Posts from the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Jan 28

Brainstorming is like wooing a girl

The more you try, the less you get.

Many people get stuck in the quiet-before-the-storm when it comes to ideas, just like when it comes to girls. So here I am, trying to help you kill two birds with one stone:

1) Find something else to do.

Newton wasn’t thinking of gravity when he discovered it. Think of gravity as true love (aka the girl you need to woo) or that one idea that will change the world. Until your apple falls, read a book.

2) Research, research, research.
Google has everything you need to know. Learn from the mistakes of other people, incrementally innovate on innovations, and let your mind dissolve the boundaries of thoughts, possibilities, imagination and benchmarks. The best ideas are inspired by some creative company, and Google is not something she’ll ever be jealous of.

3) Help technology help you.
The whole the-best-ideas-come-while-in-the-shower idea is great to inspire the daily ritual, but it’s also true. And it’s not just the shower; ideas come when you’re trying to shut out your thoughts for the day, when you’re waiting at the traffic light to cross the road, when you’re waiting in the cashier queue – basically at all times when you’re not inclined to think hard.

Reach out for the phone in your pocket. Make notes. If you happen to be near a laptop, scribble it down on a Google document so it doesn’t get lost on a hard disk. If you are still thinking girls, replace “best ideas” with remembering the little things she says. Use them when you need to score brownie points – a trick that will never fail you.

4) Get coffee in a cafe.
Anyone can down a couple of drinks at a noisy bar and muster up the strength to hold a conversation. Only real men can hold one over a sober cup of coffee. Caffeine is the kind of simulant that a well-oiled brain needs, and most cafes have the ambiance to allow free flow of thoughts. You can watch the world pass by and still feel comfortable at your pace of thoughts. That’s why they call it thinking out of the box.

Disclaimer: Brainstorming is an art you can acquire with some practice, but as you probably know from experience, girls are a complicated species!

Dec 24

3 Comments

Christmas humor, as seen on Twitter

Here’s sending some ho-ho-ho moments your way.

10.

Cheers a fun-filled Christmas!

Jan 21

4 Comments

Guess who’s back!

Let me say a fashionably late hello to the new decade. I have finally found my new link to the blogosphere. No prizes for guessing; I’m probably the last person to resort to mobile blogging! I’m already in love with my beautiful new white iPhone and all set to resume blogging!

Happy 2010 to all

Nov 11

10 Comments

the ‘un’feeling

We live our lives in phases. At the end of each phase, we pack our bags, gather our memories and move on. Just like that.

So, this is my last week in college. 3 classes to go, 1 presentation, 2 exams. That’s it. The end of college, the end of student life for me. I’m moving on. And the gravity of it is not hitting me. There is no nostalgia, not yet anyway. I don’t feel a sense of discontinuity that the future promises to bring. The next few years are going to be radically different from the last 20. I know that, and yet, somewhere within, I can’t seem to acknowledge it. I guess it will come with time. Right now, I could equate myself with some cold-hearted soul who is ready to trash the last 3.5 years and never look back. It’s my last week in college and I don’t feel anything.

I wonder sometimes if things could’ve been different. If I had studied in Delhi (paid 6000 Rs a year, oh my dear money), I would’ve graduated in July this year, and as my friend very aptly put it, escaped the whole damned recession. I’d probably have a job, people would’ve had lower expectations, and there would’ve been much less pressure. Well, who knows? I might just as well have hated my life. Anyway, this is not a time for cognitive dissonance. It’s a time for reminescence. The 3.5 years have done me good. I would do it over again, just for the people I’ve met, the friends I’ve found, the lessons I’ve learnt, the mistakes I’ve made. It still, however, feels like I’m not ready to reminisce just yet, ike it’s not all over yet, like there’s more to come.

Maybe tomorrow will feel differently and more human!

Sep 11

5 Comments

Wordle: Funky text designs

If you’re bored of monotonous looking text, or just plain bored, check out Wordle. You can write a bunch of text and it’ll convert the text to some funky patterns, with the words repeated more often appearing more prominent. I spent all of last night playing around with it! I’m considering using it for my presentations soon.

The good things in life.

Jul 31

1 Comment

Goodbye work

I can’t let the summer end without this last post. By summer, I mean the summer in Singapore. Of work, banks and contradictions. Tomorrow is my last day. I’ll be exaggerating if I say it’s been a roller coaster ride. It’s been pretty smooth actually, at least on the outside. My head has been full of conflicts though, from one moment to the next. I have come a long way since I talked about survival, surviving work in a bank. I have grown out of it, the phobia, the fear and the bias. I know though, that what I had thought all along is true, but I have come to realize that I don’t have the right to judge. It is true that most people are motivated by money. Yet, they are some of the nicest people I’ve met in Singapore. In fact, they’ve almost changed my opinion of the country, in the context of racism. I’ll probe into that topic another time, but for now, I am, as always, in two minds. I can’t say if I would want to get a full time position with them. I’d do it for the people and the work culture, but it will never be for the love of work. The passion, the excitement, the thrill will stay missing. It won’t be for the love of marketing. And the other M isn’t motivation enough. (Read money). I’m starting to blabber now, but my point is, I think I’ve discovered a whole new world in the last two months. I won’t feign excitement. I just want to establish that from here on, I won’t, I can’t judge people by what motivates them. It’s been a good two months, on most days, and it’s gone by fast, on most days.

Now, the summer really starts. Home, food, family and friends. The better life!

Jul 21

Trilympics

20 kilometers in a day, 24 hours without sleep, for the cause that was Trilympics. It was a fund raiser-cum-awareness event for disabled athletes in Singapore, who are heading out soon to Beijing for the Olympics. In support of the cause, Trilympics aimed to get people to run / spin the distance equivalent to one round around the world within 24 hours. A distance of 40,000 km, from 1 pm on Saturday to 1 pm on Sunday. The turn-out was decent, and in total, we accumulated a distance of 36,000 km! I did my .06% by running (and partially walking) 20 km. It took close to 5.5 hours and I couldn’t do it again. Instead of sleeping away the Saturday night, we were out on the track at 5 in the morning. Insanity really. Even more insane was the number of people out there with us. Not just Trilympics volunteers and participants, but regular runners / joggers / walkers. People in the age range of 40 to 75! Old, stooping, frail. Yet motivated. I wonder how. I wonder why. At 5 in the morning? Every day? I don’t know whether to call it impressive, compulsive or just insane.

I do believe in the cause, I guess. But that’s not why I volunteered or participated. I did it to clear my 80 hour requirement at college, to serve the community. Noble and all, but to me it’s sillier than even all the other stuff they do. First up, the only reason behind community service should be self-satisfaction and the desire to help. Nobody that I know would volunteer for Trilympics out of pure choice. I didn’t. I don’t even deserve the 80 hours I clocked from it. Other than the running and some ushering (as an organization liaison officer!), I spent 3 hours playing cards at Coffee Bean and another few watching a movie. I think that’s the core of the problem with such requirements. It does not even close to motivate you to do something for the causes you believe in. If you really want people to contribute to the causes they believe in, you have to lead by example. It’s not the stuff that should be looked for in a resume. Or as part of your degree requirement. It’s what should stem from inside of you. It’s the stuff of all action and no talk. How much longer are we going to score in the name of those who really do suffer?

Jun 14

A reality check

We had our interns’ orientation at work today. I’m not one for making too much small talk, but the other interns seemed pretty nice. There are some 20 of us in total. We were being pitched the MA program, and while HR talked about all the values, training and development stuff, I was almost enticed. I know by now that I like the kind of people that come to work there, friendly, intellectual and hardworking. But post HR’s intro, three people talked to us about their lives in the bank. The first was a guy whose been with them for 9 years. He looked like a misplaced designer / advertising guy (if you know what I mean), but with a more pleasing personality. I thought he showed just the right degree of “passion” and “enthusiasm” for the stuff that he did. The second was a recently hired MA, an SMU alum, who sounded like she was still trying to convince herself that she had chosen the right place to find the ‘work-life balance’. The third speaker gave me my much-needed reality check. He was extremely excited, enthusiastic, passionate, committed, frank, even funny, (in)appropriately sometimes. He made me realize how a really important factor to succeed in a place like this is the unbounded love for money. In his own words, “You can fly, drive, take a bus or take a train to KL. If you fly, it HAS to be first class. [Now that sounds familiar, thanks to Finance 101]. Else drive down, but ONLY in a Porsche.” Money. (Un)fortunately, it doesn’t do the trick for me.

My take-aways from today’s session:

Everyone looks for work-life balance while looking for their first job.
There’s no such thing as a work-life balance. Not in banking anyway.
You have no social life while you work. Work becomes your social life.
It’s 80% work and 20% balance if you are extremely ambitious (ie you really want more money and more). Else it’s just 100% misery.
HR sounds like more fun. Nah.
I should start worrying about my job-hunt, BIG time.

I like my work here, I do. I like the people too. But I can’t see myself here for too long. I’m not at peace.

The time is now. I need to get my priorities right.

Jun 9

Facebook for dummies

At a team lunch at work last week, Facebook poked its way into our conversation. Only 2 of my 30-something team-mates have ventured into the “happening” world of social networking. I don’t intend to mock, but it was more than amusing to hear someone talk about Facebook in such naive terms! It struck me then that we are really a generation apart. While we were busy building our lives on Facebook, there were some totally oblivious to that part of the world, the way Europeans were to the Americas until Christopher Columbus came along. Who would have thought that the super wall could indeed divide our generation from theirs?

Jun 8

Working in a bank

For a long time, I thought banks were plain evil.

I guess it started with how everyone (almost everyone) in college wants to get a job in a bank, some bank, any bank. To me, it came as a stark reminder of how people are all rowing their boats towards the same lighthouse, and how they’d probably crash on the same rock. It isn’t for the love of the work. Only money.

A series of poor judgments and a phase of desperation later, I find myself working in, well, a bank! It puts my ‘principles’ on dubious grounds. It makes me a two-faced hypocrite. It took nothing less than courage to walk into that office, stamping over everything I had quite believed in.

A week and a half into it, I’m almost proud to say I’ve survived. I must admit how baseless my “logic” was. At least as far as Marketing is concerned, a consumer bank is extremely similar to any other consumer goods company. They merely sell financial plans, like a telecom company would sell phone plans or an FMCG company would sell food or shoes. The work environment too, is no different from a regular company – creativity constraining cubicles, cluttered desks, lots of workplace lingo.

It’s probably not as exciting as a Nike or a Mars would be. Definitely not, but it’s survivable. In fact, I don’t hate it at all. This weekend hasn’t even felt like a weekend, not one that I desperately needed anyway. I don’t know if I’ll be saying the same a month from now. Probably not, because I don’t see myself growing here, in what I’m doing, at least as an intern. But I’ve already learnt what I’m going to value very much in my first and subsequent jobs – the room to grow, in terms of responsibility, independence and expectations. For the first time, I feel prepared to venture out into the corporate world, as though its claws have receded into a welcoming hand and its dracula teeth have turned into a big white smile.

I hope it lasts.

It still makes me a hypocrite. I see myself selling out for my entrepreneurial dream, which is slowly starting to take shape.