Month: April 2010

It’s amazing how simple this sounds yet how difficult it is do..

It’s seems so fundamental but yet. My hunch is that what gets in between is the teenage ‘go with the flow’ notion. The first time I heard about these over-ly organized lives in books, I always thought they were missing the point with their planning etc. Over time, I’ve realized that we only have leisure time when things go as per plan.. else we are always rushing from one thing to another.

A constant crisis fighter – story of my life for a long long time.

Anyway, I’m at the planning stage again for what remains of university life – 14 days!

Here I go again.. :)

Thanks to a football crazy bunch of friends at my high school (DAV Boys, Gopalapuram), I was a football convert. Having hardly played the game till I joined my 11th Grade/equivalent to JC1, I was playing a lot of football all of a sudden. There was always football talk – premier league clubs etc etc. So, I was looking forward to come to NUS to play lots of football as well.. And I did.

3 things that I remember –

1)Learning the game: In my early days, my playing was restricted to games with a bunch of my Indian and hence, known seniors and friends. This was generally a lot of fun as it was pretty feisty.. However, as I began to work, I became less regular because of clashing times. Besides, my mentor always just hopped onto the field and joined anybody who was playing. In the early days I was very apprehensive, but I soon realized how much fun it was. I learnt a lot in those days particularly from one regular called Jackie – who was a Singapore Airlines person, a commando at the army and at 46, among the fittest people I’ve seen.

Jackie’s understanding of the game was great and he always used to push me to do better – run harder, fight for the ball. He always said -‘You’ve got to really want to get the ball if you ever plan on getting it’. It was great. I made a whole bunch of friends over soccer. I was a regular for a good 2 years, generally playing 3-4 times a week. It was my way of keeping fit..

Learning: Playing with players with different styles gave a good idea of my own abilities. I had never been an amazing athlete. I had a pretty decent amount of stamina and I realized that my biggest strength was an eye for pass i.e. for spotting the right pass. I’ve learnt that for both football and life, it pays to know our strengths so we can focus on those strengths.

2)Realizing a dream: One of my big dreams when I first saw the awesome looking SRC football field was to play a proper football game and score a goal! Now, once I joined university, that dream practically faded away as I saw the the standard of the teams. With my skills, I could only make it to the 2nd round selection of my faculty’s team(which is admittedly pretty good) but anyway..

It was just when I had almost given up hope when it turned out one of my football buddies (from above) used to play on this team and once I happened to hop by with a mentor of mine as they were about to play a game. They were the NUS staff team, were short of players and I excitedly joined in. I still remember that game – we got thrashed 7-0. In typical style, I decided to be more regular and joined them for training/kicking around on Tuesdays and games on Fridays. I played quite a few games, got to know a good number of them and had lots of fun and learning. There was a player in our team called Tomoo (an Econs Professor) who was a player I would pay to watch. Thanks to a few good players, we won quite a few of these games as well.

And you know what, I did score that goal.. It was a penalty I had won and it was wonderful burying it in under floodlights.

Learning: I always think of Randy Pausch (the last lecture Professor) when I think of these small dreams. I learnt we should never give up on it.

The bigger learning was NOT to rush! I was always rushing when I got the ball – too impatient and always lacking composure. Tomoo taught me to focus on one thing at a time by taking it much much slower. This is a learning that had a huge impact on my life and work..

3)Watching Football: I started watching Manchester United in the 2002-03 season. It’s funny how it happened.. The first game on air was a Man Utd game followed by an Arsenal game.. I saw the game and fell in love with the team. Wonder what would have happened if I’d seen the Arsenal game first..

Anyway, I followed practically every game that season. Following that season, we had some weird cable rules in our city and I couldn’t really follow games for 3 whole seasons (which coincided with my board exams/O and A levels) – so a good thing, all in all I think. This passion was re-ignited in university.. And boy, has watching football given me so much happiness! I still remember impatiently waiting for the Barcelona game the night before my signals exam. (Funny how these things work…) Remember so many great goals.. Remember the joy at winning the champions league.

Of late, one of the best things that has happened is I’ve found a football buddy who lives and breathes united as well. And that’s a friendship I’m sure to treasure for a long time. It’s become a part of life now, to go down to a lounge in PGP and catch a big game with friends or walk across to KE7 and watch a game on the big(ger) screen TV.

Another fun thing that happened was ‘Management Through Football’ – my mentor’s idea to convert all our football talk to ideas and solutions to life problems. This probably requires a lot of background but was a nice way we used to catch up on Saturdays and play football with friends on Saturdays..

Learning: It’s been great following a club closely. I’ve learnt a lot from Sir Alex Ferguson’s management style. The biggest thing I’ve learnt is his refusal to take any defeat or failing personally. While he does play the media game well by deflecting attention, all in all, he almost always moves on.

Another wonderful thing I learnt is his longevity as a result of his habit to celebrate, and then move on..quickly! He’s built 4 teams at Manchester United. During this 23 year period, he was won 11 premier league titles, 2 Champions leagues and numerous other trophies. Most strikingly, over 950 managers have come and gone in all the other premier league clubs..

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Of late, playing football has lessened thanks to a new passion – Tennis. While I have no idea how it started, a few of us made it a habit to play every Saturday morning till a friend advised me to engage a coach and that’s been a great decision as well. It’s lots of fun learning a new game..

I was heading for my FYP presentation yesterday morning and was busy munching on assorted fruits. I was just in a mood to finish and the only thing that stood between me and an empty fruit cup was a pineapple piece. I had quickly gulped everything else down of course..

Now, it was a rather big piece and I tried to cut it and attacked it with vigor – only for it to become threateningly messy with all the thin string like things threatening to get stuck between my teeth..

So, I aborted that.. and paused for a moment. I then realized that there is a specific way to cut a pineapple and consciously tried to cut it along the line.. and voila, it came apart beautifully.. and I had finished my fruit cup and my quota for fruit in a day! (We’ll come to this when I write about the R15 system later..)

Every thing that nature has created has a specific way of use, a method. And every little thing has its own unique requirements. It is the same with people – everyone has a different trigger for them to open to us and be themselves..

The big question is – are we aware that brute force alone can never solve a problem? Are we ready to stop, think and understand the person/pineapple/problem before trying to solve it..

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Big one for me to keep in mind. :)

Good morning.. Have a great day! :)

| An archive.org photo of the 1st website – designed and made by me on Dreamweaver. How cool is that! (However crappy the website may be) It was actually a website with tabs that are listed in bullet points. Wish there was a better picture memory| :)

Another big part of my university identity has been ExpressionHappens – my attempt at an initiative to help people express themselves.

It was after a Nineo all-nighter that we were discussing the Nineo vision (Helping people find work they love..) at the Arts Canteen Burger King. It was a nice morning, we had a lovely view of the harbor and we came to the conclusion that we would have to practice what we preach. So, we began identifying our passions and decided we should do something more with them.. Now, mine happened to be meeting people and talking to them (I’m sure you’ve figured out I’m a big talker by now..) and the conclusion was I should start a talk show! And so it began..

1) Beginnings: So, here I was, the one man manager of my own little initiative – I decided to call it ExpressionHappens and decided I would pick a question and go about interviewing people and put all their views together in a show called ‘Talk it out – where Expression Happens‘. As valentine’s day was just coming up, I went out on a Sunday and interviewed a few people. It was one heck of an experience because about 60% said no to the idea.. And it required a bit of mental training to be okay with the idea of people seemingly rejecting you. And let’s not forget, I was still driven by insecurities rather than any semblance of self confidence.. So it definitely wasn’t easy..

Anyway, I finally released the Valentine’s Day video – my very fast. It was a very badly edited video, but was a start. And then, I decided to keep this going. I did miss a week or two, tried re-engineering the name to ‘Talkdodo’ (Successful internet companies have o’s in their name – Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft etc.. Hehe) which didn’t last for too long.

A whole set of nice developments took place though. After my 3rd episode, a friend of a mentor who I had met offered to invest $1,000 for a 50% stake in my little talk show venture. I thought it was too low given I had dreams of making it a billion dollar initiative.. Haha. I also began getting some sponsorship – the PGP Non air con indian stall being my 1st sponsor and then an acquaintance who wanted to publicize a website linking to a calling card he was trying to sell. These deals lasted for a while and I felt it had some potential. I was now looking to expand into events. Besides, by now, I had a close friend who was an expert video editor and a couple of others in the pipeline. All in all, it seemed like an encouraging start and I was all set to close for the semester…

Learning: It is extremely hard to begin. It’s the toughest thing, really. Ideas are like tender saplings – they can get crushed with just one strong critical comment. I can think of a couple of times I almost decided against this.. Looking back now, I can’t but thank the lord that I did because of the many many positives that came after.

2) The Mockery Group: Now, a lot of old history was about to be reopened with some circles I was very unpopular with. A few friends decided that the talk show was too crappy for them to deal with (they had to put with it on facebook, gtalk links etc) and they decided it was time to call for a shut down. And they did, in good style – with a nice new facebook group and a bunch of members etc.

By now, I’d already attended a couple of RealAcad’s(a post coming up, soon) and one of the important competitive strategy applications we learn is that all publicity is good publicity. So, if someone is trying to take you down, there can’t be anything better.. That’s in theory of course. Let’s not forget that you are looking at a very insecure 19 year old whose inflated ego is the only driver. Anyway, the best thing that happened is this group activity punctured the ego balloon. I practically went into hiding for a month – wanted to have nothing to do with this ‘bad talk show idea’. After all, a whole bunch of people had said it was rubbish – what could be worse?

You see, the big trouble with insecurity is that a lot of self worth is attached with the opinions of others. The bigger trouble is that more often than not, it is attached to only the negative opinions. By this time, I already had a 100 odd students and friends on my mailing list who had lots of nice things to say about the videos but again, when you are talking about a balloon, all it takes is a needle to puncture it.

That was a tough summer for many reasons (aside from this). It was a rather uncertain period at work and I decided I would do a little more with my life.. Atleast, I shouldn’t let my happiness depend on other’s opinions of me. And I decided it was time to just build on self confidence and remove the ego component. In a quest to get better one day at a time, I started this blog..

Learning: Failure is a very beautiful thing. It tends to open our minds to things we aren’t doing well and makes us humble. I questioned my own intentions and purposes on that day and decided it was time for a change.. I knew it’d take a long time to change my perception of myself. It did take a long time, but it stands among the better decisions I made..

|I was alerted that it was better termed as a mockery group rather than a hate group. Hence, the change.. :)|

3)Talkdodo, back to talk show videos and a look within: For a while, we played around with the idea of becoming a university video channel wherein we would record videos of student cca events and become an NUS news channel of sorts. This changed when we sat down with a mentor to discuss what we should really do.. As we had decided to submit a business plan to SPRING singapore. This discussion involved quite some soul searching and we decided that we needed to get back to our talk show concept.. And we did, we made a video a week consistently for 6 months and learnt a LOT. It was a real test of discipline, planning and the 3 of us in our team were pleased with ourselves.

That business plan submission went very well. After intial discussions, Spring was prepared to invest a sizeable amount under the condition that they would have close to full equity/control and we change the business idea to suit their plans.. We declined again and didn’t proceed as we didn’t feel our work justified the scale of investment yet. Besides, we wanted to learn how to make a good talk show video.. And felt we weren’t there yet. Perhaps we were naïve, but we prioritized our learning over success and it is a decision I am very proud of..

However, when we did reach 50 – we decided that this wasn’t where we had envisioned it and decided we needed to do something bigger, something that would touch more people.. It was that ‘something’ that we called Sparkz..

And that is a story for another day.. :)

Learning: A lot of wonderful things happened thanks to ExpressionHappens. It was my taste at getting my feet wet with 2 very close friends.. It is something I would suggest to anyone who still has years in university left – to try something different, something that they are passionate about. Give it a more formal name, make a website, publicize a bit and have lots of fun.. What better time than our university days?

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The next big chapter in ExpressionHappens’ evolution is Sparkz.. And as promised, that would be coming later..

And until then, here is my favorite talk show video –

What is your favorite holiday destination?

Hope you enjoy it! :)

I have been such a pathetic listener in the past that I’ve never really cared about what the other person had to say and this insensitive flowed into work till I got strong feedback from a mentor once about paying attention to the tone of the voice of the person on the other end. He said that he would know if a person was ready to talk or not just from the way he/she said hello..

I had an clarification call to make yesterday and the moment the person picked up, I sensed something was not right.. and that was the case. Luckily, I always say ‘Hello – would you have a minute now for…?’ which has helped greatly..

But, picking up a non verbal cue yesterday from a person I didn’t know so well was not a bad thing at all. Just shows how much communication is non verbal.. There are cues all around us..

So, Are we listening?

Good morning..

Let’s put out the right things today! :)

That’s probably the only rationale..
It’s 4:11AM.. I have had a very productive last 2 days and I’m very tired..
My brain’s completely fried and I’ve decided to call it a night..
My FYP presentation (at 10AM) is 90% where I would have liked it to be. There’s no way I am going to be able to make the remaining changes in this sort of state..

And yet, I am feeling very philosophical..

(Tired-ness and sleepless-ness have effects similar to alcohol – I am inclined to believe..)

Philosophical enough to whip open my laptop again and write down a few thoughts. I just finished a whole rant to a close friend.. and here are a few of my learnings, most about myself..

1) Relationships are SO hard to maintain. Especially, when it is a good relationship, it takes only one bad experience to cause a crack that would take twice as much time to repair than it took for the relationship to even build. It is so illogical but that’s the beauty about human emotions.. logic doesn’t work with emotions..

2) I am probably too judgmental.. I find it very hard to forget, even if I have forgiven. That means an experience stays with me for a while..

3) I realize that I am drawn to challenges. If I have none, I make one. How else can I explain my actions?

4) My views on relationships have changed a lot. A big part of this is because of the discipline I have acquired over the past year with systems. I would not have bothered going out of my own comfort zone in terms of vulnerability to build a new relationship at this stage of university.. I mean, why make it harder? It’s hard enough leaving a place I’ve loved..

But, these days, I actually feel that relationships can grow stronger with distance.. That’s one of the beliefs that’s changed purely because of discipline in staying in touch.. Interesting one..

5) I am a people person – not a machines person. I understand the heart better than I do the mind. I understand emotions better than I do logic.. Why do I try to tell myself otherwise sometimes?

6) I’m finding it hard to put myself out there. I’ve not had the need to do for a long time.. and time hasn’t made it any easier..

7) I just read a lovely email today about people being there either for a reason, for a season and for a lifetime. I thought it was a great thought.. I have experienced many who’ve been around for a reason, few for a reason and even fewer for a lifetime..

I think what I’ve been trying to say is that I now like to believe that the lifetime group can expand to well beyond the current few.. a point I would not have agreed with a few years ago..

Here’s to growth.. I guess this is what it feels like.. haha
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It is time to read the signs – my eyelids are practically shutting down on me. Here’s to 3 and a half hours of good shut-eye then.. and let’s see if I remember this philosophical state in the morning..

One of the amazing things about working hard during a semester is the thought of the flight back home, the seemingly alternate reality of –

i. Not having to do laundry
ii. Not having to go anywhere to get food
iii. Not having to ‘buy’ lunch and dinner
iv. Not having to worry about cleaning the fan as much..
v. Not having ANY submissions..

Wow.. Home! The mere thought always excites me. As I was telling Mom the other day, this trip back will probably be the only time when I leave for home with a ‘Sigh’.. :)

3 Things that I remember..

1)Recharge!: There were a lot of times my trip back home coincided with a tough time at work. In fact, this happened almost everytime and what always ended up happening is that my performance upped right after I was back. I was more positive, more happy, taking myself less seriously and having lots of fun..

Learning: There’s something about going home that complete re-charges and as my mentors commented, it’s a great learning in itself. Next time, I find myself having a tough time and reacting badly, all I need to do is go back home!

2)Long conversations, drives, get togethers and the like: The biggest highlights about going back home are the long long conversations with Mom and a very close friend that await me. These are generally coupled with long drives down the East Coast Road i.e. by the sea late in the night. I love driving, especially late at night and there’s no better time than playing some nice music and driving down the road..

This is in addition to spending lots of time with friends just chatting, hanging around in places around the city, organizing the odd get together or reunion, visits to all my 3 schools and meeting my teachers, meeting old friends, bumping into people I know at theatres, playing some football and having 5-6 glasses of delicious juice from a local fruit shop, playing Fifa on XBOX at Blur.. Chennai is truly ‘home’ and having always been there for the ‘right’ period of time, it’s never ever gotten boring.

Mom and I also have a penchant for the unpredictable. We’ve had a few adventures – the most memorable was a drive down to the city of Bangalore (330km or 5 hours away) at 330am in the morning after watching a good movie to wish a close friend from Singapore ‘Happy birthday’. Then, there are a few others that just make the home experience complete!

Learning: Home has always been the ultimate vacation place and this is primarily again because of the people. At the end of the day, it’s family and friends that make it that way..

3)The Parent’s meet: A very memorable home outing was this December. As we generally hung out as a group of 9 here in Singapore, we thought it would be a great idea to organize a meet up of all parents. We were VERY apprehensive of how it would turn out because while a few parents did know each other, most didn’t.

Anyway, with the aide of an event manager who turned out to be an ex-classmate of my Mom’s from college, the evening was unbelievable! Thanks to Karaoke, the whole group came alive with songs in English, Hindi (i.e. old Kishore Kumar) and Tamil.. Was one of those evening we would remember for a very very very long time!

Learning: It was amazing ‘having fun’ with parents. We saw their youths and funny sides and it felt like we (i.e. the kids) got even closer than before. :)

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Unlike a lot of other university memories, I am obviously going to continue going home from time to time. However, there will be a big difference.. A close friend mentioned above is most likely off to the states for his masters while another one will be busy at work. A lot is bound to change.. And this is a tribute to everyone at home who makes these trips special!

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Oh, and I just realized I will also remember surprising family by sneaking in at home in the middle of the night as a surprise 3 times!! They were always expecting me a day or two late (thanks to information planted by me, of course..). Nothing like a nice surprise! :)

Our oral presentation focussed on recommendations for NUS to better prepare undergraduates for careers in the banking and consulting industries. Jasper, Weiying, Glenn and I called ourselves ‘Team Invictus‘ – inspired by the recent Nelson Mandela movie starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.

Since our presentation theme was ‘3’, it is only apt that I structure my reflection into 3 parts.

The Content: This first part refers to the actual work that went in generation our content – interviews and surveys with friends/students who had interned in banks as well as full timers, the head of the career centre and Director of CELC. Almost everything here went as per plan except I would have liked to interview around 35 instead of the 20 we ended up with. It would have further strengthened our claims. Having said that, ours was probably a good effort given it is THAT time in the semester. (I have my final year project presentation tomorrow and another day after!)

Preparation: We did put in a lot of effort into preparation, particularly tying up loose ends. This involved rushing to the engineering dean’s office to find Eunice, Industrial attachment in-charge for data, making a video in a quest to keep our audience interested and attentive.

Of course, the next part was preparing the presentation. Jasper and Glenn did a great job with the slides and Weiying did a great job collating the information. We also had fun thinking of a different beginning to our presentation, and hence started with ‘Shosholoza’ – our team’s anthem taken from the movie.

The Presentation: The only thing that I felt was a blip was that our background was not seen at all. It was a light picture and went absent once projected. I had corrected this in the title slide but omitted to do so in the pre presentation chaos.

Aside from that, I had lots of fun presenting as well as watching us present. Weiying had a lovely person touch, Glenn had a deep convincing style and Jasper and I had a great time with our good cop – bad cop routine! I couldn’t have asked for more from my team. I thought they did great!

The Q&A session was very engaging. We had a lot of good questions that further brought out discussions we’d had in the past amongst ourselves as well as dug out details from our work in the background. All in all, it was a great experience.

It is the first of my last 3 presentations as an undergraduate student and my teammates and classmates made sure it would be one that I would remember for a very long time.

And one last thing, I can’t help but mention our fun photo shoot with Brad in our class room followed by the one with all classmates in a packed S16 lift..