Ruling My World

Aararoo aarirarooo (Siruthai song) 

At 9' 0clock in the night I start with this song to put my 2 year old daughter to sleep. It goes on and on moving from english to hindi and back to tamil songs. By the time it is 11'o clock, when I slowly peep in to see if she is asleep, she would jump out of the bed and tell me, "Amma innum konjam" That means, I want some more.

Toastmasters and my dear friends, welcome to the world of parenting!!

For the next 5 minutes, you are going to listen to a typical mom's banter.

If my night times are like this, my mornings are even worse. Especially during weekends, at 4'o clock I wake up after hearing a loud thunderous, crashing noise. When I find that my daughter is not around, I go searching for her and find her in the corner of the room with the toy cupboard open and all the toys scattered on the floor. When I ask her, "What are you doing during this wee hour in this pitch dark room?" She would simply say, "Amma I am preparing soup for you." Don't you think that is cute, adorable and dainty? Don't even think about it. 

 However, as a mom I am proud that I have acquired a few rare and extraordinary skills over a period of time. I have a 9 year old and a 2 year old, so I have 11 years of abundant experience in cutting kids' nails. You wont believe me, I can even diffuse a bomb while riding on a roller coaster. I am sure you can relate to this if you have ever cut your kids' nails.

I am a working mom and I spend most of time in conducting meetings. During the initial days of the lock down, I used to think that, I can easily attend meetings if I lock the room and my daughter stays outside with my mom. The idea was an utter flop and it never worked. She would bang on the door all the time. Then I decided to have her in the room with her toys around her. This really worked. Most of the time she would allow me to attend the calls peacefully, though some times she would pull my headset while on the call. But one day all of a sudden, when I was on a status call, she picked this mike, switched it on and started saying 'Pooochandiiii'- that means 'Boogieman'. All my team mates started laughing. She became an overnight star and popular among my team mates. From then on, my team mates would always ask me ' How is your Poochandi daughter?'. 

Coming back to this Poochandi story, there is an interesting flashback on this. Me and my elder daughter were watching this Jim Carry's movie,"The Mask". In one of the scenes the green colored mask man has his tongue protruding and the eyeballs coming out. It is a very scary scene and my younger daughter was so scared and she started crying. She calls him the 'Green color poochandi'. It came as a blessing in disguise. It was like a magical power given to me. Whenever she jumps on the sofa dangerously or doesn't have her meal, I would immediately say, "Green color poochandi is waiting outside". She would immediately listen and obey. But this was like Cinderella's fairy magic and lasted only for 2 months.After that she started telling me, "Let him come, I will befriend him and have lunch with him". Moral of the story, "Never ever try to outsmart your kids. Mostly it doesnt work. Even if it works, it is only a temporary fix.

After hearing all this if you think, "This lady has some peaceful 'me-time' only in the restroom.", you are totally wrong. From the time I enter into the restroom till the time I come out, the loud banging on the door with the background music, "Amma Amma Amma!!!...All my neighbours are thorough with my restroom schedules. Kaushalya aunty will probably be wondering, "It is already 3'o clock, why is there no noise? Is Kavitha at home?." "Aunty...Kavitha is at home, but her status call got extended by 15 mins so probably you will be hearing the noise at 3:15 today aunty. Moral of the story, "There is no escape. Odavum mudiyaadhu, Oliyavum mudiyadhu!"

After all this banter if you come to a conclusion, "Oh my God I am not going to have any kids." You have totally got me wrong. 10 years ago, after a miscarriage I have had nightmares that I would end up not becoming a mom at all. Now my situation is different. 20 years from now, it is going to be even more different. You never know what is going to happen. My daughters are not going to be with me for sure and they are going to have their own lives.

Now, I am trying to live my life to the fullest and cherish, treasure and venerate each and every moment . I would like to enjoy the humor, the comicality, and the witticism surrounding my life. As my role model Stephen Hawking, says, "Life would be tragic if weren't funny". I am looking at my whole life as one big funny story. I will be here to narrate the small chunks of humor in my life every year for the humorous speech contest. Over to you contest master.

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Dynamic Leadership : Level 1 - Project 2 - Locked up

'Action words are called verbs.'
'How many laptops have been dispatched?'
'Are the failures due to script issue or environmental issues?

Good Morning Toastmasters and Guests!

Introduction :

If you peep into our study room this is what you will get to hear. We have never ever imagined that three of our worlds(My husband, my elder daughter and mine) would collide together like this and we would get a chance to peep into each other's worlds. No more secrets! Every thing is transparent now. Thanks to the pandemic and the lock down. Honestly we might not have had regard on each other's jobs as such if not for this WFH .

Meetings:

Our team meetings can be divided into 3 types.

1. We talk and others listen
2. We listen and others talk
3. We talk, only when questioned

Second and third category meetings do not bother us much. Only the 1st category meetings are considered to be dangerous when we work together in a room. My scrum calls are the most vulnerable ones. There were several times my team mates would say, "I can hear a background noise" Perhaps my husband would be shouting on top of his voice during his category 'one' meetings. Now all my team mates know very well that the 'background noise culprit' is me. They have stopped saying, "I can hear a background noise" and started feeling bad for me and even started giving innovative suggestions on how to attend parallel meetings.

 By 10' o clock after preparing the breakfast and having it, all 3 of us would start the day in our study room. First discussion would be with my husband, about the list of meetings for the day. We are safe if there are no conflicting category one meetings. During the conflicting category one meetings, we would take turns to run between rooms and most of the time I take the balcony since my younger one, elder one and my husband would take the 3 rooms respectively. I had never ever imagined that a 3 BHK would still be insufficient for a small family like ours. My balcony meetings have become really popular in our gated community that my neighbors know the name of all my team mates. They know when my scrum calls start and they would eagerly come to their balconies to listen. After coming to know of these gossips, I stopped my balcony meetings and preferred to be 'cross talked' and 'eaves dropped' by my husband and kids. As the saying goes, 'Every thing is safe when it is within the four walls' :)

Charger

Apart from the meetings another important thing we fight for is the plug to connect our laptop charger. We have only 2 plug points in the room. One goes for my daughter by default as her laptop is pathetic and needs power supply all the time. The other plug point is the one we both (me and my husband) keep fighting for. When one of our laptop goes off, we make sure the other person feels guilty about making use of the plug point too much without sharing.

Familiarity with Work Patterns

Me and my husband had no clue about the type of job we were doing  before the lock down. Now we know each others' team mates' names by-heart and we know each others' schedules and meetings and work patterns very clearly that if we would swap our roles we would smoothly execute our duties without a transition plan in place.

Talking with the boss

Though me and my husband do not hesitate to attend meetings, talk to colleagues and peers in the presence of each other, some how we feel uncomfortable to talk to our bosses when some one is around. This is a strange feeling which requires a bigger analysis and research (probably in another speech). We always run to a room where no body else is around when we talk to our bosses.

 Online School

Previously I had no clue about my daughter's subject interests and how she would listen in a class. Now I can clearly see her behavior in the class, which subject she is really fond of, which one she hates, a lot about her class mates and their mischievous pranks. I owe a lot more respect for the teachers post the lock down after seeing their online classes. I wish I had patience like them.The chat boxes would suddenly be filled with random letters, special characters and numbers by the pranksters and the teacher would say nothing but, 'Ashwin..You are a good boy no? Dont type on the chat box unnecessarily". Suddenly some one would say, "Mam I know this already mam." and the mam would say, "Very good. But the others should also know right? Please mute your mike Vineeth". One of the students would even say, 'Mam the class is boring' for which the teacher would prefer to ignore. I guess the school system has totally changed from our good old days, when we were scared of our teachers. I used to wonder are these new generation of teachers always sweet and patient like this or is it because of the virtual class that is being monitored by  the principal and specially by the parents? In any case they still deserve a big round of applause.

Younger One

My younger one who is 2.5 years old, prefers to watch TV or play with her sister when I am available. Once I start my office work, she cries and keeps uttering the words "Amma venum!" I attend most of my category 2 and 3 meetings with my younger one on my lap. Trouble comes when a category 2 is converted into category 3. This is when my mom comes to the rescue.

I had my biggest shock of my life when I got a mail from her school stating that she has to attend online classes starting from next week. I made a big mistake by enrolling her for this academic year for a prekg. I never ever had the slightest clue that we are going to be stuck with this lock down. I am sure she is not going to sit for the classes and we dont have any more laptops to spare.



Conclusion :

As a result of the pandemic and the lock down  we are all under going a lot of mood swings and negative thoughts. The only way to stay positive is by enjoying the moment and looking at the humor quotient and laughing out loud. These times will never return.

Cooking and Software Development

My profile -11 years of experience in cooking and in IT (Automation). I have worked with the US, European and Asian clients in the corporate world. However, the customers I had for my cooking were only my family and friends. I understood that, which ever part of the world people belong to, the emotions and the way they react to situations is almost the same. After many years, I realized a few commonalities between cooking and software development. I immediately started to pen down these amazing facts.

My experience with Cooking and S/W Development:-


1. The first time you do it, (cooking and s/w dev) will give you nightmares. You become better as you keep doing it. However, you can also be one of those who do it 'first time right'.

2.  Cooking a very tasty dish and developing a bug free product once or twice is easy. Doing it every time consistently is challenging unless we have true passion for it.

3. Though the recipe is well defined, we can still show innovations to improvise the taste. This holds good only when we are an expert in cooking. The requirements are well defined during software development, however there is still scope for improvising, provided we are an SME.

4. Most of the simple mistakes done while cooking a dish can be rectified when we taste it and identify the issue. A badly made dish can still be given a different avatar and made to look like a good one. A buggy product can still be delivered with quality, provided the testing team uncovers the bugs and the development team fixes it without any ego. However, the architectural issues will let the product down.

5. If you are a beginner in cooking, and the target audience (consumers) are aware of that, then how much ever quality you give them, they will still think the final product is from an amateur and is of very average quality. In the world of software development, the customer's first impression, will be having  your years of experience in mind. Although, this can be changed when we build a good rapport with them.

6. The above issue for the people in the entry level can be overcome by using simple but effective mantras like, 'Building trust/rapport',  'Marketing', 'Communication' etc.

Building Trust  and having a good rapport:-

As an amateur cook, I used to think that a tasty food will always bring appreciations from the consumers. Though it is partially true, it is not always the case. You must know to market yourself and your product. If you are not confident about your own skills how can you expect this from the consumers? After so many years in the kitchen, I have learnt how to do pre-sales marketing. Before the dish is being served, you can say how many  times you have already prepared this dish successfully and your confidence and hold on the dish.Other information including your knowledge about the product and how much it is popular in other countries and how Italians (For eg:-if it is an Italian dish) crave for this dish etc. will prove to add more value. There is no need to feel guilty about marketing yourself and your product as long as you are honest. Above all, a person will like your dish only if he/she likes you and has confidence in your cooking.

A simple fact I am trying to bring here is that, it is the human relationship that brings customer-satisfaction, appreciation and in turn a successful project. You can call it trust or rapport or communication. In the end, we do business with human beings and not with products. As a fresher in corporate world, I used to wonder why certain projects were successful and certain projects were not. Now I understand that, deep inside, for the success of a project there should have been a good rapport and trust between the individuals involved. For the failure, again it is the lack of it. Though quality of a product is really important, it is time we shift our focus to the human aspect involving communication, rapport and trust.


It is easy to cook a tasty dish. You have lots of videos on youtube these days :). However, it is not very easy to satisfy your consumers. It is easier to build a quality product than to build trust with your customer. Most of our effort and focus is already on the quality whereas the actual success lies on the human aspect of it.