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
Thursday, October 18, 2007
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.
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