Morons I Have Met

 Someone said I should write a book about them, and maybe I will, some day. But here's a preview on a couple.

I once had a one-hour meeting with a superior based in another city, about why our Diesel Generator expenses (on fuel) were high compared to his! We tried explaining (my admin was with me) that we were located in a rural area outside the municipal limits and therefore power cuts were rampant in the area. But after an hour or so, he wasn't convinced. He wanted to look at Power Cut announcements for our city, by the local Electricity board to verify our claims! 

But this may not be the worst of all the M's I have seen on the planet.. just wait for more. 

Making Right Decisions

 Though right and wrong is subjective, I think intuition born out of experience plays a large part in 'right' decisions being made. From a simple thing like deciding whether to go out, or not, or deciding whether to take an umbrella, to more complex stuff in an organisational context.

Choosing a person for a job or project within the organisation, or deciding whether to go ahead on a collaboration can be tough decisions to make, irrespective of the monetary value. Pats experience and judgement of character are both useful, and can lead to a better outcome in many cases. 

I have been happy with myself many a time, because I used this experience-based intuition to guide me (not a spreadsheet exactly), and came out fine. So if you can, get some grey hair. If not, well, wait until they turn grey,..

Human Resource management During Pandemic

 Some good and some bad, for the H.R. folks, I think. Recruitment had to go online, joining in many cases too, for new recruits. I interviewed online, but joined physically for my new job, for instance. For the MBA students, some job offers were delayed (or joining was), and internships had to be carried out online, with lockdowns persisting in most places around India.

Some events that student clubs regularly conduct moved online. In some cases, this led to a greater reach, because travel time and cost for speakers was cut, but it also meant a loss of 'the experience". The education/training itself underwent a huge change, and started to resemble distance learning in some ways. Of course, the tech-savvy B schools/colleges adapted quite well, but the experience was still a notch lower because of the lack of the social aspects, and peer learning opportunities.

H.R. lays a great amount of stress on people-to-people contact, and that took a hit. But they adapted to the inevitable, and will probably use the learnings well, if and when we get back to normalcy.

Tile Trouble

It is disconcerting to find the earth splitting under your feet- tiles splitting too. We had just such an experience last week. The reasons for this ground-breaking event can vary from improper laying of the base to wrong materials used to lay the base. The heat in closed homes does the rest.

 A tile cutter being used to remove the damaged rows. Below, the job is almost done.

 Below, the dark material is the base for fixing the new tiles.

An educational (and expensive) week of learning.

Experiences

Life is a series of experiences. I had an exhilarating one this weekend, akin to finding the unknown. Or discovering the meaning of life. I am a member of a Hindi film music-lovers' group online, and we had a get-together of the group over the weekend at a resort on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

I met around twenty people whom I had never met before (except online), and felt as if I had known them for decades. Hindi film music is our common interest, and it seems that was enough. We celebrated music, of course, with singing, antakshari, quizzes, leg-pulling and fun activities which kept us so busy we didn't realise how quickly the hours went by. Some spouses and kids whose curiosity was piqued by this "strange" group their family were members of also attended, and quite enjoyed themselves (we lived up to their expectations of weirdness, I guess). We had both youngsters and those young at heart, and it was overwhelming.

To the spirit of music, and new-found friends-cheers!

Forecasting in Life

The ability to forecast is interesting. It can also be scary. If you knew what would happen to everyone around you accurately, you may be scared to tell them. If you knew what would happen to you, you might be even more so. Ignorance is bliss, in a way.

But more than clairvoyance, it takes observation and experience to make reasonably good predictions about our actions and their consequences, I think. For example, it requires no genius to figure that if you study well, you will do well on an exam. Or that sooner or later, the electorate will get fed up with the party in power and throw it out (in a democracy). That a husband and wife will quarrel. That a marriage will produce kids (in spite of the above quarrels). That a woman will do the household work (at least for another century in India).

Further, that 90% of the celebrity gurus will one day get caught in a scam or a fraud. Actually, make that celebrities and people in positions of power (political, economic or other kinds). The good ones may never (want to) be celebrities. That people will Copy and Paste if they can get away with it. That handwriting is a vanishing art ( I am reading a book about this, more on that later).

That lawyers, to survive, need someone to fight a case against someone else. Judges, ditto. Dentists would be out of work if everyone maintained discipline in eating and drinking habits. Coke would fold up if Americans (and their ad agency) did not exist. Potato production would drop if Germans did not exist. Or, that Abhishek B. will never learn to act. Nor will Arnab learn to listen.

And finally, that I would stop writing this blog if I was the only one reading it.