Posts

It’s almost a tradition now that I am writing a birthday post every year. This year, I am a little late for the post. I wanted to think through and reflect on the year that just went by and set goals for the year that is looking at me now. Staring at me, for I haven’t started anything yet! 2014: Last year was good. I had two targets for 2014. I achieved one. I missed out on the other. But I pulled off a third that came unannounced! This is actually a proud moment for me and the wife. We came to Singapore with multiple major agendas: finance, family, business and life. I guess we took care of the finance to some extent. Of course, these are sliding targets. They keep moving along with you and perhaps never quite complete unless you hit the jackpot or sell your company to Facebook/Google. We did neither, so we expect the sliding window to continue with us. I had consciously avoided setting any targets for myself last year. As a result, it looks like I did achieve my targets 😉 ...

Am slowly and steadily getting used to this. I have an idea, I and Noni discuss it a bit and figure out even we might not use it. I still have a hunch feeling that it is a worthy idea, but don’t pursue it anyway. A few days/weeks/months later I read an article about a new company or a product line formed with exactly the same idea. Today morning was no different. It is difficult to start the day feeling like a “Loser” and walk around as if nothing ever happened. But am getting better at this. Surely. Slowly, but surely. ...

So I figured out how the pain balms work – it starts burning your skin so much that you forget the pain and start worrying about the burn and fall asleep. Sleep heals the pain. Of course, I am kidding.

Vaidy took about 6 hrs off his schedule to talk to us. And I feel extremely honored that he did that for me. I have a lot of lessons from him, some for the two of us put together. It is my job, now, to put it in perspective and apply what I could. Quite important! I couldn’t catch up with a lot of people though. I guess I underestimated the work involved in organizing a wedding. Some people I really wished to have caught up with include Balaji, Ramaseshan Sir, Nallen, Bala amongst others. We couldn’t spend much time with Noni’ parents either. Although they understand, it really counts as bad planning on our side. ...

Kuti got married last month. So I went to India to be present as the brother and to help organize the last minute stuff. The wedding itself went very well with a few WTF instances. The couple is very happy. And that is all really counts. I am going to write a multi-part account of my 3.5 week long trip. That is the number of things that I’d like archived for the rest of my life. But this post is about the most important realization that dawned on me – I might not be ready to go back to India in the near term. ...

I began my career in software writing PHP code. I used to like it so much that I tried to use php for even non-web scripting. I actually improved much of my c skill set by writing a PHP module! Then came along python. I like python so much that I haven’t written any PHP code since. And now, after all these years, I have to write some PHP code again. ...

I want to learn to sell. I get this feeling that selling is perhaps the most important activity in any business. And by sell, I mean getting out there and meeting people and talking to them and probably persuading them. I haven’t, in my 30+ years of existence, ever initiated a conversation with a stranger. I usually take 1-2 days to even become comfortable talking professional stuff. It’s usually quite some time before I would engage in casual chats! So, what I am seeking to do is just the opposite of who I am! ...

I had to file my taxes in India for the 1 month that I worked last FY. And my auditor wants a Form16 from the company. Dude, I quit the company about 1.5yrs back! Anyway, I am trying to reach out to them to see if I can get this sorted out quickly. I don’t know if there are other better tax services in India. I have heard of a few companies that claim to make it simple and straight forward. If I remember right, one even made it to YC demo day (right?)! ...

So I came across Myer Brigg’s type indicator test when I was reading something on Quora. The geek that I am, I had to try it out first. I haven’t read up about it yet, but I felt the need to write something I noticed. And so here it is. This test is sorta like a psychometry test. I was told, during interview days just after finishing engineering school, that these tests were used to identify your personality, whether you were clear in your head or some such stuff. I never actually gave one, but was always preparing myself for one. It so happens that I quickly learnt to locate the patterns and game the test! ...

Last friday was the first time I ever wore a jacket. Not that the situation demanded one, but I knew it wouldn’t look too odd if I did. I always loved to wear a jacket, but given that I spent most of my time in Chennai, just wearing a formal attire with leather shoe would make you like you are over-dressed for more occasions. Mostly the folks higher up in the value chain got away with the jackets and us engineer folks generally looked best in our dirty jeans and some stupid tee. ...