Reflections from the table

Many a times I have ridiculed at this question. What still keeps few of us buzzing as a busy bee, shuttling between personal and professional life. Is money the only criteria? The last 3 months did convince me it was not so. 

I have hesitated to come out the cozy comfort circle not socializing with everyone except a selected few with whom I vent out. I used to have second thoughts on lunching with friends, being too time bound on the half an hour lunch break. Anything more than 30 mins would bring a sense of guilt and rush me towards work. Mostly I would wrap-up my lunch at desk (but taking utmost precautions not to attract pests J . So hope facilities Tm do not condemn while reading this). Little did I realize how wonderful life was being with friends

One of my college days friend who quite often saw me eat alone, invited to join their ‘Lunch Gang’.  It is a ‘Bubbly bunch’ of 10-12 lively young people who make the 40-50 mins (yes, I have become little liberal these days) of my lunch time beautiful. To my surprise, the conversations with them have helped to forget few difficult times (professional or personal)temporarily. I would fondly refer these chats as ‘sweet nothings’ like in the courtship period, where whatever the duo speaks makes no absolute sense but still remembered as enjoyable moments forever.

When I planned a brief break opting for sabbatical, I decided to compile few of ‘Across the table’ conversations happened amongst us.

·    There were days with intriguing gossips about our peers, seniors and of course about the excellent team players

·    Happy/dejected CRR discussions praising the brilliance of managers J or complaining the favoritism shown L

·    Delightful narrations on the charm and mischiefs of our sons and daughters

·    School admissions, donation, debates on best school, fee structure….believe me, you will not get such LIVE soulful narrations and truthful comments in any forums or review sites

·    Talks on real estates, reliable builders, ground water quality, benefits of recycling wastes, constructing environment friendly buildings

·    Carpooling, dance, yoga, music classes for our kids, Olympiad exams, Global Art, Abacus classes, Edu-Sports and what not ..

·    Sharing cookery recipes, tasting delicacies prepared by wives & moms, exploring different cuisines/restaurants when one of us sponsors a treat

·    Listening with suspicion J the stories on experimenting frog, snake delicacies along with fried dragonflies during the onshore tenure in China

·    Fuming arguments on better resource utilization, H1B processing, rationale behind Talent Management’s resource mapping

·    Amazed by a friend’s will power to take up Easter fasting giving up meat and wine (> a month), who would otherwise feast like a king J (Memories of him lunching Rotis and Baby Corns while watching helpless others slurping Non-Veg dishes are still green)

·    Bursting into laughter when someone describes the heroic acts by one of us, that pathetically turned soggy J 

Oh, the list is endless. Apart from these hilarious, thought provoking, adventurous and worthwhile moments, there are few tech savvy discussions adding cherry to the Pie. While one of them scoops on Windows 8 Apps development, someone else would be checking on Android Jelly Bean. If not at office, where would I get to know all of them? A person who can elegantly balance both work and life is lucky to enjoy the best from both the grounds. Having said that, so guys do you think I would wish missing all of them? Not at least for few more years J

With Love,

Lavanya 

You never know what happens next..

The client meeting was due at 7:00 PM IST and I was all set to present the deck. I was the only one to join the meeting from Chennai DC and rest of the folks joined from Pune and Onshore. I had booked a conference room to avoid disturbances and joined the bridge 10 mins before the schedule. Others joined on time including the Client and as the clock ticked 7:00, least did I expect to see the time-sheet reminder invade my Laptop screen. It would not allow me to 'Go Back' or switch to presentation slides unless I fill patiently for all missed days (Yes, I had not submitted time-sheets for a month). Nothing worked to get back and neither could I kill the process through Task Manager. God, what would I do when people keep repeating 'Lavanya, are you ready? Shall we start?' I made an excuse that my system was restarting unexpectedly and tried meanwhile to log-off and log-in again hoping the reminder would vanish.
Pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Gosh.... What do I see? My screen has toggled upside down. All panicky to keep others waiting, instead of Ctrl+Alt+Delete I had pressed Ctrl+Alt+Down Arrow in the keypad. Pressing again Ctrl+Alt+ Up Arrow did not restore my screen orientation and I was locked out. Nothing worked to log me in again. Desolate in a conference room, the situation left me puzzled with no workaround to think. I was running out of time already and started perspiring with tongue tied.
Gathering all energy, I said - 'Yes I am ready to walk through the content, although I don't have the deck before me'. 'My system crashed' was easy to say rather to get embarrassed explaining what happened in real. We did have multiple reviews on the presentation in the past and in fact a mock up happened the week before. So I could visualise the screens (20 slides) and went ahead explaining each of them. The next 1 hour was unbelievable. Midway, I had to answer queries specific to the slides until the most desired 'Thank You' slide arrived. A big sigh of relief escaped when the Client said - 'Of course you did a remarkable job with no data before you'.

Lessons Learnt:
1. Never under-estimate the process in place(had I filled the time-sheets regularly, I would not have landed here).
2. Carry a print-out of the deck, especially when you are the Presenter. As you never know, what happens next.. :-)

Reflections of a working mom :-)

I am amazed at people who are experts in dealing children. I almost shudder at the thought of having to manage both Varsha and Srinidhi during weekends nowadays. They make me mad. I keep complaining to Bharath that I don't get a personal space anymore. They have become very fussy recently, especially with the sibling rivalry creeping into Srinidhi whenever I sweet-talk with Varsha. She does all things to grab mine and Bharath's attention. Both have problems in sharing toys, watching TV, playing with appa, amma...
Making Srinidhi eat is one of the tasks I fear even thinking. She is such a poor eater and hardly has any appetite.
I have made up my mind many times in the past not to complain about upbringing children, but I fail mostly. Parenting is not easy I conclude, whenever I get tired after lecturing Srinidhi the Do's and Don'ts and she hardly listens to any of them. A shade of guilt and self-pity envelops me when I think I am not spending more time with my kids. It is a delight watching Srini and Varsha playing together though, but really unbearable when they shriek with the highest pitch fighting for something. Bharath pretends to be hilarious at times, saying "Guys let me disappear from here, be at onsite for the next few years until the children are groomed well. Too much of noise pollution". And I would add, " I too feel the same :-)". Thanks to amma again, for sparing us from all these thoughts during week days, being all in all for Varsha and Srini. She is the shock absorber, pillar of the family and everything else I would be grateful of.

Facebook made a difference

It has been a conscious decision for long, not to enter into social networking. But thanks to my current project which has forced me to have one. Working for Mobility practise, there has been many business requirements on integrating Social Media links into the App we develop. As understanding functional requirements weren't that easy with no real-time experience in these, finally decided to create an account. Wow, how pleased am I to find my 2001 batch mates after 11 Yrs .. I was almost in tears seeing Subbu in FB after so many years and in fact was overjoyed reading many of her posts in (http://shub50.wordpress.com/about/) and was greedy to grab as much content I could on a day to patch up for all the years I missed. She was a true source of inspiration during my college days and she is here again   :-) to make me post a blog almost a year after my last one. Decided to stay connected to my frens and blog at-least once a week. Let's see.

-Lavanya

Revolution 2020

A slight disappointment this time, especially after a long wait since '2 States'. Didn't find the novel as interesting as the rest. Nevertheless, I am still a big fan of Chetan's narrations. 
Especially for a person in me, it is difficult to digest certain depictions. How could Aarti have a relationship with Gopal parallely, when she is committed to Raghav and still convince herself that it is because Raghav hardly spends time with her. The story has a dramatic end, irritating I should say. Raghav definitely deserves someone better than Aarti. 
In fact I found it stupid when Priyanka his heroine of 'One night @ the Call Center' broke her engagement with Ganesh because he had not revealed his baldness to her. But did she ever tell Ganesh about her previous relationship with Shyam?. Pushing aside these pitfalls, his novels are great to read and deserves real appreciation for the amount of research he does.

Medical practice is now a business - III

The operation was successful next day and Bharath was given timely information about the progress by doctors and staffs. Aftermath of operation was painful and it took me hrs to regain my composure.  Bharath was full of praise for the hospital. While waiting outside the theater he had noticed many patients below poverty line undergoing surgery. Surprised on how they could afford the cost, it was explained that they were treated in a separate division of SRMC which was similar to GH, where the treatment was free of cost except for the pharmacy bills. Cosmetic surgeries for split lips, skin burnt in accidents etc. which would cost a fortune otherwise were treated almost free. WOW, was all we could say. 
I requested for one more night stay at the hospital because of the pain, when the doctor paid a visit to the bed. Ready for discharge the next day, Bharath and my father-in-law kept inquiring on the final settlement (?) and discharge summary to the AO (administrative office) ward secretary. After few hours of wait, Bharath handed over to me the final bill for 33k. The reaction in his face was a mixture of confusion, anger and helplessness. I quickly scanned the bill and noticed the total amount to be 29600 though the break up was for 33K. Clueless on the balance amount to be paid (we had paid 15k already) I rushed to the AO myself (Yes I did, forgetting my sutures..). I had also noticed that the room rent for the first day stay was charged as 2700 instead of 1200. The AO secretary simply said - 'Oh, it was a temporary stay is it ?'. I showed her the report sheet where the temporary stay was mentioned and signed by the section in-charge. She quickly amended the bill to be 1500 less and looked at me as if 'What next ?'. I said to her that I require clarifications on the bill details. 
I was charged : 
General Surgery - 3100
Professional fees - 7500
OB&G Surgery - 6000
Anesthesia charge - 1500
The bill also had considerable portion for operation theater, drugs & disposable charges. I did not understand why was General Surgery and OB&G Surgery mentioned as 2 separate components, when I had undergone just one operation. The ward secretary paused for a second and promptly replied that 3100 was the operation charge and 6000 the cost for the laproscopy equipment(?) involved in the surgery. I pointed to her that those charges were included separately. When the half-an-hour talk turned futile, I rushed to the Gyn to check her influence on the bill. She turned a sorry face :-( but however promised to take our bill to the next board meeting, to express our unhappiness on the exorbitant charges.
On the way back home, I said - 'No wonder, they do free service for the poor'. Bharath had a positive note on this - 'Take it easy. Get some peace thinking that the extra amount you paid helps someone needy.' I didn't know what to comment at his remark.


-The End-

Medical practice is now a business - II

Very poised, the lady said - 'How much do you expect the operation to cost ?. 
I replied - 'My medical practitioner has informed us that it would cost not more than 25k'. She promptly followed - 'This would be the cost provided you choose general ward for the stay' and further added - 'The general ward would contain 40 beds each separated by a curtain'. 
My father-in-law and myself were shocked.  
1) We did not expect money to be a deciding criterion, as though she was selling some commodity to us. It was left to us whether to proceed with the General ward.
2) We expected a decent private room for 25k.
Shaking myself as the reality pinched, I replied - 'I have a baby to nurse and expect some privacy'. The staff paused for a minute and said - 'Well, you can take a look at our general ward before deciding'. 
We readily accepted the invite and quickly paid a visit to the GW. 
It was not bad, we thought. The beds were neatly laid in a row and looked cleaner than we expected. The attender however (person accompanying the patient during the stay) had to sleep on the floor adjacent to the bed. We decided to go ahead considering the stay to be only for 2 days. The admission form had it mentioned 25k approx and we were asked to pay 15K immediately. The ward nurse said that the operation would happen only when this pymt is made. 
We were asked to stay in a single private room (AC), which confused us. However the nurse quickly cleared our doubt, adding it was a temporary stay until a bed in general ward was made available. The room tariff for GW was 1200 and for this room - 2700. The staff assured that the billing would be for 1200 only, this being a temporary stay. We were taken aback by the room tariff rules. A single day charge was calculated between midnight to next day midnight. In other words, if I check-in today at 4:00 pm and get discharged tomorrow say at 3:30 pm, I would be charged for 2 days though my stay is less than 24 hrs. The irony was that we agreed to all these norms.
I slowly examined the room allocated to us. The room reminded me of the facilities provided in a hospital where I was admitted for delivery. My delivery charges in that hosp was 25k for 3 nights stay, which also gave us a decent single private room with AC. Nevertheless, we went ahead with SRMC because the former hospital does not do sterilization until the second baby is 2 yrs old. 
After a 3 hrs stay in the private room we were shifted to GW. With just a partition in between each bed, we could hear patients in nearby beds moan with pain, cry from new borns etc.. My mom decided to keep varshu at home during nights, not to be disturbed by surroundings and we thought she was right. My operation was scheduled for next day at 9:30 AM.

To be continued..