The problem with experience

Most people, confuse “experience” with “number of years employed”. Wikitionary's definition of experience goes something like this - “Collection of events and/or activities from which an individual or group may gather knowledge, opinions, and skills”. The key is – experience contributes to knowledge, opinion or skills. Nowhere does experience indicate the number of years spent on job.

We can plot number of years employed against knowledge on a graph. As long as you are “employed” (even on bench, vacation or surfing) you continuously progress along the  X time axis. When one insists on experience, it is somehow assumed that experience = time spent on job (x=y) kind of an equation.

But is that really true? Did you learn or gain more knowledge in your last year than the year before? If you have been working for a long time already now, just sit back and think about the increase in your knowledge that happened in the first year of your job. Thereafter think about the increments every year.

If you have been doing the same job (but growing in time and consequently in positions) chances are, your knowledge level has more or less stabilised. What you are essential gaining on is the time axis.

Its funny when customers insist on having “experienced” consultants with an arbitrary number like 10+ years of industry experience without getting into the details of “what” that experience really is. I could have been doing a menial job in an “industry” for 10 years without gaining any incremental knowledge whatsoever.

The only way that you might be gaining knowledge out of your experience is if you have been profile hopping. This phenomenon occurs when you completely change your job profile every 2-3 years so that you have to actually learn completely new things to do your job. Most companies don’t encourage such kind of hopping, and if you have been lucky enough to do it, then you have “experience” in the true sense of the word!

So as recruiters or customers going forward, please don’t insist on experience in terms of number of years spent on job, but please look at what the person has done and “experienced”!

School buses

School buses in India have been getting a lot of media attention lately. Maybe because of the recent spurt in the increase in accidents involving those buses or maybe life has become that much more valuable in India now. So the Supreme Court came up with a few well intentioned directives. Some of them should have been in place a long time ago. Things like – safe seat layouts, storage racks, emergency exits, speed governors and stopping signals.

Everything great so far. But the school bus operators interpreted those directives in their own sweet ways and now we have some funny results. To start with, most school buses in India are on contract. What that means is – the same buses that ferry people to their offices in the morning double up as school buses during the day. They then are hired for company picnics and other events for the weekend. What that essentially means is – every private bus on the roads in Mumbai is essentially a school bus.

Now one of the directives says that – school buses should identify themselves as one! So now almost all buses on the roads of Mumbai have a sticker on their back indicating that they are “On School and Comp Duty”. I presume Comp is a shortened – company. So that sticker doesn’t indicate anything. It just says that if there are kids inside we are ferrying them to school (India doesn’t allow child labour with exceptions) and if there are grown-ups these people are off to work.

One of the other directives is about proper graphics. The rule says that there must be a readily identifiable graphic on the bus to indicate that it carries children. The proposed symbol I believe was the one shown below.

But some of our bus operators probably found it to be too boring and then they came up with this one. its colourful, shows happy faces and indicates that its a school bus.

Now the person who made that graphic, probably downloaded a stock photo off the internet. The irony of that image is – there is no Indian child in that picture. Its a politically correct image representing a child from each continent. So the first gal can pass off as a representative of the South American continent. The second can represent North America, Europe and Australia. The third gal is there to represent all of us Asians and the fourth kid is an African. The fifth guy probably is there to represent Antarctica as a continent (I can’t seem to place him in Asia and Africa and the gal already represents the other continents).

Finally, some innovative operators thought they would sound important by putting a warning “Drive slowly, school kids on-board” behind. What they failed to realize is that some of the craziest drivers on the road are none other than these people themselves! So the buses go fast and wild all the while warning slower people behind them to drive slower! If anything, these warnings should have been put in front of the bus driver’s own face.

Complete service!

This is a post about restrooms again. Not disgusting like my earlier ones. But yeah, toilet post none the less.

Have been trying out elite eating places in Mumbai these days. With India’s inflation shooting up like crazy, prices every where keep going up everyday. Combined with service charges and all types of other creative taxes our Government keeps coming up with, eating out at decent places is a luxury in Mumbai already.

Now for those of you who don’t know, Indians prefer eating food with their bare hands, which means we do not rely on cutlery like spoons, fork and chopsticks while having our famed breads (The naan!). Which also means that we have to wash our hands before eating requiring us to visit washrooms in every restaurant we go.

An interesting phenomenon I have noticed is – most restaurants in India completely neglect the cleanliness of restrooms. Now, considering that almost all of us visit these places, and since elite places are elite because they are expected to maintain a certain level of internal decor and hygiene, I am baffled by the fact that such restaurant’s management chooses to ignore washrooms.

If I ever become a food critic in my life, I am gonna rate these guys on the basis of their cleanliness as well. You can’t charge me a bomb just because you “pose” to be elite! (Yeah I am a disgruntled customer ranting online!)

Flower power

Some smart-pant MBAs in the detergent manufacturing companies in India figured out (quite obviously) that women decide (dictate would be a better word) detergent purchases in India. So to further appeal their target customers they decided to make their detergents have a flowery fragrance. Now every detergent powder in India has fragrances like – Jasmine, Rose and Water lily.

First they made us have room fresheners of flowery fragrances, then they captured our hand washes, and finally our clothes! My mom happily bought a huge pack of jasmine scented detergent, and now everything in our house (I am talking besides the room fresheners and the hand washes!) smells of jasmine. Not only my bed sheets and curtains but even my shirts and trousers. Imagine a macho guy like me (yeah, pun intended!) walking into the big bad world smelling like some flowers. Not only does it hurt my image, but also it makes me smell like a sissy.

Luckily for me, since all purchasing decisions in India are done by the women of the house, I have realized that all my guy colleagues these days smell of – (you guessed it right!) Jasmine, Lily and Roses.

Anyways, I decided to take things into my own hands, and I went to a departmental store, and picked up a “premium” non-scented detergent fricking powder! Yeah the scene looked like a Clint Eastwood movie, especially the – me opening the door and walking into the mall part. Beyond that I meekly paid the cashier and walked off with my prized detergent. So much for a male dominated society! Huh!

Go ahead, make my day!

Butt-ID

So some scientists have found out that people can be identified by the butt prints that they leave on their seats. If we aren’t already being tracked enough by the social networks, location tracking mobile phones and cookies planted graciously in our browsers here and there, now the places where we park our butts will also start recognizing us. And life as we know it will change forever.

Imagine going to a restaurant with these butt identifying seats. By then, I am sure the Facebook Graph API will be available to be used everywhere. The moment I park my butt into a seat, the restaurant will automatically post on my wall saying – “Girish is sitting in this restaurant and eating blah blah”. If I am unlucky enough it would also know what I order all the time, order the same and update my fitness tracking app with the calories that I consumed.

People around me will also be Butt-IDed so Facebook will remind me – “The guy on the table besides you is your friend’s friend”. (After all we are separated by 3.74 degrees of separation from anyone in the entire world!)

Every club I go to will have bouncers with Butt-ID scanners. these will be simple devices on which you will be asked to sit to identify yourselves. So a burly looking gentleman twice my size would politely say, “Sir, may I see your butt please?”

Celebrity seats – seats that have been seated on years before by a celebrity, would become tourist attractions. You would have random seats all over the world saying “Lady Gaga Butt-IDed here” or “Do you wanna park your butt on the seat that Justin Bieber sat on?”. Then we would have celebrity-crazy tweens shelling out bucks to sit and take pictures to eventually put them back again on Facebook. Wow life is gonna be soo cool!

Endorsements gone wrong

In India, cricket is a religion (luckily without any reservations) and cricketers are Gods (Yeah its polytheistic). So these Gods of ours, other than controlling our destinies, sorrows and happiness also make us buy stuff. Cricketing endorsements make a major chunk of the advertising budget in India.

My marketing professor always said that if nothing else works in advertising – sex can sell anything. So our cricketing legends are the Indian equivalent of the legendary naked women. They can sell anything. Period.

The funniest endorsements that some of them have done are – fairness creams, inverters, engine oil, clothes whiteners, Mysore Sandal Soap, Toothpastes, Biscuits etc. !! For people who have forgotten, there was this legendary advertisement about a cricketer’s mom calling him up while he was on the field!

Sehwaag ki maa ka phone!

Anyways, entire of last week I have been hearing this new advertisement of a cricketer trying to sell me anti-virus software. The jingle goes “Trusted by the best”. Now I have no problems in him endorsing software. But its wrong to call a cricketer to be an expert in security software. Its like using Bill Gates to endorse a cricket bat.

Trusted by the best

Caught in an affair

So I have a fairly common Indian name. I didn’t get statistics about number of Girishs in the world, but I am sure we are a considerable number. Now, considering that I started using Gmail while it was still in beta and was open for limited people, I got a prized email handle (Username). My definition of prized email ids are those in which I don't have to put numbers, last names or funny sounding acronyms that make no sense. I am sure years later I will be able to sell it to a rich Girish who will pay me handsomely to get this handle. Then I can retire from my day time job and write here all day and all night long.

A quick ego search about other Girishs did reveal to me an interesting Girish. I have been listening to his music all of yesterday and he is real good. Anyway, I think I am straying away from my core topic – the prized email handle.

Having this rare email address entitles me to get some misdirected emails. Other than a lot of interesting spam, I do get legitimate sounding emails which are continued conversations of other Girishs (which always start with “As discussed with you on phone…” and then an attachment which I dare not open). So I am Girish bhai, Girish dada, Girish bhaiya, Girish sahab, Girish sir, Girish uncle and a whole lot of other objectives. I have learnt to ignore most of the emails. I guess only twice I have replied to the senders – once when it was a bank statement (but they STILL continue to send me this legendary Girish’s credit card statement) and the second time was when some unsuspecting Girish gave my email address as his on his PAN card.

Anyways, these days a lovelorn and rather weird Girish has bitterly quarrelled with his girlfriend. This girlfriend of his has now retorted to sending him emails (apparently because he is not logging into the messenger). Now the problem is – this lover boy never bothered to give her his true email address. So she is spewing abuse all over the emails that she sends to me. Imagine my dilemma – if I reply saying I am not the right guy she is spewing venom at, I might end up embarrassing her and also, my mom told me to never talk to strangers. If I don’t reply, she thinks her Girish is ignoring her and her abuse is intensifying day by day. Anyway, God has given me the unique gift of being ultra patient (and lazy), and I will wait out her abuse till she gets a new boyfriend and dumps this Girish.

Sometimes it makes me wonder – life can be so interesting even if you just login to the internet everyday!

Scientific understanding

As a school going kid, I did understand my elementary physics quite well. But during my time, in school, physics barely touched upon particle physics. With the recent invasion of The Big Bang Theory and the Large Hadron Collider, I felt woefully inadequate with my understanding of particle physics in general, and the Higgs Boson particles and Theory of relativity in particular.

The Big Bang Theory

While browsing through books at a bookstore, I chanced upon a book titled – “Why does E=mc2?”. Now, I generally don’t do any book reviews, but to set context I would like to say that it is a perfect book for a guy like me who wishes to know a bit about particle physics without getting into the gory details of the mathematics behind it.

With my complete disconnect from physics lately, it took me quite a while and effort to get through this book. Though the authors have gone to a great extent to simplify things, my peanut sized brain still had issues with understanding the concepts. I literally had to read each and everything over and over again, many a times highlighting stuff and looking for it on the internet to really understand what each theory stands for. After 4 long months of arduous study, I kinda got what the book says, mostly about – space-time, theory of relativity, nuclear fusion and fission, standard model of particle physics, properties of fundamental particles, Feynman diagrams etc . (Well, before I go any further, I think I need to clarify my degree of understanding. If you are a particle physicist reading this blog, then I understand nothing, nada, zilch. I am a complete noob. I can just shake my head and say “I have heard those terms”. If you are my grandma reading my blog, then well, I can actually sit and talk about those terms for hours together and try to confuse you while I get confused at the same time.)

Most of the book (and if I mistake not – the theory of relativity as well) however is based on the assumption that no particle can travel faster than the cosmic speed limit, which incidentally also happens to be the speed of light. So finally, when I reached the last page of the book, I was ecstatic to have figured out at least a bit of particle physics. However the day I finished reading the book I read in our newspapers that scientists have discovered that neutrinos can travel faster than light.

Now, I know its still open for scientific scrutiny and the results of the experiment might be proven to be wrong later someday. But imagine if its not. Imagine – 4 months of efforts wasted trying to understand a theory which was going to be disproved the day I finished reading it. I am already dejected, not because a huge discovery of far reaching implications has been made, but because the lazy me had to spend so much time to read something which was ultimately going to be cast in a shadow of doubt! I should have waited till the experiments at the LHC were all done and we came up with a final theory which explains everything for lazy bums like me. Sigh!

5 Indianisms that every non-Indian should know

We are a billion strong nation. And a foreign country ruled us for years together and made us learn English. So, we picked it up in our own way. Sprinkling English with words we felt appropriate and accent that came naturally to us. Over the period of time, we went to other countries, we worked to “blend” and sound like them. But then, we still stick to a few of our favorite words, that we refuse to let go. Here is my list of Indian words that I still occasionally use, though I am fully aware that they are wrong.

Passed out – So I passed out of MBA in 2010. When we say “passed out” we actually mean we graduated. If you think that we lost consciousness when we graduated, yeah we were so ecstatic that we really did. So stop smirking there each time when I say I passed out.

Expired – Yeah Indians expire. We don't pass away. We all have an expiry date and when we reach that date we just expire. Yeah, I was not born, I had a date of manufacturing.

Couple of – When I say “I did a couple of presentations” or when I say “I met her a couple of times” it means – I did many presentations and I met her many times. Just because you think couple means twice, doesn't mean that I mean it that way. Even after 100s of emails, it will still remain – I sent him a couple of emails.

Lakhs of – When I say there are lakhs of people in my town. I mean hundreds of thousands of. We measure 100,000 as 1 lakh. So each time I say “lakh” remember – 1 lakh = 0.1 million don't give me that quizzical look.

Prepone – Just because you can postpone meetings, so can I prepone them. What's wrong in it? We think of pone as an event. If I move things beyond pone – I postpone them. So if I bring them before pone, I am preponing them.

How can you think any of this is wrong when 1 in 6 people in the world actually say it?

Collectibles

When I was young, I had this bad habit of collecting stuff from places I visited. My innocent self felt that they would serve as fond memories of places (or interesting things that I had done) in my older age.

But now that I am old, I have realized that all these trinkets, ticket stubs and maps of places are nothing but an absolute waste of space. Not only do I never open them to “re-live those memories” but also, I have ended up having far too many memories. They now occupy so much space in my cupboard that my present is in danger of lying on the floor.

Every time that I found some interesting collectible, I just dumped it into this area “for staring at it longingly in the future”. The problem with this area was – now I had no clue what was there in it. It had become so unmanageable, that I dreaded to venture into it. Anyway, today I finally dawned my mask and off I ventured where no man has gone before.

Now the place where I live in is generally very humid. So everything that is not touched for a while gets covered in mold-like stuff. I am sure if I decide to sleep for a week doing nothing, I too would be covered by some mold with some mushrooms growing off me. Anyway, after hours of digging around through the fungi covered rubble, I figured that there was not much that I wanted to hold on as memories going forward. The stuff I liked was already damaged, and the rest was not worth keeping. Yeah I know I am cold-hearted, but I figured there was no point keeping them just so that I throw them off later someday (that someday never comes!).

So what was the weird and interesting stuff I held on so long? Lots and lots of refrigerator magnets. I had so many of them that to actually put them all, I would probably have to buy a few fridges. Then there were ticket stubs of amusement park rides, places of interest, bus tickets, train tickets, air tickets, boat tickets etc. And then dozens of press-a-penny souvenirs. I also found a few single chopsticks (mind you – they don’t form a pair!) and a few dozen wine bottle corks (At one point in time – I envisioned myself dabbling in cork-art). If this was not enough I had stones (yeah stones!), dried leaf samples and wilted flower samples! The most interesting bits that I found was – I had a Matryoshka doll that I bought at this fort. Unfortunately as of writing this blog post, I already managed to break the doll into pieces while trying to open her up.

All said and done, I am left with no more memorabilia. Now all I have is fond memories and lots of fungi all over my clothes.