My Pug Marks

I have reached to a stage in my work life where I can't recall being as busy ever before as I am now. Not in terms of repetitive work. Not in terms of spending long hours either (though there are hours at home...). It is purely in terms of there being so much to do that you want to do but just not have the time for it. This feeling is good! I definitely believe in smart work and it is always better to have more hours spent doing different things than spending fewer hours doing the same thing. It is the head that needs to be worked out and it definitely can stretch beyond how much you think it can take. Give it a shot while I get back from my writing break to some analytics data. :)

As a ritual, I drop my wife to office every working day. As a ritual, we end up running 10-15 mins late. I am an owl type, hence mornings are usually slothfully slow for me. This irritates her. While she gets ready in 20 mins flat (5 minutes added, thankfully, because of the dressing table that we have now), I end up taking almost 50 mins. This also means she gets more time to sleep (aargh!). As we menace through the rough traffic & pot holed roads and reach her office, she says the same thing to me everyday. "Be good. Don't get angry!" I smile back and drive on to my office. I was wondering about this once. I was outraged for a bit - What does she mean? Am I a cruel heartless beast that she has to ask me to be good everyday? After calming down in an instant thinking she knows better, I gave it a deeper thought. In general, we forget to be good and get irritated with all the small and big things that happen to us or around us everyday. The roads are bad, the w...

I love the cafeteria on the 4th floor in my office. It may not be as funky & stylish as my previous workplace's but the view is simply inspiring. If you happen to come a bit early or a little late with fewer people dining around, you can get the window seat and eat in peace looking outside to see this. View from the 4th floor cafeteria This rugged iron structure, is probably the foundation of a work in progress (or not) building. Along all four sides are finished buildings, including the one which hosts my office. I keep looking at the rusty beams and  they still seem to stand strong. Despite all finished products around, there seems to be space for something new, a work in progress that can be shaped to a fine thing. It can be shaped to be so good that it completely shrouds the existing ones which boast of having stood the test of time. Who knows?  I like work in progress. It is always good to look forward to something new and different. What do you think?...

This one will definitely ruffle a few but then, it is my blog, isn't it? I actually feel like arguing but stop myself one step short realizing it may usually be futile. Cities like Bangalore, Gurgaon (yes, it is Gurgaon and not Delhi), Hyderabad and Mumbai have always faced the wrath of people working there. Most of them don't like their work cities. Most of them do not belong to these cities.  My simple question is - if you have a problem with everything ranging from traffic to rents to 'heartlessness' in here, why are you here? In questioning all the wrong things, one tends to forget that these are the cities with opportunities. They never asked to be the chosen ones but government policies, location, etc. worked in their favor. It is only the residents who realize how their towns changed into big cities which actually is the root cause of all the problems. I can speak for Gurgaon, been living here since birth. I have seen fields turn into glass buildings - a...

 Image Courtesy: http://www.thehindu.com/ Now that MBA is over and I am considered an ounce wiser, being back home means work. There are so many pending things that are just waiting in the attic to be dusted and made to work again. One of them is the mammoth task of physical share transfer and dematerialization. Though stated in one pretty sentence, it takes months of effort and work. And of course, money!  My brother has been painfully going about the motions of this work for a couple of months now and nothing much yet seems to have resulted out of it. We struck a good deal with a certain Saraswati something shares. I asked, "How much would this one fetch us?". He replied, "Enough to recover the money you spent on your MBA degree". I exclaimed, "Really! Waoh! Even after they have been dormant for like 15 years??!". He quipped, in exasperation, "Weren't they supposed to teach you all this in B-School?" I did shut up and let him do this pain...

Image Courtesy : http://digitalmirage.net/ 'Sir, it will take only two minutes' I insisted. All I got in return was a nice little smirk from the gentleman (atleast that was what I presumed him to be when I approached him). The day hadn’t been really good but it was exciting to be back in field. I was reminded of the times when I was stalking married women for my survey for a specific brand of detergent about a year ago. At times, it got dangerous, the stalking business and it was only my college ID card that came to my rescue to prove my innocence and intentions. I dreaded when I thought of what would have happened had I forgotten to carry it! It finally was time to put the Marketing Research concepts learnt in class to practice. The only problem – we were more viewed as salesmen selling credit cards and insurance rather than as diligent students pursuing research purely for academic purposes. Having reached this sweet little mall in Chinchwad to carry out our research, we wer...