Archive for the 'event' Category
Few months ago Manik suggested me to read about Scrum to see how we can implement it in our organization and prepare a presentation for everyone. I started reading book by Ken Schwaber called ‘Agile Project Management with Scrum’ based on which I developed an understanding for Scrum.
Basically Scrum is a simple approach towards managing complex projects that focuses on early returns with iterative process model and provides high level of flexibility but with few rules that must be followed. Read more
I am not sure about how much my presentation helped others but I was sure about one thing, that a clear understanding about Scrum and confidence on it can only be gained by practicing it. To be very honest even after reading the book I was not feeling confident enough while presenting Scrum because convincing others to something I have myself never experienced was really something new to me.
Just by chance one day I came to know about scrum society called ‘Scrum Alliance‘ they were providing training on Scrum and that too by well known certified Scrum trainers. Sounds interesting, I told Manik about it and he was also very keen on getting me trained in Scrum. Unfortunately the next Scrum training session was quite far.
We started to implement Scrum with basic activities like daily standup meetings. I was not playing much of role in implementing Scrum but I was finding it really interesting to see others so excited.
As I kept on checking the Scrum Alliance website regularly for updates I noticed that there was an upcoming Scrum training session in Delhi. As I told about this to Manik, he agreed on sending me there.
The training took place at InterContinental Delhi and it was for two days. I really enjoyed the training by Pete Deemer who also co-leads Yahoo!’s large-scale corporate adoption of Scrum. The training was not just talking and talking but it also included exercise to give us better understanding of Scrum. Discussions with other people attending training and Pete were really amazing.
After the training I developed confidence in Scrum and was clear about what Scrum actually is.
I am really thankful to Vinsol for giving me this opportunity and making me a CSM (Certified Scrum Master).
A major turn came in my life after I recently developed addiction for smoking. So I need to explain it in a bit more detail, so I thought of posting about it in parts and make it a series.
The first part explains about my point of view towards smoking and smokers before I started smoking.
No one in my family had ever smoked at least since I am seeing them around. It was quite obvious to develop a taboo image about smoking habits based on the family environment. When I was a kid my father used to tell me that when he was a kid and when he asked his dad for a beedi (tobacco rolled in a tobacco leaf, a kind of cigarette) how his dad beat him for that.
With the time I started to learn more about bad effects of smoking and developed even more clear picture about smoking in my mind. More over than just this, smoking seemed to me like a “slow suicide”, committing a suicide is considered as crime in law but this slow suicide is not. Well precisely slow killing is supposed to be a crime but then smoking is an exception.
I guess now it must would have got a bit clear, how much I used to hate smoking.
When I was in 10th standard one of my friend tried making me smoke and told me, one should try everything in his life, at least once. It made quite a sense to me but I was scared of pain in throat I might feel for the first time after smoking. So he told me to just take the smoke in my mouth and release it. I did that, well there was nothing great about it as I wasn’t taking any smoke inside. He asked me to try taking it inside but I refused. Later may be after several weeks I took one cigarette once again but dint take any smoke inside again, so I couldn’t find any fun in doing that so never tried it again. Even being the fact how much I hated smoking the only and the only reason for trying smoking were his words that one should try everything at least once in life.
That was then but now I know that there is no point trying something just for the sake, that others are doing it too.
As far as smokers are concerned, if I was traveling in a three wheeler (a major mode of public commute in Delhi) and if the driver would start smoking then I would ask him throw it away or else I would get down. And not just that I would at least ask the driver a few things like if he is married, if he has any kids and finally tell him to quit smoking. I did used to get very strange response from them but it really dint matter to me anyways.
While in social circle I never used to mind turning my face on other side, taking a step away and sometimes even go away if a person with me would start smoking. I think the reason for this was the mental block I developed within myself about passive smoking and may be the disliking for smoking was getting turned into disliking for smokers as well.
I still remember the evening when I was traveling in a bus and passing by my first company I ever worked with, I saw a very old friend of mine standing in front of the office and in some time I noticed her holding a cigarette burning in her hand and then in a few seconds smoking from it. At first I was shocked and then in next few minutes I changed my point of view for her from a sweet, decent, friendly girl to a BLANK PAGE, I dint know what should I think about it, I never ever thought I would see her like that. We were childhood friends and I had the same impression of the same old friend I had years ago as after we moved to a new house we never met each other again.
The questions that came into my mind was, can anyone get changed so much over a period of time and under any circumstances.
One day I was with a friend of mine sitting at Basant Lok Complex (One of the most high class hang out places in Delhi) out side “Passion My Cup of Tea”, sipping our tea and just opposite to it there is a disco called RPM. There were several girls coming out of the disc and several of them going inside. Most of the girls we could see there were smoking. I asked my friend that what do these girls get out of smoking, then she replied, most of them are not even smoking, if you see carefully then they don’t inhale any smoke and just throw it away as soon as they take it in there mouth.
After that I noticed those girls and I was surprised to see what she said was absolutely correct. Now it was quite clear that its not just the addiction of smoking but addiction for looking cool and addiction for looking part of high class that is adding to the numbers or smoking addicts every day. In fact I guess that the most biggest reason for teenagers getting addicted to smoking is that they find other teenagers who smoke very COOL and tries to become like them!!
Note: I wanted to add few pictures but I am not adding them due to the fact that this page may be accessed by non smokers and in any way I don’t want to promote smoking.
This post is tagged based on the tags for entire series, so few tags may not be relevant for this post.
Few of the most dangerous enemies of humans are anger, anxiety, expectations and curiosity. It is very important for us to get hold of them before they start controlling us.
Anger or frustration are result of access availability of energy within us. When we are not utilizing our energy efficiently it has to come out in one form or another. Anger tends to be the most easiest way of releasing energy hence we usually get rid of excess energy through anger.
As it is really hard to fully utilize our energy all the times, hence most of the times we end up getting angry or frustrated about things around. Another way of controlling the energy level within us is to reduce the level of energy.
To bring down energy level in me or in a way to punish myself for choosing a way that is destructive for me myself and for others around I had decided to fast and stay hungry every time I will get angry or get frustrated. It might not be a correct way to handle this but something needs to be done in order to control to avoid any problems in future.
And I believe that by doing this, it will remind me of staying hungry and thirsty every time I will get angry or frustrated about anything.
While I am writing this post I have already been hungry and thirsty for more than 18 hours and it may continue up to 24 hours. My definition of fasting is not that you don’t eat any food but eat all the fruits and drink lot of health drinks. When I am fasting then I am really fasting, nothing to eat, nothing to drink.
I hope that soon I will be able to come up with some other ways to handle other most biggest enemies of mine and of the human kind.
Cost of taking something lightly can prove to be life of an innocent child is something I could have never imagined.
While coming back from office I got down at Uttam Nagar East Metro station and noticed that there were few kids sliding on the slope built for escalator. I quickly went to the nearest security official on duty and requested him to stop those kids as someone could get hurt. In response he said, (”marta bhi toh nahi hai koi, tabhi manenge yeh”) why don’t one of them die only then they will stop. I could make out that this man is not going to help so I went to customer care center and informed them about the same, all he could do was suggest me to contact security officials around. I finally went to another security official and asked him to stop the kids, he said to me that he would do the needful. Keeping his words I left from the station.
While travelling back from Ajmer in train I thought of reading newspaper out of the blues, and I found the article attached with this post. I was shocked and filled with grief for myself. All I could think was if I would have filed a complaint that day then this might not have happened or those responsible for this would get punished.
Indians have a very peculiar quality of forgetting things easily and I am quite sure same would have happened in this case as well. Officials at DMRC have easily stated this as an accident where as they are the ones who were responsible like how can this happen even when they claim to have covered every corner of metro stations with surveillance cameras.
I send email telling about this to all my friends, contacts and even Hindustan times but nothing could be done.
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