Serial Killers

Definition (from Wikipedia):

A serial killer is someone who commits three or more murders over an extended period of time with cooling-off periods in between.

Word of caution (from me):

If you are a weak hearted, don't worry about it and read on. This post is not directly related to the serial killers who take away the lives of innocence. This is about the killers who take away the times of innocence.

Now my story begins...

I have been thinking of writing this since my friend siva posted this. I wouldn't get a better time than this. I am in a celebration mood for some reason. The reason is given at the end of this post.

I feel that the definition of serial killers rightly suits the mega-serials. Read the definition given above again...more murders, extended period, cooling-off period (saturday & sundays) all suit mega-serials perfectly. Right?

Couple of months ago Sun TV made a great decision to move all its non-serial related programmes telecasted during the weekdays to weekends. Now all 5 days of the week most of the time you can see only the serials in Sun TV. Ad-money must be pouring in really huge to make sun tv management to take such a great(!) decision. I believe that Sun TV is loosing its viewrship because of some really good shows in Vijay TV and lack of such good shows in Sun TV.

I think 99.999% of serials would fit in the following template: (please add if you think I have missed something)

1. A title song by a female singer with all smiling faces of heroine & other castings of the serial. (but the people in the serial never have situations to smile in the serial)
2. A female who is on the verge of retiring from film industry or who is not getting movie offers or who is retired from the industry is the hero cum heroine
3. Heroine is either divorced (must be a single mom) or being cheated by husband or fighting for right with her husband
4. Heroine is born with a lot of siblings (definitely more than 3) & she does the role of head of the family
5. A female villain and a few more villains to support that female villain
6. Heroine is a lone warrior; only very few other good people would be there in the serial but even they could not help her when in need
7. At least one main character is bigamy
8. When the director dont know how to proceed, there comes a new character and a new side-kick story

A conversation with me & my colleauge just a month ago: (colleague's name is avoided because of confidentiality issues).

Me (reluctantly): By any chance did you watch Selvi, last night?
Colleague (reluctantly): Yeah, why?
Me (with confidence): I missed to watch because of power cut
Colleague (with a great enthusiasm): oh, yesterday GJ went to Selvi's house to get the 'thali'....blah...blah...

I am wasting my precious 1 hr every day watching Kolangal & Selvi. I hate both the serials. You know it's like smoking, most of the smokers don't like to smoke but they can't really quit. These serials are like such addictions.

Can someone please suggest me a best way to quit-watching-serials?

For the best suggestion, I promise to transfer a few shares of Sun TV from my demat a/c to yours. (Worst suggestion gets the entire pack of Chitheeeee DVD, be careful).

Epilogue: Reason for my joy is that Selvi has ended (finally) last week with lots of loose ends. What a relief? 30 mins of productive time is gonna get increased in my life everyday. I am eagerly waiting for Kolangal to get over but there ain’t no trace of ending in a near future.

Where do they go?

Airport is a place where you can see lot love & happiness. People who are travelling for the first time, people who are
travelling on vacation, people who are travelling back after a successful business meet, people who come to see the loved
ones off and people who come to receive the loved ones are the few to quote for love & happiness. Leave out the frustration
that arises because of the flight delays.

I always enjoy my flight journeys. Every trip is a different experience. Sometimes good, sometimes bad and sometimes weird (such as the one that I am gonna talk about).

Couple of weeks ago, I was waiting for my delayed flight at Bangalore Airport almost close to mid night. I was sitting right in front of the booth where the airline staffs announce the status of each flight. I eagerly started observing the representatives (strictly not because that they were girls, please believe me) from each Airlines announcing the delays and departures of their flights.

At the time of departure of almost every delayed flight, representative of the airline was searching for at least a couple of 'missing' passengers. Jet Airway's representative howled over a million times about a missing couple and some Gupta. After a while she was searching for that Gupta guy by visiting each and every row of seating. I was seriously started thinking where do they go? To the rest room? Gone home of frustration after a long wait? To the books shop? I couldn't get the answer myself. While deeply thinking about these people, I dozed off for a while.

At last, my time of boarding arrived. I boarded the plane and sat on a seat next to a man aged in mid forties who was wearing a Gray coloured Italian Suit. He held a blackberry in his hand. I peeped eagerly to see what he was typing. I could only get to see '......close the deal'. Then he received a call. In a few seconds of listening he said

‘…When is the next available date?’

‘....then give appointment in August’

‘…bye’.
I thought he must be a well do to business man. The moment I saw his face I felt that he looked awfully familiar. He looked like my father when he was at that age. I observed that he had a scar on his face exactly like mine. He switched off his blackberry duly responding to the request
over PA by airline staff. He turned to me, smiled and said you look like me when I was at your age. I was surprised to hear that. I started probing about his background. He said he was a CEO of some company that I have never heard of. He originated from the same place as me and studied in the school where I did study. What a weird coincidence? I simply couldn’t believe that. He didn’t seem to be surprised when I said that we both had same background. I humbly asked for his good name. I felt like I was struck by a lightening on his reply. He said that his name was Seenivasan. While I was still in the high voltage shock, a person came to me and shook my shoulder

'…excuse me sir, are you the one travelling in the flight S2-0123 to Chennai?'

I nodded.

His face showed the irritation explicitly and his mouth said, 'Sir the plane is waiting for you as you are the last person to be boarded and we are looking all around for you'.

I came to reality, oh my god...all that was just a dream.

Well, it's not everyday you get to meet "you" after some 15 years, eh?

Now I know where do all those missing people go?

By the way, do you want to share some of your best/worst experience in Airport?

Me, Elvis, Golf and Wine

My grandma started worrying about me when I adopted some habits newly. Her grandy (yeah, that's me) was watching programmes in unknown languages on TV. I heard her whispering to her friend (another oldie in my neighborhood) that I must have gone mad after 4 years of my engineering degree. This happened when I was doing my fourth year engineering.

Originating from a small town (well, my friends still call it a village. But I don't agree) I was not exposed to English pop music & albums at all. One fine day I made a decision that I should start watching MTV and Channel-V to gain my knowledge on English music. I call it as 'knowledge' purposefully because I thought getting such exposure would make me a good schmoozer. In less than a year from then I was supposed to join my first job, which would have people from all over India with different cultural background. That’s the motive behind my decision. I learnt the names such as Bryan Adams, Lou Bega, Backstreet Boys, Shania Twain and etc thru that exposure. I must say that to some extent my newly gained knowledge helped me in making me a schmoozer at various situations.

While I was extending my knowledge horizon on my English music, one fine day (it happened few years after my grandma started worrying about my habit) in Minneapolis, USA, an American was mentioning about someone called Elvis during her conversation about music. I thought Elvis was a new singer whom I missed to notice. So I shrugged my shoulder (just for style) & declared that I never knew who Elvis was. She gave me a satiric smile and asked 'don't you have Elvis in India?’. Then she taught me that Elvis was a very famous singer in the world a few decades ago. I must say that it was one helluva embarrassing moment for me.

Few weeks after that, at my work place a karaoke contest was organized and they gave a list of songs which participants could choose to sing. I saw a few of Elvis's songs in it among hundreds of 'unknown' singers to me. With my friend's motivation I made a brave decision to participate in that contest. I bought a music CD of Elvis with the songs listed in the contest and started practicing.

D-day arrived. I was surrounded with an intimidating crowd of 300 Americans, I saw raising eye brows in the first couple of rows when I went on to the stage, my vision started becoming blurry, I grabbed the mike, my face was brave & legs were shivering (as vadivelu says: building strong, basement weak), I opened my mouth, I started the first line 'You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog'. (Just try imagining Elvis singing a song with thick south Indian accent). I must say that I made people around me very happy that day. I saw all of them smiling (or should I say burst out laughing?). Also I gave them a great topic to chat at dinner tables with their family. I finished singing the song and walked with my chins up and real proud like a successful gladiator even though there are heavily bleeding wounds. People (read Americans) cheered and applauded and came congratulating me. Later, it helped me to make some acquaintances at my work place too.

Remember it was a contest. They gave 3 prizes ($100, $75 and $50 cash prizes). I lost it. But the very next day, I got an email declaring that I got an 'honorary prize' of $25 and a T-Shirt. Not bad, eh? So at last, my MTV, Channel-V exposure paid me back.

Mohanbir Sawhney, McCormick Tribune Professor of Technology, Kellogg School of Management says: "While Indian engineers are good at maintaining and testing software, it's about time they also learnt how to hold a glass of wine and swing a golf club. It will go a long way in building a global brand".

When I read the above excerpt in the last edition of Business Today I had the flashback about my decision to get exposed to English songs & how that exposure came in handy many times enabling me to break ice, to make conversation and to make acquaintance.

Conclusion: When India growth story is keenly watched by the world and when many Indian companies are going on M&A spree, it is imperative that Indian companies should produce executives who are not only competitive but also comparative with their counterparts in the foreign companies.

(Well, when my wife is okay with my swinging a golf club, she is strictly prohibitive about my holding a glass of wine. As a future executive and a corporate leader, I am fighting so hard with my wife to improve my soft skill(?).)

Health is Wealth

Insurance is a risky business. I feel that in India awareness of insurance is not that great. The importance people give for medical insurance is far lesser than that for life insurance. While they worry about what happens when they are gone, they fail to give adequate thought about the mishaps that could happen while they are living. The probability of dying in accident is much lower than getting severely injured but not-dying. Many people go out of job for a longer duration due to accidents or some chronic diseases. Just by comparing the number of people (who I know) having life insurance with that of medical insurance, it seems that people are more worried about mortality than the morbidity. I think it is mainly because of the unawareness of what a medical insurance is. Even today in rural areas insurance to them is LIC. That’s it.

To me, medical insurance is more important than a life insurance because it aids me during my life-time. I do not want to spend all my savings on medical expenses. Well, there are some life insurance plans which cover chronic diseases too, let us leave that out for this argument.

A recent news states that Health insurers in India have been paying Rs.125 as claim for every Rs.100 paid as premium. That has resulted in hikes in medical insurance premium. I believe that the main cause for this is that the number of people having medical insurance is far less. To my knowledge, salaried people who are working for some established companies have group health insurance. Apart from that may be people with good awareness would have medical insurance cover. That’s it. There is a huge crowd of people with no sufficient knowledge about medical insurance.

Only when large number of people gets medical insurance the premium will be lower as the claims pay out would be made break-even by the amount paid as premium.

As per a statistics from census bureau of US, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage in US in 2005 is 15.9%. I couldn’t get a similar data for India to compare. But I am sure that it would be somewhere in seventies or eighties. In US there is a constant crib about medical insurance not giving adequate coverage to all kinds of diseases (like the one comes in the movie John Q). Here in India, the case is entirely different.

As a business, I think health insurance companies in India have lot of untapped market. With a proper awareness camps and advertisements they can get a great business. I don’t even remember seeing TV commercials for health insurance.

I used to tell my friend 4 years back that I want to start a medical insurance company in India as it has a very good untapped market. I feel that this holds good even today. But starting an insurance company needs a great capital. Given a chance I would start a health insurance company and my primary market would be rural areas.

By the way, do you have medical insurance for you and your family? Click here to learn about various options you have for health insurance in India.

Klog

I came across this K-log (Kid Blog) of a 5 years old kid. The kind of exposure kids get these days are really amazing.

Cho Chweet....I enjoyed reading.

(I am sure that this kid will start writing on his own in a year. He has it in his genes...)

Giving Back...

Few months back I got a feedback from one of my colleagues that it was time I started giving back to the organization whatever I had learnt till then. (I was on a learning curve). Last couple of weeks I am hearing his voice echoing in my ears repeatedly, but on an entirely different note.

In corporate world there is something called CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility. When a concern is becoming big it starts thinking about contributing something towards the improvement of its region/society. I have not seen a start up or a company that is making losses talking about CSR. Only the biggies that are making good profits and have good resources talk about CSR. These companies take up some kind of social service activities such as adult literacy program, environmental cleaning etc.

When I was in school and college, I used to think a lot about social services. I used to console myself that I could not do anything because I did not have money and once I got into to a job and started making my dough I would start fulfilling my service desires. Then it was justifiable and in line with a company’s CSR policy (?!). Almost three quarters of a decade into making money (being on earning curve) I have not given back anything significant so far to the society. It does not have to be just money it could be of any form like my knowledge, my time, my advice etc; it could be to anyone but without expecting a favour in return.

Now I am using 'my busy life' as the scapegoat. :(

I keep getting my colleague's voice in this context again & again and grows louder day by day. I think it is time I started something pretty soon before I become deaf.

Or should I just call my psychiatrist to fix an appointment for my hearing voices?

Exploit...

On a sunday afternoon I got a mail from one of my team members updating the status of his work. He is a smart one in the team so obviously victimized with loads of work, which made him to work during the weekend. Is this an exploitation?

This may sound like exploitation. But actually it is not. It is opportunity in disguise.

India and China are becoming (should I say already became?) outsourcing hub for the developed nations like US & UK. As a matter of fact US & UK are exploiting the low cost labour in India and China. But for the countries like India and China with over population and poor employment opportunities this 'exploitation' is certainly an 'opportunity'. In fact a great opportunity that has changed many lives.

Total number of employees in India's top 3 IT companies alone has reached around 200,000. Recruitment projections each of these companies show are mind-boggling. Our work environments are becoming more and more competitive with highly intellectual people around. To stand out in the crowd there is a lot need to be done by each individual. It has become not an unusual thing for the people who are 'meeting the expectations' to end up with lower performance ratings. Everyone is crazy about 'making a difference' and going that 'extra mile'.

There is a saying: You can achieve little with little sacrifice; you can achieve more with more sacrifice; you can achieve great with great sacrifice. Achievement is always directly proportional to the sacrifice. If we look at the history of great achievers there would be lot of sacrifices in their lives.

In my experience I have realized that when it comes to getting opportunities & growth one should let others exploit (positively). That’s the hard reality now.

Upset

I always wonder how much the readership of my blog is. Not a bad thing to have for a burgeoning writer (yeah, that's me...). Recently I re-enabled the web counter which I had disabled sometime ago due to some technical reasons. Whenever I make a new post I send out a mail to my friends requesting them to read and comment it. Most of them read it; some of them comment it and few of them send mails to me with their comments.

There is this good old friend of mine who never commented nor sent any mail commenting it but I constantly make my request & nag him to read my blog. I was wondering whether he really reads it or not as he never commented about it. I wanted to know his comments very badly because we go a long way, he knows me very well and he had been a great moral support during my ups & downs. We spend hours talking about books. He is a voracious reader. He introduced me the authors like P.G.Wodehouse. One day, he casually commented that he would read my blog only if his name was mentioned in my posts. After a few days I sent him a note saying that he could find his name in my blog. I lied. I lied because of a stupid avidity wanting to make him read my blog and to know his opinion. He did read it and found that I had lied. He is now pretty mad at me and neither answering nor returning my calls. That has made me pretty upset.

This post is to make my open apology to my dear friend Venki.

Venki, sorry for what I did.

Playing Welch

I have a machine, which constantly fails to meet my objectives. It has lot of performance issues. I could easily decide to throw away and purchase a new one or send the machine to a repair shop. Unlink of machines addressing performance issues of people who work for you is not an easy thing. That too when it comes to people with ‘attitude’, it becomes a great challenge to address the matter. Performance management is still an area where a lot of research is going on and is an area using which business consultants make handsome money. There is no standard performance management practice across the globe. Each organization adopts or creates its own practice, which none of its employees agree that that is good. In most of the companies there is no ‘performance management’ only ‘perception management’.

It’s quite usual that we have to face people with performance problems at work. There were many instances during when I wanted to sack people out of my project (if not out of the company). As a boss I could easily decide whether a person would scale up or not and whether to sack him or keep him. But it is the phase that comes next which always makes me sick. I think of the consequences to that person after sacking. Empathy would occupy me all over and I would not be able to make a decision which is of organization’s interest. I would try to find at least one or two qualities in the person to keep him. Who am I helping by sacking a person who has real performance issue? Is it me? or my boss? or my boss's boss? Who is the 'corporate'? Are those mortars and bricks the corporate? The consequence of keeping or sacking him ultimately goes to the investor, the one who enjoys or suffers the good or bad results of the company.

A few weeks ago, I felt pathetically helpless when I had to reject 7 out of 8 people whom I interviewed for recruitment because they did not meet the expectation. When I had to reject people from rural background, from a small unknown village I would feel like hell. I put my legs in their shoes to realize how would they feel or react to the negative result of the interview. This may be because of the fact that I myself was not from a great background. In one of such situations, in my previous organization, my class mate from my college & I who were in the panel decided to select a person instead of reject. We justified ourselves saying that when we could survive that candidate would also survive. Was it unethical?

Mr. Jack Welch, ex-CEO of the empire GE was a great manager. He is one of the best managers of the century. When I read his autobiography ‘Straight from the Gut’ a few years ago it was very motivating. I have strongly recommended to many people to read this book. Being a CEO for 20 years for an empire like GE and growing it multi-fold is not an easy job. He is notoriously known as brutal & ruthless for the way he managed his human resources to ensure good performance. In his saga he had laid off 100,000 people from his organization. In his autobiography he explains how to manage & ensure performance of your people. It goes somewhat like this: (sorry that this is not a verbatim recital from that book) When a shop owner approached him of advice on how to manage the performance of the people employed in that shop, Jack advices to lay off bottom 10% of the people in terms of performance. When the shop owner said that all in his team was performing pretty well, Jack advised to go ahead with the lay off rule so that it would result in improved performance of the others too. This is how threat is injected into the veins of the employees and more ‘performance’ is extracted using the survival of the fittest concept. Unlike most other organizations GE demands year on year productivity improvement from its offshore vendors. Terror, eh?

I like Mr.Welch. I liked his style. But Playing Welch is not easy. I can’t do that. I am too sympathetic to have the guts to bite the silver bullet as Mr.Welch. I am experimenting ways which work for me & will adopt in the longer run. Who knows one day some one might write a blog on ‘Playing Seeni’.

Kindergarten Engineers

A week ago, my wife & I visited one of my friend’s home. My friend has a kid who goes to kindergarten. My friend was telling that the next day his kid had his term exam. I was observing the kid for sometime and I observed no sense of tense or no seriousness of the exam. The kid was busy playing and enjoying himself with out a trace of exam fever in his deeds. Whereas his mom & dad highlighted a numerous times during their conversation with me about the kid’s exam and they sounded real nervous about it.
Suddenly an analogy struck me.

Back at my work place I have many fresh out of college people in my team. Having those kids in the team keeps the work place very lively with all the fun, as if having kids around. I have observed that most of the freshers would not have the seriousness of project delivery deadlines while me and my team leads are pretty worried about meeting the deadlines & meeting the quality etc. When retrospected my good old ‘fresher’ days I realized that I was no exception.

Now it’s my turn to worry and be serious on behalf of them (as someone else did on behalf of me). However, I am sadistically happy that soon they would grow up to realize the seriousness of the environment they are associated with. Some cycle that!