Respect the TV

…so said Vivek. Confused over what I heard, I asked “what did you say?”. With his head fixed in the direction of the TV, he repeated in an emphatic tone, “Respect the TV”, indicating that none of us should chat in front of the TV. Wondering what he was watching ? — multitasking Tour De France and F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Haaaaa..so much respect for the idiot box. Do you guys do that?


Do Bloggers suffer burnout?
I think I did. Not so much because of writing but because of reading so many blogs in a day. I started wondering if Blogging was an obsession and if I could stay without it for a few days. I did just fine the last 5 days with no blogging and no checking the stats and without the frenzy of reading tons of sites like a maniac. End of the day my head would spin in a dizzy having read non-stop throughout the day assimilating all the information, making a note of interesting stuff, posting to del.icio.us and I would just come crashing. I was burnt out from the information overload and decided to retreat into a quiet world. It helped and now I’m back with a more organized approach to read and write!

Cold

I’m sick with running nose, cold, sneezing and a handful of tissues! I was just going through my blog archives from 2003 and found this quote.


William Gladstone said “If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated; it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are exhausted, it will calm you”.

So true. I had a cup of tea and I feel so much better now. I’m contemplating on taking a month long vacation from blogging. Just contemplating …

Will U.S come to terms with reality?

It required a 9/11 for U.S to acknowledge that its long term ally was not so “nice” as it projects all the time. When India harped for decades that it was terrorism on our borders along Kashmir and Punjab, they turned a blind eye and continued to support - you know who. Only when your fingers get burnt do you acknowledge at times. After 7/7 there was a good article in The Times of India that said :

India a lab for terror strikes

By Chidanand Rajghatta/TNN

Washington: Has the failure of western intelligence agencies to recognise India as a victim of terrorism and their lack of interest in terrorist modus operandi in India over the past 15 years brought them grief in recent years? It would appear so, going by the action replay of terrorist acts in India that one is now witnessing in various parts of the world.The serial blasts that shook London on Thursday show again that India has been used as a laboratory by terrorists.

The world may forget but Indians wouldn’t - the serial bomb blasts of Mumbai in 1993! It was ok then because it was India where hundreds die every month. If you are smart, you know the point I’m driving home. Good articles on the same topic —

  1. Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq

  2. If It’s a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution - By Thomas L. Friedman

How I remember birthdays?

Of late, people are amazed at how I remember dates. I don’t use an organizer or any fancy gadget or any website that sends me reminders every morning. Some people find it difficult to remember dates while they can recollect a whole lot of other things very easily such as faces and names. I have a fasciation for dates but I’m very bad at remembering names.
Here’s my memory mapping secrets for dates (umm not really):

  1. Rule 1: Association
    As a kid, we remember a lot of things and this number wanes gradually as we grow old. The key to remembering newer dates is to map them to what you already know like your friend’s and family birthdays. Naturally, the dates I can remember easily are those that fall in the months of January, February, April, May, July and September (family birthdays). It takes an effort to remember the rest.The first step is to group the dates and remember them in patterns. For instance, Jan 21, April 21, May 6, June 21, July 13 and September 25 come naturally to me. So when I came across dates such as Jan 22, April 24, May 8 or September 23 it was easy to associate.

    People who share birthdays or anniversaries are the easiest.If they occur on a National holiday such as August 15th or Jan 26th all the more easier!

  2. Rule 2: Recency or the last year rule
    Every morning when I wake up, I make it a point to see what date is. It is a mental action item to do it around 7:30 a.m. or just before I go to bed the previous night. I then do a quick mental run to see if the date seems familiar. If I have done something substantial such as wishing someone on their birthday or anniversary last year, I generally remember that by way of what responses to e-mails or calls that I received. Don’t ask me how. I just have a vague remeberance. The more frequently I do that, which is successively over the next few years, it becomes a habit. Usually, if I don’t remember it in the morning, the likelihood that I would through the rest of the day is very bleak!
  3. Rule 3: Grouping Dates
    This rule works best to enrol newer dates into your memory. Birthdays of people from a similar profession or friends who are associated in some way to each other are easier to remember. One such group is March 20th to 22nd, July 9th to July 15th, Sept 21 to Sept 25th.
  4. Rule 4: Day of the week
    This is an offbeat rule which hascome in handy at times. There are events and the day of the week and the month that it occurred the previous year that I remember distinctly. Such dates even if I make an effort I generally fail at it. So if it happened on a Sunday last year, it would be on a Monday this year. This cannot and will not work for long!

Despite all this, there are dates that sound quite familiar like july 19th and I can’t figure out what it represents. It is probably also worth mentioning that it is selective filtering. Not anything and everything goes in. Either the date or the person associated has to be special in some way (obviously done subconsciously) to get registered.

Technical (Java) Interview Experiences and tips - I

I’m much more composed now than I was 6 hours back. The last post which I decided not to take down speaks volumes about my state of mind then. I wrote that minutes after that grilling 55 min interview.

Just a little background on what’s going on. I’m looking out for a job because we are relocating to a new city and I began interviewing with prospective employers today. I went through a similar experience just 3 months back. For whatever reason, this experience is frustrating and teaching me so many lessons. So I decided to hell with anonymity and decided to blog about it here. Some Do’s and Dont’s. The process of getting a Project Lead job in India involves the following steps :

Precursor

1. Making a resume and I confess I’m not very creative at it.
2. Posting a resume in a job portal or through referrals.
3. Answering to hundreds of e-mails from thousands of consultants within hours of posting the profile.
4. Hundreds of calls come for administrators and network guys if you are looking for a project lead position. Everything is software and IT for consultants. Its their job and they don’t give a damn.

Finally when something materializes, REAL interview calls start coming in. The criteria for every company varies. You can judge the kind of organization you are getting into by the way interviews are organized and conducted. Just like they say you can judge a man by the company he keeps, you can judge a company by the HR personnel the company employs.

Every company typically has about 4-5 round of interviews of which atleast 2-3 are technical nature varying in complexity.

What went wrong today?

Interviewee - that’s me :

1. preparedness : If you are not prepared, do NOT agree to take an interview. If you do, then only 2 things can happen. Either you try to prove that you are smarter than the interviewer or you end up saying “I don’t know” for the answers you know too because you are not confident.

2. Location : The place where I took the interview was just not right. It was in the open with 37 deg C Sun rays right over my head that made my temperature and temper rise.

Otherwise I think I did a good job.

Interviewer:

1. If you ever happen to interview someone, please review the role you are interviewing the person for. Asking the person what each member in “system.out.prinln” does not make any sense. How many times do you really care before writing system.out.println as to what it does?

2. No Googling: Please please do not Google for Java Interview Questions and ask questions from there. People are smart enough to do the same before taking an interview.

3. Ask questions relevant to what is needed to get the job done and what you encounter daily in the project. Ask design and architecture related questions for a project lead and not what is the difference between classes111.zip and classes12.zip.
Test for spontaneity and practical application, not theoretical knowledge.

4. Focus not on you: Your motto is to judge how good the person you are interviewing is. Your motto is NOT to prove that you are better than the person you are interviewing. I’m sure you get more chances and avenues to do that on a different forum.

5. Do NOT test syntax : In this age of Rapid Application Development, asking someone for the syntax of something is the most stupid thing one can do. IDEs do that for you. Use your gray cells to remember design patterns and better stuff.

6. Test the aptitude : Aptitude to be able to judge the right solution and the attitude to get the solutions by any means is what you need to test. Understand that one would not have answers to all the problems and one need not know anything.

7. Area of Expertise : Interview and explore their knowledge on an area of expertise extensively. A little knowledge of everything is not what you need. My interview this afternoons spanned from normalization techniques of databases to textbook definition of joins to Rational Unified Processes to Project Manegemnt tools to Reflection API of Java. What are you trying to judge by interviewing on all such varied topics? Have a focus area and attack that!

8. Problem Solving Approaches : The way a person thinks comes out best when you ask him/ger to solve a problem. I like ThoughtWorks way of interviewing. First they give youa problem to solve and then in the later round, ask you to critique it and improve the solution.

frustrated

Damn damn damn. 55 mins of goddamn technical interview. I’m exhausted. My desire to do some stuff on my own is growing by the day! I mean, seriously, wtf, such an ordeal within 3 months is definitely not welcome.

This blog post would be gone soon. I’m just taking out my frustration. It was goddamn HOT outside and my head is fried
literally!

What makes a presentation great?

Today afternoon, I along with a 100 other people sat through a 2 hour long business update presentation. The presentation commenced at 2:30 p.m. and it was intended for all the employees. I got very fidgety after 15 minutes. Contrary to my expectations, the lead presenter, someone with very commendable credentials wasn’t a great speaker. I had cultivated this wrong notion that people up the ladder are great speakers! They might be great strategists, great visonaries, great businessmen but not necessarily great speakers.

Here are some do’s and dont’s of obvious flaws that I observed and compiled during the 2 hour presentation of about 6 speakers:

  1. Content:
    It is not mandatory for every presentation to use PowerPoint. Content of any presentation goes beyond PP. The amount of preparation and the research one does eventually shows in the confidence of the speaker. Content is the king.

    • Golden Rule: One point per slide. Do not clutter your slides with text. This distracts the audience to read all that’s up there.
    • Put only the gist in the slide. The rest is for the speakers to talk about.
    • Font size: Make it a 28-32 pt. Neither too small nor too big enough to read. This afternoon’s presentation required magnifying lenses.
    • When there are too many related facts to compare, make a graphical representation.
    • Display the entire slide at once. Do NOT use any fancy fly-in fly-out text. It is exciting at first but distracts the audience and gets too annoying.
    • Organize your content in a logical flow. If you have too much of information to share and too little time, then focus only on the salient points.
    • Do some ground work and get the facts right. You don’t want to get on the wrong foot by delivering incorrect information.
  2. Delivery :
    Even if the presentation is rich in content, if not delivered right, all the hard work goes down the drain. by delivery I mean the demeanour of the person speaking.

    • Golden rule: Do NOT read the slides. MSPP is just a tool to guide you. The presentation is in your head.
    • Talk slowly. Indians have a very habit of talking fast. Blah blah blah no periods at all. One has to be very attentive so as to not lose track.
    • Having said that, it does not mean you can be very slow. Space your words right and get the pace. Pause briefly between sentences and make it consistent.
    • Variations in pitch is very important. Talking in the same tone throughout makes it drab.
    • Humour is a key component. You instantly win the attention of the audience if you start your speech on a funny note.
    • No “umm’s mmmmm’s aaaaa’s”.
    • Enthusiasm is contagious. If you can show the energy and enthusiasm radiating in your face, great!
  3. Posture :
    Most people don’t pay attention to it, but positioning yourself physically right is a vital factor too!

    • Stand erect. Move your hands. Pace up and down if you feel uncomfortable. Don’t overdo it.
    • Glance across the hall at everyone. Just don’t look at only one side of the room.
    • A very trivial one but positioning your microphone correct is important too. Else you would be fiddling with it throughout.
    • Arriving a little early at the venue to hook your laptop and be prepared is always desirable.

Weekend started yesterday ….

Finding my cubicle at work is like wading your way thr a maze. Unlike every morning, the maze wasn’t buzzing with activity today. 30 odd coworkers from my team are out today and tomorrow on a fun team building trip to Kabini. Kabini is not very far from Kushal Nagar. They plan to go on a safari ride, sleep in the tents, do a bit of trekking and have fun. I couldn’t go on this trip as we are heading to Madurai tonight. The workplace was deserted today and I was in no mood to work either..wish I could have taken the day off! 10 more days to go.

Check these links :

1. CEO Blogs List - Interesting that U.S still tops the number and is way ahead of the rest.
2. Consider the outsource


The work is getting done faster and better, Prestowitz argues, because Indians are not only hungrier than we are, but better educated. China, India, Japan and Europe all churn out more science and engineering degrees than we do. Worse — and downright embarrassing — is the state of American education. Globally, our 12th-graders rank only in the 10th percentile in math (that’s 10th percentile, not 10th). Our students also rank first in their assessment of their own performance: we’re not only poorly prepared, we have delusions of grandeur.

– an interesting change in perspective on outsourcing from what was an year ago. If you recall the Cafferty File conversation or Lou Dobb’s show Exporting America where the quality of outsourced work was criticised so much! Will America wake up in time to the China challenege and not lose its edge?

Getting that dream job

FastCompany : Dream Jobs
In July 1999, when I started at my first corporate job as a programmer, straight out of college, little did I know what to expect. The thought of working with thousands others, a boss to report to, dressing in formals everyday was intimidating. As I remember now, I went with one principle. Work Hard. Work Hard come what may. Period. Few years later, I realized things aren’t black and white and my principle had to change. Work Smart.

Job satisfaction was like a sine curve going thr troughs and crests at various periods. Never once did it feel like “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” Over the years, I dreamt of working at 2 organisations for whatever reasons. One was Sun Microsystems and the other Google. Now I’m not sure. These were dream companies, not dream jobs.

I post my profile yet another time on a job portal tonight reviving “Project Search”. The question lingers in my mind, “What is it that I want in this new job to turn it into a dream job?” From Slacker @Work

If you don’t enjoy your work, in a general sense, you really will end up being one of those do-nothing layabout slackers us all a favor that give the rest of us a bad name. So do us all a favor and find good work. Office Space is a great movie.

This is an attempt to elucidate the mystery. Five things that I would look for before choosing my new job in the same order:

  1. Passion: Passion is contagious to an extent. If you take pride at the work you do and whom you work for, then it is a quicksand to get drawn into easily. Passion for technology figures top on my list! There is no definite way of knowing it before joining :(
  2. Professionalism/Integrity:A right percentile of professionalism is needed to keep things in check and organized. This ensures you don’t take people for granted and neither are you taken for granted. You start respecting other’s time and effort.
  3. Freedom:A lil Freedom in everything. Freedom of organising my work thr the day. Freedom of managing the team. Freedom to prove myself. Freedom to be efficient and effective. Smart managers don’t tell smart people what to do all the time.
  4. Creativity: An opportunity to be creative and not tied to the conventional rules of the game.
  5. Casual Dressing:Not Friday Dressing. Sounds a lil offbeat for a job expectation. Well yes, I find it rather stupid that it is ok to wear casual clothes on some day of the week while it is not on others. One thing I love about my current job is I get to wear jeans all 5 days. A tiny thing that ticks me off… by David Allen on the same topic..

(Better pay, Work from home and a great library are all just an icing on the cake).
To be honest, I would love a job that requires me to read/write business blogs all thr the day! I hope with the new job I can wake up and long to goto work!

What is your dream job?

Update : A beautiful article on the same topic : Why Do You Work So Hard? Is it maybe time to quit your safe job and follow your path and infuriate the establishment?


Our culture allows almost no room for creative breaks. There is little tolerance for seeking out a different kind of “work” that doesn’t somehow involve cubicles and widening butts and sour middle managers monitoring your e-mail and checking your Web site logs to see if you’ve wasted a precious 37 seconds of company time browsing blowfish.com or reading up on the gay marriage apocalypse.

How to Give Up Coffee and How to Become an Early Riser - Part I

How incredible is it that I find articles on the traits I’m quite infamous for in the family, on the same day. There are only 2 possible explanations when I wake up with a grouchy mood, headaches, a long face and snap at everyone throughout the day - either I didn’t get enough sleep or didn’t have my morning tea.

There is a mental program that sends signals “your day hasn’t started yet” if the 100 ml of tea doesn’t go in by 7:30 a.m. It gets worse. I get a kick only if the morning cup of tea that I consume is made by me. I don’t adopt any special procedure..It is the regular Taj Mahal/Lipton/RedLabel mixture with 2 spoons of sugar, a little milk, crushed ginger sprinkled with cardamom powder for flavor. Satisfaction guaranteed. Thinking what a spoilt brat am I? Tea has been my favorite beverage since childhood. Mom wouldn’t allow us kids to have tea. So I would sneak in every morning and steal a bit from her cup. On getting caught, she would hold my ears :(

Well as Steve says, Caffeine is the modern drug of choice in the work world, easily accessible, socially acceptable, readily affordable, and of course perfectly legal. This is so true. I cultivated a bad habit when I joined my new workplace April this year. I started drinking coffee (black without milk and sugar unlike what Indians are used to) 3 times a day because of easy accessibility. Everytime my colleagues would go to get coffee and would ask me to accompany them, I had a cup. Soon I was consuming more than my body could take! I had to STOP because of the adverse side effects like acidity and it killed my hunger and my digestive system went for a toss. Here are a few steps that I followed to fight my temptation:

How to give up Coffee:

Should you give up coffee?
Anything had in unreasonably large amounts is harmful. With time it becomes an addiction. If you notice side effects like decrease in appetite or concentration, then its time. I know of people who don’t drink coffee in the evenings because they would end up staying wide awake through the night! More importantly, if you can’t live a day without coffee at predetermined times and fight the urge, then its time to kick the habit or have it in reasonable portions!

Method 1:
Reduce the Quantity:
Instead of stopping the intake abruptly and traumatising oneself, reducing the quantity gradually over a week helps. That way you don’t give room for any psychotic feeling that triggers false feelings of headaches due to lack of caffeine!

Method 2:
Break the habit:

Most coffee/tea drinkers develop a rhythm and a timetable like 9:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 3:30 p.m. and so on when they have to have coffee come what may. It is important to break this habit and do something else. If your coworkers call you, then don’t accompany them for a few days for the coffee break if you can’t resist the temptation. This is what I did. If you can resist, then drink something else like water or eat cookies! Or if you feel like drinking something warmer, switch from coffee to a hot beverage like cocoa or some other energy drink.

Method 3:

There really is no method 3. It is more of a mental challenge. Every time I felt like having coffee/tea at work, I remembered all those days I suffered and challenged myself, “Don’t I have even this much of self control? Am I so addicted” And remembered the one satisfying cup consumed in the morning.

For 2 weeks now, I’m surviving on just a cup of tea - down from 5 a day!

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