I was never a beer lover. But they always said, "To love your enemy know him better". And thats what I tried to do. Now that I know what I'm drinking and how I should feel about it, beer doesn't seem to be bad after all.
The catch is to have beer with the right kind of food. Or atleast, thats how I rationalised it to be. Here is an interesting link to the kinds of beers.
Sansmaran 2005 came to an end. That's the NITIE Alumni Meet conducted every year. And this year it was different. There was variety and more so because there was a Mime and a Skit. So what you may ask.
Well, nobody had seen anything like it before. Here were some comments I received.
Alumnus 1 - I knew NITIE had intelligent people. But, for the first time I realised, we have a good sense of humour too.
Alumnus 2's Wife - I always accompanied my husband for this event. It used to be a bore. This year, I thought it was gonna be the same. Brought some magazines along to read. But today, what I saw was amazing. Did you guys do it for the first time or were you professionals.
Alumnus 3 - You guys were amazing. First time a program of this sort happened in NITIE.
I had to lie - "we are professionals maam!".
Well more about the play. It was about four emotionally challenged persons in an institution for punksters. The four characters showed extremes of the following emotions - humour, innocence, romance and perfectionism. I played the part of the humourist (the joker). The play was a huge success. It was meant to be a comedy and the fact that we could make the children in the auditorium scream with laughter made us believe that we did a good job.
Actors who suited their roles, good timing of dialogue delivery, music, apt choreography and most important of all - language that the common man understands. These were the ingredients that went to make this play a huge success. And this play made us feel that when you put your heart and brain into something, you can really make a good job of it.
Today was one of those days! The end of which you go to bed saying, hope tomorrow I wake on the right side. Its one of those days when a single event at the beginning of the day keeps running in your mind the whole day and you can't stop feeling bad about it.
It was the Organizational Behaviour class and I was answering a question on the importance of appraisals within the organization. In my enthusiasm, I said - "We can do an ABC analysis of employees using appraisal. A - star performers, B - Averagers, C - Laggards". This comment of mine sparked a series of weird looks and raised eyebrows. My professor, turned down my idea saying that its heard of only in the field of inventory management and maybe marketing, but not in HR. Go fish! A few of my friends were mocking at me.
I am not worrying about my idea being turned down. But I was trying to understand the attitude displayed by people around me. Maybe, I'm just a guy suffering a trauma due to my industry experience, something like the villian in "Universal Soldier", but I would still like to gripe about it.
You will use a toothbrush to clean your motorcycle, but you cannot stand an SCM concept being applied in HR. If I were a student, or worse a janitor working at The Harvard Business School and I had spoken these words, the world would have seen it as the new age mantra to all HR problems. I could have even won a noble prize for it. (Ok! this was a bit too much). Funny people!
And worse, my class is a bunch of engineering stalwarts, who aspire to be like the students of IIMs and what not, but can't digest a new idea. Ideally, I would have been happy, if somebody had said - you are talking bullshit, I have a better idea. I would have digested that. But instead, making a hue and cry about a genuine idea and considering it sacrilege to have even conceived such a concept makes me feel nauseatic. If you want to comment on my idea, come up with a better one first.
There are two kinds of people - Ones who save pennies by crook or crane to buy sickles to slit throats (small people) and the ones who dream of dollars, will go out and form camaraderies to get it so that they can buy duplexes on Sunset Boulevard (big people). I would like to be one of the latter.
Couldn't wait to blog this. Its about the photo shoot for my class placement brochure. I was teamed up with my best friend, who is no less a dodo than me ;)
We were late by 40 minutes. Checked in at the venue and rushed to the restroom to wear some makeup. And as everybody knows, how good make up is when done in a hurry. Well, ours was pretty good. We had talcum all over our face and I certainly looked like a buffoon. Back to the venue with our ties straightened out.
Then the make up lady who was hired for the occasion turns up and confesses that she has to give us a puff job :D Not wanting to disappoint the lady, we obliged. We were buffoons now.
Scene 1 ===== I quickly check if my zippers are intact and when I look up what do I see? Everybody is smiling at me. "Hey! I was just checking."
Scene 2 ===== Photographer : Bigger the smile, more the money Sastha - moves his lips 2mm Photographer : Can you show your teeth please?
Scene 3 ===== Photgrapher : Move a bit closer Sastha - moves close and puts his hand on me. Photographer : That won't be necessary. Me : Yeah! What will they think of us.
Scene 4 ===== Sastha and I are holding our pose - stiff body, wide grin, sweat peeking out on my nose Silly photographer is adjusting his camera, a Nikon D1X for the nth time. Then he goes on a rampage, 7 clicks in 30 seconds Sastha : How much longer Me : I can't hold it anymore
It was a hilarious experience. At the end of it, our photos came out well. Atleast, there was a halo over my head and Sastha was hidden behind it :) And yeah, the green board behind us was glowing with a karmic like exuberance. Whatever that means!
And my whole world came crumbling down when the only router of my college went down. This was two days ago. A new router has been installed and life is back to normal. Can't believe that I am so addicted to the net.
Now I'm back to checking my mails 5 times a minute. Yahooo!!
I was amazed to see the clarity on my monitor after I wiped it with a clean piece of cotton cloth. It was better after I wiped my glasses. Crispy clear!
Goes to show how much more beautiful the world would look when we look at it with a cleaner eye. Our perceptions of the world are influenced by our experiences, biases and egos and many a times we seem to be getting our bearings wrong. Cleaning our minds through introspection, advice and a little bit of rationality can help us see and admire the world we live in.
Life is too short to be spent bickering and sulking. Maybe I think time is linear, but I want whatever is left of it to be sweet while it lasts!
