random ramblings

  1. I spent two days in bed over the weekend, with a terrible headache and cough. Even the fever bouts in the past did not flatten me totally like this for the last few years. Even though there wasn’t any fever this time, the kind of “fever dreams” of scenes that run in a loop adds to the disorientation. Recovering now.  2. Watched two movies in the past week. Chamkila (Hindi) - story of Amar Singh Chamkila, a Punjabi musician and his wife Amarjot Kaur, who were both killed at the peak of their popularity. Some of their songs were suggestive about extra marital affairs and drug use and they got caught up in a web of professional jealousy and militant uprising in Punjab. What is right or wrong in such - but solution wouldn’t have been shutting down voices. This was well acted, liked the music and the slice of life from Punjab.   Watched Oppenheimer (English) finally. During the Barbenheimer, I had watched Barbie (which was boring for me), but kept this for later. I w...

  “I would like to go back to being a software engineer, earning the salary of a software engineer” - someone at work told me today. She was quite serious about it and was asking why such an option does not exist for someone to be in the same role forever. This is after nearly 18 years in the career. I was suggesting she take the power programmer route, to remain a programmer all her career since she wanted to do programming only, but as a specialist, earning higher and deserved compensation.  I am not sure whether it is because of lack of confidence or self belief, but this reminded me of this article - “ Confidence Gap ”. Many of us suffer from “imposter syndrome”, that we will be discovered as faking our roles. But the article says, it is prominent in women.  I hesitate to suggest reading this article, to be at the risk of “mansplaining” or being a “benevolent sexist” (effect of being educated about the unconscious biases), but I see many painful instances of women dro...

Yesterday’s word in the Wordle game was CRAFT.  I came across a couple of ways craft was talked about in the last few days.  First was Jerry Seinfeld, promoting the first movie he has directed, at age 70. I had watched and loved the show, Seinfeld. I had read somewhere that comedians tend to understand human psychology better since they need to process a lot to come up with lines that are concentrated wisdom that surprise us and make us laugh. I had also read somewhere that you should not take serious life advice from a comedian. But still.  Jerry must be on a media tour to promote his movie and hence coming up with “thought bombs” that grab attention (in the first article below, he proclaimed movies are dead). But it was a good read and I came across below excerpt:-  Stand-up is like you’re a cabinetmaker, and everybody needs a guy who’s good with wood. There’s trees everywhere, but to make a nice table, it’s not so easy. So, the metaphor is that if you have good cr...

  1. I took a break from work (mostly) for a week. I had felt exhausted, out of energy and was wound up so much that I was easily triggered. I feel this past week quieted the mental chatter, helped reduce the anxiety and somehow feels like the inner waves have settled on a more peaceful rhythm. I had let 12 earned leaves lapse by the end of the March, had to work on India holidays since I was on travel and might have worked myself to the point of burn out. Hope to change that this year.  2. I am encountering more and more “hints” or “signs” like this one which says wisdom is gained through “weathering storms in tumultuous arenas of life”. In extreme versions, it is stop reading / listening, start doing. But I hope to have a balance to apply the learnings in life and work and curate my reading / learning to match the problems I am facing at the time or to fill the known gaps.  3.  I am continuing to make an effort to find and read good long form articles. Few that I l...

  Yesterday I was talking to a friend who is in Norway, at crossroads about career and where to raise kids. I was telling him about this tweet -  about US vs Europe work culture, education, healthcare, art and culture in general. I read someone else saying tongue in cheek - “France has Mbappe, Mistral..”.  In India, IT work culture resembles that of the US, with “unpaid overtime” which is taken for granted and similar work life balance issues. NRN was talking about working 70 hrs a week for India to become a developed country, glorifying the unpaid overtime. Meanwhile, emigration is still increasing. Earlier people used to go abroad for postgraduate masters degrees and then continue working there, but now there is a trend of even going for graduate degrees abroad if they can afford it.   Today, I saw this headline , incidentally from someone in Norway itself saying work life balance apart, “Europe is less hardworking, less ambitious, more regulated and more ri...

  1. One of the blogs I have followed for more than 15 years, is Matt Webb’s Interconnected. I am not sure how I came across his blog, but it is one I kept track of, as I migrated from blogreader to google reader to feedly over the years. I don’t understand him many times, but like people whom we remember for having given us something in life, I owe him for introducing me to Gregory Bateson’s “Steps to an Ecology of Mind”, all those years back. I came across below in one of his latest blogs.  "For me, a company is, at least to a degree, for the people in it. Right? A company that makes not too much profit but is the collective endeavour of many people is a good company, surely? Or rather, it occupies as many people as it requires and allows those people to enjoy a relaxed life. Imagine a company staffed by people with enough room in their days to build intuitive skill in their work and show empathy to customers. To be not transactional. And to take long lunches. That’s good fo...

I have been waiting for one movie to come out on any of the OTT platforms, seeing the praise from many in my “circle” and finally got to watch it - Perfect Days , a Japanese language film, by a German director. It is about a man who goes about his days cleaning toilets in Tokyo. Its dialogues could be printed in a handful of pages, very little is said. It shows the routines of a normal life, simple pleasures in life such as music, nature and books, not worrying about the tomorrows but living in the now, not living to others expectations, needing little, not taking on commitments for the sake of it and being satisfied with what one has.  I had written “change one thing a day” at the top of the daily journal, to remind myself to change some part of my routine every day, to avoid getting into comfort zones and declining. But this is the opposite - having the exact same routines every day. Same morning routines, same coffee, listening to 70s or 80s songs from cassette tapes, doing the ...