to quantify their performance."
Calvin: "That sounds like a job."
Dad: "..Except you don't get paid."
Calvin: "So play is worse than work?"
Dad: "Being a grown-up is tough."

By the way, whenever I read Calvin and Hobbes I feel a slight pang of sadness - because I always wonder if Calvin is just being a normal kid, imagining all those things he imagines or if he is schizophrenic. Anyone know if Watterson said anything about that at anytime? Like how J.K.Rowling revealed that Dumbledore is gay? :D

No longer once upon a time...

Once upon a time, I did not have the need to blog - parents took care of most of my needs, friends were all around me to listen to all the cribbing I ever needed to do, and 'stress' was a very rare term in my vocabulary. To put it simply, I wasn't yet in the grown-up world.

Now, I am "independent"; friends are in geographically distant places and 'stress' is an everyday term. I have officially entered the boring, adult world. I need to blog now - I need a way to talk to myself and to my friends - to gossip, share, crib, reminisce, gather my thoughts... whatever it takes to feel saner by opening up :).

Anyhoo - here comes yet another blog, my existing multiple public and private blogs not-withstanding :D. Not to mention the facebook and twitter updates :D. Actually, I just needed another blog for everything that I didn't say on one of my other blogs!

Due credits for the idea for this new vent-venue goes to Pree's new blog :).