Finally, it arrived....

For more than a couple of years, we have been planning to get rid of our old crappy backyard play set (came with the house) and have something nice for the kids to play. Finally, we decided to make it a birthday gift for Nalin. The new play set came and has finally been installed (it took the contractors slightly more than 2 days). It looks pretty cool and the kids had a blast yesterday. Well worth the money and the wait....

First, here's the old one.



And, now presenting the new fun play structure..... :)

Home delivery

This morning I was WFH waiting for the delivery guys to deliver the washer/dryer. They gave a window of 8:30 am to 10:30 am. I had totally forgotten that I had to deliver a presentation at work at 10:30. Hmm.. what to do. I hoped against hope that the delivery guys would come soon but to no avail. Meanwhile I logged into webex to monitor how the meeting was going and when my turn was going to come.

At 10am, I see the delivery truck stop outside my house. I quickly rush out, greet the people and show them where the stuff needed to be installed. Then I rushed back to my meeting only to find that the presenter before me had not shown up and I was to present next. hmmm. aal izz well. I started presenting (it was supposed to be a short one). Meanwhile, the delivery guys got to work, removing the old stuff etc. As I was wrapping up my preso, one of the participants asked me a question and I was mid-sentence replying to him when the delivery guys yells out "Sir!! Sir!! Hellooo!!!"

I stopped mid-sentence, excused myself, punched the button on the phone (hopefully it was the mute button), yelled from upstairs to the guys below to give me 2 mins and went back to the call to complete my sentence. :) oh boy.... I would have laughed at the situation had I not been so tense. Rest of the presentation went ok, without any further incidents. In hindsight, the timing couldn't have been worse :) but it all turned out ok in the end.

trip to the airport

This week Saturday evening turned out to be quite eventful. :) Our flight time from LA moved out to 7:40 pm from the usual 6:40 pm. So, for a change, my carpool group decided to go out and party with some EMBAs, Full timers and Alumni. We all had a good time... and decided to leave for the airport with just about an hour to spare. We thought we had enough time. First, finding the freeway was a pain but once we got on, we saw heavy traffic. Out came a bunch on IPhones and to our horror, we found out that there was an accident 5 minutes before the airport. As a result, the traffic was clogged up and dealys up to 40 mins were expected. Ours is the last flight out to SJ for the evening and we had a sinking feeling that we were going to miss it.

While our expert driver was driving/weaving in and out of various lanes, a couple of us were coming up with alternate plans/routes. The traffic was painfully slow... and to cut the long story short... there was no way we would be able to make it. Then one of us checked the flight status and found... gasp!!! the flight was late by 20 mins. SW usually has all its flights on time... oh god... were we glad for the flight being late (for a change) :) We dashed into the airport 7:50.... and made the flight.

We could only imagine what our families would have said when we told them that "Our flight leaves one hour late now but we still could not make it to the airport on time" .... shivers :)

Giving up control...

There is this book club initiative I started at work. The sole purpose of this initiative was to help myself and my colleagues to develop critical soft skills and enable them to be successful in their personal and professional life. Well, the initiative is a work in progress and has been partially successful at best. There is a group of 7-8 people who attend regularly while other people came, sat through the meetings (as usual busy on their laptops) and never to return again. It doesn't bother me since,as they say, you can get the horse to the water, but not make it drink it.... anyway their loss. But that's not the purpose of this post.

Senior managers have appreciated this initiative. A few weeks back, a thought stuck me. I decided to divest myself from running this initiative by transferring the leadership role to the group members. So, now each month one of the members takes over the group, comes up with the agenda, runs the meetings, decides the activities etc - total control. Now why would I do such a thing. Most people want to hold on to power, status etc and here I am doing the exact opposite. Well, I believe, if you really want to be successful, empower your team - give them full freedom and power to run their affairs. While I maintain a watchful eye, so that the group does not digress from the main objectives, I have empowered the intended beneficiaries to take control and do what is relevant for them. Now, I don't need to do what I think is right for them - they themselves decided what is right for them and what is it that they want to improve in themselves. Today we had a meeting and needless to say it went quite well. People are gradually opening up and talking about their shortcomings and seeking suggestions on how to overcome them. It is a very collaborative environment and hopefully the end result of my decision turns into a positive outcome for everyone.

Birthday

My dear Nalin turned 7 yesterday. We had decided to invite just his friends over for a party at our house - all 22 of them from our street (sorry, others friends stood no chance of being invited). Rented a jumper, had some good music, ordered pizza, more food and it was time to rock. The kids had a blast.... and at the spur of the moment we decided - what the heck. Let's call the parents over as well (being a weekday, we wanted to keep it a manageable affair).... so in come the adults. I think we had 50+ guests all from our street. :) The party went on till 10:30 pm in the night. The kids were so tired that they did not even look at the gifts.... His biggest surprise gift has arrived in the store (special order) and hopefully will be installed this weekend.

The other part of his birthday treat (yes, another trip to LA) has been postponed till the memorial day weekend (end of the month). Time just flies. It seems it was just a few months ago that we got him as a baby from the hospital and then his first steps, the first time he called "mama" and "papa" and so many memories....

Wish you a very happy birthday Nalin and long, happy and healthy life ahead.

MBA effect...

I guess it had to happen one of these days. This quarter I am going through Marketing course and discussions about Branding, Segmenting and Positioning products. Then, just this past Saturday I attended a Seminar on Branding by Marketing guru Sasha Strauss. All this talk, has really brought into focus how companies market their products and charge a premium from their customers by positioning them a certain way. Now, the side effect of this is that when my wife says, I want to buy this product (xyz) since it is premium quality or more expensive, I am jumping up and down telling her that it is all marketing... :) I see through the company's game plan and while she also realizes that (having done her MBA too), she still wants to go for it. :) Case in point - we were evaluating washer/dryers the last few weeks and each time she would get fixated on the most expensive ones (Electrolux). I saw other brands like Kenmore and Kenmore Elite side by side with apparently no significant difference in feature set but a big difference in price. It is quite interesting how we associate quality with a higher price. In the end both products will do the same thing more or less but a lot of people will shell out lot more money for a "elite" or "premium" sounding/looking product. So, we did end up spending $2.5k for the pair whereas it would have cost us maybe $100 or less to fix our old one. :)

A big girl...

Flash back: Chandigarh, Bhargav Nursing Home. March 1992. A little girl is born and I get to hold her even as she is just a few minutes old. :) Fast forward to today... She is all grown up and will be graduating in a couple of weeks. All ready to go to college and face the world, decide about her career and her future. It seems like only a few years ago this little angel was born and look at her now. :) How we wish time would hold still, we can capture their little smiles, first steps, little mischiefs and tantrums, hugs and kisses and the special moments in our hearts. The little angels grow up and think we have forgotten but trust us - we have not. You are still very dear to us and we miss all the time we missed seeing you growing up but more than that we cherish the moments we did spend together, seeing you grow up.

Here's three cheers to our dear Shaweta!! Wishing you all the best and success in life.

P.S. Thanks for the correction on the two errors in the post. It is 1992 and the spelling of the name.... All this while I never knew it was Sha... !! Cheers!

sleep

Once upon a time, many many moons ago, I used to love my sleep - atleast 8-9 hours every night, no matter what. The came along my kids. Bye bye sleep... I started sleeping in 4-5 hour chunks. Then along came my work, and my total sleep time went down permanently to 7 hours a night. Then finally came my school and together with kids and work, my sleep time has come down to an average of 5 to 6 hours a night.

Last to last night I got 4 hours and last night I got 3 hours for a grand total of 7 hours over 2 full days.... Thats it.. I am gonna sleep late into the morning starting right now... or so I like to kid myself. :(