Career Advice
There have been many times where I’ve been asked for “career advice”, especially after a talk. I usually suggest them to ‘build a repertoire of things you have done, things you are capable of, things you like to do’. But I’ve never really been sure of this advice nor do I feel I have the credibility to answer such questions.
The good thing is that I have now found something to point them to - Garr Reynolds‘ presentation on a career advice book. This presentation explain things very well and is so beautifully done that it can capture the attention of a young mind:
The other resource I have found useful is Aaron Swartz’s “How to Get a Job Like Mine”.
Cultivating a good career is like creating the Mona Lisa. The right tools and strategies will only get you partway there - the soul of the artist is necessary to create something worthwhile.
Thought for the Day
The world is a comedy for those who think; a tragedy for those who feel.
– Horace Walpole
How to defend India?
I’ve been provoked and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Incident 1. It all started on Day 2 of my Singapore trip (Dec 23 Sun) when a hotel owner was too friendly. Maybe he didn’t have much work, but anyway, he got pretty chatty with us and was asking about how we like Singapore. All we wanted to do was eat noodles.
He started talking about his visit to India, and like most Singaporeans, he had been on a Buddhist pilgrimage to India. I can still remember the angst in his voice.
He said that the central government in India is good but the state governments are bad. Strike 1. I had to agree.
He said that it’s not a safe place for businessmen to invest money. He said one of his close friends made huge investment, but when the government changed, the policies changed and the friend made a huge loss. Strike 2. I don’t know much about such things, but I can imagine that it is possible.
He said that India hasn’t advanced enough, there’s still too much poverty, there’s still so much chaos. He said ‘take a look at China’. For example, if the parents invest some amount with the government, they’ll give back 10 times the amount in 10 years, or something like that, and this is guaranteed by the government to safeguard the child’s future. I don’t remember the numbers he used but I was impressed with what he said. Strike 3.
I was beaten and didn’t know how to fight back.
I’m not a patriotic guy. I don’t go around burning boards written in non-state languages, nor do I go around speaking only in Hindi and refusing to speak in English. But I believe in the concept of India as a nation and I instinctively feel that I should defend my country when someone makes says negative about my country.
But I was stumped. I was completely caught off-guard. I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded. I desperately looked for things to tell him. But I got nothing. Throughout the trip, I kept thinking of things to go back and tell that hotel guy that India is a great country, but what do we really have?
Specifically, the question is:
Post-independence, does India, as a nation, have achievements to be proud of?
I’m not talking about our ancient history or ‘culture’. I’m not talking about what some Indian did when he went to a foreign country, or even someone who went out of his way to achieve something within India (like the paeans being written about Tata Motors and their Nano car).
I’m talking specifically about the 1. post-independence era and the 2. ‘as a nation’ part.
A week after that incident, I was still trying to forget about it. But the same thing happened again on Day 9 (Dec 30 Sun) with the store owner of a bookstore that Abishek and myself randomly walked into. We had a long conversation about Buddhism and our beliefs of God and how we pray. It’s surreal that we randomly started talking our intimate spiritual beliefs with a complete stranger. But such is life. And then she mentioned the same exact things that the hotel owner did. She specifically mentioned that she was appalled at the poverty when she went to Bodh Gaya.
Yes, we are talking about poverty, not just about the beggars on the busy roads of Bangalore, but he fighting-for-food kind, the kind that we saw in ‘Swades’ movie.
Incident 2. After visiting the Kaala Chakra exhibition, I realized how influential India has really been, especially to most of South East Asia, from language to politics to trade, Indian-related stuff is everywhere in South East Asia. I used to wonder about why Tamil is such a common language here in Singapore, and only after I visited this exhibition, I realized that this goes back to the B.C. ages!
Notice the irony that I got to know more about Indian history and influence when I’m outside India.
Probably because there is such importance given to history and culture in Singapore. But people in India have no time for such things, we are still fighting and struggling for our basic needs.
This immediately reminded me of “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs”:
We are still struggling in Levels 1-3, that’s why we are just touching Level 4, and we’re a long way from reaching Level 5 of Self Actualization. At least, my point of view.
Incident 3. I know there will be lots of people that say that I’m wrong, and that everything’s fine in India. (It reminds me of Rahul Bose in the “Everybody Says I’m Fine” movie.)
The problem is that everything’s fine as long as nothing bad happens to you or you witness it, only then you realize how bad the situation is. God forbid, you end up in an accident, only then you realize the problems with the police, the hospital, the insurance, and so on. The situation is the same everywhere, irrespective of the aspect of life.
I don’t know how better or worse we are compared to other countries, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be in a better situation. There is simply no reason to! We have the money, the people, the resources…
Incident 4. I came to know recently that at a premier medical institution in Bangalore, teachers are openly telling students that if they don’t “help” the teachers (i.e. pay them money), they will make sure that 30% of the students will fail! I am not kidding you, this is for real. Where’s the sanctity of education? Where’s the concern for the students’ future? Where’s the concern for encouraging future doctors (especially because the number of doctors is already dwindling)? Where’s the concern about setting precedents for future of medical profession? Even if they don’t think long term, how will students afford this? I know many medical student friends who have struggled to pay the hefty fees, what about these students who simply cannot afford to pay bribes to teachers?
Incident 5. Similarly, lecturers in PUC colleges have stopped teaching in college and they tell students that they are anyway going to tuitions. If not, they should join their own tuitions! What happens to all those students who can’t afford it?
Incident 6. Abishek’s close friend and special effects friend Osmand is a third-generation Indian. When he was about to fly from India to China to visit his relatives, he was abused that he was a Chinese person, and this for a person who’s born and brought up in India his entire life! The difference in attitudes was telling when the Indian immigration officer made him wait for 3 hours to prove that he’s an Indian compared to when he explained, that he’s a third-generation Indian originally hailing from China, to the Chinese immigration officer, he said “Welcome home.” Now, Osmand is as Indian as it gets, irrespective of how it looks. Tell me, who’s the racist here? Osmand is so fed up of this attitude that he wants to go back to China.
raison d’être
What’s your reason for living?
“We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.” — The Quarter-Life Crisis.
Roving
I hear you brother. I hear you.
Biking to Hogenakkal
Aug 10 2007 Fri 6 pm. After missing the last night drive that Azmi and Rishi went to, I wanted to go for a night drive too, and Azmi was happy to oblige.
At 10pm, I was at his house. We opened up Google Maps, MapMyIndia and the Weather.com. We decided to drive to Yercaud which was a good 205 km from Bengaluru. It involved Hosur Road, NH7 and NH68. Things looked good.
At 11pm, we decided to sleep for a couple of hours, get up at 1am, and start driving by 2am. We set the alarms and dozed off.
Azmi wakes me up at 2.15am. We’re late. We realize that both of us didn’t set the alarm properly on our mobile phones. Luckily, we didn’t wake up too late. As usual, Azmi, the chef, cooked something fast and satisfying - boiled corn and maggi.
At 3 am, we took out his Pulsar and started driving.
During the onward journey, Azmi did most of the driving, because he was more enthu, and I am not that used to night driving yet. Besides, there was just way too much lorry traffic on the road. Even at 4 am.
At 5 am, we had tea and dosa on a roadside shop. I wonder why food at such roadside places taste so much better than swanky restaurants.
We continued driving on the smooth road and enjoying the scenery and the speed.
What really happens with feedback forms…
That reminds me, it’s been a while since I read The Daily WTF.
ion and the police
This incident happened about three weeks ago when the preparations for ion were in full swing, and Vikram and myself worked all day long to create the posters for ion as well as the website itself. At one point, we realized that we were spending most of our time in choosing just the color and placement of text, and we spent some 20+ min just to decide the font of the apostrophe in “plug ‘n play”!
At around 6 o’ clock, we were dead tired (at least I was, Vikram said he had never seen so lazy before) and decided to go get the posters printed but I didn’t want to, so he suggested instead to go for the new place that he went for cycling to recently. We went by bike through a zig-zag maze of roads and after 3-4 km, suddenly ended up in a place which seemed to be deserted! It was a new layout being formed by destroying the hill and the greenery, the signs of urbanization marked by destruction, the green being replaced by the grey (concrete).
We climbed up the rocks, just sat down there in the darkness and we had a long discussion about random things and sometimes deep things. Then, we noticed there was a huge reddish moon in the sky. Simply beautiful. I was taking photographs.
Happy New …
New Year, New Problems, New Resolutions, New Disappointments.
Same person.
Following the “people developer” Pavlina’s advice, I have chosen my primary focus for the year… so far it’s already worked out good. One thing I’ve realized is that things are gonna change only at the cost of other things - you have to make sacrifices elsewhere so that you can concentrate on one thing*.
Let’s see how long this lasts.
* Of course, all generalizations are not true all the time.
Thought for the Day
“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.â€?— Martin Luther King, Jr.
“A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.â€?— Charles Kingsley
Hard Questions
- Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
- Should your life have a purpose? What if you don’t know what exactly you want to do?
- How do you know when you’re happy and truly achieved something?
- Ever inspired by Norvig’s speech?
- Do you have aspirations/dreams? Even if it is world peace.
- Is money important or dreams?
- What if you don’t have any dreams or aspirations?
- How often should you stop, take a step back and take stock of your situation?
Are there any more hard questions one has to ask oneself?
