Everyday I pass through this stretch and feel like taking a picture. The other day I finally parked my bike on the side of the road and took this picture.
Day 55/ 365 – Dhoom 3
One of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year – Dhoom 3 releases today. There is so much buzz about the movie, that most of the tickets have been booked for the weekend. The general story line of the movie is – The bad guy steals, the good guy catches him, the bad guy becomes a good person or dies. Nothing different, right? The Dhoom franchise is famous for making its bad guys look really cool in the movies. In the first movie we had John Abraham who looked super cool riding a Hayabusa bike and robbing banks and casinos alike. Then we had a super suave thief with Greek God looks in Hrithik Roshan in Dhoom 2 who would steal the rarest of rare artifacts and now Aamir Khan who plays a clown thief with a weird face tattoo who robs (God knows what) in Dhoom 3.
The only constant characters in the movie series are the good guys – Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra. While Aamir is already an established super star, the careers of the other two baddies – John and Hrithik really took off after this movie. The other thing that has evolved with this series is the location where the baddies operated. John operated in India, Hrithik – the world over as they tried to show it and Aamir – primarily in the US as the trailers show. Another thing that has worked in the favor of the franchise is that so far the movies have been slick and fast paced. I am hoping that same continues in the upcoming movie. I just hope that in this movie – Abhishek Bachchan dies and Aamir wins.. buhahaha.
Day 54/ 365 – Rose clicked at Manali
Took this picture of a rose just after it stopped raining a few months ago in Manali. Found this picture hidden somewhere in my archives and thought of sharing. Taken at ISO 200, F6.3 and focal length 208 mm.
Day 53/ 365 – Plan work better
Recently my wife has been spending a lot of time at work as she is handling multiple projects. Each of those projects are requiring a significant amount of her time resulting in her working pretty late into the night. Now I personally don’t prefer to spend more time at work unless there is some deadline or something unplanned has come along. However, most of the times I prefer working my 9 hours and then head home. Since my wife has been working overtime (and not getting paid for it also), I just thought to share some of things which I follow which helps me plan my day/ work better. Not to say that my wife does not do this.
Warning: All of the below does not work when you receive unplanned tasks or something from the management (which is always, usually urgent).
1. Plan your day
I spend at least 30-45 minutes planning my day and the activities which I need to accomplish in the day. I set out a to-do list every morning and allot numbers on those activities depending on the urgency level. The to-do list keeps getting updated once the day has begun with all the new activities getting added at the bottom of the list. The goal of the day is to accomplish everything that I have identified that needs to be completed today. Obviously, if any un-planned work occurs, the above does go for a toss. However, 90% of the times this works.
2. Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize
Normally we have tons of things which we need to do and more often than not they are always urgent and someone, somewhere is always waiting for it. So what I do in such scenarios is, think and analyze if they are really that urgent. One of things that help me do this – I always ask the person by when he/ she needs the data or the report. I always request for dates which ensures that I am working on only those things which really need to be done today. This helps me avoid spending my time on other things which can be dealt later.
3. Learn to say No
I had read somewhere “Always find a way to say a Yes”. I tend to disagree to this saying. I believe there are times when you need to learn to say No. I prefer saying a No, rather than agreeing to deliver a task by a certain amount of time and then failing to deliver it or not doing a quality job. Normally we have a tendency to please everyone and we tend to bite more than we can chew. Initially I would feel, if I say a no, what would the other person feel etc. However, as I grew professionally, I realized that it is alright to say a No if you have valid and genuine reasons behind it. Most of the times, your boss would understand and tell you not to worry about it.
4. Meeting Prioritization
We all have a lot of meetings that we need to attend. I haven’t yet worked in an organization where I haven’t had multiple meetings scheduled in a single day. The best way to gain sometime is to analyze and understand whether you need to attend all the meetings. I normally identify the meetings which are absolutely essential for me to attend and plan my work around those meetings. There are a few days when all I do is attend meetings – during those days I ensure I don’t have any deliverable assigned for those days. Normally such days are few and far between and you would normally know them about a week in advance. Kindly check the your meeting Calendar on a regular basis. Seriously. It is the best tool to the plan your day.
These things have been working for me. Feel free to share what works for you.
Day 52/ 365 – House Hunt – Meeting with prospective seller
As mentioned in my earlier posts, I have been searching for a home for quite sometime. This weekend, we finally found something which we were interested in buying and so we asked the real estate agent to arrange a meeting with the seller this week. The meeting happened today and it didn’t go as planned. Since me and wife are both salaried professional, we wanted to get a home which would be financed by the bank. The bank normally finances 80-85% (depending on your credit scores and eligibility) of the agreement value. The seller however was only willing to make an agreement which was less than Rs. 49 lakh as he wanted to avoid the TDS (tax deductible at source) which needs to be paid if the agreement value is more than Rs. 49 lakhs. The total cost of the house was coming to 80 lakhs, so this would basically mean that bank would give a loan of Rs. 40 lakhs and the remaining 40 lakhs would need to be managed by me. I was very surprised on hearing this. The reason the seller cited for not making the agreement for more than Rs. 49 lakhs was that once the TDS is deducted, there is no guarantee that money would be refunded by the Income Tax officials. Apparently the seller had some really bad experiences with the tax authorities and he didn’t want to take any further chances. The estate agent asked me if there was anything I could work out. I replied in negative saying that since we are salaried, this does not work for us. The meeting finally ended with the estate agent promising to revert back to us with some kind of decision by the end of this week. Not feeling very hopeful about anything being worked out for this place. 
Day 51/ 365 – Moon shot
Took this picture of moon yesterday with 250 mm lens. Obviously it didn’t turn out half as good as I expected. Probably need to get a 400 mm lens or higher to get a really good picture. To account for distortion, I increased the shutter speed to 1/400 and ISO to 800
Day 50/ 365 – Shiva – The God of Duality
I clicked this picture at Panchvati in Nasik. There is a small Shiva temple near Ramkund and it is easy to miss it. Shiva transcends all duality, one image to express this is the ardhanarishvara (“the Lord who is half woman”) As you can see, one half has male features and attributes, and the other half female (thus showing how Shiva transcends one of the most basic divisions among human beings, that of sex).
Day 49/ 365 – Ticketless Travel
The other day I was returning from my MBA classes and completely forgot to punch in my train coupons. Normally I stand in the ticket line on the platform and buy a return ticket, but on this particular weekend I was running late and didn’t want to wait in a line to get the tickets. So I decided to take the train coupons and punch them in. The problem with the train coupons is that you need to punch them in every time you need to travel. So I reached the railway station and used the coupons to travel, but while returning completely forgot all about it. So I traveled in the train, got down at my stop and walked out without ever realizing that I had not purchased the tickets. I only realized the same when I had almost reached home.
I remember, during my college days in India, when I was once caught traveling ticket less in a 1st class compartment. Like yesterday, it was entirely accidental. During my college days, we used to get special discounts for students for the monthly/ quarterly railway pass, which was basically 1/3rd of the original price. I used to travel by 1st class because the crowd was comparatively “better”, the seats were cushioned and it was comparatively cheaper. I had taken a quarterly pass and used to travel on a daily basis. I thought my pass was expiring on a certain date and was traveling keeping in mind that date. However, my railway pass had expired a couple of days earlier and I wasn’t aware about it all. Like usual I was traveling in the train with an expired railway pass and a ticket checker came along to check the ticket. I handed him my expired railway pass and didn’t even look at him considering all was fine. So he asked, “do you have any new pass along with this?” I replied “No”. He told me “This pass is expired and you need to pay the fine.” I was like “Oh oh are you sure?” He said “Yes. Here take a look.” I looked at the pass and saw the pass has indeed expired. So I check my wallet to see how much money I had and there wasn’t much. As a student, I didn’t really have a lot of pocket money and fine for traveling ticket less in a first class compartment is usually very high. The ticket checker told me the fine that I needed to pay and I told him I didn’t have enough money to pay the same. He asked me to get off at the next station and then have the discussion outside. I was like ok.. So the train stops at the next station and me, my friend and the ticket checker get off. I told him I have Rs. Xx and he should just take that money and let me go. He then said that’s not possible and I need to somehow pay the fine. I checked with my friend if he had some extra money and he said he didn’t have enough to pay off the whole fine. I asked the ticket checker to let us go with whatever little money we had. After some amount of haggling, we agreed on the fine and which I was able to pay and was finally let off. Since that time onwards, I normally take a ticket while traveling, to avoid such an experience.
Day 48/ 365 – Concept photography
Decided to take this picture inspired by a post seen on Reddit some time back. Placed a green marble on the flash of the phone. I am thinking may be a more colorful marble would have given a different result.
Day 47/ 365 – Internet sharing issues
Around a couple of months ago, I upgraded my phone and laptop from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 and around the same time I changed my Vodafone 3G internet plan from unlimited to 2 GB. The two events occurred around the same time. Before the upgrade and change in the data plan, I was able to use internet sharing on my phone without any issues. However since the upgrade/ change in data plan, I am not able to connect to the internet. I am able to connect to the network, but when I open the browser, the net does not work. I didn’t pay attention to this problem since I always carry a 3G data dongle with me. But today, I had a presentation to make for my MBA classes and forgot to carry the data dongle with me. I really needed the internet connection to work. So I tried connecting through the phone and as usual it didn’t work. I called up the Vodafone call center, assuming that it could be a problem at their end as earlier internet sharing on the phone was working fine. After being repeatedly kept on hold, the customer service executive informed me that since I have a windows phone and windows machine, internet sharing would not work. I was extremely surprised at this answer and told her that everything was working fine earlier and only recently since the change in data plans, things aren’t working. She told me that there is nothing that they could do over the phone for this and it was a known issue and I could try my luck at the nearest Vodafone store. Not satisfied with the answer, I decided to connect through a Windows 7 laptop. The same issue occurred – I was able to connect to the network, but not able to use the internet. So it leads me to believe that this is a Windows 8.1 issue.
I am now trying to search through the issue on the internet to see if this problem exists and what is the resolution. I am also going to go to local Vodafone store to check the issue. Hopefully should be able to identify a resolution to this problem.
My thoughts...My story 