Touting won't buy anything

When you go to school and learn alphabets and your papa proudly says my kiddo knows alphabets. You proudly smile that you know alphabets. When someone asks you to say it, you proudly say "a, b, c, d......". It was exciting. It is never a touting. It was celebration. It was a paradigm shift. You are just trying to learning something new. In fact you just start to learn something formally.

But when you are in 10th grade and again your papa says my kiddo knows alphabets. And you proudly smile and your papa is even prouder. Now, your dad asks you to say alphabets. Now, you can understand that pain that others undergo. It is touting.

Well, a lot of things depends on what you have to say and to whom are you saying that to.

Touting by any means won't enable you rather pulls you down.

BTW, this is a just a hang over post after experiencing something which i can't digest. But i forgot it after watching this comedy clip (from a Tamil movie) :-) (when i see this comedy i remember the quality of some of the whitepapers, honestly this is much better than those whitepapers)

I wish i could be wisest

I wish i could be wisest, but until i become one (remote possibility), i prefer to be foolish.

I wish i could behave like a grown-up, but until it comes naturally to me, i prefer to be like a child.

I wish i could write little better (particularly my posts here), i can just copy here, copy there and sound like a thinker. I wanted to be original but not a photocopy. Until it comes naturally to me, i prefer to stay foolish & half-baked.


But the point is, i like to be looked at as a fool and i feel so proud to be such a fool.

Where Am I? Where I want to Be?

After some eight years of experience, i tend to ask the following questions to myself (and may be i can help you too). By comfort zone, i dont really mean working in the same company and i really mean comfort zone - doing something you never did :-) or keep doing something different that you love to do - programming, testing, writing articles, writing books etc.

What does the experience teach? Does it teach about the concept of incremental pay hike? Or does my experience is all about eight one year of experience? Am i able to understand the classical things about computing now? At a bare minimum, does my experience help me to choose a programming language to do a specific job? Am i directed towards something and if so am i going in right direction? Am i become bankrupt of steam of learning? Am i forgetting the fact that learning is lifelong process?

Well, i reflected a lot about my state and i m quite pissed off with my actions for past one year. There weren't intellectual learning at the level i expected and i certainly feel like i m doing mundane thing. I used to write articles, i used to speak in conferences, i used to speak technically, i used to write code, i used to design and i used to share at reasonable level with others. When say "i used to", you got to understand that "i m not doing it right now".

After a long reflection, my heart says, i got to invest on two things - time and money. Of the two things, i feel like time is more important entity and it is quite difficult to buy. I want to learn new programming language such as Scala, Scheme, or Haskell. The second thing is that i would like to set up a small lab. When i say, a small lab, it is really small. Probably, x86/Linux based desktop. I want to relearn some of things that i have forgotten but this time around i want to give a strong focus on fundamentals. It is not going to be time-bound but it doesn't mean that i won't be time conscious. This time the focus is more on going deeper than wider. I want to especially do something in cloud computing space as well.

I think, this is going to be an exciting journey and for sure i ll share some of my learnings here as i go when i get something concrete.

I know what you are murmuring. Yeah, i really sounds like a freshman but it is the true state. I got to accept it and move on.

What I Think About Thinking

There is a friend of mine, initially i didn't like him much because i watched him from a distance and i believed what others had to say about him. I was deeply conditioned having my own lens (and few borrowed ones). Later, i had a couple of close interactions with him, now, i started to like him and most importantly the way he thinks. That is a usual story and probably heard number of times in your life. (me too). Here are my inferences with few meet-ups.

A good thinker always spends a lot of time in "thinking" than "speaking". He listens a lot and he doesn't jump into conclusions but keep learning (or draws inference). A good thinker always has a model to think - his own way of inferring/learning and he even learns the ways of new thinking (contemporary). Thinking has to be like a moving target. It is all about being dynamic and more dynamic.

Human beings are programmed to think, think deeply and that is part of the evolution. Thinking deeply needs time (to think and to reflect) and practice (with mistakes). You got to reinvent the wheel for your sake because if your friend knows "A B C D" that does make you educated. Your life is quite different from your friend's life and so is your thinking. So, reinvent the wheel, if  it gives you joy. Whatever that gives you inner happiness is always going to be correct.

Nothing can be so dangerous than being unknown and partially knowing something. Let us strive hard to do the research on something. Research makes us to think. If there are two choices - the first is to use the existing material and the second is to do research, choose the second. Research makes us to think though it takes little time. When you think, your learning gets registered in subconscious mind (otherwise, you abstract concepts). Life will be pleasant once we start abstracting.

The interaction with my friend made me to think and as a result i infer paragraph #2, #3 and #4

What do you think :-)?

Weaker Ones - Go Get It

There were many stories and the good one is the story of the fox that says, "mmm, no, those grapes will sour".

Weaker are the ones who surrender totally. I won't even use the word surrender as the word signifies freedom and realization in spiritual context. Inaction and letting others to act on me is a terrible pattern. Initially it made me feel so good and i seemed to get things with someone's effort. But i m sure that as the time progresses, the pressure will mount on me - you can't really say the cause of the pressure and if you drill down, it is self. I feel that i m deeply chained and we know that if we are chained to anything except the roots is not freedom. Freedom is something for strong hearted but not for me, because i m faint hearted. Freedom should lead to action but not the passport for inaction.

Freedom is highly risky and for sure leads to evolution. If i don't choose freedom, i not only stop the evolution of my self but also attempt to extinguish my self.

The above is my thought and highly influenced by Osho through his book "Freedom".

(Hu)Man's Problem

The human race is now going away from evolution. It is going through extinction. It extinguishes other micro organisms and organisms and that changes the ecosystem. We are marching towards to a point of no return. A point from where the mistake is going to be costly and most importantly it is going to be a irreversible situation. Is the nature keeping quiet to all our deeds? No

Nature gives him the signals through events. The man is not patient enough and intelligent enough to sense the events. He might have invented latest gadgets, most posh/luxury sedan and made a cover story in latest inventions. In order to understand the nature, he doesn't need those invention. He needs to be patient. He is too impatient to listen the nature.

He has the unique thing "awareness". But he is impatient and hence lacks to employ "awareness". The magazine Scientific American talks (for more than months, years?) all about the mess we create for future generations.

Politicians at Ripe Age

Yesterday, i happen to meet one of my great friends who is going to retire in two years. He is working in a bank and says he wants to retire as early as possible. He clearly knows that he needs rest. After hearing that, i was thinking about politicians and i deeply pity them. 

The politicians are mostly at ripe age - 50s (it is ok), 60s (still ok), 70s, 80s and 90s. It takes them a lot of time to climb the leadership ladder in their party and later in government administration. Somehow, their thirst is not quenched even if they are in power throughout. In some cases, by the time they enter their office as ministers they are quite above their retirement age.

But then, they are not able to leave the power even at 80s and 90s. My question is how they will face the death. If they feel so much about power and need the kick of power, how will they face death. Do they want to die when they are in power? Are they willing to be powerful dead-bodies? The death is total surrender. Even our own lung won't breathe, our own heart won't pump blood, our own blood won't flow even if we command it. It is total surrender.

I feel, the death for them is going to be so painful and paradigm shift.

I m not responsible if it sounds like your workplace :-(

Powers of Truth

Today, I happen to write a recommendation in LinkedIn. Now, I m writing my experience on how i feel when i say something and how it affects our state of mind. When you say something, your intuition says something to you - you will feel that you have done a good job and your mind goes into peaceful state or your mind goes to confused state and you feel not so good. Even if you do something wrong because of your conditionings (but not based on the real facts), a slight discomfort kicks in. It is up to us to regard or disregard the cues given by our intuition. You can call it intuition or conscience (which again shapes you in a long run).

The real powers of truth are - the truth and its omnipresence, its ability to kick back some quality feedback on the subject immediately (person who is truthful/untruthful) and its ability to erupt like a volcano if suppressed (the tipping point factor).

Today, there is no doubt that i feel so much peace in mind and it was fantastic day :-)

Unconditional Burning Desire To Make Everyone The Best - Teacher's Day

Today is Teachers' day - a day that is dedicated to teachers. There will be at least one teacher (if you are lucky enough, you will have more) who made a difference in our lives. Often, they are Gods in disguise. They give us knowledge, wisdom, experiences, motivation, inspiration and what not without any expectation. The unconditional burning desire to make every student a better human being. During this wonderful day, I would like "thank" my teachers/professors (and all teachers of the world) and "dedicate" my professional and personal successes to them. In a sense, our parents, friends, siblings and seniors at work are wonderful teachers and my dedication to them too.

Verify Everything - Feel It Before Accepting

The self realization has never been a group work. It is an individual's efforts towards knowing himself. The object painted by society is just the view of the society. It is framed by people like you and me. So, there is every possibility that it is wrong. Because, human errors are natural. However the society makes every attempt to make you to accept its view and to be ingrained in its view leading to deep conditioning. The society (may it be the society we live, work, party, religion and many other groups) has a deep conspiracy. The conspiracy of not to allow us to think. Society says to man, I will allow you to think but you have to think the way I want you to think.

As man grows, his views about world widens. He becomes knowledge base and his knowledge is dangerous because his knowledge was never verified/validated by him. But he simply endorse it. He conditions you and then he comes to you with a group, the group conditions you. Because, the group feels the majority makes them right. So, he conditions you. If you get conditioned the society wins, you lose and if you don't condition yourself the society loses and you win. It is all about survival of the stronger. So far, mostly the man lost.

When you are a child, you questioned everything. You didn't think about the relevance of a question. But you just question. You get worldly experience by asking questions on the things you perceive through your senses. When you are a child, you verify everything. You give very first hand information. When you say, the fire will be hot, you experienced by touching it and you say with confidence. Thats why the child never say there exists a God (but the parents make him to say so). Verification is key to contemporary thinking. If you don't verify something, you cannot endorse it. If you endorse something without verification then it is conditioning. 

Verification is key to self realization.

Have a Great Monday and Fantastic Week.

Notion of Best Practice - Does It Make Sense?

Most often we say that something is a best practice or at worst someone (who generally doesn't know anything about the problem you are trying to solve) asks you to follow a best practice. First, the very notion of best practice is wrong. The term "best" signifies that it is the superior and no other better option is available. In reality we, the human being, have not perfected any system with such an accuracy and deeper knowledge so as to say something is best. Most of the systems and processes are still evolving.

Assume that there is already a known best way of solving a problem and even there exists a proof to conclude that it is the best way of solving problems. The proof says about the best way and various other known ways of solving problems. It compares the known existing methods. For example, while there are numerous ways of sorting a given set, we can pick a efficient method to a job. But the proofs do not talk anything about other possible but unknown ways of solving problems. What happens if there exists a solution that is better than the best?

In the context of problem solving and thinking, the term Good Practice makes a better sense than Best Practice. The notion of best practice is wrong and the "best practice" thinking arrests productive thinking.

Have a Super Sundae.

I Have Found My Deadliest Enemy, What About You?

I have found my enemy who always cheats me, stops me from driving towards excellence, he is the one who is making me lazy, he betrays me, he gives me lame excuses to not to do something, he spoils my consistency, he always questions my unconventional thoughts and he stands as a hurdle when I want to take the road that is less traveled or never traveled, he asks me not to take risks, he asks me adventures spoils happiness, he highly conditions me and passes a judgement that I can do only this much, he stamps me as a software engineer, he stops me from growing human, he says where is the time, he makes me to sleep in couch like a lazy potato (pig?), I m addicted to his way of thinking, I don't want to think like him but yet he wins. Who is that? He is "Me".

Many of us would have been in the scenario of failing and would have blamed someone or something other than us. But the real fact is that it is "us" who is responsible for the failure. The responsibility doesn't stop at failure but rather starts after we fail. When someone says that he will take responsibility of a failure, it should mean that he will fix the root cause of the failure. The pain of failure is far lesser than the pain that will arise due to lack of awareness or ignorance. If you take ten things that you wanted to do but never did and analyze what is the root cause of the problem, you will simply see the truth.

For example, I was trying to jog for past few months (years?) and never did consistently. One day, I had work, the other day there was drizzle, another there was a relative at home, yet another day I was not feeling well but certainly I didn't have a single day in life without an activity so that I can jog. When I gave excuses, I fail. I dont really know whether I can say that as failure. Because failure comes when you do an activity. When you don't do the activity, it is not a failure. It is lack of thinking and awareness.

So, I have found my deadliest enemy and it is "Me". what about you?

Have a Super Duper Day (yeah, weekend is arriving).

Collaboration - When It Is Fruitless Encounter

It was a cold night. Many folks are sleepless not because of chillness that prevailed through the air but due to sounds of gun shots at the battlefield. They are sleepless and at the same time they aren't just staying in bed. They are in battlefield, fiercely fighting out the intruders. Unperturbed by loss of their friends and friends in death bed, they are fiercely fighting, heeding the commands of their captain. They spread across the area of more than 20 kilometers with only one thought in mind - to regroup after ten hours to attack the intruders in unison. They dismantled themselves to reunite. They call "dismantling" as collaboration. The collaboration is a coordinated action strongly focused on the vision with everyone willing to give their share of breathe. After ten hours, you either find them there or dead somewhere else. They are true collaborators. They make sure that they win as a team or fail as individuals. For true collaborators, accuracy and precision are what that matter. For them, the collaboration is not certainly another form of escapism to hide their incompetency.

The corporate drama in the name of revenues, net margins, gross margins, profit & loss and the series of actions in the name of collaboration is shocking or very least far away from my comprehension. People, time and again, prove that we fail as community. In many organizations, you can find many dead communities. Are those communities died because of plausible reasons. Most of the communities fail because of few individuals - key guys that involve in drama. When someone starts a community, I get a question, when will it die? when it will die pathetically? My question gives me answer. When will you die? when you do evolve. This applies even to community. You cannot stay there, you got to be better every second. When you collaborate, you got to be better than you a day before. You always feel that the value the group adds to you is more than the value you add to the group and you try to match your value with that of the group every time. In a fruitful collaboration, everyone gets their own deserved share of joy, recognition and of course peace of mind. When there is no fairness, the community starts to deteriorate and starts to move to general ward, then slowly to intensive care unit and finally declared dead.

When my friend (Karuna) and I had a discussion on this, he shares his experience. These days, as the economy is recovering, what you bring to the table is very less (or rather far less) than what you take from the table. I see you in the playground, I see you rolling your sleeves up but I cant see your hands or cuffs go dirt or you don't allow me to influence the group. It remembers of the election manifesto and electoral public meeting. You bring your share of sweat and I will bring mine. Have you ever thought about this. What if everyone brings less value than the value they take from the table. It is death by (lack of) collaboration. If you ask me to choose one between non-collaboration and death, I will choose non-collaboration. If i have choice between speaking up & getting hurt and keeping silence & not getting hurt, I will choose speaking up & getting hurt. If you say that my attitude is wrong if I stop (or reduce) giving when I see you don't bring the value to the table consistently, it doesn't sound like a killer idea and it sounds more like a moron's speech. Then, why call it a great deed when Gandhiji led non-co-operation movement? Well said, Karuna.

What do you feel?

Artificial (Fake) Chaining - Can We Break It?

There was an elephant near a temple. An iron chain was tied around his leg and the other end of the chain was hanging free. The elephant was believing that he was tied to the stone pillar near him. He was thinking that he wouldn't be able to move as he was tied, very tightly. He wanted to go to jungle to have deep bath. He wanted to eat green plants to live an healthy life. He wanted to be around like sized and like minded individuals. But he thought he couldn't go because he thought that he didn't have strength to break the chain. I m not talking about the elephant that you heard in some story. It is us - you and me. We never realize that we are not tied. Once we were tied and we still think that we are tied forever. For some of us, we have an opportunity and privilege to be tied with a golden chain.

This perception is not a problem until you realize. If you believe that there are 24 hours in day, one day you will wake up to find that there is only 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. Someone may steal one second from you without your permission. Someone will say that you have to work in the way he wants and say that it will give satisfaction to you. Someone may dream for you and say that it is the purpose of your life. If you let that happen, you will be sitting like a duck that is ready to be butchered. Absolutely there will be no notable difference. Only difference is - the duck quacks but we speak.

Don't curse them. It is the way they have be asked to operate. They are doing it thinking that they are chained which is not true. We are totally stuck in disbelief about ourselves and we are doing total disservice to ourselves. But the irony is we want to grow. Growth is not a matter, growing up is a matter. I feel that the biggest conspiracy that is quite successful in this society is this "chaining". The conditioning hinders the free flow thinking. Get rid of the conditioning and grow up.

Sometime back, I heard from someone in a respectable position that I cannot do two things. But the issue is that those two things are done by single guy few years back. He was quite immersed in status quo and very strong view. But the problem with his strong view is that it cannot be changed and it hindered him  from seeing my perspective. We don't need strong views. We just need free flow views. He is deeply chained with golden chain decorated with diamonds. How sweet it is, a trouble is a trouble, probably we can call it a nice trouble or sweet trouble. But trouble is a trouble.

Producing Leaders Vs Producing Business

I had a view that the organizations should produce leaders to win in business. Now, I feel that it is the other way. The business (or need) produces the leaders. I m not talking about building one's leadership qualities. I m talking about the need of leaders to drive business goals. When you have business, you will have a support system or a cushion for people to be always at peak of their performance (meeting business goals) and the mistakes are quite fine when you are at your peak performance. When the people are at their peak performance, they naturally become stars. So, producing leaders (or rather business leaders) starts with producing more business. If you have more project managers (or more seniors), you need to have more projects.

If you ask me, which takes precedence, I would say "producing business" makes bigger sense than "producing leaders".

Medicine or Poison - Let us Wake Up

This news is there for a while and for most of us it is just a news. We don't go medical shop that frequently and there is every possibility that we get good medicine even if we go or very least we can think that we will get medicines that are perfect to cure diseases. Few months back, I heard an interview from a government health officer in radio (FM) and he promised that there are no incidences of selling fake or expired medicine. He said that the medicines given in government hospitals had very strict quality control. But it seemed genuine when he accepted that there were few isolated cases but that could not be generalized.

Recently, there was a big scam or rather a cruelty brought into light. It was shocking to hear about a single person involved in selling of expired and contaminated medicines. He used to involve in an activity of collecting drugs from garbage (that were thrown out by people) and sold it to shops like a drug distributor. Should we believe that this is done by a single person? How can the collection, packaging, distribution and selling of expired medicine of such massive scale be done by single person without any help from others? The magnitude is so big and revenue picks to few hundred crores. 

Just few minutes back, I heard someone in drug distribution (I bet he must be a President or in similar post) to talk about medicine. His statement was too general to believe. He says that the medicine loses weight after expiry date and loses it power or curing capabilities. He says that it will not cause death. Another one says that the people should buy medicines in full strips so that the expiry dates printed in the strip is not cut away and clearly visible. For sure, these creatures are better to be magicians. The guys who sell medicine on the road side ("legiyam vickaravan") are much better than these creatures. I don't want to ask them whether they will give this medicine to their loved ones or for that matter will they go and buy the entire strip when they just need two tablets. This shows that how irresponsible they are and I quite related to Mr. Subroto Bagchi's example of a doctor who sold kidneys and later to fled to Nepal. This is pure impurity - the lack of integrity and the lack of professionalism.

But I m sure that the guy involved in this scam will also get bail in few months and lead a peaceful life. At maximum he will be fined few lakhs, the bank account and property in his name will be seized (but his wife's, son's, friend's, relatives' and dogs' account will not be seized) and few police officers will get promotion, the chief minister will appreciate the police department (and himself) for being proactive.

But who is responsible for betraying the people who did not get a chance to go to medical college (or any school) and ended up swallowing the poison?

Solar Power from Sahara

Yesterday, I read in newspaper that a German based company is planning to generate solar power based out of Sahara desert by 2050. Also, the project claims that it can cater 15% of power requirement of Europe. This quite inspiring and shows the commitment towards saving earth. But the beauty that these consortium believes that it can generate power by 2015. Let wish the project a great success and let us follow in our homes/offices.

This is what we call big thinking.

But, why are we not thinking to generate solar power at homes/offices. In my aunt's home, they have solar power that runs two florescent bulbs and a fan. Is it a futuristic thinking? My uncle is a big thinker.

Indian IT Industry - Be Responsible

Indian IT industry doesn't seem to understand the importance of quality of resource. Most of them make offers out of which many are bad offers. If we think that "bad offers" is an exception that can be discounted as it is negligible, we are dead wrong. Anyone with an Engineering degree (with few days of reading a programming language) can get into IT and get six digit salary. I hear interviewers saying, he is good in concepts, struggles a bit in programming but trainable. Neither the mediocre create value for the organization nor the organization creates any value to its clients. Together, we create mess.

The quality of people that get into the organization not only affects the performance or morale that exist in the team. It also creates a devastating effects to the culture of the organization. As more mediocre people get in, they deliver mediocre results and they make everyone around them mediocre. The only reason why I find we are happy in hiring mediocre people is to fill the positions and to get that "extra" bucks (and bugs). Indian IT, please be responsible. If we are not responsible, we have to pay heavy prize. China is no longer non English speaking country. So, is that the reason why most of top Indian IT opened up shops in China.

Two more blogs

It is great feeling to share one's learning in the form of presentation, training, discussion and writing. Now, I have started two more blogs to document my learning, express my thoughts and validate it and give some food for thought for you. Yesterday, I registered as PMI member and this means that I will be taking up PMP in near future. That is going to be a steep learning curve needing discipline. I have a started a blog on Project Management and for the next few months I will be posting on PMP and occasionally on other aspects of Project Management. The blog address is http://tinythoughts.grabyourfreedom.net

Many of us will be willing to earn money and multiply it taking some risks by investing in stock markets directly or indirectly. I primarily started to play with stocks not to earn money (but I dont know why I started to play). After playing for a while, I made tiny losses and huge losses before making small profits. But overall, the learning was great and it taught me how to shield oneself from others emotions. Believe me, stock market is a place with low emotional intelligence and if you can continue to make profits consistently, you are really maturing. So, I am planning to do research on stocks/technical analysis/reading charts. I will be posting few to start with at http://finance.grabyourfreedom.net

Two more blogs to our portfolio

Tiny Thoughts
Value Investing

Stop being a Bozo, be Sensible

The world revolves around me and how can it revolve around the sun. I am the leader, possibly because I am more experienced (probably few more days) than you and you got to think as I expect you think, I will give a dot and you have the freedom to stand and if you are intelligent to play within the dot and most important thing is that you have to update me, when you do anything. Welcome to the world of old generation. This concept of leadership is old, probably only few hundred years when we lived with animals. We say arsenic is silent killer, but this is sick leadership and dreadful than arsenic. It kills people shaking their self-confidence, spoiling their creativity. It helps to create herds not organization.

I think, "sick leadership" should have been a conspiracy against an organization. It is clearly a trend and starts with an idiot who has more power and end up misusing his power. While he misuses his/her power, some class B sees it and there comes the perfect understanding. This class B again creates many class B when Class B reaches a threshold gives way to Class C. The sick leadership will appear to give great results but it just gives wrong hopes. The term follower has often misunderstood. The follower has a different meaning than a slave and a happy slave can never be a follower. The follower connects with leader for a common and noble purpose. The leader has a different meaning than bozo.

Stopping being a Bozo, be sensible.