Something just kept me going...
Had a super tiring day after a long long time. Slept at 5 in the morning - lots of small things kept me busy until then. Woke up in 6 hrs from then to attend a meeting near Embankment, London. What an amazing area that is! I can literally spend hours walking next to Thames, taking pictures, looking at pedestrians, or even just introspecting and 'philosophying'. The meeting went well, but went way beyond the scheduled time.
The delay made me rush for the next appointment - squash. The person I played with played at similar level as mine. This made the game competitive and obviously super tiring. By the time I finished, a friend called over to play badminton. That's exactly when I figured I need something to keep me going. Decided to try something new - drank Lucozade sport lite (lemon flavor). Drank that once, and figured it wasn't enough. So drank another.
Played 5 games of badminton - with a player who too played at similar level as mine. These games were probably the most tiring badminton games I've played in a long long time. Finished that, and then went on to drink another Lucozade sport lite. Loved it! Came back home, freshened up, changed, and went on to practise for LBS Diwali dance performance.
Am tired and exhausted now, and just want to have a quiet and calm sleep for the next 6-8 hours. Still wondering if it was the drink that kept me standing throughout these activities, was it the free time, or was it my enthusiasm towards extracurricular activities (racket games and dance). Whatever it was, something just kept me going throughout.
Those little moments of happiness
Sometimes things really do give you a pleasant surprise. I recently met someone who brought to my attention that there's a ton of information available about me on Google. Obviously, I got worried, and wanted to find what they have up there. So I quickly went back home and searched for "Akansh Khurana". My linkedin profile, my blog, some random comments across websites, and my resume from almost 6-7 years old -- all of these things showed up. Honestly, my old resume (that I don't know how to remove from my college website) was the most embarassing of the lot. But overall, I was happy to have found so much about myself on Google. Having a web presence can sometimes make one feel happy - that's what I learnt from all the searching effort.
Well, I continued to scan through next few pages. On the third page (I think), I found something else too -- which I found even more interesting. I saw that Bain (on its recruiting
website) displays my name as a Bain alum who is one of the students at the London Business School.
Until then, I never thought that systems are such well coordinated in the Bain system. Displaying the names on the website must be a part of the exit process - maintaing an exhaustive database of what Bain alumni are upto. Or may be Bain closely works with the core business schools it hires from. More than the fact that Bain systems and processes are well coordinated -- never thought that Bain actually promoted our names to prospective employees. Was a pleasant surprise!
Labels: Bain, London Business School
What Steve Jobs can still teach us!
Today’s world offers plethora of opportunities, a culture of immediacy and a highly competitive environment to work in. This has made most of us impatient, and has reduced our attention span. For those most of us, Steve Jobs is an ideal example. Steve’s focus, self-motivation and persistence helped him innovate and push the human race forward. And those three are the most important traits we all need in today’s world. These traits are not only foundations to achieving perfection in what we do and winning in the competitive environment, but also making a difference in the world around.
Technology on the roll
I recently read about few different things and when I tried to connect the dots, I realized how amazing the world is going to be in near future. What is fundamental about these things, what really is an enabler is 'Technology'. I've now started to believe that technology, just as dreams, has no boundaries.
First, Facebook's Timeline allows users to tell the story of their lives chronologically with photos, videos, and music -- what an amazing way to keep track of our lives. Remember, if every user goes about creating this, it will mean a lot of information and data. Second,
www.1000memories.com is trying something similar too. The idea of 1000memories is that every individual in this world - famous or infamous - has the right to keep a record of his/her life. Their idea is to create this record using pictures. Wow - more information and data. Third, I read about the potential room for growth in photography. It was incredible to find out that 10 percent of all photos ever taken were photographed in just the last year (check this:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/30/technology-advancing-art-photo-apps/). And with applications like Instagram and Path - I can't even imagine the upcoming world of photography, and amount of information and data. Fourth (and final for this post), I read about Zillabyte - a product of few ex-Googlers. These guys have figured the need to analyze and manage all the content that we've been talking about (and much more!).
All of this just makes me think of a ton of opportunities across the value chain of content - source of creation, actual creation, and management and analysis. The opportunities for entrepreneurs will always remain, always!
CWG side-effects
This is perhaps one of the millions of posts that have already been written about CWG. But an incident early this morning made me consider awakening this dormant blog.
A door bell at 7 in the morning woke me up from my partial asleep state. I found this man standing at the door with a hope clearly visible in his eyes - a hope to get a job from me. I quickly recognized this man to be my car cleaner until almost two months ago. Although I have to admit that I had forgotten his name. Like many other laborers, this man too was made to leave Delhi at the time of CWG due to lack of identity details. As a result, he lost work from all the households who he served prior to CWG.
After a little conversation about his trip back home, I told him that I now have a replacement for his job and won't be able to employ him for cleaning my car anymore. That was followed with a moment of absolute silence. Although I did realize that he was trying to speak something, his heart filled with pain and his eyes filled with tears did not let him speak. Unsure on how to console, I told him that I shall let him know if there's any work for him in future.
The day started with a disappointing feeling of helplessness. Makes me think if someone is answerable for the loss of living of multiple such people.
Some damn thing
Really want to write something down tonight -- more of an effort to go beyond one post after returning from my long 'non-writing' hibernation. Hopefully, I'd be successful tonight.
Was just wondering that there has to be a story or instance from everyday that is interesting, something that's likely not a daily routine, and is worth writing. And finally figured out a topic to write about, which is Cricket! ('Ours', not 'Theirs').
Bain India, for the first time, is entering a corporate cricket tournament and our first match is scheduled against Colt India. Next Sunday's (16th Nov '08) the match and we finally started practising today. Well, we hopefully will have atleast one more practise before the actual play. It was good to see how our team was finally discussing on who the bowlers are, who are the batsmen, who'd be the captain etc. I finally realized that I do have a spinner in me, a leg spinner. The ball doesn't spin as much as Shane Warne, but isn't too far off at the same time. And since I already have a batsmen in me, guess, I make an all-rounder now. (Well, in case you are wondering, am not going to make my score and performance from the matches public on this blog).
That's it for tonight I guess. Good luck to our team.
Time taken to write this post: 10-15 minutes
Wakeup
Originally, there was just one thought behind this post, but suddenly as soon as I wrote the title, I realized that the subject actually has multiple meanings behind it for me.
Most importantly, it reflects that I need to "wake up" from a long 'non-writing' hibernation. Ofcourse, I've tried this a number of times earlier but then guess, the motivation doesn't last more than one post. No further comments on this, I am forced to believe in
"Actions speak louder than words".
Secondly, for some reason, it reminds me of the college days. My every single password back then used to be "wakeup". Ofcourse the college days were quite lazy and I kept this as the password so that atleast everytime I key that in, I am reminded to get active. I know it's random, but whatever.
And lastly, the original thought: I went home for a week during the Diwali festival and being tension-free from all the work back in office, I slept for long hours, infact very long hours. My dad called me on one of the days and said that he has some experience to share, and this is what he said -
"My son, there are two kinds of people in this world - masters/bosses and the slaves/servants. When masters sleep, they wake up from their sleep in time and are attentive with hundreds of immediate actions and directions ready for their slaves. They act responsibly and behave actively. But when slaves or the servants get up from their sleep, they always have just one lazy thought on mind of being a servant to their boss and having to follow their directions or working on the daily routine. And to be clear, I mean masters or slaves by behavior, more than just by designation. So decide, if you want to be a master in life or just a slave."Between that day of my dad's thought and today, trust me, I've still been lazy, very lazy. I feel so much like a slave at the moment.
Time taken to write this post: 30 minutes
