The biggest update since the last time I posted something is that I have moved to Chennai. Singapore is fun and a great place to live, but perhaps it didn’t work out very well for my career aspirations. It did work great for the wife, but she is happy to back in Chennai as well. Besides she is on the planned break for Sid, so maybe it doesn’t matter all that much in the short term. ...
Recently my mom had come visiting; more to spend time with my infant son and a little to spend time with us. Now my in-law is here with us – more to take care and spend time with our son than much else. A trip we arranged for our convenience as well. Of course, we took this step to evaluate our options. But this taught us more about our parents and gave answers to most of what we are. Yeah, and an answer to what our options really are. ...
Recently, I have been coming across a lot of people who use their work laptop as though it were their personal laptop. Of course, there isn’t anything wrong with that. Companies know and understand fair use of the equipment provided. That’s the keyword here: fair use. I think an extended definition of fair use is also acceptable. In my opinion, it is fair use as long as you don’t benefit from or misuse the equipment. In that sense, skype video calls to your parents back home, watching your weekend movie on youtube or some crappy pirated website is ok too. By doing these, you largely don’t harm the trust factor in the fair use clause. But Skype interview using work laptop is a strictly unethical. At least, in my view it is. Making job applications from your work laptop is just as unethical also. But most companies do expect and forgive some of these. I don’t even keep a copy of my resume on my work laptop. ...
I am a Jobs’ fan. I mean, by now you must already know this. I have heard his “Stanford commencement address” almost once a month ever since I came across it. I take inspiration from many of his quotes. I don’t want to be another Jobs. I just like his example. But unlike most Jobs fans, my favourite quote wasn’t “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”. Simply because I never understood what it meant. At least not until now. But maybe I understand now and so maybe I’ll join the drones of others who love this quote as well. ...
Yet another year has gone by! I was just running by my last year’s birthday post. It is sad to see that not much has changed from that post although quite a lot has happened in the year. I still cannot call myself an entrepreneur. Not even a freelancer. I still am trying to beat the blues from last year. Maybe I’ll just count my blessings this year and set some realistic goals for 2016. ...
It was an insightful morning today. I was getting my 1-month-old to sleep after his feed so that we can get our day started. Noni is sort of jealous of me on this: Unta seems to love my arm couch better than hers. Even though I squeeze him like an orange. Maybe he feels super cozy! Ok, please don’t advise me on why I should not squeeze a 1-month-old like an orange. I already know I shouldn’t. ...
I sometimes think Seth Godin has a team that just spies on me to give him inputs on what he should write about. Because there are so many instances where his post for the day directly answers something I have been pondering over or ranting about to Noni. Ask her, she’d vouch for this. I find it difficult to accept most of his advice, though. I think I have my feet too deep in staying afloat that I am super scared to change any of that. Hopefully, someday I’ll be able to follow at least a portion of his writing. ...
I sort of went into an exile since the last post. I think none of this blogging platforms in working for me. I hate to type with my phone, in spite of its bigger screen. I don’t carry my pad everywhere either. Not so much of the mac too. Basically, I travel only with my phone and I don’t want to have to type with the phone. That means, I lose all the brilliant thoughts for a post by the time I get to the mac or to the office laptop that I usually write these posts from. Last week, I tried another “brilliant” attempt. I quickly logged in from the phone and wrote the title alone for two posts. I forgot about this when I got back home. Then when I logged in over the weekend, I have completely forgotten what those titles are for. So lost two more posts, effectively. ...
As usual, I have started running another experiment.But this is only two days young. I should wait for another month or so to see if I really hold this up. The routine is the SAVERS routine that I came across in techcrunch or mashable recently. The actual routine is like this: Sit in silence; Meditate Affirmations Visualizations Exercise – my usual yoga Reading – currently “War of the worlds by H.G.Wells” Scribe – for the first time, am writing a journal with pen and paper. Each of the steps, except exercise is about 5-10 mins long. Overall it costs me about an hour or so to finish. But the best part of this is, I don’t touch my iPhone or mac until this is done. And usually, there are some tasks like watering the plants and replacing dry plates and cutlery back in their aisles. Then I have only enough time to give myself a bath and start for work. Of course, I don’t wake up that late either. I just managed to start work quite early on both these days. Maybe most other days, I ll have a lot of spare time. ...
I found out recently that I don’t use Facebook all that much anymore. Ever since they created a separate app for messaging, I don’t really chat up anyone on Facebook anymore. I have nothing against the move, I just hate to have one more app. I haven’t posted anything on Facebook in a very long time. I don’t tag the places I go to anymore. I don’t check-in anything I do. To think about it, I don’t even click pictures when I go some place. I just enjoy it in my eyes, get mesmerized and leave it that way. ...