Monday Blues !!!

Work has been not much fun as it used to be ..It doesn't excite me as it used to be when i was young..Work seems to be a routine and boring. Tried changing jobs, changing cities , everything but can't find that eagerness and fun that i used to feel when Sunday evening used to energize me. 
Now i wake up on a Monday morning thinking 'damn another f***ing week starts'.
When did i lose the joy from work ?..It seems like a long time when i slept peacefully with a feeling of  job well done.
Failures and disappointments are part of life. You can't succeed if you don't fail. But who defines success?
The figures of my year end bonus or what my Boss, customer, team and colleagues think can be classified as success?
The social fabric of life is so much wrapped around us that we just can't be 'us'. Everyone has to live based on what others think about them. I always thought of me and work as being in a relationship. Both has to work towards each other, sort their differences and be mature in their relationship. But i always forgot the other end of the relationship is not a person but group of people, power games & bureaucracy and they are always judging and measuring you at each and very step.
You would find different type of people in your career and may not get well with everyone  The world has never accepted a rebel and would never accept him because it creates imbalance & change and no body likes change.
Honesty and straight talking has been always challenged. No one likes the truth as it is..It always has to be sugar coated (diplomatic)..
Today's corporate world and work environment has become so much political. No one appreciates talent, its always 'perception. 
You would be called successful because people perceive you are successful . Then bonuses, plaudits etc. will fall on your lap.
Its so much perception based that being true and speaking your mind is usually termed being aggressive and never appreciated. 
The most important factor for growth is change. No new ideas will emerge if you don't challenge the old ones. 
For me success is not about what the world perceives of me but what i perceive of myself. A genuine thank you from some one whom i helped can be success for me.
I wish i could create a work place where there is no hierarchy of a boss or employee. No body would report to anyone but themselves.Where there is nothing called perception and everyone is equal from the janitor to the director.
Everyone has a right to speak up their mind and being heard no matter how stupid others perceive.If they really believe in themselves then let them do it..if they fail..let it be..but if they succeed then we are making impossible possible.
Today's corporate world is so hell bent on reducing cost and becoming leaner that every appraisal process has only one objective - Find people to fire..Blame Jack Welsh  for it.I hate his philosophy because his theory made humans into machines...If the machine is not performing to specifications then decommission it, sell it and in case of people 'layoff'. The sorry part of his theory is that he forgot one most important thing..Humans are not machines and Humans can change..The only liability you can convert into an asset is your 'employee'..Sorry Mr Welsh..The bottom 10% of the company are not poor performers but your company is performing 10% poorly as expectations and it can be due to the 10% hike that your senior management took in bonuses.
The problem is that no one wants to challenge the mob. Challenge, debate and argument if moderated correctly can be cradles for ideas..but unfortunately the current appraisal and performance review process has forced people to avoid conflicts and stand up against the mob.
The appraisal process has turned into a joke where you feel as if you are up for trial with evidences, arguments and counter arguments between you and your manager.The role of a manager is to mentor his team, guide them and help them grow. But now a days managers are only concerned about finding people to fire so that they don't get fired. Its one of the most sick part of the entire process where instead of enhancing the asset (employee), it tries to destroy it.
I always believed that if a child fails, its not because he is stupid but because his parents are . The same goes for managers. Every person is talented and its the job of a manger and the organization to utilize the talent
Most of the people hate their job because they are stuck in something that they don't love. Finding what you love to do and enjoy as work is equally difficult to finding your soul-mate.
Hence we end up like in our relationships, always compromising.
I would want to create an environment where people are given time to explore their talent rather than assigned a task. People should be allowed to chose their tasks rather than the managers assigning it to them.An organization should be fluid where there are no teams but one single team where any one can go and work on anything that excites them.I call it organized chaos.
Its very important that we try different things because until that time we would never find what we love to do and never have the opportunity to explore it.
It is possible..may be..I don't deny that its difficult but everything is possible..unless you challenge..you never know..
Till that time Monday morning would always suck...

We the 'Ants' !!!!

Thought of going to work on Monday is one of the worst feeling for pretty much all the people. Then there are some people who always are working be it weekends or nights. I wonder what pleasure they get in spending long hours at work.
Most of us working in the corporate world would have seen the 'ant' ! . The one who just keeps on working day in and day out. 
For the past few months, I have been thinking about these ants and why they work so much. Surely if you are working days and nights, then either there is something wrong with you or your organization. 
Then i thought, what a wonderful idea to classify these ants. !
The Idiot  - This ant would spent all his time doing something else and then start working only till late in the day. He would never forget to send that 'important' email late in the night marking his boss a copy of it.
The Workaholic -These ants are genuinely crazy. They would always finish their work as soon as possible and then want to take up others work.They would hound like hyenas and would be the first to pounce on any meat sent via common team emails.Their only objective is to screw other peoples happiness.
The Fast Tracker - These ants are the most shrewd. They know how to pull the right strings. They want to learn more about everything and would spend long hours even learning about their neighbourhood teams projects. That way they can ask 'some' questions to 'some' managers and show off how much they know about etc etc....They have only one objective to grow as soon as possible.
The Dumb Ant - These are the poor ants who are slow learners and usually take time to finish their work. Alas they have no other option.
The Loner - The ant with no social life. Usually you find these ants in the libraries or in some corner doing something completely alone. They have no social life so to speak of and the only comfort they seek is in their work.
I have seen all these type of people in my career and always pity them for the state of life ! I wonder if work is everything for us. The idiot, workaholic & the fast tracker are just driven by their ambition and ego to succeed. Working late hours is their way of proving to their boss that they are an asset to the organization.

Destiny...Fate..Its written..!!

Happened to catch the movie 'slumdog millionaire' on the telly.I had seen it earlier but some how when i watched it again alone with no distraction, I seemed to like the movie. I had my own reservations about the movie depicting the sad part of a lovely country and i had watched the movie with that pre conceived notion. However this time around i watched it in the real sense.Its an absolutely wonderful ride to show how everything in life has a way of working out.!!
We may not realise it as life flies by but when you look back,whatever happened good or bad , happened for the best. If it did not happen, you wouldn't be 'you'.
I often wonder if life is merely circumstantial coincidences happening over a life of a person. Life for me is just an algebraic equation and i have to solve for X.
We cannot control where we are born or what kind of life we get. Some People are born in well do families and inherit a fortune.The equation is easy for them.Others it not so easy, born and brought up in not so desirable circumstances, they get a much tougher equation to solve.
But some how not all people who have easy equations to solve are successful and the complex ones are failures. Its the way you approach to solve your math of life.
There are only two reasons we fail, over confidence & lack of confidence.Some of us no matter how tough the problem is find a way to solve it. Some of us are so over confident that we mess up the easiest of equations.Some of us are so scared of the thought of algebra that we mess up even before looking at it.


The biggest mistake we face in life is same as we make in our exams.Life is never too easy to solve and neither is it too tough to solve. Its the way you try to solve it.
Most of you who has reached to this stage of my blog would be wondering, what the hell has this to do with destiny..? fate..? 
Destiny is the process of solving your equation on life.Jamal mailk had a bloody ridiculous equation to solve.He created his own destiny..His search for the solution of life (his love) was so desperate that he some how managed to end up on the show..rest is history. 
No matter how tough your life is, it doesn't matter ...remember..give it your best shot and rest will be history! 
Eventually it all works out !!! 

The age old question !!!

Hmm...This is one question that has plagued the human mind right from the time we understood emotions..I don't think science can put a time scale on exactly when we started feeling emotions. Did a caveman have emotions? Or did it evolve as the human brain evolved and humans started becoming social..Did a caveman feel sorrow when he lost his friend..? Did a caveman feel love for his wife?? Did he feel the care for his children?? What is emotion?? What is love? What is care? 

I remember my growing up times when one day back from school, i saw a few cute looking puppies playing on the road, They were so cute, i wanted to take one of them home. The moment i picked up one of them, i heard a growl and i could see its mother about to pounce on me. I ran as if there was no tomorrow and to this day i get scared even looking at puppies.Well does this mean dogs also have emotions and is it very different to what we feel. Our emotions may be more complicated but isn't it also a bit selfish? 

The love that a dog has it for its babies is unconditional care. But can care be called as love? Does that mean the dog loved its puppies? 

Every man or women would have heard this term 'unconditional love'. What does it mean? Every one expects unconditional love..Its said that when some one cares for some one unconditionally, that's when its called 'love'.

I just cannot understand the difference between care and love. 

Parents love their kids , give them the best of things but don't they expect that kids take care of them when they are old. Couples love each other but isn't it that they need some one to share their life with, some one to make them feel special and the fear of losing them makes them love?

When can you say really that you love some one..? What's the ultimate test of love? How do you know that you love some one? 

Some would say that for love you have to lose. You have to feel the space left by that person cannot be filled by anything else in this world to make you realize love.But isn't it a bit far fetched to know love. For that you have to kill that person first or make them go away.

But is is really the case, can you care for some one so much but then let go? Can you really disconnect yourself with some one whom you love so much. Like the dog does to its puppies once it grows up.

Some would say yes, There are cases when couples love each other and then they end up moving apart due to unavoidable circumstances. Most of the cases, kids move out of their parents place when they grow up or parents make their kids go out to make them independent.

Does this mean we are no different to a dog. I guess not. The dog doesn't think about the puppies once they have gone. The cycle of life starts again for the dog. But for a human, its not so easy, our emotions are much evolved and much more complicated.

People move on but they carry their baggage throughout their life. They love and lose and love again in the cycle of emotional life. Each time they lose some one, they repent on things that went wrong and try to change in their new relationship. Then they commit some new ones and the whole cycle again and again and again.

Loving some one doesn't mean letting go. Loving some one means keeping them close to you. Making sure you don't lose them.

In this complex modern life , we care for our loved ones but we rarely love our loved ones. Until the time comes when we get the meaning of love, we are going to keep on losing the people we cared about.

The best way to love some one is to think every day what your life is going to be without them..!! 

Playing God

It was one of those evenings when the arduous pain of office work had broken me down. The thought of making dinner was killing me. It was a choice between starvation and sleep. I knew i could not sleep, then the next work day would have been another painful one to pass.Eventually ended up watching telly while i was cooking. BBC had new programme on synthetic biology. It was a very interesting series which showed how much we humans have advanced technologically where we can take a gene from a jelly fish and put it into a bacteria to make it glow. Wow that would have been some kind of science fiction when i used to study biology in school.

Being a computer programmer, i can relate to the theory of creating such kind of programmed cells. This made me think..are we really playing god??? Some people may say this is not right and we should not try to mend nature..but are we really mending nature??

Nature created us..Humans..gave us the brains to think..its all natures design..so some day if we really design a cyborg....isn't that also form of evolution..? May be nature wants us to create these to take it to the next level..May be this is all in the design..May be this is the form of nature's way of exponential evolution..We humans are just the tools for it..

The biggest reason of evolution is necessity to survive..To keep you alive...thats why we have brains..because we are not the strongest in the animal kingdom..Humans evolved their brains because they had to survive.

Hence the transformation from Monkey to Human..

Now we are faced with the next stage of evolution..Man has reached the stage when he can challenge the the ultimate default, i.e death..Can this be the another step in evolution??

If our body is a machine..then the genetic code is the software that runs the machine...

I feel synthetic biology is the tool that will take humans to the next level of evolution.

To make a man into a cyborg.

And this is nothing against nature, this is nature's way of evolution. Its been happening for millions of years and will continue on....