Christmas it is!!

“Kadavul Ullame Or Karunai Illame

Adaikalam koduthaven arulai kanuvom”

...

“Unnum unavum neerum dhinam thantha deivame

Endrum umakke naam nandri solluvom”

Downloaded this song after a looooooooong search on the net...one of my all time favourites from Anbulla Rajinikanth..btw did Bhavatharini sing this??better than the not too recent “Anbendra mazhayile” from Minsara Kanavu..well..opinons are subjective and this is mine...after all...IMHO..the Master cannot be compared with the Maestro..

there is another song in this movie which i love..

“Then poove Vaa..”..haven’t been able to locate that on the net...will get that soon......

Saturday sani!!

It was 5:00AM IST on Saturday when I started from Office after having completed my marathon release, which lasted 2 days (incidentally I had left office only by 4 on Friday and missed dinner on both days), thanks to a ultra-perfectionist on-site coordinator, who thought it more prudent to give a message box that said ‘Enter the month’ instead of a configuration file for a DTS task on SQL Server. Such was her intention of building a User friendly process that she was Ok even with an empty message box, but not an ini file! Ammmmmmmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......drove me up the wall!!!It is not ignorance that drives me mad as much as the exhibition of it...well, I seem to run into too many such specimens of late!!!

I managed to convince her about the ini approach and finally got on to my bike..my mobile was out of charge..so I would not be able to enjoy my usual quota of early morning radio L..Waded through the so-called road from my office to sholinganallur at unusually slow speeds..I didn’t want to go at my usual 80-90kmph...and i had decided to go by ECR..cruising at 40-50..the world engulfed in darkness..my Yamaha cutting through..and a strong sense of nostalgia took over me..my night shift days when i used to drive on ECR on my way back home at about 6:00 AM......sleeping while you drive..driving as you sleep..the cold wind blowing on your face .. great feeling!here it was back again...i distinctly remember the stretch from the point where the connection road meets ECR to Marrybrown..my eyes were closed..it was as if I was lying flat at home...no lights..no disturbance..except that I was driving!! No brakes applied and no sudden thrusts required...i was on a flying machine..couple of short naps..and i was at home in 60 minutes..

Little did i know that this journey was going to hurt me so badly...i’ve been down with severe cold, throat pain and fever for the past 3-4 days..my appetite is gone..can hardly taste a thing now Lno respite..so how long will this persist??

Given a chance, i will definitely drive in the dark again, though i should get a bullet/cruiser..A 100cc just isn’t good enough on ECR..no insults meant to my King size libero’s capabilities!!

What the heck...office again ..tomorrow....??!

“Vesham Kalaikavum Oivu edukkavum

Velai nerunguthamma”

Looking forward to my vacation, as and when it happens..!!

SmirnOff..

Vodka + Sweetlime + Sugar Syrup....Rocks..!!

Weekend movie marathon..

3 movies in 2 days..what better way to enjoy the weekend?

'Thank you for Smoking' has been on my laptop for so long and I managed to finally double click on that mpeg file at 1:00 AM Saturday early morning, as soon as I got back from office. Well... the movie certainly is worth watching and must be made part of the Marketing specialization of MBA. The hero's dialog delivery and body language are right on target and the best part of the movie is the session at his kid's classroom...short; yet makes a great impact..and the change in the kid's attitude towards his father is fantastically portrayed...

'Constantine' - the movie started with some age old prophecy. whew...worst of the lot..what was the director trying to say?? pathetic storyline..the all usual God vs Satan..do the graphics save the face of the movie?? not really is my call..keanu reeves looks great...that is all this movie merits in my opinion...

'Chicken Little' - Walt Disney animation..need i say more.excellent sound tracks..graphics and a story that suits the animation genre..Mr.Cluck (Chicken little's father) doesn't believe in Chicken Little after Little creates a huge confusion about sky falling..All through the movie Little tries to make up for it and in the end succeeds..my favourite character..the gold fish..beautifully crafted animation with a helmet containing water on its head..
(Constantine and CL..back to back..from 9:00 PM Saturday to 1:00AM Sunday..hehehe)

I cannot help but draw parallels between the thread that is common to 'Thank you for smoking', 'Chicken Little' and 'Pursuit of happiness': father son relationship portrayed in different forms..though the last one is about the father's fight to lead a better life..a fantastic one...the other 2 are a bit light-hearted on the same theme..one that i relish..personally!!

and am not completely done..plan to watch Chicken Run tonight..

Aankhon ki gustakhiyan..

Drops certainly seem more beautiful than studs!!

;)

Lenin is back!

I was passing through the Thiruvanmiyur bus stand when I was hit by a vampire of old times..one that had me in its holds for long and still does, though with a much lesser intensity (and why??, will find an answer sometime later). There is this Kalyana mandapam near the bus stand where a state- level meet of the Communist party is being held. A big hoarding of Lenin in black and white on a red background has been erected. And this is enough to kindle in me, the long fuming fire of communism. Did Lenin have such magnetism in real life, as is being projected in all these posters? Only someone in his era can answer that, but I can vouch for the fact that his implementation of the spirit of communism and his ways of work (to my very limited knowledge, based on what I have read about him) certainly attract even the critics of communism.

All the red literature in this world cannot arouse in me, the same feeling as a poster of Lenin/Stalin or the sickle-hammer on a red background. These lines from a long forgotten Tamil movie come to my mind the moment I think of the Red revolution:

‘Manidha Manidha ini un vizhigal sivanthal ulagam vidiyum

Vizhiyil vazhiyum udhiram muzhudhum ini un saridham ezhuthum’

My ode to the greatest Red revolutionary leader: my management ideal. Money, my honey, but not at the cost of the hand that makes this world run!! Communism in its raw form emblazoned with the motto of Capitalism! The philosophy is not dead and the truth shall be proved soon!

My thoughts on Management

So many thoughts have been clouding my mind for the past 3 weeks; yet none have been published. Thoughts on the most simple of problems that can happen in an organization: leadership change. A leadership change is no doubt a phenomenon that needs to be handled with care, for a rash decision by either side ultimately affects only the organization (the loyal guy that I am!!). People like to say nobody is indispensable but only those involved in the blood bath called IT understand what it means..you are ‘used’ to the point beyond which you are no longer required and at any point of time between the origin and the destination you are indeed indispensable, no exceptions made!! And why is all this generalization being made: to understand the mindset of ‘established’ resources and their difficulties in changing to a different leadership style. These resources, over a period of time, become masters of their respective areas that the question of dispensing with them is equivalent to asking a member of BCCI if Sachin can be ‘dropped’ for a match! The value-add that this presents to the organization does not come without a cost, though. They are so used to their own way of running things, that any minor change (leave alone a radical one) to the way they are being managed arouses a strong feeling of discomfort in them. And if the style of the management changes from macro to micro, it is all the more worse. People feel that every action of theirs is being questioned, they are left ‘out of the loop’ on important discussions and there exists in office, a non-conducive atmosphere for growth. This is where I beg to differ: the problem is not with Micro-management as a style; it is in the way it is being implemented by the manager that causes all these problems. Otherwise micro-management is as good a style as any other management technique; the only caveat being its success depends a lot on the manager who uses it. The results of an incorrect implementation are what I am seeing at office today. The organization is losing out on a well trained manager, the all-too-important SMEs and most important of all: their productive time is wasted on unnecessary plots to pin each other down!

The other point where I feel corporate ethics haven’t been upheld is in the way people are seeking a resolution to this issue: an open discussion is all that is required to put all this out of everyone’s mind and not an escalation. An escalation for all these operational and ‘soft’ issues, to the next level, is nothing short of a student going to his headmistress (intentional reference to a female!!) that his teacher (male and intentional again!!, let me see if I can decode this when I come back to this post some time later) for some subject X has changed. A closed mind can never see what can come out of a fair discussion and it never happened here. A meeting addressing everybody’s concerns with the new manager and his boss (Headmistress, it is!!) would be my solution and in my humble opinion, one that would work definitely rather than a clandestine session with each one, which only serves to add to the animosity.

No, the see-saw is too tilted now..Too much has been said about Mr.X that this post will be better off without him and there are too many cases to be presented against him. After all, this is a post on my thoughts on management and not on Mr.X!!