A kid is kid...

Couple of days back I was in a mall with some colleagues of mine, had lunch, were walking down to ground floor to grab some ice cream. Something caught our attention mid way..there was this three year old baby crying and running behind her mother trying to catch hold of her...well..usual stuff...but the mother was just marching on ...something was out of order in her march...the ruthlessness! Soon she was about to get on to the escalator on her way down..kid was just about to approach her...and whoa..she left him behind crying..and on the escalator she was..and lost her balance too but managed with the railing.

Now here is the three year old kid..standing in front of moving escalator unsure of stepping forward..watching his mom drifting away.....for some moments it made my heart sad at the emotions that were in the cries of the baby... emotion of  fear, terror, loss, non belongingness...

It was left to the writer to grab the kid, and get him safely down the escalator; handed him over to his mother, and bit unwillingly had to part ways there. Soon the march started again..jerking the kid flat on the ground...

I just had to move on. Some mins later my colleague pointed them out to me sitting next to each other.. probably trying to make up.

Am sure they love each other..and that mother is as special a mother as is any mother... just angry at some act of the kid ..but hey..he is just a kid and a kid and a kid and a kid. That's it. What max can he do to generate and face such a behavior? Lets all just learn to love humanity..right from the point and especially at the point when its nascent. That's one sure step we can take to not promote terrorism in long run.

Sania ki shaadi...

Its their personal affair, I quipped back when Dad said its not fair to Sania.No but Sania doesn't know the truth about Sohaib..he persisted. How do you know - I exclaimed!.. she just tweeted that she was aware - suddenly realising that I too was into this personal matter. My brother, quite till now but in deep thoughts, came out with the opinion that she is not doing right by leaving us Indians out and marrying a Pakistani. Its her personal matter - I exclaimed again! Its not! - my brother got back even more strongly...why is this happening in so much of publicity..they have not left it personal any more..I am involved..he stressed..and serious he was.

While on "Involvement" I recollected one Thackeray objecting to it, and another  Thackeray approving it ...as if she cared!

Fun..anyways...the whole discussion was..but even I couldn't figure out how personal a thing is for a public figure..and how personal they want it to be....

itunes and searchindexer.exe

Listening to music on iTunes, adding songs to a playlist in every 2-3 minutes..as I go along..and I notice my laptop's fan is going mad trying to cool down my machine. Peeped into the task manager and iTunes is taking upto 20-25 % CPU, and searchindexer.exe upto 40-50 %.

Hey, I exited searchindexer sometime ago...well went to Indexing Options from control panel and ...and it says "Its indexing..." amazing..now there is no option to snooze it too.

Learnt on web to remove .xml files (refer iTunes) under Advanced options of indexing; and it did make the difference straight away.

- MJ

Bi-Cycle

Two of my friends purchased bicycles over last week. Both of them are 30+, working and definitely quite different from college or school going young guys who would normally fit in the frame of our imagination of someone sitting on a bi-cycle.

I told them that its recession that prompted them to go ahead and buy a bi-cycle; of course both of them defended it out like any thing, and they were right that they did not purchase it to save money. They both come to the office in their own cars and would continue to...

In fact I never reasoned that its to save money, but the promoting reason was recession. Here is why: recession forced our minds to go back into our simpler less expensive times refreshing the life style we had when money was scarce. It brought out those happinesses that were less expensive and more happier. It recreated some less cluttered images of life in our brain. And from there, sub-conscientiously came out the BI-CYCLE a simple easy to acquire machine that takes you places, that was and always is a pleasure to drive, that reflected freedom...fun.. , that is one of the last pleasant activities we did around 10-15 years back when we used to just bicycle and have fun of it.

Of course none of them agreed to my this loosely founded theory, but no one agreed with Copernicus too...on something I don't recall...probably something I don't agree to ;)

Grand Punto

Hey Guys..saw a Fiat Grand Punto on road this weekend..and man ..after a long time saw a car that had class in it..that had a character in it...'non-aggressive admirable bold'.

Since long Maruti has been numbing our design admiration senses by turning out one after another bland design. Look at Swift Dezire's boot ..reminds me of car Ambassdor....the Ritz..hey unconventional abstract whatever you may call it....only problem is that you can't appreciate it.. 'A Star'..the front looked good when I saw it for the first time and the I saw its tail...entirely disconnected..looked like Lion's torso on rear of a goat.. Zen Estilo..swollen jelly bean...lets not even talk about it..its a shame on original cute jelly bean Zen - probably the only car along with SX4 from Maruti stable that have a design with a character.

Skoda Fabia, Mahindra Logan just added to the blandness on Indian roads.

Thanks to Hyundai's i10, i20 and Honda cars that kept on refereshing our design taste buds..one could still appreciate Grand Punto

-MJ

TOP 3....hey what about 4th!!

Since the time I recollect..have always been told about 1st, 2nd, 3rd ranks...be it my 1st Class, 10th, 12th, Graduation..or be it about a marathon held in Delhi, or Olympics in Beijing (hey they call them Gold, Silver, Bronze), or about winners of a lottery, or ..or..or..about ...pick top 3 of whatever comes to your mind..
...have started wondering now why its Top 3 not - Top 4 or Top 2... Rule is simple, 1st one bettered 2nd, 2nd one bettered 3rd, so did 4th to 5th. Had we lived in Top 4 instead of Top 3 we would certainly have had more winners all along (well 33%).. So what limited it to Top 3, probably the answer is in two parts..
one - we, the followers, have always seen Top 3 so we continue with that
two -the guy who termed 'Top 3' was either 3rd in the list of some competition at the advent of documented competitions in human age (blah...), or father of a prince who stood 3rd in some competition

...you guys can answer and choose Top 3 to be probable answers but one thing that still confuses me is why do I set my car stereo volume to 15 not 17 or 14 when my ears can't see ..and why do we have 5 rs coin..not 6 or 7... and hey why do we celebrate 100 runs and not 137 when latter is clear 37 more..probably Table of 5 was the easiest to remember in school..thats why!

MJ

www.skigee.com

Friends please take time to visit http://www.skigee.com - this is the website for the product for which I have been managing the project for past some months now.

SKIGEE is the name of the product. Its primarly for hotels allowing them to communicate with their guests using SMS with minimal effort and high sophistication...rest is on the site so won't repeat here.

moving manishjoshi.com

ummm..now have started enjoying it thoroughly :)

..and have decided to move manishjoshi.com to this blog. The only thing that was there is Richa's page. You will see that being moved to this blog. Some people were referring to that page directly, so will send them the updated address.

Also 'Lessons Learned', as name of the blog, doesn't make sense any more, within two days of completely justifying it I don't agree with it now ;)

renaming this to Manish's open world...

Richa

Hey

How do we get to see those eyes once again

Thou used to blink in duplicate

How do we get to see that smile

That used to stretch till your eyes

How do we hear that laughter

That u created whenever under pressure

How do we have your presence

Which was so jolly and pleasant

How do we open your eyes

Which were never closed

Cause when world closed them

You chose to keep them open!

We know

We all know

You are there somewhere

In the sky, in the stars

Near god or a new one among us

Creating joy and splendour

Spreading smile and trademark laughter

Somewhere

Some where near!

मैं

Doston, have decided to publish my collection of poems here...starting with my favorite ' मैं '

so here we go...

मैं
अभी भी मैं ही हूँ
पर अब मैं वो मैं नहीं जो मैं था

मुझमे वो सब अब नहीं जीसकी वजह से मैं मैं था
पर जो कुछ भी मुझमे है, हूँ अभी भी मैं मैं ही
और मैं चाहता हूँ की लोग मुझे मैं ही समझें

पर यह कैसे हो सकता है
मैं तो बस मेरे लीये ही मैं हूँ
बाकीयों के लीये तो मैं - वो से वो हो गया हूँ

new mobile in recession time !!

so all of us changed our mobiles every six to nine months...yes yes ..we had reasons for that..new ones are jazzy..have new features...music..camera ..small..sleek..fresh..and that too everytime!

thats something most of us are missing while facing the heat of recession.

But I got a solution for this...few days back my wife was playing around with my mobile and she changed the display theme..oh man it looked very fresh again..almost new...now I know what to do some months down the line..right! change the theme again..

..and then this colleague of mine who had to change the cover of her mobile to replace that junky cover..and it was as good as a new mobile....Hmmm...

realised that combined 'theme and cover' change would be the killer combination..;)

you know what to do now..bye..go and have fun with your new mobile theme :)

why lessons learned

thought about this quite a bit...why the blog should be named 'Lessons Learned'..and then realised that life is nothing but lessons from day one...some we retain..some we forget..some we forget to retain..some we love to retain.. well..enough! But this meant that I can write anything I wish to write here on any topic in any domain and that would still be classifiable as 'lessons learned'...

so here we go doston...am going to keep bugging you with posts here as I have added you to my forced 'email' list without asking you or giving you any options.. ;)

lateral growth

This was in Kochi, (Kerala, India). It was different..difficult..how could the tree be growing laterally not vertically..and surviving. The image beautifully.. comprised of earth ..air..water..life..hope..struggle..beauty.

Ahum...

PMP Cleared, Lessons Learned

Hi,

Cleared PMP on 3rd Jun 2008. Here is an attempt on lessons learned:

Stydu material:

- PMBOK 3rd edition
- Rita Mulcahy 5th edition
- Vijay Verma's chapter on Delegation (3-4 questions come on delegation)
- PMI Code of Ethics
- Some research on PTA on google

I started off in Feb 08. Read PMBOK first and got an idea of complete framework. After that I started off with Rita and read each chapter in parallel with PMBOK. Completed three cycles of both Rita and PMBOK like this. Rita brings life in preparation, PMBOK is just too dry whereas Rita talks to you.

Used Whizlabs sample questions. Rita's questions after each chapter are excellent, even though you won't get any question in actual exam with detailed scenarios like Rita has, but it fine tunes your thought process which is much needed for the actual exam.

Make sure you check out Oliver Lehmann's 75 and 175 questions.

Regarding ITTO's there are many questions but none that tests you from memorization point of view, if you understand them you will certainly get them right. Most questions are not very long worded. There was only question where I had no idea about the answer.

During the exam, I created the download sheet depiciting Page 70 of PMBOK and key formulas during the 15 min tutorial. Answered all questions in 3 Hrs 5 minutes with around 70 marked for review. After review I was unsure of at the most 15 questions. So if you are well prepared you won't find paper too tough but certainly testing. I got 'Proficient' level in all 6 areas.

One key point is not to get tired. After 2 hours in the exam I noticably slowed down in grasping questions and answers, immediately took a 7-8 minutes break, and started fresh again after coming back, and it made a lot of difference. Took another break after completing all questions and before reviewing the marked ones.

Another point is that you don't get time to review all questions, so don't leave things for next round, do them right in first go and mark all the doubted ones.

Apart from this don't spend money for 35 Hrs certificate on these 5 days courses. There are many online course and considerably very cheap. I used the one from PMPrepcast.com. Later I realised that you get this with Whizlabs package as well. The PMPrepcast has audio lessons and gets you going if you drive a lot. Use any MP3 player and you get going.

Regarding scheduling I scheduled my exam only 5 days in advance. Purposely did so as the job has its own demands on your time, so once I got some time to push the studies I decided to go for it.

The Prometric center (Gurgaon in this case) was excellent, staff was very active, no noise, even though they had Head Sets as well, just in case! You have to leave everything in the locker including your handkerchief. Only thing you can carry in is your one ID proof.

Personally I discovered huge gaps in my knowledge while preparing for the exam; thats the best part, its not just another certification, its great learning.

Will update if recollect any thing else.

Cheers
Manish Joshi