Meeting an Interesting Airport character..

It’s been a nice flight from Zurich to Dubai and interesting because of 3 things –

1) I caught 2 movies and that is a record because I always sleep through the entire flight (yes, all 80 odd hours on 4 flights to and fro from the US). And one of them, 7 things to do before I am 30 had a nice message..

2) I started writing a letter. I realized it takes SO long to write a note. It’s still incomplete as food popped by just as I was finishing a page but was very nice. I should probably write more letters..

3) Meeting the character was the big one. I met a very nice Swiss guy sitting next to me – a lawyer on his internship and taking a summer study trip to Beijing. We got along well and decided to spend some time together in transit. And that’s when we had a 3rd character join us, an Indian guy who had lived in Switzerland. This meeting was interesting for a number of reasons..

What intrigued me was his point of view about everything. He was talking with great pride about being expelled from various international schools in India (his parents sent them over from Switzerland as he was too much of a troublemaker there apparently) and the fact that he’s working at a telecom company now and how he plans to get his BBA by joining a friend’s school in Bangalore. Given the friend is the education minister’s son, he figures he doesn’t quite need to attend classes and can fly in to take his exams. As for preparation, he’s sure he can get his hands on the question papers. So, that takes care of that..

After all this, he went on about how India changed him and how he’s against western attitudes and way of thought. He obviously had a lot to say and after a while, we had to bid adieu and my new Swiss friend and I decided to just sit down and browse. Our Indian friend promised to be back after a smoke..

Of course, he never came back..

Maybe we were too boring for him. What hit me was just that I couldn’t wait to get out of his company. While I’ve matured (I think that’s what it would be) not to judge him or his opinions or his actions as right or wrong, I just realize that I’ve very little bandwidth to spend time on things I don’t want to do.

I just love the quote I read the other day ‘Whenever you are saying yes to something unimportant, you are saying no to something important!’. I guess this will be a good morning quote soon..

And its true, I am enjoying typing this out and learning from the incident.. :)

It’s been a busy few days but lots of learnings coming through.. very soon! :)

Slow and steady..

wins the race..

We had an a very innovative fun activity. We had to come up with an advertisement in 3 hours time – a proper 30-60 second ad..

And it was SO much fun. It was a big learning curve for me as I played Director and I’d never done that before and it was lot of fun storyboarding and working with Walt, the cameraman.

The funny part is that we spent close to to 1 and half hours just brainstorming! 2 teams were done in 30 mins while we stayed, debated, argued, fought for etc.. and boy, it was quite a long process. We almost gave up, but that’s just about when we agreed on something and started on it..

The other team (there were 4 in total) took slightly longer than us and we were almost freaked at this point as we had started really really late! And guess what.. our team came 1st and the other team came a close close 2nd (settled on tie breakers).

Our story lines were extremely simple, conveying a simple idea with lots of humor and that won it for us.

It was quite a lesson for me –

1) Think.. and then act..
2) No point in hurrying. The important thing to focus on is quality. :)

The Greatness Guide by Robin Sharma – Idea rich!

One of the disadvantages of having an archaic phone whose headphone cords don’t work is you can’t listen to audio in places with close proximity to public. As a result, I had to take a book along and thank god I took this one..

3 things that struck me:

1) The book is ‘idea rich‘! Lots and lots of ideas in byte sized chapters (no more than 3 pages). Every page has a nice little anecdote and a quote that makes for very entertaining read. Who says management books can’t be page turners?

2) I found the book to be very very reflective. It caused me to stop at many points and actually think of what I would do in situations, what I am doing right now, whether what I plan to do makes sense, whether I am actually focusing on the priorities etc. Every once a while, it is nice picking up a book like this. I have jotted down a whole bunch of new ideas to reflect on in the next few days, a whole bunch of quotes(like the Anita Roddick one today morning) to share on this blog and what’s more, I think I’ve found a new blog to subscribe to. If his blog is anywhere as close as his book, it should be well worth it!

3) We’re all destined to be great! Let’s just not shrug, make excuses and look for alibis. Our schedule tells the true story. What are we REALLY spending time on? A schedule never lies.. are we setting ourselves up for greatness?

There’s enough out there for all of us. So, let’s start pulling each other up! :)

The Blind Side – Loved the movie!


Caught the movie ‘Blind Side’ on flight today. Loved it! It’s just the kind of movie I love watching – inspirational, family based and what’s more – it’s based on a sport!

Blind Side is the movie which got Sandra Bullock the Oscar for Best Actress. She plays the role of a well to do white mom who adopts a (huge) black homeless kid studying in her kids’ school and the story of how this kid with potential becomes a great football (The American one..) player. Based on a true story..

3 things that struck me..

1) Every one of us is insanely good at something. This kid, Michael, flopped all diagnostic tests but scored in the 97 percentile in ‘Protective instincts‘. Bullock harnessed this strength to bring out his fierce side and make him an incredible football player..

2) It’s all about family. Enough said.. :)

3) It’s important to give first. Bullock played a life-changing role in Michael’s life. It was a challenge to get to know him though -‘like an onion, you have to peel one layer at a time‘. She gave the relationship her all. The results were, of course, life-changing!

Seatguru for seat selection during online check in..

Disclaimer: This post is not applicable for all fellow students who have the privilege of flying Tiger Airways to and fro from Singapore. But hey, we can’t complain.. the rates are amazing! :)

Anyway, it was a nice change being able to access Online check in and being assigned a seat. The cool part was using seatguru! I’d read about Seatguru on lifehacker and it was nice to finally check it out..

Seatguru is a service which allows you to check out the seats on the plane in addition with the pros and cons of every seat. Here is a screenshot..

Pretty useful for long flights and frequent fliers I thought.. :)