the wow moment!

its two am in the night and i am strolling through random blogs trying to kill time, i have a feeling i am suffering from internet addiction disorder; wikipedia has a lengthy description of it, have a look at it. i personally feel addiction to the internet is not a bad thing, the ‘kind’ of internet addiction is what matters here. 

a lot of strange things have been happening lately to me and i am kinda ok with all of them. my root canal treatment failed and i have a swollen jaw, i have terrible cough for two weeks now, i tripped down the stairs and got a hairline fracture and from the time i gave up swimming, i have a feeling i am growing fatter,that apart, i am perfect. 

bill gates left microsoft last month to devote his time full time for charity. this man, despite what people have to tell about him has lived a remarkable life and continues to do so. bill gates was definitely not the pioneer in software industry, he was the pioneer when it came to making money through software, the man was responsible in a major way why you are reading this blog now and why i wrote it, it’s definitely not about the great software, there are better OSs and better computers around but they somehow never reached our homes. microsoft did. and that’s where gates the businessman comes in. gates was definitely not a stringent innovator, he was a businessman, a blunt businessman. he knew what to do where and was emotionally secure and cool almost always, very much unlike the monkey boy steve ballmer who is known to have vowed to ‘kill google’ and not let his children use an ipod. (yes, you can smile here ). 

this week had yet another news item as the blogosphere buzzed with verizon ceo commenting on steve jobs getting old and wanting him to die. even though he didn’t explicitly state it, the meaning was obvious. people might see it any way they like, but as far as i am concerned, this is some sort of honor, your competitors are so pissed off and jealous of you, they’ve given up all hopes of any competition and are wanting you to die. what can be cooler than that ? given the elegance, style and the awesomeness of the iphone, i am pretty sure that there is no one in the whole market who can even come half way of what apple did. and with the costs coming down, it wouldn’t be surprising if you end up seeing iphones with just about everyone in an year or two. 

two days from now and india will have it’s first sci-fi movie. i am normally a persons who abhors movies but i just had this feeling that i should be commenting about this movie. love story 2050 reminds you of star wars, minority report, xmen and so many others just by the look of its trailers . the point i would want to make here is that the target market which the makers of this movie might have speculated have already a lot of sci-fi in hollywood flicks and its unlikely that they’ll boo boo at it. also, you can’t expect the basic indian crowd to come out and enjoy sci-fi movies. for those who are going to see it, there’s nothing new in it, the others don’t quite bother about it. i am no astrologer but i have a feeling that all those projects which people take up just because they are ‘cool’ and have ‘worked before’ never quite work out. 

by the way, i saw schindler’s list yesterday and i think its an amazing movie.  we’re all so lucky we weren’t born at the time of the war. 

ps: the punctured parachute was blue in color. and contrary to what you might have imagined, it was discarded, no one ever used it. 

Dear people,

when i started this blog, it was meant to be more of a diary blog than what it is now, and today, i intend to satisfy that purpose. I ve been busy(not as much as i pretend i am), so much has been happening that looking back you feel ” ok, now come on, i ve been busy, so much has been happening, wait a min, what exactly happened?” you see i am blank there and i hate that feeling.

the last month and half was very productive, was it ?, well !! i am looking for a proper word, i ve been learning so many things which i must NOT do.is there a word for that ?why bother anyways ???i have been traveling from team to team and now i am ‘enlightened’ (yes, even normal people can get enlightened; you need not necessarily be a Chinese monk ).

Let me tell you this thing about people, you see a billion people, the billion and oneth will be different. So, honestly, there is no point thinking about them. For mathematicians and nerds, Net count of types of people= Net count of people. Its really funny and exciting to work with a bunch of crazy people(in a perfect real world, all people are someway or the other crazy).

To start off (you see i am very nagging bozo, this is the 4th para and i am still starting); let me discuss some thing called YBAH,Young Business Associaion Of Hyderabad. now this was some sort of a business organization started by an alumni of our college, and because me and my bunch of friends somewhat knew how to talk to people, throw around some charisma, we were made the ‘core members’. So what did we do? Well, something. So you are a bunch of dynamic people, know how to pretend that you are very cool and all, does that mean you can do business ??Life is supposed to be simple, everything that pertains to life is also meant to be simple. At YBAH, we had a mission statement that was more or less general, a twelve year old could have come up with the same thing. I didn’t realize it then, but now i feel strongly, that was where it was beginning to screw up. You see you started an organization with a foundation that has nothing new to offer, you lack something called a USP, you cant expect to survive. Only close contacts and friends will become your members and thats exactly what happened here. And talk of professionalism, believe me - its not about the formals!!! wonder when people will understand that !! YBAH offered in its statement that members will get management classes and internships and all, but, what type of management classes, no one knew! who was going to lecture, we had no answer. When we asked this, our whims were satisfied by some long convincing nonsense about what we can do and all. The power of Speech ! i tell you, this is very dangerous, you not only screw but kill the prospects of your long term relations. We are here to do business, not to preach or throw attitude. When people asked us whats going around, we played the same dirty trick, we came up with a list of nonsensical blah blah so that people come running to us. You see such tricks work only once. You will be wiped off, you need people to do business.

Alarmed with all this and filled with a sense of pride and dedication, the YBAH team kicks off to get sponsors for an event called EDGE(Entrepreneurship Development Growth and Excellence). You see the name was posh. period. The so very ‘experienced’ seniors came up with lists and divided the core members to go for marketing. Do you think it worked, NO. Ill tell you why ? Firstly, we didn’t have anything to sell i.e we were not offering anything new. To be very honest we were not sure if we had anything at all to sell, we didnt know where to go, we were ‘passion driven’ here, passions don’t quite end up sweet, you see you end up feeling like the insect who gets hit by the bulb. Passionate things only feel good for a little while, you need to focus on naked ground realities. We senselessly went to Google, Dell, Deloitte and a truckload of other high funda companies and guess what we told them, we were like ‘ you see there was this amazing event two years ago and we want to do it again, will you give us sponsorship ?’ why we wanted to do ? we didnt know. how we were going to do ? we didnt know. Being enthu is good, but its always better if you are smart first and brave next.

Thats how it all ended, business is not about making visiting cards, printing lists and showing off how good you look in formals. Common sense is a blessing.