Amachi Mumbai

I Miss you.

Dear readers, my second home has been hit by worst ever rains. Everyone outside the city is thanking God as they were not out there. I do not have such feeling. I miss being there at that time. Mumbai has its own spirit. I wanted to be a part of the struggle against mother nature and rebuilding. I wanted to be with all Mumbaikars out there on that day.

Mumbai refuses to bog down by any challenge thrown at her. I love the city for its pace and cosmopolitan nature. Mumbai never sleeps and it gives whatever you need to you.

Where else on face of earth you see your co-travelers in local trains celebrating ur b'day? The travelers in locals share their happiness and sorrow. I was part of this culture when I used to travel to SEEPZ from Thane or Navi Mumbai.

Every Indian should spent a yr or 2 out there. She gives you purpose to do your work and a sense to life. She clears out your future directions. Best of all is the support you get from complete strangers. It can happen only in Mumbai.

To all Mumbaikars, People prey for your safety. I prey for conservation of your spirit and positive outlook towards life.

Three cheers for PATNI

I believe in Strong work ethics. You need to do intelligent hard work. My belief has been made stronger by my organization. I received a 50+% hike from PATNI. My Indian salary stands equivalent to a 3 yr experience resource in PATNI. My salary has doubled in 2 year. Not bad! Ah!

I am more than happy not because I am gonna get a lot of money but b'coz the efforts have been recognized. Man, you can raise salary standards in any organization if you are good enough.

3 cheers for PATNI b'coz it was ready to give me that chance 2 years ago which everyone denied to prove myself in my own eyes.

I am sure to get a reply from Yogesh.

- Bhuga

Future Communication

The other day I was talking with my folks in India. My mother handed over phone to my father. Our conversation goes like this.
"Hey, how are you? What's up?"
"Pretty Good. How abt urself?"
"Not bad for an old man. It has been raining cats & dogs here. Looks like the crop would be good this season. "
"Oh! That sounds good. How abt ur school?"
"Well! On that front, everything is cool. I will give it your mom."

By the way, it was my birthday and he forgot to wish me. I spoke with my mother who was all the time telling him in background abt to wish me. Then she said, you know he has a lot of love for all of you in his heart but was never able to put in words." I agree with her.

With that in mind when I went to bed, I started thinking about my communication. I wasn't great either. I always had this problem in pronunciation. I was not able to present my thoughts whenever we had discussion in English. Probably I could convey only 30% of what was in my mind. We(Human Beings) were gifted with ability to talk. But should it be a distinguishing factor for knowledge in any other field? I am fine with being differentiated on basis of fluency in language when I take language courses, but why in other subjects. All human beings think using Brain and communicate it to all body using nervous systems. The language of communication should be same as nervous systems. Why should be there any difference based on command over any language?

I believe that our future in communication lies in making research in this direction. If we can decode the language used by nervous system or if we are able to make devices which would translate response of your body into a language common to all, we make communication much easier. More thoughts will be exchanged and our lives will be better. By creating language as a barrier we are blocking this exchange of knowledge.

Well, we still give people edge and they can choose to speak themselves when they want to. This would preserve the beauty of language as it exists today and make communication effective in case you need help of technology to put across your thoughts.

What do you think?

Do you think we can use something from our work at home?

I think I should be listed among world's richest who's who. For that matter all those who lived in 38, Lyme street, Apt. 108 in Feb and Mar should be in that list.

Well, If you know Electricity Bills in United States, you will also know that $50 is actually reasonable Bill for a month. We paid a Bill of whopping $900 for 50 days. Aren't we rich? Girls are you reading? :-)

On Friday evening when everybody is rushing to reach home; we had a discussion with my manager abt Six sigma. I had no clue what it meant. So I asked him abt it. At home, when I was looking at the ppt he had send me I had goose bumps. This what they call six sigma? What! C'mon we did this for reducing our electricity Bill.

Really, Can we use knowledge gained at work at home? I think so. I know, I am bad at giving examples. But let us use this one.

I still remember the rude shock we felt when we got that bill in April. Well, after the general bitching, we started thinking. We first though of getting this Bill reduced. Frankly speaking, I do not think we all felt it was anyway possible but you know money matters.

We looked at the history of the apt. 108. We got a congrats message, this Bill was less than earlier ones. hmm... Next step was looking at history of other apartment in the building. Well that did not helped much either. They always had Bills > $230. Then we started noting down the reading. Then the experiments started, what happens if we do not switch on the Heater. What if we use water heater only for 2 hrs and so on so forth. After a week's readings we came to conclusion that however hard we try our bill will be never less than $200. In Six sigma language we were in define stage. Of course we did the measure step earlier.

Now we started analyzing the readings, try to identify the equipments which were using maximum energy. We discovered that

• Our heater had a faulty switch. Hence, we used to run heater even when no one is at home
• Our closet had a separate heater and it was always ON.
• Our water heater was always ON.

This was based on our analysis of when reading was lowest. We fixed these root causes immediately. In six sigma methodology this is analyze.

When our next Bill came through, to our surprise it was less than $200. We then started thinking over reducing it further and redefine our targets. You can say we redefined our goals. The next bill was even lower than this. This month's bill is $75. Hmm. This is called Improve stage in six sigma.

Now I think we know what had happened in first 2 months and we can better control our bill.
The learning ofcourse is we are changing our apartment when our lease ends on 31 July. The new apartment has central AC & Heat unlike the current one.

Didn't we actually applied six sigma methodology to reduce electricity bill. I am sure there are other things from office we can use at home. Vice versa is also true. I will write later abt them. Till then keep reading.

If Marriages were made in heaven, I must be God's own Johny Lever

Sometimes I sit down to think about my school days & I cannot resist myself laughing alone. People around me look at me as if I am crazy. Actually there are completely wrong. Anyway, I am gonna start writing a series of events which happened in my school holidays. Many of them are about marriages and hence the title.

This was my first funny experience with marriages. I had to attend this wedding of our family friend's daughter. I must have been 12-13 yrs old. I was given a important responsibility (At least that is how it appeared to me at that time) to hold the flowers. So I was standing near a stage midst the rain of akshta ( auspicious rice thrown at groom and bride). The stage was build with planks of wood arranged on a square structure of steel. As the final moment reached with every ready to run, so that they can catch a place for themselves for eating. The stage broke down and everyone on or near stage fell down. I was the last man standing. Everyone was staring at me as if I had done something. Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt. After ensuring that everyone ok the crowd started laughing. Some of the gentlemen who were 21-22 years old, told me that it was funniest thing that they have seen in any marriage and they started thanking me for it.

Man! I did not know what to do and I still do not know what I should have done. Accept the thanks saying "my pleasure" or deny it. Doesn't really matter, b'coz everyone believed that I did something.

I will post another of these stories sometime this week or next week. Till then bye and thanks for reading. Looking forward to your comments.

Why Questions are more impressive than answers?

Often I wonder why questions are more impressive than answers. Think about it. How many times a question has impressed you or a answer has? I would say the ratio of them being impressive is favoring questions with 65-35%.

A presenter is prepared with presenting his ideas to the audience. His focus is more on how he can reach his audience or how he can present his ideas in a manner they can resemble with. Unfortunately there are less studies being done on kind of audience you are going to address. Hence the presenter is mostly not prepared for what could be there questions.

Now think of the other side. The audience is a mix of different philosophies and mindsets. Some of them are just impressed by the knowledge of person and some have not understood even a single word. Probably the presenter has not been able to connect with all of them. The audience got split up into various groups who have their own way of thinking over the presentation. Since the presenter has not been able to think of all such perspectives, he is not well prepared to answer the questions. Hence more often we see questions winning over answers.

Is there anyone who thinks other way round?