"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 :).