experiences – Page 12 – Abhinav Bhatt

Year 2019 End Blog Post

So, the fastest year of life is over in a jiffy. I went to Goa in Jan 2018 and it feels like it was just a few weeks ago. That’s how fast the last 2 years have gone by.

There were many learnings this year work-wise. I have now completed more than a decade of working. It went pretty smooth for me for the first 7 years but the last 3 years have made me work as many hours as I worked in the first 7. There were numerous late nights and weekends. The amount of knowledge gained was also enormous. I also completed 5 years working in the same company. So, I have spent more time in office than in the rented house I am living in. Does this mean the office feels like home? Dangerous sign.

And, as much as you want to avoid, but someday politics catches you. But it is fun and challenging and as part of life as it can be. Bring it on!

As I observed, I have been the heaviest this year. Time to look into it in 2019. Better to go into new year with some aim.

Below are the things I enjoyed this year, like a normal human being.

Movies (In theatres)

The least number of movies I watched in Cinema this year.

Joker – enough said
Avengers: Endgame
Mission Mangal
Bala

TV

Movies

Movies by Edgar Wright – Scott Pilgrim and Trilogy of Ice-Cream and Blood
Article 15 – Dark and brilliantly shot
Section 375 – Gripping!
A Quiet Place – Goosebumps, silently. Brought back memories of Spielberg era

Series

The Office – I haven’t laughed as much I did while watching this in ages. I’m seriously! All hail Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute combo. Things do get weird in S8 but still so much better than all those shows with a laughter track after every 10 seconds. Each and every character in fact make you chuckle. It will be hard to miss. That’s what she said!
The Family Man S1 – Superbly made. I think all the things by the creators of this have been amazing.
Fleabag – Some 4th wall breaking done really brilliantly, the writing and the acting by the eponymous Phoebe Waller-Bridge is something else!
Stranger Things S3 – Still one of my most favorite shows. The ‘Never ending story’ part was the best.
Veep S7 – Cannot think of any other show which has so many jokes crammed into every dialogue that before you finish your laugh at one, another one comes which is even meaner. And this was the final season. Elaine, I mean, President Selina Meyer, what a performance!
Chernobyl – Highly recommended

Books

The following are the books I read this year. I had targetted one book a month but I ended up 2 short. Currently, I am reading Thinking Fast and Slow but it is not going to get finished in the next 3 days.

One thing I regret about the following books is that in spite of them being definitely life-changing, I didn’t change my life. I will have to read some of them again because they are definitely worth re-reads. Some of them tend to appear a bit lop-sided about growing old and understanding the world more. But then as I said I didn’t let them affect me in any positive or negative manner. One way to actually implement the learnings from the books is to go through them again via a book review which I didn’t do at all this year and that has to be corrected next year.

* All the above links are Amazon Affiliate Links.

The New Indian Adhesive

It’s ISRO obviously.

What else could unite us all at 2 AM in the morning? It used to be Cricket only. Sometimes movies. But from September 7, 2019, ISRO is the next Indian adhesive, I think!

Well, Chandrayaan 2 is a partial success after all. It reached pretty far accurately, even became the first Indian object to touch the Lunar Surface (right?) may be through a hard landing, but lost the communication channel to tell us about it. As soon as this image came onto the screen, deafening silence engulfed everyone over. It felt a bit hollow inside as if the heartbeat had stopped.

It is certainly important to introspect this image and the data it brings, but this should never deter us from attempting it again. Yes, we didn’t make it cleanly but ISRO is a winner all the way.

Recent feats achieved by ISRO (including this) will go very far for our upcoming generation. Sheer excitement amongst the folks who are least interested in space, or are cynical about anything India does, certainly got us united and got us cheering for ISRO all the way.

I really liked this one Tweet.

https://twitter.com/Abhina_Prakash/status/1170084662233849856

This is exactly why ISRO exists. It tells us that impossible is nothing. If we dedicate our focus on the right things, we can reach anywhere. It might take more than 1 attempt, but we will be there sooner or later.

Next time, ISRO does Gaganyaan or Aditya Mission or the exoplanetary mission, the cheer would grow even louder and we will all be stuck to our devices, watching the live streaming. The next time, it would be a successful touchdown.

Correcting Selflessness

“So, I shouldn’t voluntarily donate blood at all from next time, right? Isn’t that what it is supposed to mean?”
Me

That was my stern reaction when I was told that the hospital doesn’t take blood from an external blood bank. I was indeed livid while the person in front of me kept a straight face.

Let’s back up a bit.

I donated blood at a camp organized in my office on July 2 this month. In fact, I have been a regular blood donor, donating once a year. This has been a mostly-regular habit/ritual/routine for more than a decade. Every time I donated blood, I did it:

To help any stranger in need.
Hoping nobody needs it and the world becomes a sans-suffering place. <joking>

Also, I semi-secretly wished that if I or someone close to me needs it, I would be able to get a unit back in exchange for my selfless service.

That was the catch: selfless. While I was donating blood, I was thinking that it is selfless service. But I expected a return in the worst case. So that’s not selfless, right!

So, recently a near one actually needed blood. I told the hospital authorities that I have donated blood recently, so I am eligible to get a unit back from the blood bank. Of course, I couldn’t donate again because one should take at least 3 months break from donating again. I called the blood bank and they agreed. However, to my utter surprise, the hospital said that they aren’t supposed to take any blood from any blood bank save their own blood bank. I insisted that the blood bank to which I donated can give the blood, but hospital folks were adamant. They said we cannot trust the credibility of outside sources. They can only accept donors and not blood directly. The blood bank where I donated is a rather renowned one and it is affiliated to many prominent hospitals. But not the one where I was, unfortunately.

Eventually, we got donors arranged in the end which helped. I was left kind of aghast though. I thought that there’s no point of donating blood if I cannot receive it when I need it. Moreover, I should always stay ready to donate but not donate itself because then at least someone close can get from me.

After a couple of hours of disappointment, few realizations hit me.

We can’t do a selfless service if we want something in return. That’s not selfless per se.
If I am donating blood, that blood itself would have got used for someone in need then and there. So what I intended while donating gets realized.
I can’t keep my blood safe in my body thinking I will give it away only to a known person. That’s rather selfish.

So, I was donating blood with wrong intentions I guess. Now a new life lesson has been learned.

Donate blood if you can, selflessly. Don’t expect or wish anything back. Let your blood help a stranger when they need.

Front End

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

I was recently roped in as a volunteer to be in charge of a Registrations Desk at an event in which close to 700 people were expected to attend. Being in the organizing team since the very beginning, I was supposed to also take care of the help-desk part at registrations because we had anticipated some anomalies and grievances. To make it interesting, we had kept a goodie box in which there were a number of small items like a customized with name keychain, a small plastic bag, a phone popper, etc. I also had the same items as loose in case some of the attendees who hadn’t registered, showed up at last moment.

Majority of the folks had registered in advance and they got their registrations verification done easily. They received customized goodie boxes and moved on. But to make it more interesting, we also decided to hand over food & drinks coupons to everyone when they came for registrations. Now, somehow the number of coupons I had weren’t enough to cater to 700 folks. To make it furthermore interesting, the event was a 2-day affair and there were different kinds of food coupons: Day 1 Lunch, Day 1 Dinner, Day 1 Drinks (soft), Day 1 Drinks (Liquor), Day 2 Lunch, Day 2 Hi-Tea. And to top everything up, not all had registered for both the days and even the Day 1 dinner. I had to keep referring to an excel sheet and then hand over loose items/goodies which also got over soon. Then there were also some issues with wrong food coupons given to wrong folks. Later, some people came back as their customized goodies had names of someone else.

All in all, despite the event being a major success and nobody getting hurt, the task of handling so many registrations was a major challenge. I had the support of various other volunteers who didn’t break a sweat and we eventually got through but at times, the exercise became a headache for everyone. For some, it would have surely ruined the experience of the event because it was the first thing they encountered. Hopefully, they also realized that we had all just volunteered and nobody had any bad intentions but just the circumstances.

No soup for you — I didn’t have the liberty of becoming the Soup-Nazi to do crowd-control either.

I also recently attended a training called ‘Design Thinking’. The crux of the training is to develop a solution or a service by thinking about the end user in mind. This might sound very easy but it takes a painstaking number of hours to come up with possible permutations and combinations of what end-user will go through and get satisfaction.

Some learnings from all of the above:

Design Thinking is a great concept to have when you have to act in a public facing job. We all know and have faced the humiliation at Bank, Transport Offices, Post Offices and other places in which we have to line up and wait for our turn, sometimes in unbearable conditions, facing atrocious services. Only if, the person who is in charge of designing this can think of themselves as the end user, the process would improve. That is the reason great companies are great because they think of their products/services in the hands of the users and how they are going to perceive it.

Whenever you have to make something for someone, not only consider what you want to deliver, also think about how the user is going to take it. Front-End of every product and every service can make or break an experience.

Featured Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Bookstores of Bangalore

Did I tell you, I always wanted to own a Stationary Shop which also sold books?

I have always wanted to read more and more books. But like everyone else, I end up reading less and less. There are some phases when I do read 2-3 books in very less time. But those times come like Halley’s Comet if people still remember that thing. Not digressing, this post is about book stores. It is not an exhaustive post about Bangalore’s Book Stores but just a few pictures of the bookstores I have been to.

Disclaimer: I own a Kindle since last few years. And that has rather helped me read more. But still, there is a charm in real printed books and book shops. Whenever I get a chance, I do visit book stores and get a feel of reality (and feel intellectual). Also, I am a keen observer of Book Covers. I don’t usually buy books but I always feel the guilt that I should.

So last weekend, I was roaming around on Church Street, Bengaluru. As many folks would know, it is famous for the Blossoms Book Store. I found another one very next to it called The Bookworm. Very close by, on MG Road, there is Higginbothams’ too. Do visit.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkxrwD-HSPG/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bwe57rxB-yE/

https://www.instagram.com/p/BdrcGS3Dob-/

So as they say, when you desire something, you do get signs. So, I found this today. Please watch this. This post was mostly written to share this video.

Bringing out the Wild Animal in You

Have you ever seen any animal get really very happy or really sad or really angry? Maybe occasionally your pets do display such emotions but not for long, right? Humans, on the other hand, cling on to joy or sadness for a longer time. Our emotions have more inertia and they sustain for a while.

Is it possible for us to learn from the wild animals to be more stoic? Is it possible for us to celebrate but in moderation, to feel depressed but move on, to get angry but forgiving?

I believe, if we can learn to contain ourselves and not hold on to the feelings as if they’re extremely precious, we can do much better. For that to happen, we must consider sadness and joy equal. I think that’s possible, isn’t it?

Morning Motivation Served On A Platter

https://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/106007/india-break-70-year-drought-with-2-1-series-win-in-australia

It took more years than I have been alive. And not only me, whole generations, in fact. It took so many alarms not at all snoozed and waking up early to see the leather brushing off the noses and the chins of Indian Batsman. It took so many sledging lessons. It took many greats which were deemed equivalent to Gods. It took so many VVSs, Dravids, and Sachins but the dream was still a dream.

Till today. Today, it has finally been achieved.

Congratulations Indian Cricket Team for defeating Australia 2-1 in the tests for the first time ever.