3 Things I forced myself to learn - Week 3

Some good news is creeping up on the horizon for Bankers, as the Five day Banking scheme might finally get implemented. To compensate for the additional non-working days, the daily business hours will be increased. Of course, when you are already working on non-regulated working hours with no overtime, that makes no difference. So, here's to hoping that all weekends shall be worth two whole days as soon as possible.

Why is this relevant to this blog? Well, a proper weekend every weekend means that I'll hopefully be able to get back to my routine back in 2013-14, where I took time to write, rather than trying to cram my thoughts into semi-coherent thoughts, late on a Saturday night, while watching some Premier League football.

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For this week's blog, which is coming nearly 48 hours late, we are going tp go through some things I have had to learnt to do the phone.

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1. Grocery shopping lists on WhatsApp

The first time I remember seeing someone use WhatsApp was in 2011. I was sending bulk SMS to my college friends across the country and he was chatting one-on-one with his friend in Australia. The speed with which WhatsApp replaced the existing platforms for sending "Good morning" messages and the "if you don't forward this to ten people, then..." messages was astonishing.

In the late 90s, I remember us calling the telephone exchange, asking for them to connect us to grandmother's home in Trivandrum, then waiting for some time before having the actual call (at a good cost too). Today, I can call my brother in US at any point of time with the tap of a button. Of course, I still have to wait, since the nocturnal creature might be asleep or playing some online game.

The latest addition to WhatsApp uses in my home is a group just for grocery purchase. If Ammu or myself find that we have run out of something, we will put it in the group. The next person who goes to the store is mandated by law to check the group before finishing any purchase.

2. Snapchat

I was initially confounded by the process flow in Snapchat - You click a photo, you send it across to your friends; they click a photo, they send it back. It's not even like forwarding a funny reel. The photo could be a mundane thing in front of you, or just a picture taken with the camera closed. I still haven't understood the logic (old age and all), but the advantage of trying out the app was in keeping my toddler entertained in 2020. She loved the "cat on your head" lens, and it was always a sureshot way to make her smile. No skill learnt is unutilized.

3. Voice notes

I hated voice notes. For someone who had built up his typing speed solely on chatting in Gmail and Facebook, I abhorred the idea of replying to someone with a voice note. Of course, once you start receiving minute long voice notes, you realise that you can't reply completely within a few short sentences. Slowly, I too was converted, and now I don't mind starting a conversation with voice note.

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Before I take your leave, let me share an interesting question that was put forward to me this past week.

"If you are given one extra minute every day, what will you use it for?"

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So, that's all for this week then.

Have a great weekend!!

'til next week.

3 Things I forced myself to learn - Week 2

History always repeats itself - mostly because the lessons of history fades away from our memory. The Malayalam movie TRAFFIC showed a possibility which arises from jumping traffic signals. People were very wary of it then, not so much now - I was a witness to a near miss event just today.

P.S. The flavour of the hour is to hold tight your kid's hands, and never let them get away from your sight. 

Coming back to topic, there is a reason why you chose not to watch THAT movie till date. With zero external compulsion, with no threats of blackmail, and with no tantalizing reward on offer, why I still chose to watch PERUCHAZHI will always be an enigma. Why I chose to complete watching the movie is on me though.

After intensely studying the subject for close to two hours - on whether this was a self-depreciating spoof movie or not - I'm still unaware of the intentions to make the movie. Maybe they just wanted to have a month in America.

Umpteen times have I fallen for this trap, and as soon as this experience faces from memory,  one more time will I repeat it in the future. History always repeats itself.

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The things I learn at work are mostly in the operational category and are of not much use to you. Initially I thought of extrapolating such things to the general sphere of activity to make sure that there's some use of it for you. But then, if that was the case, you would have tried to finish those two paid courses you started at Udemy an year ago (says he looking at his reflection in the mirror).

So, I have decided to go the other way round. I'm going to give you three examples of how I picked up something from other walks of life to use in my job.

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1. It's all in the numbers.

It was always fascinating to hear my father speak on the phone. He would say 98115 coach to be moved to rack in the morning, and 99124 to have its alternator checked. He has the ability to recollect things to a high degree, which is something he passed on to my brother. As for me, a goldfish will fare better than me when trying to remember what it had for breakfast.

Anyways, one thing my father told me is that since he knew the numbers, his colleagues knew they had to be precise. Data is king. Anyone can make a story, but there has to be data to back it up. And that is something I steadfastly hold on to in my work.

2. Teams

"Boop beep. Boop beep beep. Boop beep. Boop beep beep"

I'm pretty sure that sound made you shudder inside. We are now a generation working through online meetings. I had been watching my missus attend such meetings for a long time. The decorum they keep on their meetings - being online on time, giving value to everyone's time and sticking to the schedule and topics, not unnecessarily turning on camera / microphone, not forcing anyone to come on camera, etc - were little things obviously, but oozed respect for each other. 

Once covid fast tracked online meetings to traditional workplaces like mine, I have been following these simple rules myself.

3. Patience

I had seen it in movies and comics, but I never thought it actually happened. My curious little monkey found out the word "Why?" and decided to repeat it until she got to the bottom of every mystery in the world. And it taught me levels of patience I never knew existed. But again, it came good.

Having a client facing job is strenous work. You need to keep calm and accept that there is a mistake, even if you haven't committed any. Take for example, take the case of an IT professional somewhere far, far away - probably on a work from home schedule. They wake up one day and decide that one year from 01-12-2023 is 31-10-2024. And the field having the second date is non-editable. This halts operation for the day. You cut a sorry figure in front of the customer for no fault of your own. You are instructed that this issue will be resolved tomorrow. You use your entire gamut to convince the customer to come the next day. Next day arrives, so does the customer. And the second field date shows, "31-00-2025". Patience is very key to sit through another day.

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So, that's all for this week then.

Have a great weekend!!

'til next week.

3 Things I forced myself to learn - Week 1

The first thing I did before I wrote this was check something. By the time I click "Publish", it will be a minimum of  THREE years, SIX months, FOURTEEN days since the last published post.

And no, it's not like riding the bike.

So what do you do when nothing works? You pour the old wine in a new bottle.

* Deep breath as he wonders if anyone will get the dad jokes in the last five sentences*

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3 Things I forced myself to learn - Week 1

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I'll admit it. I'm now well into the wrong side of thirty. I can't finish a medium sized Domino's Pizza by myself anymore; I can't walk up three flights of stairs without breaking; and I can't understand many things that people are talking about.

The problem with procrastination is that time still moves forward. If you didn't learn how to use a computer in the early 2000s, you became expendeble at work. If you didn't find out how to use a smartphone in the early 2010s, you will find it is hard to talk with your grandchildren living abroad. If you didn't explore the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence in the early 2020s, you will miss out on easy ways to write blogs. If you don't care to hone your skills in using the selfie powered instant transporter in the early 2030s, you will be stuck at home watching your friends on the hologram, as they finally arrive at Goa, after twenty years of planning.

The fallacy of our youth is that we never realised we were constantly learning. Maybe it was just to pass an exam, maybe it was just to get a degree, maybe it was just for an event at a college fest, maybe it was just to impress someone, maybe it was just because you were competitive - but nonetheless, one way or the other, for the first two decades in your life, you learnt by default.

This brings us to the third decade of existence, where without a strong will to learn, you'll just start to ebb away from the process of learning. By the time the first half of the fourth decade is over, you will realise how hard it is to learn anything.

My chemistry teacher in school once told that the best thing she likes about her profession is that she keeps meeting young people and that keeps her young, atleast in mind. That was a tangent, and I'm not sorry. Just think it over.

Okay, so which part of my mid life crisis was I droning on about? Oh yeah. The part where I sorta, kinda accepted the fact that I have stopped learning and that it will require a significant effort on my part to start learning anything.

And as I learn, I'll share.

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1. Learnt vs learned

Even though both of these words mean the same, with the only difference being that each word is used only on one side of the Atlantic Ocean, a significant difference I could find out is that "Learned" is also used as an adjective. So, to put things in a simple way, you can not become learned without having learnt something.

2. Xlookup

Whenever I wrote anything in Excel with vlookup, I would think "Oh, where would I be without you, you beautiful thing.". Understanding vlookup and indirect functions in Excel have been nothing short of miraculous in my work life. This week, I was fortunate to come across a higher level as follows.

P.S. Among the thousand and one ideas I'm constantly scheming , one of the stronger contenders is an Excel tips channel/blog/podcast. Even if I don't know what I'm going to do, I know exactly what I'm going to call it.

"PIVOT!! PIVOT!! PIVOT!!"

3. Give way

One of the first things I remember my freshly migrated friends mentioning about their new life overseas was that they didn't have to wait to cross roads, and that vehicles actually gave preference to pedestrians at road crossing points - which is in stark contrast to what we have here.

But it's actually not supposed to be like that. A quick visit to the MVD site shows the following.

I guess it is just a matter of manners.

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So, that's all for this week then.

Have a great weekend!!

'til next week.

it's not easy...

It's not easy being a mom.

Who knew right?

Think back to the first day on your first job. In a completely new surrounding, you might have been asked to take care of an issue without any prior training. Becoming a mom is like that, but nothing like that.

Overnight, you are made the keyholder to the self destruct button of the entire world. One wrong step and kaboom. There is a glaring lack of an authoritative instruction manual, which leads to the void being supplemented by a plethora of unofficial, "friendly neighbor" advices. And that's always helpful.

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It's not easy to be a working mom. 

To be a committed employee to your job and to meet the needs of a toddler. I don't need to say much. You are the superhero every kid deserves.

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It's not easy to be a wife, who's a mother.

During the initial stages of parenthood, during those moments of experiencing the firsts of your child, during the frustrations of having to give up your earlier comparatively carefree lifestyles, it's usual for both of us to forget that we were once a thing. But when she places her one hand on my face and the other on yours, and then breaks out into the most beautiful of smiles, we realize that the our feelings were only playing hide and seek. 

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It's not easy to be the mom of a premature baby.

Remember the self destruct button I was talking about earlier. This is when someone else presses the button and then leaves you in charge.

The normal pregnancy comes with enough trauma and tension included in the box. Prematurity kicks it up several notches. The simplest of pains is that you only get to see your kid (don't even dream about holding her) for less than ten minutes a day for the first 40 days. Everything else builds on that. 

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It's not easy to not fall in love with this feeling.

This is one job you would find hard to hate. One smile from the upcoming terror, and you end up forgetting about everything else.

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Happy Mother's Day, Love!!!

The Best of the Worst

"All I can do is to pray to all known Gods, and unknown, that they let me see this piece of heaven in her arms, both of them safe and healthy."

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That was the last line I wrote on this platform, some 6 months ago. And I thank every single one of them, because it took every prayer that could be heard, every blessing that could be given, and every miracle that could be spared to bring my girls home safe and healthy.

The short version of the story is long by itself.

On July 26th, in her 26th weeks of pregnancy, Ammu decided to check her BP. Even though we brought the BP monitor the month we knew she was pregnant, we hadn't used it yet. The reading showed 160/110. We decided to go to the Hospital and they admitted her for observation. We would be at a hospital every day for the next sixty days.

By July 29th, it was confirmed that Ammu had Pregnancy induced hypertension, and had to be kept under medication in observation for a longer period. The good news amongst all this was that the baby's growth and vitals were not affected by any of this.

On August 2nd at 12pm, the Doctor informed me that her body was not responding positively, even to the maximum allowed dosages of medications. The only solution was to terminate the pregnancy. It took fifteen minutes to understand that the jargon meant the baby would have to brought out in an emergency procedure. But I dare you to be in my shoes for those fifteen minutes and come out laughing at the confusion it caused.

The baby's weight was still below 1kg and since Ammu's body was still fighting, the doctors were able to push the cesarean to August 6th. In the meantime, neonatologists informed me about the complications that could arise for my child and the survival chances. 

On August 6th, SHE was born to us. Weighing in at just above one kg, she put on her gloves and took her stand onto the right of the boxing ring. Having had to come to the fight three months early, she needed all the help she could get. Thankfully for the three of us, the doctors and the nurses were very adamant in providing that.

We got to see her for 10 minutes in a day. Touching her was a luxury. Seeing her without tubes on her face took 6 weeks. The infection scare in first week of September almost stripped us of our faith in this world. None of this was how we imagined our first two months with our child, and we pray that no one else has to go through the same.

There are a thousand sights I can't unsee, and a thousand words that I can't unhear. Even though they are fading into the horizon, I felt the need to write this line down here for eternity. 

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To our Daughter, 

Between February and September of 2019, you were presented with multiple opportunities to just go away. Your mom doing heavy gym work in the early weeks of February was the beginning. Of course, we didn't know that you had decided to make your mom your home at that point in time.

We came to know about that only the day after we ran and finished our first 10km Marathon. The marathon your mom ran with a nagging pain in the stomach. At both instances, you could have quit and no one would have blamed you. But you stuck on.

Come the end of July 2019, your mom was lucky to have the thought to check her BP and that helped in identifying the pregnancy induced hypertension and subsequent pre-eclampsia. One in a lakh pregnant women are diagonized with this. You and your mother went through this to allow the other 99,999 have a better entry to this world.

You were born extremely Pre term in the 27th week of pregnancy at just above 1kg. You had barely functioning internal systems. The odds were stacked heavily against you. You could have quit, and no one would have blamed you. But you fought on.

Luck was on our side even in these dark times. You had the least of complications and other issues. We were blessed with having the best of the worst experience possible.

99% of the babies hardly leave their mother's shadow in the first six months. You fought a battle alone in an ICU. You have proved your grit and determination against your peers. When you feel down in the future, as is wont to happen, I want you to remember this. You were born a fighter.

Love,

Dad.