Lots of people.
People coming out of the station as waves in a sea, relentless...wrapped up in long coats, jackets, scarves, gloves and what not, stepping on each other...impatient to catch the next red traffic light to cross the roads; the Salvation Army Santas ringing bell for donations; Scarlett Johanssen on Macy's bright, colorful, digital billboard doing her jig for holiday perfume; the sanitation department people cleaning of the streets; free newspapers and pamphlets being distributed by punters; two cops sipping hot coffee in the comfort of their white-blue sedan.
And then you see a couple of odd seagulls elegantly finding their way in the myriad of skyscrapers and hoardings towards the Hudson.
Good Morning New York! I'm ready for work.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Saturday, December 01, 2007
All Things Considered!
All things considered, I'm going to start an article on emergent relationships....human relationships....I used to write quite a few during the hey days of my blogging however have not been so pronounced from the time I moved to NY/NJ. Why? May be people in NY/NJ people whom I'm acquainted with are not relationship-emotional oriented.....they are more profit motivated...I mean material profits, career targets, real estate dreams. May be because I'm the right person at the wrong time (super narcissism)....may be because of the whole subprime meltdown (blame it on Merrill and Citi)..hahaha...it can be for a 1001 reasons and again for no 1 good reason...its for me and others to figure out.
BTW, what is a emergent relationship? well its something of a sort of flower bud..trying to bloom against all odds of fluctuating and inconducive climatic conditions. So putting it into human perspective these climatic conditions can be
BTW, what is a emergent relationship? well its something of a sort of flower bud..trying to bloom against all odds of fluctuating and inconducive climatic conditions. So putting it into human perspective these climatic conditions can be
- busy schedule to find time for togetherness, or
- defensive and cautious approach to the whole subject of committment and relationship (because of past experiences!)
- just being overly practical and analytical (read anal :-)) about the other person
- lack of communication between 2 persons with respect to expectations (I lost my blackberry couple of days back and that provided me some downtime to update my blog...)
However, perseverance is the key. The bud can bloom to a flower only by perseverance against these adverse conditions. So all of you out there (believe me I know so many of you now), keep your patience, keep working at it....and be convinced in what you are doing..........you waver from this conviction and a strong wind will pull down your potential bud into ground....
Let me know how you are doing....
Friday, November 09, 2007
Things I want this Christmas
- Wicked remote controlled airplane (to feel the speed whenever I get a chance)
- Illuminated globe (to see how far I'm away from home)
- Meerkat slippers
- A freaking BMW
- Cheap and easily available white wines
- A smart dining table
- TUMI Backpack
- Perfect Pushup Handles
Thursday, October 18, 2007
The Middle Way
I always thought of justifying this 'The Middle Way' .....Buddha pioneered the Middle way long back, the path to enlightenment (what's that) by avoiding the extremes of sensory self-indulgence and self-mortification. The whole idea revolves around the theme of 'moderation'....sounds kind of antagonistic in the fast paced NY life. NY is all about taller sky scrapers, higher ambitions, bigger paychecks, lofty apartments and so on..all things material, all things capital. Moderation is an unknown word in the vocab of the people in and around NY, whether they are struggling actors or established bankers or successful doctors and lawyers.
Life is so hurried here that people don't have actual time to communicate with their near and dear ones....most stuff gets done in phone calls, SMS, chats, blogs, emails....what happened to the habit of just sitting down together for a quiet lunch or a plain walk or just playing a simple board game? We still do all such stuff to provide 'face' time to our 'clients', why cannot we do it in personal life? Why such simple stuff has to always wait for the weekends and not happen suddenly (prize factor) out of a whim? The answers to those questions are obvious; lack of time from work and all. Well adapt the middle path....nothing is more important than doing things (including your work) in moderation specially when you strive for an enlightened personal life. Professional life and work are as much of a calling as the personal goals...and the correct work-life balance can be achieved through some degrees of moderation (the middle way)...what do you think?
inspired by the pace of life in NY
Life is so hurried here that people don't have actual time to communicate with their near and dear ones....most stuff gets done in phone calls, SMS, chats, blogs, emails....what happened to the habit of just sitting down together for a quiet lunch or a plain walk or just playing a simple board game? We still do all such stuff to provide 'face' time to our 'clients', why cannot we do it in personal life? Why such simple stuff has to always wait for the weekends and not happen suddenly (prize factor) out of a whim? The answers to those questions are obvious; lack of time from work and all. Well adapt the middle path....nothing is more important than doing things (including your work) in moderation specially when you strive for an enlightened personal life. Professional life and work are as much of a calling as the personal goals...and the correct work-life balance can be achieved through some degrees of moderation (the middle way)...what do you think?
inspired by the pace of life in NY
Monday, October 01, 2007
Indian doctors in USA
The other day a Turkish cab driver in NYC asked me "What is w/ Indians? Are all of you Doctors or something?" and then I realized how true is he..with most of the other white collar jobs being outsourced to India, most NRI families have been getting their kids to focus more and more in medicine related professions.
In the US, Indians and Indian-Americans make up the largest non-white cluster of the medical community (they account for one in every 20 practicing doctors). The presence has come more to forefront in recent times with more charitable activities, more political lobbying, less high paying jobs in other sectors of the economies, increase of outsourcing of radiology reports and abundance of health tourism (where an american would go to india to get a knee replacement surgery than paying almost twice here).
I mean most of us know that we Indians have a history in medical stuff (Indian Atreya and Susrata established medical schools around 600 BC before people knew about Hippocrates or his oath :-) ) however statistics as "Indians make up roughly 20 percent of the International Medical Graduates - or foreign-trained doctors - operating in the U.S" are kind of social triggers that convince more and more Indian parents settled in US to infuse their kids with the thoughts that they gotta become a doctor. This sense of choosing a profession based on job security and monetary returns is a 3rd world phenemenon however it seems that most Indian parents in USA have not yet been able to curb their inner insecurities for money and stability over years.
Why cannot the Indian Americans be something else in life? I mean how many Indian Americans are good script writers or artists or painters or musicians or social activists or comedians (I can only recall Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan and Russell Peters)? Why most Indian Americans are doctors? I know a few Indian Americans who are doctors because they love being doctors, however what about the rest? Why do they still want to run the rat race?
In the US, Indians and Indian-Americans make up the largest non-white cluster of the medical community (they account for one in every 20 practicing doctors). The presence has come more to forefront in recent times with more charitable activities, more political lobbying, less high paying jobs in other sectors of the economies, increase of outsourcing of radiology reports and abundance of health tourism (where an american would go to india to get a knee replacement surgery than paying almost twice here).
I mean most of us know that we Indians have a history in medical stuff (Indian Atreya and Susrata established medical schools around 600 BC before people knew about Hippocrates or his oath :-) ) however statistics as "Indians make up roughly 20 percent of the International Medical Graduates - or foreign-trained doctors - operating in the U.S" are kind of social triggers that convince more and more Indian parents settled in US to infuse their kids with the thoughts that they gotta become a doctor. This sense of choosing a profession based on job security and monetary returns is a 3rd world phenemenon however it seems that most Indian parents in USA have not yet been able to curb their inner insecurities for money and stability over years.
Why cannot the Indian Americans be something else in life? I mean how many Indian Americans are good script writers or artists or painters or musicians or social activists or comedians (I can only recall Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan and Russell Peters)? Why most Indian Americans are doctors? I know a few Indian Americans who are doctors because they love being doctors, however what about the rest? Why do they still want to run the rat race?
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Corporate America
After watching this, you can gauge how the american corporate world works...groups of like minded people trying to bully another different group to earn their daily living..till they are kicked in the ass by their competitors or some unknown entity cropping out of nowhere...
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Who's Next?!!
Tom DeLay
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Bob Ney
Rick Renzi
John Doolittle
Don Young
Sen. Ted Stevens
Mark Foley
David Vitter
Sen. Larry Craig
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Bob Ney
Rick Renzi
John Doolittle
Don Young
Sen. Ted Stevens
Mark Foley
David Vitter
Sen. Larry Craig
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Golf and I
It's an interesting encounter of sorts....still now I'm on the losing side.
My experiments with golf initiated a year back..however I had to terminate it prematurely after 2 of my first swings broke a window (I used to live in an apartment complex surrounding a 9 hole golf course) and hurt a cat. Now again with renewed vigor and passion, I have started taking golf lessons, visiting the range; also got inspired enough to buy a brand new set from PineMeadow.
You would think that golf is all about "knocking a small ball into a series of small holes in as little strokes as possible while avoiding the hazards"..however it's definitely not that easy. I'm still trying just to get the right swing (http://www.abc-of-golf.com/playing-golf/full-golf-swing.asp) with a success rate of 10% i.e. 5 tee shots are going correct in terms of height, direction and distance out of a possible 50 shots that I hit at the range.
The battle is still on...
My experiments with golf initiated a year back..however I had to terminate it prematurely after 2 of my first swings broke a window (I used to live in an apartment complex surrounding a 9 hole golf course) and hurt a cat. Now again with renewed vigor and passion, I have started taking golf lessons, visiting the range; also got inspired enough to buy a brand new set from PineMeadow.
You would think that golf is all about "knocking a small ball into a series of small holes in as little strokes as possible while avoiding the hazards"..however it's definitely not that easy. I'm still trying just to get the right swing (http://www.abc-of-golf.com/playing-golf/full-golf-swing.asp) with a success rate of 10% i.e. 5 tee shots are going correct in terms of height, direction and distance out of a possible 50 shots that I hit at the range.
The battle is still on...
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Monday, August 06, 2007
Plain updates-Ver 2
NY Bar Live Music Feedback
Had an awesome time with the band Breaking Laces at the Cutting Room in NYC. The lyrics are strong, the stage presence is commendable and the crowd was loving it thoroughly. The cover charge of 10 bucks was worth the music and the free CDs and the crowd..
Princeton Piano Concert
If Breaking Laces was all about raw energy and drums, meet Alexander Gavrylyuk, the pianist-prodigy from Ukraine (currently based in Moscow). The winner of all major piano masters competitions across the world, this 24 year old enthralled a diverse and appreciative audience by his rendition of Bach, Schubert, Mozart, Filippenko and Rachmaninov in a solo performance session lasting for 2 hours. Standing ovation was only but due to him.
Corporate America
Have you heard this joke " I wish I were African American when in a club but a Caucasian when dealing with Corporate America" ...I thought this is a joke till last week when one of my professionally trained and accredited friend got replaced as a frontline Project Manager for a major project he was handling as the client wanted someone 'senior' (say Executive Director or CTO) to lead the project..was it a modest way of telling that we don't want to deal with a smart Indian guy with a not so bad accent...I found this interesting article to confirm my assumptions.
Had an awesome time with the band Breaking Laces at the Cutting Room in NYC. The lyrics are strong, the stage presence is commendable and the crowd was loving it thoroughly. The cover charge of 10 bucks was worth the music and the free CDs and the crowd..
Princeton Piano Concert
If Breaking Laces was all about raw energy and drums, meet Alexander Gavrylyuk, the pianist-prodigy from Ukraine (currently based in Moscow). The winner of all major piano masters competitions across the world, this 24 year old enthralled a diverse and appreciative audience by his rendition of Bach, Schubert, Mozart, Filippenko and Rachmaninov in a solo performance session lasting for 2 hours. Standing ovation was only but due to him.
Corporate America
Have you heard this joke " I wish I were African American when in a club but a Caucasian when dealing with Corporate America" ...I thought this is a joke till last week when one of my professionally trained and accredited friend got replaced as a frontline Project Manager for a major project he was handling as the client wanted someone 'senior' (say Executive Director or CTO) to lead the project..was it a modest way of telling that we don't want to deal with a smart Indian guy with a not so bad accent...I found this interesting article to confirm my assumptions.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
New York Ice breakers
Few ice breakers to kick off the next party you are in
- Biggest fashion crime committed on the streets of NYC
- Most favorite cartoon show
- Jay Leno or Letterman or Conan OBrian
- MoW (Man on Woman) or WoM (Woman on Man)
- Black, Brown or White (please don't ask me what)
- How to greet your ex? hugs with kisses or plain hello
- Buttery nipples or Slippery nipples (for the perverts, they are names of shot drinks)
- Finance or IT
- Cheers or Salud
Inspired by Fox news and NYC night life
Sunday, July 15, 2007
FI and H1
The F1 visa-holding students are seriously disturbed by the existence of the H1b holders and vice-versa.
The former class thinks that the H1b visa holders are living a privileged life as they are getting paid higher salaries for working in multi-national firms without 'much serious' effort. The H1b holders on the other hand have the perception that the F1 crowd is the snooty intelligentsia who just likes to study and have fun filled sorority/ fraternity bashes (lot of booze and chicks-American Pie). Well both of the facts are half truths.
F1 students do have to work very hard to support themselves; with the small grants and scholarships its very difficult for them to live the American dream...and study and score near-perfect GPAs at the same time. They are under constant pressure to match up to the other foreign students as well as American students and ABCDs; also the mental pressure of being an immigrant is always on them...no wonder they yearn to complete their degrees and earn the coveted H1b status. They feel the pinch of money throughout their course time (if they are not sponsored by their wealthy uncles and relatives) so for them getting a H1b is almost the first step to the American dream.
On the other side, the H1b guys have a different plethora of problems; but somewhere the crisis of both these communities match. Most H1Bs make a decent salary from the corporations they are working with. However the identity issue (or the lack of it), the constant pressure to prove yourself and grow vertically up the corporate food chain, the desire to live the American dream are all the same. The hard work that they put in to the job to prove their mettle and excellence is seriously commendable.
So personally I believe, in general, F1 guys get to experience different sort of hardships than H1b holders. However, it is not right to discard the H1b holders as being privileged. What matters at the end of the day is how an individual can handle her own finances, control her support systems, adjust and adapt to friends and colleagues and peers in a foreign country...totally alone and away from the motherland and parents. And this has nothing to do with the visa types but more with the nature of independence of the person involved and her past experience of living and making it alone in this busy bad world.
Do you agree??
The former class thinks that the H1b visa holders are living a privileged life as they are getting paid higher salaries for working in multi-national firms without 'much serious' effort. The H1b holders on the other hand have the perception that the F1 crowd is the snooty intelligentsia who just likes to study and have fun filled sorority/ fraternity bashes (lot of booze and chicks-American Pie). Well both of the facts are half truths.
F1 students do have to work very hard to support themselves; with the small grants and scholarships its very difficult for them to live the American dream...and study and score near-perfect GPAs at the same time. They are under constant pressure to match up to the other foreign students as well as American students and ABCDs; also the mental pressure of being an immigrant is always on them...no wonder they yearn to complete their degrees and earn the coveted H1b status. They feel the pinch of money throughout their course time (if they are not sponsored by their wealthy uncles and relatives) so for them getting a H1b is almost the first step to the American dream.
On the other side, the H1b guys have a different plethora of problems; but somewhere the crisis of both these communities match. Most H1Bs make a decent salary from the corporations they are working with. However the identity issue (or the lack of it), the constant pressure to prove yourself and grow vertically up the corporate food chain, the desire to live the American dream are all the same. The hard work that they put in to the job to prove their mettle and excellence is seriously commendable.
So personally I believe, in general, F1 guys get to experience different sort of hardships than H1b holders. However, it is not right to discard the H1b holders as being privileged. What matters at the end of the day is how an individual can handle her own finances, control her support systems, adjust and adapt to friends and colleagues and peers in a foreign country...totally alone and away from the motherland and parents. And this has nothing to do with the visa types but more with the nature of independence of the person involved and her past experience of living and making it alone in this busy bad world.
Do you agree??
Friday, July 06, 2007
Crossroads II: Run for life
Crossroads I: Walk
More than a year has passed by before I could write the sequel to Part I (I actually never planned on writing the sequel)..fell-in-and-out of apparently TRUE love once during this period. Life taught precious unpleasant lessons which might have been better not experienced. Now I'm again on crossroads. And this time I'm in NYC...the big city. Here, you can bump into a mini celebrity, or go ga-ga over expensive cocktails and broadway show tickets, get dazzled by the real estate prices, or feel one with the cosmopolitan vibe of the city, meet successfull bankers and not-so-successful actors.... yet this city can often make you feel lonely if you are not well connected with the correct 'crowd'. I am hoping that some one from this crowd will give me a sense of direction at this crossroad. Hope I do not have to make another sequel.
More than a year has passed by before I could write the sequel to Part I (I actually never planned on writing the sequel)..fell-in-and-out of apparently TRUE love once during this period. Life taught precious unpleasant lessons which might have been better not experienced. Now I'm again on crossroads. And this time I'm in NYC...the big city. Here, you can bump into a mini celebrity, or go ga-ga over expensive cocktails and broadway show tickets, get dazzled by the real estate prices, or feel one with the cosmopolitan vibe of the city, meet successfull bankers and not-so-successful actors.... yet this city can often make you feel lonely if you are not well connected with the correct 'crowd'. I am hoping that some one from this crowd will give me a sense of direction at this crossroad. Hope I do not have to make another sequel.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Anonymous me
I love those anonymous comments to my musings....they remind me of the modern day essential dilemma of privacy and transparency.
We want everything that happens somewhere (in the government, in big public enterprises etc) or sometime (say facts of assasination of JFK) or someone famous (say Jennifer Aniston's new boyfriend) to be transparent yet when it comes to 'us' we value privacy more than anything.
Being an Indian and specifically a Bengali, my sense of privacy have always been vandalised by the in-borne 'para' culture............(for the uninitiated, para/chawl/potti are colloquial terms used in India for residential communities); people in the community kind of always knew what the other families were up to (which movies they watched last week, what type of fish they are cooking today etc). Thinking that now, its kind of hilariously scary that rarely there were any deep secrets between various families in a community.
Things changed over time, and people have become conscious of privacy so much that they are up against online search engines for storing apparently innocuous data. And people now don't bother to know anything about the neighbors, whether in condos in a high rise or sprawling single home communities. We all now have suddenly become hi-strung on the privacy topic as the government and federal agencies are collecting more information about each of us than we could possibly imagine. One way or other, our privacy rights are getting compromised everytime we do a transaction with any agencies on or off the web.
We can label this para feeling as tribal in one way where people were closely tied together for various reasons. The melting-pot culture of metro cities delineated the tribal principles over time. This change in trajectory in human cohesivenes definitely would be a good topic for anthropological research. More highways, more airlines, more social networking websites, more viral marketing appears to me as means to get back to that old primal tribal being. So why atleast NOT post anonymous comments to my blog entries?
I would love to know all of you. Peace.
We want everything that happens somewhere (in the government, in big public enterprises etc) or sometime (say facts of assasination of JFK) or someone famous (say Jennifer Aniston's new boyfriend) to be transparent yet when it comes to 'us' we value privacy more than anything.
Being an Indian and specifically a Bengali, my sense of privacy have always been vandalised by the in-borne 'para' culture............(for the uninitiated, para/chawl/potti are colloquial terms used in India for residential communities); people in the community kind of always knew what the other families were up to (which movies they watched last week, what type of fish they are cooking today etc). Thinking that now, its kind of hilariously scary that rarely there were any deep secrets between various families in a community.
Things changed over time, and people have become conscious of privacy so much that they are up against online search engines for storing apparently innocuous data. And people now don't bother to know anything about the neighbors, whether in condos in a high rise or sprawling single home communities. We all now have suddenly become hi-strung on the privacy topic as the government and federal agencies are collecting more information about each of us than we could possibly imagine. One way or other, our privacy rights are getting compromised everytime we do a transaction with any agencies on or off the web.
We can label this para feeling as tribal in one way where people were closely tied together for various reasons. The melting-pot culture of metro cities delineated the tribal principles over time. This change in trajectory in human cohesivenes definitely would be a good topic for anthropological research. More highways, more airlines, more social networking websites, more viral marketing appears to me as means to get back to that old primal tribal being. So why atleast NOT post anonymous comments to my blog entries?
I would love to know all of you. Peace.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Isn't It Ironic?
I always wondered, how much trust my parents have in each other that they have a stable relationship of more than 35 years now.....and then I wonder, how much trust worthy can I be for my partner.
Particularly in USA, the word Trust between partners assume a dimension of mammoth proportions as kids, teens (specially of broken parents) are getting alarmingly used to break-ups and move-ons so early on in life.....before you are 14 you have 3 and 1/2 breakups (half for the one you are breaking up with currently)...consequently trust in later life becomes a serious challenge ...
Most of the times, my unambiguous, undivided trust have been trampled by my partner; My partner negotiated my trust for easiness of life, traded my trust by inflicting immense insults and all these in the name of religion, culture, skin color or family background. And I had to find consolation in the fact that the trust-bridge collapsed long before the traffic started on it (well it happened now, thats better than happening later).
Yet I want to find someone again whom I can trust. Isn't it ironic?!
Title inspired by Alanis Morissette's hit single Ironic
Particularly in USA, the word Trust between partners assume a dimension of mammoth proportions as kids, teens (specially of broken parents) are getting alarmingly used to break-ups and move-ons so early on in life.....before you are 14 you have 3 and 1/2 breakups (half for the one you are breaking up with currently)...consequently trust in later life becomes a serious challenge ...
Most of the times, my unambiguous, undivided trust have been trampled by my partner; My partner negotiated my trust for easiness of life, traded my trust by inflicting immense insults and all these in the name of religion, culture, skin color or family background. And I had to find consolation in the fact that the trust-bridge collapsed long before the traffic started on it (well it happened now, thats better than happening later).
Yet I want to find someone again whom I can trust. Isn't it ironic?!
Title inspired by Alanis Morissette's hit single Ironic
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Questions They Ask To Decide
You have already read about the Questions to Ask Before You Decide ...now once you are ready prepare for the questions they will ask for them to decide...some samples are given for the prep..
- What are you most proud/ashamed of in your career?
- What would your team say about you as a leader/colleague?
- In what kind of working environment do you experience the most success?
- How would you handle an angry boss and flippant client?
- If you had the chance to go back and change something that you did in your current (or past) job, what would you do differently and why?
- What do you do to bring balance into your life?
- What is your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness, on the job?
- How much do you know of 'our' company and work we do? Do you have any questions/comments around our operations?
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Plain updates
Just plain updates ...trying to do a lot of things to keep my mind from wandering...
Attended the awesome jazz and blues fest at Red Bank, NJ over the weekend..
Trying to get my arms around PMI courses..
Listening a whole lot to the likes of Carly Simon (you can find her top hit here)..
Had a get together of few people last week --self cooked (+ stuff by a good friend) food with good wine from down-under and NZ..
watched a couple of good films including 'Sex, Lies and Videotape', and 'Parzania'
life is good being single ...(well thats a consolation when the mind wanders)..
Attended the awesome jazz and blues fest at Red Bank, NJ over the weekend..
Trying to get my arms around PMI courses..
Listening a whole lot to the likes of Carly Simon (you can find her top hit here)..
Had a get together of few people last week --self cooked (+ stuff by a good friend) food with good wine from down-under and NZ..
watched a couple of good films including 'Sex, Lies and Videotape', and 'Parzania'
life is good being single ...(well thats a consolation when the mind wanders)..
Friday, May 18, 2007
Take It Easy--everyone says that
Are you happy? or lets say are you doing good with your life? Whom do you confide your deepest fears? Who do you share your ecstatic wins? Whom do you like to be in next 5 years? Who do you love?Do you want know about unconditional love? Do you believe in compromises and adjustments? Do you believe in priorities?What do you want to have, if anything were possible? Do you have someone you would say everything to? Are you mad? What are your thoughts on this?
Simple questions....tough answers...
Simple questions....tough answers...
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Life Management Institute
Wish there was a place called the "Life Management Institute" akin to the more popular PMI or Project Management Institute.
Wish LMI have had principles and standards that could be learned, imbibed and practiced to put together a great project called life; the output would have been a 'happy successful life'.
Wish LMI documented proven methodologies to 'execute' and 'monitor and control' different phases of the project life...so that all the risk elements in the form of sudden emotional crisis, loneliness, mental blockades, adhoc adrenaline rushes could be prevented, mitigated or at the least lessened. Wish LMI came with statistical tools, mathematical models and predictive comparison analysis to solve all the puzzles about making 'right selection' in terms of various inputs to the project life.
Wish LMI have had principles and standards that could be learned, imbibed and practiced to put together a great project called life; the output would have been a 'happy successful life'.
Wish LMI documented proven methodologies to 'execute' and 'monitor and control' different phases of the project life...so that all the risk elements in the form of sudden emotional crisis, loneliness, mental blockades, adhoc adrenaline rushes could be prevented, mitigated or at the least lessened. Wish LMI came with statistical tools, mathematical models and predictive comparison analysis to solve all the puzzles about making 'right selection' in terms of various inputs to the project life.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Verse
Her eyes
bright with hope
Her smile
ooze perennial confidence
Her hair
shadows the moonlight
Her gaze
across the horizon
Her lips
silent in thoughts
She broke my heart...
bright with hope
Her smile
ooze perennial confidence
Her hair
shadows the moonlight
Her gaze
across the horizon
Her lips
silent in thoughts
She broke my heart...
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Get back to the basics
Sanjaya Malakar (he has bengali roots... I'm rooting for him still now)
Virginia Tech shootings
Citibank layoffs
Gov. Jon Corzine
India's early and disgraceful exit from World cup cricket (its called world cup because 16 countries play for the title, not like World Series played only in America)
Murder of Bob Woolmer by alleged betting racketeers
Not-so-smart confessions by Angelina Jolie, after all, she is a UN ambassador
Iran's (I is pronounced as in ink) uranium enrichment rhetoric
Warren Buffet's immoral support for Darfur genocide
Real estate melt down
We are surely living in very troubled times....so its a request to all my readers to get back to basics-----in your own little ways and do something good every day to make your life better...
Virginia Tech shootings
Citibank layoffs
Gov. Jon Corzine
India's early and disgraceful exit from World cup cricket (its called world cup because 16 countries play for the title, not like World Series played only in America)
Murder of Bob Woolmer by alleged betting racketeers
Not-so-smart confessions by Angelina Jolie, after all, she is a UN ambassador
Iran's (I is pronounced as in ink) uranium enrichment rhetoric
Warren Buffet's immoral support for Darfur genocide
Real estate melt down
We are surely living in very troubled times....so its a request to all my readers to get back to basics-----in your own little ways and do something good every day to make your life better...
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
300 Only!!!
Last weekend I had the chance of watching the latest blockbuster movie called 300. Its a story of how 300 smart and courageous Spartan fighters fought and died valiantly against the powerful, ruthless hordes of Persion army lead by Xerxes. They inspired 10000 more Spartans to fight.
The movie is outstanding for rivetting photography, art direction and music. And also for eyecatching 'spartan' physique (Gerard Butler looks awesome with his 6 packs and beard). The director took tremendous help of imagination and special effects in portraying and packaging a 5th century historical event to a saleable movie . I see a video game in the offing with the same name soon.
However to me the release of this movie at this time seems to be an irony..........USA is fighting a 5 year old war at Iraq and President Bush is asking more funds and solidiers to fight the 'evil'; this is so akin to the movie where the king goes to war with the best 300 soldiers and his wife is making a presentation at the state council for more forces and funds. She also kills the person who resist the proposal ( more like Bush vetoing any Congress sanctions!). What is however different between the movie and the present war is that the latter was almost unilaterally initiated and pursued by US while the movie depicts the war as an act of defense (and not offense), as an effort to preserve independance. Hope the people watching this movie doesn't get too motivated by the glorification of war/battle :-)
The movie is outstanding for rivetting photography, art direction and music. And also for eyecatching 'spartan' physique (Gerard Butler looks awesome with his 6 packs and beard). The director took tremendous help of imagination and special effects in portraying and packaging a 5th century historical event to a saleable movie . I see a video game in the offing with the same name soon.
However to me the release of this movie at this time seems to be an irony..........USA is fighting a 5 year old war at Iraq and President Bush is asking more funds and solidiers to fight the 'evil'; this is so akin to the movie where the king goes to war with the best 300 soldiers and his wife is making a presentation at the state council for more forces and funds. She also kills the person who resist the proposal ( more like Bush vetoing any Congress sanctions!). What is however different between the movie and the present war is that the latter was almost unilaterally initiated and pursued by US while the movie depicts the war as an act of defense (and not offense), as an effort to preserve independance. Hope the people watching this movie doesn't get too motivated by the glorification of war/battle :-)
Thursday, February 22, 2007
SDLC and PMLC
The recent spurt of Fortune employers scouting for IT Project Managers with PMP certification has taken me by surprise. I started wondering that why these employers would need PMPs to do Software Project Management when they can 'sustain' with SDLC experts or is it just another certification fad!!
Project management as a discipline can be used to handle situations in almost any domain - from building houses, to planning your holidays, and obviously developing software. So Project Management is valuable to focus as an established mechanism (a science??) for getting work done. It has processes (Rita Mulcahy) and should be used for continuous improvement of PM processes and for capturing knowledge to improve the performance of the Project Team. Concern of project management include project planning, risk assessment and management, issue management, schedule management, status assessment and reporting, calculating costs etc.
SDLC is another specific discipline used only for the development of software. Concerns of SDLC involves requirements gathering, business modeling, systems architecture and design, development, integration, release, maintenance, etc.
The processes involved in SDLC definitely needs to be managed and data from these processes need to be collected for future improvement and client satisfaction.
The similarities are many in both of these methodologies; PM methodology recommends breaking down tasks into chunks of activities to be completed in definite or overlapping phases. SDLC prescribes the phases as Analysis, Design, Code and Test, Deploy . However its important to understand the differences;each of them has independant sets of metrics, and SDLC is much more specific than PMM. RUP, Agile and other software development methodologies has Project Management as a separate thread to address this unique overlap. RUP even also has no prescription for contract/vendor management.
At the end of day, it makes more sense to mix the PM and SDLC methodologies based on cumulative experiences, company culture and and come up with blended ( or chai latte) approaches (continuous improvement) that handles "who", "how", "when", "why" of "what" needs to be done in the context of IT Project Management. Also with most of the companies now agressively being involved in ourtsourcing and offshoring and multi-vendor contract development, software Project Management demands a new level of acuity and ingenuity than earlier. Again, SDLC supports only development of software systems, a project usually involves lot more than just developing software; customer interaction, business process reengineering, marketing a new product/service etc. Knowledge of generic PMLC helps to coordinate all these other activities.
So having a Project Management certification along with RUP or Six Sigma is not bad at all for your next career move!!
Project management as a discipline can be used to handle situations in almost any domain - from building houses, to planning your holidays, and obviously developing software. So Project Management is valuable to focus as an established mechanism (a science??) for getting work done. It has processes (Rita Mulcahy) and should be used for continuous improvement of PM processes and for capturing knowledge to improve the performance of the Project Team. Concern of project management include project planning, risk assessment and management, issue management, schedule management, status assessment and reporting, calculating costs etc.
SDLC is another specific discipline used only for the development of software. Concerns of SDLC involves requirements gathering, business modeling, systems architecture and design, development, integration, release, maintenance, etc.
The processes involved in SDLC definitely needs to be managed and data from these processes need to be collected for future improvement and client satisfaction.
The similarities are many in both of these methodologies; PM methodology recommends breaking down tasks into chunks of activities to be completed in definite or overlapping phases. SDLC prescribes the phases as Analysis, Design, Code and Test, Deploy . However its important to understand the differences;each of them has independant sets of metrics, and SDLC is much more specific than PMM. RUP, Agile and other software development methodologies has Project Management as a separate thread to address this unique overlap. RUP even also has no prescription for contract/vendor management.
At the end of day, it makes more sense to mix the PM and SDLC methodologies based on cumulative experiences, company culture and and come up with blended ( or chai latte) approaches (continuous improvement) that handles "who", "how", "when", "why" of "what" needs to be done in the context of IT Project Management. Also with most of the companies now agressively being involved in ourtsourcing and offshoring and multi-vendor contract development, software Project Management demands a new level of acuity and ingenuity than earlier. Again, SDLC supports only development of software systems, a project usually involves lot more than just developing software; customer interaction, business process reengineering, marketing a new product/service etc. Knowledge of generic PMLC helps to coordinate all these other activities.
So having a Project Management certification along with RUP or Six Sigma is not bad at all for your next career move!!
Monday, January 08, 2007
One more trip to India
I successfully returned to US last week from one more annual trip to India.
As usual, I amassed tons of invaluable experiences during this visit.....not only because I took a 'american gori' with me to 'amar kolkata' but also due the airlines I chose to travel with.
To start with, Air India delayed us by 30 hours and made us poorer by 500 dollars even before we could see the sunrays glimmering on wasteland-grass blades around the Kolkata airport. Air India and Indian Airlines made sure that the dollars saved by buying relatively cheap Air India tickets (during prime holiday season) ultimately got spend in purchasing alternate tickets..some kind of poetic justice...ehh.
On our way back Air India and United Airlines goofed up a checked in luggage at the Chicago airport and still there is no trace of it (heard from the mouth of a coughing call center agent based in New Delhi that the black luggage made it to other distant airports in the US during this time).
No more Air India I think in the days to come.
The american gori coupled me garnered more stares from passersby in Kolkata, Delhi and Agra than the number of girls I have stared at during my entire college life. Just think of it. When will our colonial hangover ultimately disappear??? And to top it all, most tourist sites in India make unprecedented discrimination based on skin colors....white people pay $15 and get to wear their shoes with a shoe-cover inside the Taj while brown skinned masses like I have to walk barefoot!! Who says color doesn't matter?
As usual, I amassed tons of invaluable experiences during this visit.....not only because I took a 'american gori' with me to 'amar kolkata' but also due the airlines I chose to travel with.
To start with, Air India delayed us by 30 hours and made us poorer by 500 dollars even before we could see the sunrays glimmering on wasteland-grass blades around the Kolkata airport. Air India and Indian Airlines made sure that the dollars saved by buying relatively cheap Air India tickets (during prime holiday season) ultimately got spend in purchasing alternate tickets..some kind of poetic justice...ehh.
On our way back Air India and United Airlines goofed up a checked in luggage at the Chicago airport and still there is no trace of it (heard from the mouth of a coughing call center agent based in New Delhi that the black luggage made it to other distant airports in the US during this time).
No more Air India I think in the days to come.
The american gori coupled me garnered more stares from passersby in Kolkata, Delhi and Agra than the number of girls I have stared at during my entire college life. Just think of it. When will our colonial hangover ultimately disappear??? And to top it all, most tourist sites in India make unprecedented discrimination based on skin colors....white people pay $15 and get to wear their shoes with a shoe-cover inside the Taj while brown skinned masses like I have to walk barefoot!! Who says color doesn't matter?
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