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I went to watch a circus show with L. It was in Central London. Inside an inverted purple cow. I really did not expect anything deep to come out of a place near London Eye - I don't know why. Perhaps it is very touristy and one does not really need to do much to please a tourist.

S: Are you prepared to handle some randomness from me?

U: Ok

(Two minutes pass)

S: I want to go watch a movie with you. What do you think?

U: Did you not say that you did not like watching movies?

S: Yup but I think the experience depends on the company. I think you will be a great company.

U: I think you are overestimating quality of my company. Even I don't enjoy movies so much now but I am open to the idea of going to one in a group.

S: Ok. I asked because I had to ask. Thank you so much for handling it so kindly!

 

Just like that the pressure was taken off and I felt happy.

 

Later, V asked me how my day was and I couldn't help confessing that it was good. Isn't it scary how dependent we are on external factors for our happiness?

 

I watched a Ted talk (How to stop screwing yourself over | Mel Robbins | TEDxSF) where the speaker asks the audience what exactly it wants for itself (not what other wanted them to want). You have about 5 seconds to take action towards getting what you want otherwise you will talk yourself into how you really don't want/need it.

 

I asked myself what I wanted and there was a moment of clarity. I wanted to ask U if she wanted to go watch a movie. This sounds so juvenile. At the same time, it became so important that I physically responded to it. There was an increase in my heart rate and everything else dissolved into background. It was very annoying.

 

That is when I pinged her. She was working from home so I could not talk about it in person. Maybe, it was for better because it allowed me some time to phrase my request in a better way. I knew that it was not important whether she agreed or rejected the request. I was overly concerned if it would be weird and come in our day to day interactions. At the end of it, I was impressed with the way she had come up with an option between yes and no and avoided the situation.

 

I remember my discussion with M about "responding to a situation" against "reacting to it." The interaction that I had with U is an example of her responding to a situation. It is always impressive.

 

U just changed her team. It was a right move and we let her go. Her move was so abrupt – we come in one fine Monday to find that her desk has been moved to new team. Now S seemed to sit on my left and U on left. S and I have had our share of differences and he decided to move his desk. He said that he was doing it because the seat he was moving to was a premium one but somewhere I realise that I had something to do with it for sure. So I don't have anybody sitting on my left now I did not have anyone on right. "I am suddenly feeling very alone," I told U.

 

I had a session with her to give me feedback on her experience working with me. What did she say? I am helpful. I think that was the only positive thing she had to say about me. I was expecting to hear "absolutely brilliant with problem solving." That was disappointing. On improvement side, I needed to work on my mood swings and general state of well-being. I need to be happy. On communication side, I need to work on my facial expressions. Fair enough.

 

When I got promoted, N and U2 took me to lunch. I don't know why but I still remember that lunch given the general high level of forgetfulness I show. It was very personal and we had a good time. In the same spirit, I wanted to take U out on lunch before she switched her team. We have been planning it for months now and I believe that it will not happen. It is as if she is actively avoiding it. Maybe she is aware of my hidden motives here.

 

This behaviour of postponing things indefinitely is part of her charm. Or maybe it is flawed part of her personality. This behaviour has been demonstrated in multiple occasions where she starts off with passion but fails to take the task to completion. The project that she was working on and struggled to complete was boring so I cannot blame her there. However, there is this instance of taking a group photograph, making a video, putting things on auction, where things just did not end with a bang. The amount of labour she puts in is monumental, only to be contrasted by relative lack of impact. "Work is force into displacement," I told her as someone had told me once.

This week has been so eventful. I was waiting for Monday, after all S was here. I spent about five minutes debating if I should shave or not. I decided not to shave. I also received an iron bed that I had ordered from pepperfry. I went to office to find that I was to take an interview and was late for it. Anyway, I called the candidate about half an hour later, apologized and conducted the interview. I asked him some pretty cool questions (and tough too) and I was satisfied with my performance in the interview. Unfortunately the candidate didn't make it. Then we had a potluck and my cake was well appreciated and it was a good event overall. And just like that it was already well past afternoon. Things looked very good so far.

 

There was also a significant shaking because of a distantly centered earthquake and that made sure that I did not sleep well in night.

 

Also, we were made to move to ground floor from Third floor. I always get very emotional when it comes down to leaving places. It is almost like I am performing to an audience that wants to see me cry. I kind of picked up my stuff from my drawer. There are rectangular whiteboards around our desks to write down something inspirational. A day before I wrote - Alcohol conserves the brain. On Monday someone had written - Satish was here. I liked that somehow.

 

I also had a chance encounter (from a distance) with "S" and "K" on the ground floor and rest of the day was spent assessing my character for reasons as to why I could not just go and meet her.

 

I shaved on Monday evening and shaved some more on Tuesday morning. I realized that S was here and I had spent a day without saying "hi" to her. So first thing I did after I went to office was to go to fourth floor and look for her. She was not there. I came down with mixed feelings. I was psyched and happy to see her near my desk asking people where I was. We hugged formally. I introduced her to team members - which she must have thought was weird or maybe not. Then we sat down in office Sofa - for first time since I moved to ground floor, I felt that that sofa belonged to that space and was most likely serving its lifelong purpose. What did we talk about? She gave me updates on what was happening in her office. Business is going through some tough time and few people have had to leave and that kind of made her emotional. Apart from that we had few laughs around how she was very young and must be very polite to older colleagues in office. "Do they make you serve them coffee in office?," I joked. I told her about my career plans. She told me that she was looking forward to a change in role as well. We decided to figure out a way to have lunch together. I was suddenly happy for the rest of the day.

 

I had ordered a mug from an online store. It said WTF but in Hindi. It seemed very funny at the moment. Later in the evening, I kind of felt that it was an idiotic gift so I decided to buy something that represented India. So I stopped at Galleria market on my way back to home and looked around for a book store. Fortunately, I could not find it open. I went to Archies and bought an overpriced gift bag. Then I decided to explore Handloom house for scarves. I saw a few but was not sure if it was even gifted to people or not. I came out and called U for some quick advice. She did not pick up the phone. Most likely she missed it at the time and later did not call because it was very late in night. That's the sort of stories optimists tell themselves. Anyway, I returned home and pinged S on WhatsApp. She had given me her number and had asked me to add her on WhatsApp. Eventually, I ended up asking her advice for a good gift. She asked if there were any options. I find that part about women fascinating: how they take time but come with perfect responses. I told her about a silk scarf and she said she would love it. Later, I would discuss this with U and she would comment how it is much more in practice to insist that one did not need a gift when asked for what they would want for a gift. On reflection, it made me happy that S did not do that.

 

Tuesday night people from pepperfry visited to assemble the bed for me.  It was dissatisfying to see that I had ordered wrong kind of bed. Maybe, I will return it. See how that turns out for me. I woke up till 2 doing random things. 

 

On, Wednesday morning, I went and purchase a scarf. That was unsatisfying too. There were not many options and  I did not like any scarf particularly. I also had zero knowledge of what was hip in scarves. I bought something that was kind of different - one that is a rectangular scarf but is already folded and stitched along its length so it looks like a strip. While I was on my way back, I remembered my newly committed motto - "hell yeah or say no" and felt sad that I had compromised on that motto. I had also ordered a winter Jacket online and it did not fit perfectly. I could have kept it if I wanted to. But I just told you my motto in life and so I had to return the jacket. On my way back home from office, while facing wrath of cold gusts of wind, I said to myself - "I should have kept the damn thing". 

 

During lunch, I remember telling S2 that I was feeling sad and he made a joke about it. (On a side note today I shared some more news with him and even there he seemed more amused than happy. Is he an unnecessary source of negatively and should I avoid going to lunch with him?). As I told V, I share a complex relationship with S2 but more on it in a different post.

 

Weather was unusually cool too. I asked P if it was "happy" weather or "sad" weather and he said it seemed rather "gloomy". I felt happy for a brief moment there because now I could attribute my sadness to weather.

 

I had the mug and scarf in the gift bag. I pinged S telling her that I had brought a gift for her. I did it on Jabba and her response was something that uplifted my mood for sure. "Did you? Did you?! Did you?!", she asked with enthusiasm. Ha Ha!  I asked her to collect it exactly before she leaves office so that nobody in office gets to ask her what it was and who gave it. I told her that it felt very child-like. 

 

In the afternoon, U pinged me and said she wanted to discuss something with me. I said I had a discussion with her "now" manager in 10 minutes. We agreed to catch up after that discussion. This discussion was kind of an opportunity for me to give feedback on U. I am never satisfied with the feedback I give about people. I want good things to happen to U and I want her manager to have a good impression about her. I see her strengths and I see her weaknesses and most of the times I give my unbiased views. But U is also a friend. So I feel that I am not being fair to her if I give my objective feedback on her in a corporate environment where favoritism seems to be the norm. Anyway, most likely I am assigning more importance to my feedback than it actually is.

 

So later we (U and I) went out for a walk to discuss what was happening in her new role. We crossed U's now manager taking a round as well. That was weird. We felt like co-conspirators. U commented that we should do more of this so we don't catch unusual attention. Anyway, we had a good laugh about it.

 

In evening, the team went for snacks outside. It was impressive that everyone was up for it given that such events continually get postponed. Especially an event that was scheduled by U. Even more specially because a person was shot dead this morning right in front of the place where we intended to go for snacks. Yes, Gurgaon is the Sincity. The logic was that the probability of having another shootout at the same place was probably lower than other places in Gurgaon. It was fun. I had a Kachori and a Jalebi and a half Samosa.

 

Anyway, in the evening S came to ground floor and I took her to the place where lockers are and gave the gift packet to her. She took out the items from the bag. The message in the mug was in Hindi so she asked if it was a personalized message. I said it was not a personalized message. Or maybe it was because it was in Hindi and was given to her precisely because her colleagues will not be able to read it. It was a slightly inappropriate message and she needed to hear it from me. I did not want her to go about asking people what the mug said – that would have been funny though. Strangely, I could not bring myself to say "What the fuck" in front of her. I said "What the.." a couple of times and finally she got it and laughed about it. Just to make sure that she really got it I asked her what it was and she said "What the..?" And then she took out the scarf and tried it on. She asked me for directions around how it was to be used. I said I had no idea. She said she would figure it out. After she was gone, I realized that she is just a great taker of gifts. The best one, maybe.

 

I came home little late at night and I had a slight headache due to lack of sleep and overthinking so I slept after having dinner and a pint of beer. V pinged at night and asked how to kill a SQL query.

 

On Thursday afternoon, S and I went for lunch. Customer service in the restaurant was top class and there was no one else except for us. They played good music. I wish the food was better though. We discussed about PP and how it is always funny to think up of ways of destroying it. We discussed common friends. I gave S some feedback too – I shouldn't do that. We also discussed how we are lagging behind in getting promoted. How does one prepare for a visit to India. It was good. She also paid her part of the bill. Few years back, I wouldn't have allowed that but now I let people do what they want to do.

 

We came back and went straight up to attend IMU. It's kind of a town hall meeting.

 

After that I had a discussion with L who is visiting India as well from London office. We could not find any meeting room and so we came down to CCD and ordered coffee and continued with general discussion. L mentioned that coffee was good and I agreed.

 

Thursday was truly a great day. S had also brought a gift for me – it was a face mask and a toner from Korea. He he. Talk about gifts that are also useful. I tried the mask on and shared the picture with her. I asked her few questions about how to use them (instructions were not very clear) and she didn't reply to them. I remember feeling sad and stupid about it.

 

On Friday morning, I received an email from L confirming some good news. It was also an early Friday so I left early for day.

 

On Saturday, I helped move S3 into a new house in Gurgaon. They had dinner at my home in evening and A cooked some really good chicken.

 

On Sunday, A, my flat-mate, asked me to join him and his girlfriend for dinner and we had a really good time.

We had been planning to meet for a few weeks now. We finally did meet on the day of Dusshara. The earlier plan was to go to Kingdom of Dreams. However, they did not have an afternoon show of Zangoora and so we decided to watch Shaandaar instead. One good thing was that we did not have to collect ticket at the counter. M got the printouts of the tickets (very proactively) and we got in without any trouble.

 

We went upstairs and waited in the lobby. M told me this rather scary story of travelling alone in a bus to visit her sister. It ended well so we can laugh off it now. But this is a story that plays itself on every time a female passenger boards a bus. It makes me sad. The question however is – what am I gonna do about it?

 

That conversation was very interesting and it was abruptly ended by theatre staff telling us that the movie had started.

 

Since having watched this movie, I have read many reviews of it. I see people rating it average or above average and I wonder how much variation human beings show in their perception of things and world. At some level, it makes me hopeful. At another level, it makes me question authenticity of these reviews – especially those by critics.

 

I personally found this movie insulting to its audience.  What was the point of the movie? Before we get to that, here is my summary of the story in the movie. Although, some would argue there was none.

 

There is a wedding that is also a business deal. The bride is cute and fat. The groom is an asshole. The half-sister of the bride is hot and falls in love with the wedding planner who is also hot. Father of the bride is weak. Grandmother of the bride is hated by everyone. Mother of the bride does not leave much impression but is hated anyway. Groom's brother is loud and idiotic and does not die at the end.

 

The only thing good about the movie was that it ended. It was excruciatingly long though. There was a 10 minutes long and completely unnecessary segment where Karan Johar made an appearance. In the world of anime, it is called a filler. The movie is filled with annoying fillers.

 

I cannot help but review a movie with regard to social messages that it delivers; stereotypes that it breaks or reinforces. As is clear with the story of the movie, all characters can be describes by a single adjective. My worst moment was when the groom makes fun of the bride in front of everyone and the father of the bride reacts musically. The groom later apologises (again musically) and is promptly forgiven. These are all cases of actions without repercussions; similar to how both lead actors have insomnia but they look fantastic nonetheless.

 

I had read a review of a Bollywood movie (Queen actually) by a Norwegian national and he expressed his annoyance at repetitiveness of events designed to prove how groom in that movie was an asshole. I thought he had a fair point.

 

What are the stereotypes associated with rick folks? They are insensitive, ignorant, disrespecting of poor and willing to trade emotions for money. How true is that stereotype? I think it is oddly off. I think rich people have the education and grooming to understand importance of appearances. Education alone is enough to give them a better view of the world and mould their behaviour that maintains their richness.

The movie could have scarred me for life but I had the pleasure of M's company. Not to rob her off of any mysterious elements but she does not seem to have a dark side. She is in the category of genuinely nice people.

 

We spoke about sunshine's blog and how the way she responded to a situation was inspirational. We spoke about how private jobs compare with government jobs. How she changed her sleeping cycle to be able to read late at night. Inspirational stuff.

 

As with the last time, shaandaar part of the meeting was that there was no hurry to get somewhere else.

In the last post, you read the part one of curious case of S (CCS). S is trying to plan his career with one major objective of correcting his salary. He has an offer from an organization and wants to decide whether he should negotiate his salary with them or straight away decline the offer. He consults his friends to get their perspective and has a list of pros and cons. 

 

Pros: It will be a change of scene and at a leadership position, S will have a lot of say in guiding vision of the organization. 

 

Cons: The organization is little known. It delivers services that do not align with S's primary interest in developing solution and can cause long working hours.

 

Eventually, S decides to decline the offer.

 

Dear reader, you are in for a treat because I got S to write rest of the story himself. As you would see he is a much better writer than I ever was.

__

 

I am S. This is my search for meaning and satisfying closures.

 

I have heard that one should write a story for their ideal reader. Specifically, they should write it with the intent of making their ideal reader pee in their pant with delight. I write this for you.

 

Let me quickly contextualize my frame of mind in these last few months.

 

In September, last year R left the organization and suggested that I should leave it too. I eventually created my resume and gave a series of interviews to eventually learn that I was not very good at them.

 

I also spoke to many experienced people that I respected from my current and previous organization.

 

I spoke to T and he recommended that I read "What you are really meant to do?" He also mentioned to take interests in activities outside work – joining an NGO maybe.

 

I also spoke to S and he mentioned that he would like to see himself as "head of analytics" kind of role where one is generally good with everything but not particularly good at something. The idea appealed to me.

 

I spoke to T2 and he suggested that I should not try too hard to plan my career and go where people welcome me. He asked me how I felt about my current role and I said that I had found it to be enjoying.

 

A asked me to start creating a list of all the projects that I had done and really work on my story in preparation toward interviews. He also wanted me to start created a list of companies, primarily through research on LinkedIn. He kept on reminding me that my stint in dh has been very fruitful majorly because I was well respected and I had time to think about my priorities and do things that I enjoyed.

 

I did all this because I had time at work. I was not particularly busy. The objective of our team was more or less met and there was no clear future pipeline. I remember the conversation I had with M during the time I decided to join my current team and he had asked me to get clarity on what happens when the work is over. That was a good thought.

 

I briefly mentioned in my last post that I discussed about my offer to my manager to get his views on the matter. One repercussion of that discussion was that I needed to change my team. I was still aligned to my current manager so I continued to sit with my existing team. However, all of my work was to be managed by a new guy now. And boy, was he annoying!

 

This new manager does not believe in the concept of listening. He has few things to say and he will say it in most aggressive way and not bother to see your response. At times, he is downright disrespectful. Most of all, there was complete lack of feedback and I kept myself motivated with whatever I could. I did create new visualizations on Shiny and that was good.

 

In summary, things were not great at office and I was not entirely convinced that it would be worse off if I had joined this other organization. So when I was again contact by them at the end of 3 months, I had more positive feeling towards them. After a lot of negotiations they offered me good money and there was an additional incentive of international travel. Eventually, I expected the offer and resigned from dh.

 

My manager asked if there was anything they could do to still keep me with the company and I told him that I was incredibly bored and I just wanted to leave. I asked him to release me early and he was kind enough to accommodate that without much fuss: I really didn't have much dependency anyway.

 

This decision of leaving dh and joining TS was made by keeping a couple of factors in mind. Money was good and if this decision did not turn out to be a good decision then I could always leave. Also, in my previous dealing with assessment of this offer, I had asked opinions from many people and they only seemed to add noise to already existing state of indecision so I had decided to take this decision on my own. I had all the factors identified through my previous discussions anyway.

 

After resigning, I really felt happy for few days. There was some noise around how this could be a bad decision but I had made a decision and these noises were not able to work up my piece of mind.

 

What happened after that?

V tells me that within each of us there is a machine, a human being and a chimp. Of course, the chimp dominates. 

Building a product - That is my idea of owning a business. It keeps you occupied. It can empower you and others.

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S and I entered in the elevator and continued our conversation, I said, "It's been so long. It seems absurd." "What is absurd?," he asked logically. "Us living for so long."

For a bit, I was impressed with the promptness of my response. Generally, after making such quick - apparently smart - remarks, I find myself questioning their validity and end up feeling stupid. Not this time. Really, 30 years. That is a lot of time.

Later in the day, a friend and colleague asked me a question about a solution (more like a product that helps you optimize promotions in a store). This solution is so overly and unnecessarily complex; and it has taken (sorry wasted) so much of my time that the thought of getting involved with it brings me down like nothing else. Anyway, I empathized with this poor fellow who has to deal with it now and so said I will look into it. After few minutes of result-less investigation, I felt very depressed and gave up. Later, I jokingly sent him a message on how the exercise made me suicidal. I really didn't know spelling of suicide back then so I searched for it in google and was impressed to find a helpline number thrown at me.

I told about this to a friend and he asked me why I was searching for it and later announced to the team about it. I found it very annoying.

I have become increasingly aware of negativity in my relationships - when someone is trying to push me, or take me to a guilt trip. For a couple of days, there was limited attendance in the team and I was surprised to observe how liberating that felt.

Now, I am managing this girl, U. She seems to have the talent but is not delivering to it yet. A certain Rohit Sharma comes to mind. Well, I am trying to be the best manager here and so I experiment. She is new to the in-house technologies and she labours to make them work. She approaches me and I solve it in seconds. Literally. It surprises me at time. It also make me realize how good I am with this stuff.

I thought she would be impressed too. But now I think it otherwise. Maybe it annoys her. Maybe, I am not able to contain my smugness. But I am rarely smug. I am rarely proud of my work. There is this tension between us at times and I don't like it. She really is full of energy and positivity and I often wonder if I am the source of this tension. The way I get negatively influenced by others in the team; am I influencing her negatively?

And there is more to it. She asked me to help her with something and I managed to say to her (after of course promptly fixing the issue) - "that is very basic, U. you should take that as a personal insult." I mean who says things like that?! With all my commitment to kindness, I still said that.

She did take it personally. I am trying to bring the situation to normal.

This whole episode made me think. During my time in MS, I had people reporting to me who really respected me. Here in dh, I have repeatedly got signals that people are not really crazy about working with me. There are a number of factors that could explain it.

I don't want to go into self persecuting mode (How true you were, M?!) but people don't exactly fall in love with me right after meeting me. I also have the fear of over coaching and that could very well be limiting our interactions. I also have this absurd idea of people responding positively to challenges.

There are people of different kinds. Yet, we all so want to praised and respected. That seems to be the key factor. People feel that I don't appreciate them. It is an area where I do need to work. From a technical point of view, I always see gaps in the way something has been done. I look at them from far above. This realization is interesting because I also said in the same post that I am not proud of my work. Either I am one ignorant bloke or I have contempt for everyone else's work. This last sentence gives me clarity even though it is intentionally ambiguous.

I also pondered over the idea of being in love with her. I mean she is intelligent, independent, beautiful and kind. And who doesn't like the idea of exploring associated emotions and behaviours that come with love?! Does she think good of me? Am I invading her space? Is it right to for me to be thinking about her like this? Is it right to be writing about it?

A wise man on television once said that if you want to get over a woman, turn her into literature. What does that imply?

There is a thin line
But with no sign
We'd try to transform it into a spline
and that could buy us some extra time
For what is love if we don't test its soul
Eternal love is no love at all
Only great highs can yield great falls
In another world and another time, I would be that superman guy
I hope I can learn to walk. I don't mind if I cant fly.

Thank you RhymeZone.com

I have a page on Facebook where I post my favourite lines from my favourite songs and it is about to reach 1000 likes. Before that, I already have a milestone. Recently I posted the line 'Yeh kahan aa gaye hum, yunhi saath saath chalte' with a snapshot of the video - of Rekha and Amitabh taking a walk in a garden together – and it reached to more than 1000 users and about 80 of them liked it. Talk about a scandal! I was really psyched to see it.

 

What are the learnings? Lines accompanied with pictures get you more likes. That is one. And simplicity: you get more likes on posting opening lines of the song. Sometimes, I get carried away in my attempt to show off my taste by posting lines that show more depth. Here, I successfully avoided an urge of posting  "humein milna hee tha humdum, kisi raah bhi nikalate".

 

The second learning is especially relevant. It took me a long time to understand important of repetition. While being asked to talk about myself in my interviews, I somehow wanted to be "new" every time. I will try and come up with different aspects of my personal and professional history in each interview. It never worked. You hear politicians – AK, e.g. – and they make sure they say same thing again and again and suddenly they make the truth.

 

This week has seen me go through a sine curve with regard to range of emotions that I have felt. I am trying to get better at saying no. I am trying to get better at negotiations, in general. You know what they say – you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. Job negotiations generally involve you interacting with strangers.

 

Interacting with strangers have always been a challenge to me – especially if power equations are not clearly defined.

 

I remember our extended team offsite where we got a younger colleague – let's call him R - drunk and stuck with a question – you know when people get drunk, they insist on knowing answers of deep questions of  most philosophical nature. So before he got drunk, we were evaluating effectiveness of Hindi as a language. I have a major crib with Hindi – presence of "tu", "tum" and "aap" has made interactions with new acquaintances so much painful. I am always struggling to find the right word to address a new person. My default tends to be "aap" but I have realised that people take that as a sign that I am younger or on the lower side of imaginary power pyramid. With women I still use "aap" without feeling much confusion – I am in love with all of them. Anyway, with "prioritizing new" as my motto, I have started to call people that I think are younger than me (and most of them are) as "tum". I see that English has escaped this problem quite simply. So R really wanted to know why there are different variation of "you" in Hindi and whether they are a hurdle in making new friends. Except that he never completed his question and even when he did, he wouldn't allow a response.

 

So coming back to my struggle with interacting with strangers, I made a comment to V that I somehow manage to idealize strangers. On top of that I start to believe that they know all of my weaknesses. Honestly, I don't like this level of self-awareness. My only hope is that it's a positive step towards self-improvement.

 

What could be a plan of action in a situation like this? I need to "not be me". I am going to do that by wearing hats – I should wear my "smart" hat, "honest" hat, "grandfather" hat and I need to keep shopping for new hats to see what works for me. There is a side story on "grandfather" hat that will digress me further so it will have to wait.

 

I should also de-idealize them. I need to see weaknesses of my hr manager in the hr manager that is interviewing me.

 

In this quest of me mastering the art of interacting with strangers, V and S have been most helpful. At times, I look at myself looking at them for approval – but maybe, I do that with everyone.

 

The first time I spoke in order to negotiate with the consultant, I don't think I was particularly good. I felt bad that I could not be good. Second time, it was marginally better. The interaction with the HR was a really nice surprise – that maybe I don't need rules. Just don't be presumptuous and don't take unnecessary guilt trips. I could almost be in control right now if it was not for an unplanned stupid experiment.

Finally, I think we have reached to my favourite part of the year - when it ends.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

I came across this quote on Quora and it just made sense. Specially after Rohtang trip. There is no escape but only a chance of acknowledgement.

I have already read Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance once. This quote seems like a good example of something that deserves little attention when you are reading a book.

I don't know how but I have been consciously trying to remember advices given to me by different people.

1) Try to control your sense of humour in front of your manager when things are not going great at office. (2008, it must be?)

2) Don't take it lying down. Give it back to them. (2014)

There was one that I wanted to put at number 3. Just cant remember at the moment.

3) Change is always good. (2011, at the time of switching)

4) It's only a matter of time. (When I told a friend that my decks suck)

5) Self persecution

It has been a fortnight since I moved to a new flat my another colleague.

I don't know how one goes about writing a humiliating experience but I am this close to giving it a try.

It irritated me for a few days. It still does. And I am looking for a resolution, a closure. After a week now, I realize there are no easy resolution. It's more about what kind of stories you choose to tell yourself and steps you want to take to be better prepared for the next time.

I knew it could happen. And it did happen. At least I now know an iota of what it feels to live through your worst fears. It's always exaggerated. Reality has that effect on nightmares.