A loss and a gain

We've lost our first employee today. Ravi decided to start something of his own, uncomfortably close to our location unfortunately. To be fair signs were there, and we did try to keep him. But we're happy that he's trying out something closer to his heart and wish him success.

However he provided us a very short notice. Since we've just started and are operating well below capacity, we can absorb his departure. However this could have put us in a spot in other circumstances. And its important to the continuity of the business that employees provide sufficient notice of their intention to quit so that planning a transition is possible. We did have an understanding to this respect with our employees, but nothing formal. So while there was nothing stopping Ravi from leaving on one day's notice, there was nothing stopping us from holding his salary back either.

It could be a dilemma. What do you do? Should you penalise your employee for not sticking to the terms of employment? Or should you accept the fact that employees are not bound to work for you and can quit when they please?

At this point it is a no brainer. He was not contractually obliged to work for us. So we have to pay him what is due to him.

And it is only fair to do so. There may be a counter argument that putting a penalty will deter othe employees from taking similar steps. However I don't think it holds much water. There must be better ways to make our employees loyal to us and ensure that the business' success is aligned with their well being. We need to find what these ways are, but we are certain that penalizing is counter productive in the long run. Soma says it best 'Kisi ka bura kar ke mera koi bhala nehi hone waala'. Besides, penalties need to be contractually binding, and at this point there is no contract between our employees and ourselves.

Anyway, so we lost Ravi today, but we do not have plans to replace him yet.

Also I've made a few changes to our website http://www.pinkandbluespa.com/. If you type the url or if you type 'pink and blue spa' it does come on top of google results. So there is some definite progress there.

I also tried to put some meta tags etc to the pages for SEO. The main reason is that it is important to have a better search ranking when searching for the hobby classes Soma conducts. Right now, we're nowhere in the search results, so that means we're not ranked yet. It could be because Google may have not crawled these pages on our site yet. However I am confident that once crawled, my work today should improve our Google ranking. So the first priority is ensuring Google continues to crawl our site. To effect this we're trying to leave a link to our site wherever possible (which basically means our blogs and facebook profiles). Don't know how far it will get us though. Any help from readers are welcome.

Silence

Sometimes the most awkward moments are the ones spent in silence. Most of the times however, they are the moments that bring sanity to the proceedings.
You need silence to think clearly. It may get very noisy when you haven't thought clearly, but if you haven't thought at all, its silence again.

Random musings

We all are young, and we have dreams about our future. Some of these dreams we can achieve on our own. These are the easy ones. There are other dreams which we build around other people. Long term goals, future plans. Who’s to say our future will be to plan? Who’s to say jobs will be as easy to find ten years down the line? Who’s to say you wife will not run away with her colleague? Who’s to say, you friends will not drive drunk and leave you paralyzed limb down for life?

What you have is your today. And if you’re not happy with what you have, you probably will never be. People are too busy trying to make their future secure, secure mind you not happy, that the present is full of shit. 14 hours work, half a pack of cigarette a day, two square meals with multiple coffee breaks, six hours of sleep. And no body is complaining since everybody else is doing it too.

Today, my today is going down the drain and I am satisfied with just a meek ‘too bad’. On the other hand why don’t I just take care of my today, and if I do it consistently for the rest of my life will not my future take care of itself?

Let’s face it, we don’t really know what the future has in store for us. And what we don’t know, we fear. And what we fear, we try to avoid. So we do things we feel will not jeopardize our future. We play safe. And yet some of us do get fucked up.

Some of us find out that we’ve been fucked up. Some of us don’t even realize it. Perception is confused as a satisfactory reality. It may be sufficient to avoid pissing us off, but it’s not the reality. Reality may be that no matter how hard you work you might still get passed over for that bosses’ favorite. Reality might be that the love of your life might have had loves of her own before you and is planning more ahead. You’ve seen it happen with other people, who’s to say it’s not happening with you or can’t? What you perceive may just be a cruel joke you haven't had the exposure to understand.

So what’s stopping me from enjoying now? Why am I still putting in 12 hours of work a day? Why am I saving for a house over mine and S's head? Why is it that I don’t even think of flirting around although she’s miles away from me? I miss her so much, but should I? Is sanity holding me back, or is it madness?

Not very deep

Charlie Brown: Next year I'm going to be a changed person.

Snoopy: Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.

Somedays you feel like Charlie Brown, some days you feel like Snoopy!

Here's a happy thought to end it all

Snoopy: My life has no purpose. My life has no direction, no aim, no meaning. And yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out! What am I doing right?

Unlucky charm

Can there be something like that? If there can, then one such star crossed chinese curse lies dumped somewhere between other such junk in my cubicle desk. It's a gift so I don't have the guts to throw it away. I have had my share of bad luck this last year and I don't feel like inviting more. Guess you learn new things about yourself every passing day. Also I don't feel its only me. I mean superstition is inbuilt into our system, as a defense mechanism against the unknown. Its said that if more of your superstitious behaviours (crossing fingers, touching wood etc) are designed to bring you good luck, then you generally consider yourself lucky. Unlucky people dread and avoid more than anything.

Books people read

And what is good Phaedrus,
And what is not good –
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
It is just unsafe to wander out alone in the deserted streets of Delhi at 2 AM in the morning, especially if you a girl who belongs to a clan which people feel radiate an aura of looseness and availability.
I am desperately trying to move beyond the third page of 'Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. But for that I'll have to find some time to start reading again. The book has been lying unopened since the day I bought it. I read the book earlier, at least part of it. This was years ago, when the primary thrill I sought from books was excitement, and this book seemed terribly slow paced, sermonizing and directionless.
Although I could not complete the book, I did toil with it. I persisted, maintained some inertia no matter how slow, and took help of occasional breaks where I took the help of a rich assortment of Archer, Grisham and Forsyth to reanimate my interest in reading. But whenever there was nothing to read, I came back to Pirsig, like an erring husband comes back to his wife. And ‘Z n d rt of MM’ took me back, each time. But it was a more of a boring wife, with whom you struggle to make a living. But I carried on; my own unprecedented tenacity amazed me. Maybe the sweltering heat of Allahabad, when loo looms large and you go out under threat to your sanity, helped me. But still I struggled to capture the essence of the book, or to make something up for my own comfort.
There were good times, especially his descriptions of things around him and Pirsig’s devotion to his bike. My interest in IC engines grew as a result, to better understand the portions when he describes the maintenance of his bike. Or maybe it was the other way round, I don’t know.
Our affair lasted for a month and a half. But then the dichotomy between the message in the book and my lifestyle struck in, and I threw in my towel. The book was discarded into the dark corners of my tin trunk where it found its way next to a discarded study lamp, which I felt was an apt union. Several migrations across Allahabad, Shillong, Bangalore and Chennai later, I can’t find the old book anymore.
They say, you are what you read. My Engineering and MBA books earn my living and decide my designation, but I don’t think that’s exactly what the phrase meant. Maybe we should take the opinion of Heller, Lee, Adams, Wodehouse, Kafka, Salinger et all. Have they been able to undo the damage inflicted by Sheldon and his clan? And what about the Anderson brothers, Blyton, Stan Lee, Herge, Uncle Pai etc? Do they still influence my flighty imagination, or is its reinvigoration the sole contribution of Tolkien? Do Doyle and Agatha still feel let down by me?
I go back to Pirsig because I think he was trying to say something that will mean something to me at this phase of life. In ‘That 70s show’ the curly haired dude, tells that bitchy chick, who by the way I think will easily qualify for Bluebird’s harem, that Zen is being cool. I’m cool, but I don’t know if Zen means only that. Maybe Pirsig will throw some more light.

Boot Camp for Amateur Kissers

"A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point."

A comma will indicate that there is more to follow, paragraphs in fact, harbinger to tales of the delightful amorous kind. There will be a kind of connection between the author and the reader which can only be expected in lovers, which they already are or galloping towards being.

But hold on, the others are actually better. Take a kiss that is like a question mark for example. An unexpected out of the blue kiss. One which will propel you in orbiting speed out of the blues, if you happen to be in such a disposition at that moment. A sudden, refreshing and rejuvenating peck on the cheek, from the sweetest and hopefully cutest friend, while you are demoralizing all around you with your constant ranting. Demoralizing all actually, other than her.

A kiss that is like an exclamation point is the third best thing following an orgasm, and taking a dump. Further elaboration is unwarranted.

Sadly my first kiss turned out to be a full stop.

A and I were great friends, and her lips were of the succulent kind. The eye-catching succulent kind. Suffice to say that next to Angelina Jolie’s no other lips attracted me such. The build up to the kiss was the type that could only be dreamt about. This was partly due to the fact that this was my first kiss and I dreamt about it a lot. The follow-up was however an anti-climax.

Yuri Gagarin

Tomorrow is the day Yuri Gagarin would have turned 27 in 1961. Curiosity is demanding a retrosearch into what could have possibly gone through his mind that day.
I mean things like introspection and stuff. People hopefully do introspect a little on their birthdays between the age of 25 and 30. You know, things like, what are you doing with your life, what do you expect to be doing five years from now etc...
Why 25 and 30? Well probably because your'e too busy worrying whether you would get laid before you cross 25 that you hardly have time for other introspections. Hopefully you do get laid before you cross 25 otherwise there is no point contemplating other things, as are failing God in the most basic task you are going down for.
30 is a dangerous number when it applies to age, for human beings of course. There is something ominous about that number and I really don't want to think about life beyond it.
So that leaves us with the 25 to 30 band. Hopefully you will look back at your life sometimes yaar ... atleast on your birthdays.... just for that five years..... arreh maan jaa yaar.. jaan lega?
Good, so that now we reach to the firm conclusion that mankind contemplates the state of his affairs on his birthdays between the age of 25 and 30, we could now shift focus through what could have gone through that commie mind of dear old Yuri on March 9, 1961 as he sat listening to Elvis' "Are you lonesome tonight?" which topped the charts for the first time a month back, and by now would surely have found its way around the iron curtain.
Was he worried about what progress was made of his resolve to turn an astronaut before he turned 30? Probably not, as Blackie had already returned from space alive, and he had been chosen for the ignominy of following a dog's footsteps which made him review his earlier plan to say something like 'A giant step for mankind' on the occasion. He could have been a little scared contemplating the anatomical differences between a dog's constitution and his own, but that would probably have been it.
Was he worried about his Astronaut Analyst Lead increase his already astronomical tasks, offhand, just before launch, and then review them while in orbit? His only task was surviving in space, which his Lead would have already assured is nothing, even dying in the process is a great honor. So Yuri may have casually dismissed any premonitions he might have had saying 'We'll survive when we have to!'.
Was he worried about what would be the outcome of the latest test match between the Soviet Union and the United States in a three match test series played in USSR the first time since World War 2. Fat chance. Their aversion to wasting an entire day in the cricket field leave alone five consequetive days, outweighs the cumulative animosity the superpowers harbour for each other.
Heck, probably the king would have already taken him to the lonesome world of pathos and a couple of vodkas later he would have already found his soul floating around in space with little scope for contemplation. Let's hope his colleagues had a kind word to say about dear old Yuri in the midst of the celebrations for the return of Blackie.
Happy birthday Yuri Gagarin!

All the world's a stage

Do you sometimes feel that life created us as interesting stage characters with unique personalities, great intellects and unlimited potential but somehow forgot to write the script for us or include us in any of the interesting acts? So while the stage is filled with characters playing their part in completeness, we wait in the side waiting for some indication from life that it’s time for our part.

The camel's hump!

'The camel has a big dumb ugly hump. But in the desert, where prettier, more streamlined beasts die quickly of thirst, the camel survives quite nicely. As legend has it, the camel carries its own water, stores it in its stupid hump. If individuals, like camels, perfect their inner resources, if we have the power within us, then we can cross any wasteland in relative comfort and survive in arid surroundings without relying on the external. Often, moreover, it is our "hump" - that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable - that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.'

A beautiful thought from Tom Robbins I feel. It sometimes makes me wonder, whats my hump? Well I'm lazy like hell but nothing good ever came out of it!