Taking ownership for Successes & Failures

My job experience has now been almost 4.5+ years. Most of it has been in the IT industry offcourse. Right from my initial years upto now I find one thing that has remained unchanged..... guess what ? Most of my colleagues as well as my seniors in my workplace, whether a small time company or the topmost company, always jump in to take credit for all achievements that me & my team achieves in the organisation. When it comes to accountability for failures its only me who is ready to take the burden. This attitude is prevalent right from my technical colleagues to my Managers. Though this attitude has helped me in achieving leadership roles much earlier than what other people do, it still sometimes bothers me. If you or your team do something marvelous & instantly take credit for the same then why don't you also hold yourself accountable for failures. We all are humans & not machines, & are bound to commit mistakes. Why does the saying "To err is human & to forgive is divine" stay only as a bookish knowledge & not realised in real life ?

Atlast a perfect Cake baked in Microwave !!!!!

Right from my school days I used to hear from my sister that Microwave ovens bake excellent cakes। I am talking about the 90s era when my sister used to frequently visit one of her friends place & would always tell me about the different Microwave delicacies she used to taste there.

We had to wait up to 1999 or so when the first Microwave oven, from IFB, first arrived at our place. After experimenting few dishes few finally decided to bake our first cake in the oven. After the entire baking process we found it pretty disappointing that the cake was not up to the mark & definitely not what we expected after investing Rs.15,000 on a Microwave oven. After discussing with other people we finally realised the flaw..... ours was a standard Microwave oven without the convection feature. We started cursing the sales person who didn't inform about the absence of this feature. We had no other option but to continue with this model until & unless the oven malfunctioned & we had an excuse to get a new one.
1 year, 2 years, 3 years..... Gradually as years progressed we realised that our oven was from an old stock due to which it used to give us frequent problems. Finally we procured a new LG Microwave oven..... off course with the convection feature in Feb'2007. After the demo from the technician a few weeks back, we finally decided to bake our first cake yesterday. We already had our preparations done & my mom had also purchased an Aluminium vessel as the baking vessel. The confusion started in the afternoon about how to go about with the baking process..... whether to bake it in Microwave mode or Convection mode or the Combination mode. I searched through lot of Internet sites & finally decided to use only Convection mode with the Aluminium vessel, which the technician had also suggested.
My mom prepared the dough & in the meantime I preheated the oven to 200 deg C, as instructed in some sites। Finally we transferred the cake mix to the vessel, placed it in the lower rack & set the time for 30 mins. 1 min, 5 mins, 15 mins...... we started getting the lovely cake odour. When it completed 25 mins, I decided to pause & check whether the baking was complete. I took a fork & pierced the centre of the cake & when I removed the form it came out clean. This meant that our cake was ready. So I now stopped the baking process & kept the vessel inside the oven to absorb the remaining heat. After 10 mins or so I finally took out the vessel & allowed it to cool for an hour. Coincidentally my sister also turned up in the evening & was delighted to see the freshly baked Microwave cake, which she always talked about. Finally we cut the cake & relished it to the maximum.

So our patience for almost a decade payed off !!!!

Sale of Sunfeast Biscuits set to decline - Just a joke

So after the pathetic cricketing performance by the Blue Billion (our Cricket Team offcourse), no one would prefer to have Sunfeast Biscuits which promotes on the tag line "AB GHAR GHAR MEIN SACHIN". We don't want the big names at all. What we want is young, enthusiastic team which gives more than 100% on the field, which the current team is not capable of.

DTH price war

With the successful launch of the latest series of INSAT satellite, we will soon see few more parties joining the DTH bandwagon. One of the topmost is Reliance's BlueMagic. And we very well know that Reliance is very good at initiating a price war in any market. So very soon we will find an upsurge in DTH service providers added with some cool Value Added Services. Monthly subscription charges will soon come down drastically offering customers a very low price for DTH services. What remains to be seen are the charges for Installation & Set-Top boxes. So the coming years will be an interesting ones for all of us. So don't be in a hurry, continue with your old cablewallah, coz you might repent very soon for investing much higher on existing DTH services.

Work from home

Few days back one of my friends working in New York said that due to heavy snowfall he was said to work from home. I am desperately waiting for such a culture to be widely accepted among corporates in India. Take the case of heavy rains which happen in Mumbai every monsoon. Even on the worst affected days we are expected to come to office. My job is such that I can easily provide remote support to anyone with my home PC switched on & connected to net via broadband. Though I do have the flexibility to work from home, its unofficial. If I request my seniors to officially permit me to work this way, it wont be accepted. Thats the way it goes right now. Eagerly waiting for the dawn of "work-from-home" era .....

The Moon Eclipses on a HOLIday

4-Mar-2007 was one of the perfect days to watch a Lunar Eclipse. Coz 4-Mar-2007 was a Sunday with everyone celebrating Holi. The preparations for Lunar Eclipse began at home since the news broke out on News Channels on 3-Mar-2007. Immediately after the news broke out, me & my mom managed for a quick Saturday afternoon nap on 3-Mar-2007. Then it was an endless wait till 4-Mar-2007 1:30 am when the Eclipse was scheduled to begin. Exactly at 1:30 me & my mom rushed to the terrace. Since it was a full moon day the entire atmosphere was lit with bright moon light. Our locality being little bit away from the heart of the City, gives you to watch an amazingly clear Night Sky (a thing to cheer about for Sky gazers). But what about the Eclipse ????? We waited for about 15-20 mins & returned back home, disappointed not to find anything interesting. Then set our Alarm clock to 4 am (coz 4:15 am was the time of total Eclipse).

Beep...Beep...Beep...4 am. Me & my mom rushed to the terrace once again & saw something which we were really looking about for. Our cool & calm Moon had been overshadowed by its master, our big blue Planet Earth, by almost 98%. Finally at quarter past 4 it was completely engulfed by the Earth's shadow. We enjoyed this natural beauty of a total Lunar Eclipse for about 10-15 mins. What interested us was that though the Moon was Eclipsed by the Earth's shadow, it was still visible in a Copper colour. We felt as if someone had lit a red colour bulb inside a huge Table Tennis ball in the sky.

We again came back home & watched many TV channels which were showing the Night Sky। I then connected to Net & also browsed through some sites which were showing live Eclipse pics all the way from Geneva. While browsing I also found out an interesting fact about the Copper colour of Moon during the Eclipse. Actually the Earth acts like a prism. So the Copper colour is due to the bending of all reddish light generated in the Earth from different countries on account of Sunrises & Sunsets occuring at that instance. Really interesting fact na.....

Finally we retired to bed at around 5 am & woke up at 8:30 am to get ready for the HOLI day.
The entire day was then colourful for me celebrating the festival of colours with my friends & relatives at my new residence.