Gotta share if you care.
Nasty shit.
Find me on Spotify for more playlists to get you through life.
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3AM CLUB LIFE -
Gotta share if you care.
Take one and pass it on.
Find me on Spotify for more playlists to get you through life.
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Experiments that barely qualify to be called an experiment. Mostly
keyboardskeywords and moods.In no particular order of merit.
Some Indian bloke. Lost. Just another guy without nowhere to be, no one to be.
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I’m accustomed to receiving feedback. It’s been a part of my professional life since 2008 and over time I think I can digest (most of) it fairly well without heartburn. Call it experience or practice, it’s a kind of a necessary evil or regrettable necessity that has in fact improved what I do and the way I do it. So, thank you whoever for the kindness that you shared in the choice of your words.
But of course, there are those remarks that thankfully come few and far in between which find a way to miss the mind and hit the heart and cause a bit more than heartburn. Some kind of painful churn. Stuff that you would smile through with a quip about being grateful for their attention and/or time.
My Observations:
- The no-one-asked-for-it, but-here-it-is (NOAFI-BHIIS) model of managing complex workflows added a touch of unwanted humanity. Thankfully months of machine learning meeting my years of experience in the professional world allowed me to be open-minded to yet another set of unsolicited feedback. In that way, the AI was being very human.
- Pleasantries before touching upon the ‘areas of improvement’ also reminded me of some of the most thought-damaging feedback I’ve received from the senior folks I’ve had the opportunity to work with. Points for keeping it real.
- While I have personally been guilty of this in the past, using bullet points or numbering to (clearly) state your inputs stinks of ‘Premature Surrealism’ because (real) human beings are too messed up to be so clear. It’s a turn-off and a clear giveaway!
- Corporate Motivation sign-off, while even in the most human form tends to send the most talented yet underpaid personnel into a fit of subdued rage. I prefer the feeling of conversing with a bot instead
I’ve visualized the above data in a simple manner so that it can be easier to grasp:
Hope this has been illuminating 🙂
You can find the original article that inspired this one here.
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That I make a lot of jokes. She didn’t explicitly say that I’m funny or anything to that effect. She didn’t even suggest that the jokes were effective. Effectiveness in this case is about the message delivering the intended outcome, and in this case, what I could hope for was to lighten the mood. Mood modulation is usually necessary when there’s a stalemate in a game. If happy employees are good employees then happy players are good players. The game in question is marriage. While this isn’t a game in the sense that it’s not an activity that either of us pursue for amusement, it most definitely is one of those things that get better with time. Time here indicates the level of participation in the game and not necessarily the number of marriages per se, one has played. That would be a riot, wouldn’t it? Not that a marriage can’t be a riot but more that riots aren’t inherently fun. A marriage on the other hand is a game (as established earlier) but not yet a sport. The oldest (eldest?) players are the ones who have been traditionally ranked right at the top. But these are postmodern times and we do tend to reject the proverbial old-school. Heroes of the past haven’t aged gracefully. Even though marriage is a tradition, we must evolve it to meet the postmodern couple who believes that their values outshine those of their parents. Parents can probably be considered as the new joke. The ones who got so much wrong in their day but somehow we turned out so right. Parents Are The New Joke could also be a long-running series, or mega series because the only thing that gets old is them. But, I must admit that time comes for all. One day we might become parents and probably even grow old. This was the original holy grail. A goal post that people began dreaming of even before they got married. One that still eludes many of our friends or one that many of our friends elude depending on the circle that the subject is being discussed in. The number of subjects that adults discuss seems to be increasing every day. The proverbial ‘opinion’ has never been easier to share, just like this one. Sharing no longer means two kids splitting one chocolate. It’s more like the candy that everyone wants to throw emojis at. I tend to use a lot of emojis. I still remember a time when I used to call them emoticons. That’s another term that’s deemed old-school now. Consider that a fresh opinion.
My wife thinks that I tell a lot of jokes, but I’d rather have her laugh with at least one joke a day to validate my pointless skillset.
Art Credit: La Clairvoyance, 1936 by Rene Magritte -
…that I’m rather good with words. She believes that the choices I make while speaking often help me lead conversations, and in some cases ‘win’ in them. In other words, I create holes in an argument and can navigate myself out of difficult conversations.
I didn’t have much to do today and so decided to write my way out of ennui.
Normally I use too many words, but since I don’t really do this for a living, you’ll have to excuse the pointlessness of what you’re reading. On second thought, it probably doesn’t even matter. This is what us old-timers on the internet call a ‘blog’. Blogs have been and usually stuck to the format of simple words put together with the purposeful intention of not arriving at anything. Sometimes leaving the reader with the feeling of wanting more, but usually ending up with the fear of wasting time. A commodity that’s so scarce that you’re normally better off scrolling through Instagram and feeling fulfilled. Or better yet, creating something to post on Instagram. Those are the prolific ones of these times. Every era has them. Mine had forummers running rampant on several forums every day. Followed by bloggers, who were usually the same people that were on forums but here they could own their own space, and craft an identity unique to them (pro tip: look up stream of consciousnesses). This was soon followed by the video explosion. It’s not that video didn’t exist while forums ruled the world, it’s just that 3G and its successors were a science fiction subject and so obviously not meant to be taken seriously. Also, smartphones of yesteryear were actually feature phones with state-of-art technology like infrared and never-ending pixel loops known as games, more popularly referred to as Snake. This is well before the iPhone and the first Android. I remember the genuine fear of them taking over the world and enslaving humanity. Only to realize too soon that that’s an adult problem and not something that teenagers need to worry about. We were focused on our blogs and other artistic pursuits. Today we see the same passion in a new form. Coupled with the video explosion, these passions now manifest themselves as Vlogs. The relationship between Vlogs and Blogs can be understood by observing what exists between electric cars and cars. Futuristic, lesser understood and everyone’s promising of getting one. A part of me wishes that this was a vlog. But that’s a slippery slope. If this was a video, then the next thing I’d want to be would be an influencer. A real one who gets paid to create unlike me who’s answering phone calls from his wife while writing this and responding with ‘nothing’ to the world’s toughest question, What are you doing! This really is a messy one. It needs to be something smart, maybe even witty because that’s who I identify as. It shouldn’t seem like too much fun and should leave the caller with so much awe that they reply with the intended outcome of ‘Cool’, and if you’re lucky, ‘What’s that!’. The explanation of which leaves you feeling true to your identity. Unless the conversion leads to a ‘fuck that’ or ‘bullshit’. That’s the feeling you’re probably having right now. I feel you. Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, and/or difficulty. I was in a difficult position when this began. I feel you. My wife thinks that I use words to my advantage, and to be honest, I’d rather be known for other things.
Photo Credit: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford -
14 March 2022
Ende Ammachi. You grew old, I grew up.
Never ever gave any thought to when your life would let up.Fond of you as any quiet grandchild you see.
Eating away my childhood, naadan snacks, and your home’s TV.Life is filled with pities like missing your send-off.
Today it’s been a year, but old memories can’t be walked off.Tears are a bump for we live against a clock.
Why it only took until 2 am Monday, for these simple words I chalk.Time is cruel, but with it, on me, you grew.
At first scared, especially when you pulled my tooth or two.Out went the first one, and I knew that you were nice.
God knows that dentists aren’t that swift or precise.Today was a mess, but so were your last days.
Memories and the mind you lost in many ways.From knowing life’s experiences to becoming a child again.
Somehow I’m happy that you relived happiness through all your pain.Now that you’ve gone, I feel like I should try my best.
Thus dared a boy to sit down and cry like the rest.A year late, but that’s always been my fate.
Maybe later, even this day will just be a date.Pranamam.
Ammachi -
I’ll be honest. This was a task that I dreaded even before I actually got around to doing it.
You know the drill. Government documentation is all about knowing ‘what’ to do in a world where people suggest getting an ‘agent’ for everything. But things weren’t oh-so-bad. In fact, the process was quite simple and I did it all over again for my wife as well. Here’s what we did:
Step 1: Log onto https://myaadhaar.uidai.gov.in/ with your personal credentials
Step 2: Go to ‘Update Aadhaar Online’
Step 3: Then there are clear steps to follow. Take a look:
Step 4: You can then proceed to update your Name, Date of Birth, Gender or Address. They also mention the number of turns you have left. After which you may make the changes you need.
Step 5: Status Check. Now every time you log-in, there should be a Requests section that holds the latest update about your changes. It should say ‘Completed’
Printing a PVC Card version of your new Aadhaar is also possible similarly. Takes a fee of INR 50/-
That’s it!
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Originally written in September 2019.
In Bombay, when people ask you where your office is, the answer can sometimes make the questioner decide certain things. Things like whether they would like to do business with you or not.
It’s how one can build a perception of how large or small your company is.
I’m actually being quite judgemental myself by saying that this is a Bombay thing. This is more of a human thing.
Something like this Princeton Study.
So, whenever I visited the GroupM India office at the Westin building in my early 20’s, there was always an aura of awe. The awe of doing business with a company that can afford to be housed at what then seemed like one of the most premium commercial premises available, at least for an advertising agency.
But actually, it wasn’t like ‘I’ was doing this so-called business with them. I worked at a (then, as in 2011) much smaller boutique agency that was one of the preferred vendors for a certain now overly commoditized creative service. But I loved going there for meetings. Loved it so much that I took the first chance I got at a job interview in that building. In fact, at the time of the interview, I was unemployed and seeking immediate employment after my deal with a rival and equally large organization went south on the joining day. Short story time: Before my joining date, I was asked to come in a few days earlier and pick up a handover from the person I was replacing. Seemed straightforward, but it turned out to be a massive blow to my plans of working closer to home. Strange how the Talent team handled that. I knew that if Day minus 5 was like a bummer (I’m being nice), then the days of life ahead couldn’t be extravagantly different. The End.
Then came along the aforementioned interview. At this point, I was ready to take up smaller (read less pay) offers because of the not-so-respectable behaviour that I witnessed at a large firm. I thought that maybe I wasn’t cut out for the big league. Maybe I was just a young kid with big dreams but without the necessary skill set to own the floor at a large firm. The confidence that I had brewed in my mind because of being exceptional at a smaller firm felt hollow. The clientele was the same as the big league. But when a hiring manager tells a 20-nothing person that they’re still untested on the ‘real field’, it doesn’t help inspire confidence of any kind. It in fact, led to my own use of that terrible thing to say to interviewees the following year.
Being the underdog wasn’t a choice or a rebellious teenage headline. It was an unwanted necessity.
I just realized that I’ve written more about the shitty experience than about the shit that I actually wanted to write about. Can you imagine the so-called childhood trauma?
Course correction and fast forward.
I got the job. Loved everything about it. The people, the role, the company and more important(to this story) the office. When people don’t understand your job (digital media *facepalm*), they try and judge its potential using other external factors. So when someone outside of the biz heard that the office is at the Westin, and occupies 3 whole floors, it definitely left a strong impression of success. I didn’t realize when, but somewhere there was some notoriety with that impression which I started enjoying. So whether it was at a family gathering or a college reunion, no matter how little anyone cared about the business of creativity, they cared about the prestige associated with the address.
That was at 23. Now I’m 30. The charm of the job has definitely waned. The roles have changed. The people have moved on. Hell, we had a merger a year-and-a-half-ago so the name of the company changed as well. At the lowest point of the job (and there always will be), the only thing that made going to work feel special was knowing that the damn building doesn’t flood in the monsoon, doesn’t melt in the summer and didn’t look shitty at any point of the year. Basically doesn’t feel like Bombay.
This was, in my opinion, the single greatest factor of enjoyment in those times: at least the building looks great!
This is probably why I’m writing this great good-bye to the building.
No, I didn’t lose my job. The whole company is shifting! To a place that’s actually halfway closer to home.So, to new beginnings and remembering the good ol’ Westin days!
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Originally drafted in July 2014.
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Work is…
Meetings
Content
Design
Illustrations
Changes
Rework
Adapt
Estimates
Billing
PO
RO
Follow up
Where is my payment
Stinkers
Appreciation
Escalation
Strategy
Execution
Awards
Client Delight
Alcohol
Thought
Passion Project(s)
What happened to sleep
New Business
Appraisal?
No sleep
Snack
RaveRepeat.
Curated excerpts from real life:
Research timeline: 3 minutes.
Sources: Two scrolls of Twitter. @adweak
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