mentoring sessions

I have been fortunate to have met and mentored by two very respected people over the last two weeks. Last to Last Saturday, I met Sue Baumgarten for about an hour at Anderson and got some very practical advice. This mentoring was arranged by the Easton Technology Leadership Program (ETLP) of which I am a member. Just yesterday, I had the opportunity to have a 1:1 mentoring session with Bill Cockrum, the top Entrepreneurship Prof at Anderson and voted the best in the US by Business week. Both sessions were really great. While some of my colleagues are jealous that I am getting these opportunities, I tell them that the opportunity is really out there, they are the ones who need to step up and grab them.

Summer Qtr is a short one - 5 1/2 weeks. We are already midway through the quarter. Looking forward to the florida vacation at the end of the quarter.

Saw Toy Story 3 in 3D with the family today. Awesome movie even though I have not seen Toy Story 1 and 2. The kids had a great time too. It was one of those spur of the moment decisions.

Grearing up for the work week now... meeting a couple of buddies from 10 years ago for lunch tomorrow. :) I have never considered myself to be much of a social animal but somehow people seek me out.

new kids on the block

Around this time of the year, last year I was all excited. I had been accepted into the MBA program at Anderson and we had a mid-summer welcome party. It had felt as if time was going by too slow and we couldn't wait for the classes to begin. Well, this last Saturday, it was the mid-summer welcome party for the new kids on the block - the class of 2013 (and we were invited as special guests). I could see the same excitement on the new faces, exchange of business cards, even binders for leadership foundations that they will be going through in September. It was quite a nostalgic feeling while it lasted. :) Of course we have had our trials by the fire (since then) and have learned to move on.

Anyways, to welcome the new batch from the bay area, a mixer is being planned this week. Looking forward to building some more friendships soon.

KLOK 1170 AM

For the past one year, we have been listening to a new radio station (KLOK 1170 AM) which features primarily desi content (99.9%). Initially, it was quite a novel concept:

- clear signal in the entire bay area
- bollywood songs all the time
- a change from the dull american content (101.3, 106.5, KGO) - yuck

The radio station owners heavily promoted the station, offering people with no experience to come host shows. For a while Ruchi and I were tempted to do our own show too - we even went and got the contract forms etc but later decided not to do it.

Anyway, as time went by, the desi business community took over and we started getting couple of dentists running their dental shows, a few beauty parlor females, and so on. Pretty soon, some dudes from fiji took over a bulk of the time slots. Then came the astrologers and CFA/CPAs. Finally, came the homeopath and Ayurvedic doctors.

The state of affairs now is such that it is painful to the ears to listen to the station. Some of my pet peeves with the presenters/programs on the station:

- Way too many ads. At times it appears that there is less programming and more ads.
- some ads are demeaning to the females e.g. a female will announce that she bought xyz from SJ, abc from Hayward, cde from sunnyvale etc etc. Are they really questioning the audience's intelligence??
- The fiji guys have absolutely no presentation skills. Most of the times, they speak in broken hindi sentences, crack crude jokes and such.
- painful to hear people's dental problems on the radio.
- People call in to the astrologers asking when they will have a kid or get a job and things like that. People get a life, go get some training or education, go work hard.... there are no free lunches and definitely not by wearing stones on your fingers and following the Lal Kitaab.

Now, comes my biggest issue - the alternative healers. The ayurvedic guy is so crude that people call him and ask a simple question and he will point blank ask them to call him at his clinic. It is obvious, he is trying to drum up business (which is fine) but atleast answer the question. If the caller persists, he will get rude and mean. I question, what right this guy has to take over the airwaves and insult people just because he paid a couple of hundred dollars to the radio station. The homeopath is another sad story. I have personal experience with him. I heard him on the radio and was quite impressed. So I setup an appointment with him and saw him. First of all, his office was in the crappiest part of San Jose.... quite literally stinking. The doc is an old guy (which is ok) but he charges an arm and a leg. Not that his medicine did anything for me, on my last visit I was informed that he is going to India for a month. He reduced the dosage of my medicine and charged me double fees because the (same amount of) medicine would last me a month. Goddammit!!!! What a crook.

So, there you have it. I am getting back to suffering my KGO news talk shows.

back to school

Last 10 days have been fun as well as super hectic. At work, boss breathing down my neck to deliver something earlier than committed. Had a friend and family visiting us from the east coast (we hosted them 10 years ago). School started again this past Saturday. but first things first...

The kitchen remodeling project is finished (well almost). They had estimated a week but it took 2 weeks. It was super painful not having a functional kitchen. On top of that, all the dust and debris... nails all over the house and driveway. Once they were done, we took over and painted the ceilings and walls. The end result looks very nice. So, why do I say it is still not done? Well, a spice rack needs to be replaced and a couple of glass pane cabinet doors need to be replaced. But the kitchen looks awesome. During the project, we changed the specs and added the work for a water line and a gas line (happens at work too). :)

Phase 2 of the project is the remodel of the 3 bathrooms. They are estimating 2-3 days for each of them but I doubt it will take that long. Hopefully, they should be able to wrap it all up in 2-3 days. Time will tell.

Once we painted the kitchen, we worked late into the night (Friday morning 4 am) and moved all the stuff back into the kitchen to get it up and running. What was the rush? We had guests coming to stay over on Friday mid-day.

The guests came, we had a good time with them. Took them to Monterrey on the weekend (got a parking ticket there - 3 mins late coming to the meter), drove along the scenic HWY 1 but didn't have the energy to wait for sunset. Next day (Sunday) went to Big Basin and then onto Santa Cruz. It was really crowded and we had a couple of serious medical emergencies even before we could get to the boardwalk. Scary!!!

Guests left for Tahoe on Monday (holiday due to long weekend). Company work took over and Saturday - school started. 8 straight hours of operations. I was dreading the worst but turned out to be pretty good. Prof. is really good and I build a good rapport with him right from the beginning. I was somehow assigned a seat in the first row itself :( I would have preferred the last row. :) Last row is not that bad...since the seating is stadium style. :)
Yesterday, we went to sfo to spend the day with our guests (they are leaving today). Ate lunch at Little Delhi (stuffed myself with appetizers that I didn't even order, that I couldn't eat the lunch I did order). Rode the cable car to Ghirardelli square, standing on the side with Nalin, hanging on for dear life. :) Spent time on the wharf, window shopping. Took a break at starbucks, was feeling a bit overwhelmed when Ruchi came over and we had a small private moment, which was duly caught, noted and bradcasted by out friends (a third family had joined us for the wharf trip). :) Overall, a nice but very tiring day in SFO. Headed back later at night and the rat race begins again today. :)

Have a case discussion tonight with my study group and I have not even read the case, leave alone prepare the answers. Don't know when I will find the time but has to be done. Need to get going now - boss must be wondering where I am goofing off - little does she now that my life couldn't have been more hectic than what it is right now.

restricting access

I am back from my summer hiatus. :) Some ideas going on in my mind. Towards that goal, I plan to restrict access to my blog going forward. If you follow this blog and would like to continue doing so, please drop me an email at umangsaini@gmail.com in the next week or so. At that time, I will set the appropriate permissions and restrict access to this blog. I will explain the reasons for this action at a later time. Ciao