I am back ...

After a long hiatus, I am back to blogging. Since last time I wrote (blogged), many things happened in my life, most importantly took a long term assignment (LTA) through my company and returned back to India. Though I have multiple excuses, I feel bad for not blogging for a while. I wanted to revive it today. And, here I am (with a generic post)!

Looking back, it was quite a hectic time for past 8 months: my family's India trip (Nov), completed Managing Innovation and Technology MBA course (Dec), Hawaii trip, India trip, my daughter's school admission in India (Jan), US return, acceptance of LTA offer (Feb), R2I preparation (Mar), shipment (Apr), R2I (May), etc.

Now that I am in India, I am experiencing quite a lot of interesting things everyday. Thought I should blog to capture those experiences / memories. Most likely, I would be busy for next few days as I am still trying to settle down, but sure to blog about my experience soon.

Ciao soon!

Schools in Coimbatore

It was mid of October 2009, when my mom called me from India to inform that LKG admission for one of the well-known schools in Coimbatore has closed. I was surprised to hear that admissions are closed 7.5 months before the start date. I learned that getting into admissions for standard higher than LKG is difficult. So, I decided to send my daughter to India to begin her schooling (LKG) as we plan to return back to India (R2I) in near future. My plan was to begin searching during early 2010 for the same admission year. But, the news from my Mom has set fire in me and pushed everything else to lower priority.

I began to search for good schools in Coimbatore through R2I Forums and friends/relatives. I literally spent quite a lot of midnight hours to collect information and coordinate the school hunting with my friends/relatives in India. There was no one place to find a consolidated list of schools, so I thought of compiling one to help me and, perhaps, others who are looking for one. I have compiled a decent list and uploaded to Google docs. I'll update as and when I gather more information. If you have any information, please send it to me. Alternatively, depending on the interest, I plan to give permissions to all to edit the same. The document can be found at Schools in Coimbatore.

Here are my learnings from this exercise:

1. I didn't spend or invest this much time and effort for my undergrad college admission. So, I would encourage to do the research much early on.
2. Many schools admit their preschool student batch to LKG. So, getting into LKG has also become little difficult these days.
3. Get started in August month itself for an admission for subsequent year. August may be too early for some schools, but monitor it twice and once a week in August and September month respectively. Admissions get hot during October month, if not before.
4. If you have a choice, enroll your kid in PreKG itself in the same school. PreKG campus may be far from the main campus. So, you need to make a choice whether to put your kid in a preschool nearby just to avoid travel for initial two years. And, later spend time in hunting for a good school or compromise your kid's education in other school.
5. It's better to make a choice on Matric/CBSE/ICSE schools early on. I decided to go for CBSE, based on feedback from my friends and little research on Internet. There are limited options for ICSE. There are quite a few CBSE schools now. Matric schools are abundant. Based on your selection, you may have to start early. For Matric schools, I believe December end/January would be right time to start the activity.

Conquer your worry - Part 2

Preface

I intended to write the second part of "Conquer your worry" sequel couple of weeks back. However, I got busy with dinner appointments, trip planning and speech preparation. Finally, I wrote the draft version on the flight to Alaska. (Yup! watch out my Travel blog re: my trip to Alaska). Hope you had a chance to read the first part and able to triumph over at least few of your worries, if not all. If you need some tips on living in the present moment then get in touch with me. I can provide some information and help you in however way I can. Well, let's look at the basic techniques in analyzing worry.

Basic techniques in analyzing worry

In chapter 4, Dale Carnegie discusses the steps to analyze the problem(s). Problem analysis is critical, as at least 50% of the time we tend to make "immediate" decision to get rid of the problem without really understanding it. Here are the three steps:

1. Get the facts. As mentioned earlier, half the worry is caused by people trying to make decisions before thay have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision. It's interesting that this simple step knocks of half of our worries.
2. Analyze the facts. Well, this step is obvious.
3. Arrive at the decision based on the facts and then act on that decision. Enough of theory; let's see couple of things we could put into practice.

In the next chapter, Mr. Carnegie provides us 4 questions to ask when we confront a worry. Here are those:

1. What am I worrying about?
2. What can I do about it?
3. Here is what I am going to do about it? (decision)
4. When am I going to start doing it? (act immediately)

You could create a template using the above questions with some space for answers or memorize these questions. Whenever you become aware of a worry, then answer these questions either on paper or in your mind. This exercise should yield more clarity about your worry and aid in making an appropriate decision.

In the last chapter of part 2, Mr. Carnegie recommends to do the following, similar to the one mentioned above, exercise when we worry about a problem. This too comprises of four questions.

1. What is the problem?
2. What is the cause of the problem?
3. What are the possible solutions?
4. What is the best solution?

Now, let me expand on the second question i.e., cause of the problem. Here, you could employ the "Five Whys" process. This process is heavily practiced in Toyota Organization and helps them in address the real cause of the problem and reduces reoccurence of poor quality products. Whenever we encounter a problem we should ask five "why" questions to find out the "root cause" of the problem. If we don't get to the root of the problem, we may address the problem at the superficial level, but in long run the real problem will pop up again. I read about the "Five Whys" process in my Operations course during the MBA program, but you could find more about it by googling.

I must admit that the above-mentioned exercises are similar. I believe, Mr. Carnegie's intention is to repeat it, so that it sticks to our mind. After all "repetition" is one of the techniques to remember things and improve our memory.

"In a day when you don’t come across any problems – you can be sure that you are traveling in a wrong path." – Swami Vivekananda

Do you throw the kids into the air?

Ding dong, Ding dong ... the alarm went off. It was five in the morning on Aug 14th 2009. I hardly had 6 hours of sleep, but unlike usual alarm-snooze saga I woke up and got ready. I rehearsed the speech (The Three Wishes) for couple more times. It was my first speech from storytelling manual and 3rd speech at TGIF Management Club. I reached Coco's Bakery Restaurant few minutes early and did my breathing exercise in the car.

Even before the meeting has began and my heart began pounding faster and faster. First speaker was an experienced Toastmaster and began delivering her speech. The beginning of her speech was awesome. Midway through the speech she went blank. It was not that she forgot the speech, but her mind went totally blank. She was speechless for few moments. Once she recovered she told that her brain was injured TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) some years ago when the shower fell on her head. As a result she experiences a kind of epilepsy, where her mind will go blank for few seconds/minutes. Well, she gave an unintentional demonstration of the effects of TBI. As an advice, she mentioned that it is dangerous to throw the kids high in the air and catch them. Later, when I was chatting with my friends about this incident, one of my friend said that it is also dangerous to shake the kids forcefully. Well, that's a learning for me. I used to throw my daughter up in the air and catch her, because she loves it. From now on I would refrain from doing that with any kids.

Okay, back to Toastmasters meeting. She recovered from the disruption and concluded the speech well. Next, it was my turn. I was completely moved by this incident and my heart started beating even faster. Initially I planned to try unique voice for the characters in the story, but decided to keep it simple this time. In my opinion, I delivered it decently. Third speaker was a DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster). He spoke about the underlying issues with 401 (k) plan.

Finally, the meeting hit the "awards" section of the Agenda. Voila! I was awarded as the Best speaker for the day. I was thrilled, but the corner of my heart felt heavy for the first speaker. Had her speech was smooth, I would have been more joyful. But, I learned a nice lesson "Don't throw the kids into the air."

Textbook rentals to students

Numerous online (used) book stores and book rental are popping up and growing everyday. These Internet companies exert significant competitive pressure on the brick and mortar stores and the textbook publishers. Brick and mortar stores are affected by the inexpensive offerings from online stores. The publishers take a hit in revenues when the companies rent the books. The royalty to authors also takes a hit due to textbook rentals. In order to mitigate the threat, the publishers have woken up and are beginning to rent the books to college students. You can read the NYTimes article for details.

Now, why am I writing this? Well, for two reasons:

1. I believe this a nice business (competitive) strategy to tackle the "imitation" and "substitution" threats/challenges. Something to ponder about when your business is faces similar threats/challenges.
2. As a retired student, I believe this to be a sweet deal for students to save money and still get a good quality book. Check out my other blog for some tips for students.

Conquer your worries - Part 1

Preface

It's two months, since I am done with my MBA and I haven't read even a single book. Although I borrowed couple of books from library, it only costed me a return trip as I didn't allocate time to read them :-(. I was really concerned about wasting time without reading books and sipping few droplets of the vast literature ocean. This week, I vowed to myself that I would at least read few chapters of Dale Carnegie's book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living." Now, that I have read few chapters (touch wood), I thought that the profound concepts in the book would be helpful to other souls as well. My current plan is to write only first few chapters of the book, as my intentions are to bring basic awareness to conquer worries and kindle interest to read the book. What I found really interesting was the alignment of concepts outlined in this book with the spirituality concepts that I heard/learned from my Guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I'll compare both the concepts wherever applicable. The concepts as such as simple, but the challenge is to discipline ourselves to follow these concepts. Well, enough for preface, let me jump to first part of this sequel.

Fundamental facts you should know about worry (Part 1)

Dale Carnegie begins the book with a basic principle that would help us conquer our worries. Live in day tight compartments - he recommends us to shut the iron doors of past and future and just live the present day. My Guru and, I believe, all the enlightened people, also preach that to be happy one should always "live in present moment." Mr. Carnegie quotes numerous real stories to substantiate this principle. Sound simple? In fact it is not. If you notice young kids, they almost always live in the present moment. There is no concept of time at that age. However, when we grew older we have been conditioned about the past and future and we dwell most of our time in those. [Note: Neither I nor the author (& my Guru) advocate to stop planning for future. You should always have a vision/mission in your life.] If there is one take away that you would like from this blog, then that should be this basic principle: Be aware and live in present moment.

In the second chapter, Mr. Carnegie discusses the Magic formula that can help to overcome our worries. First, when you are worried about something ask this question: "What is the worst that can possibly happen?" Once you have an answer, then prepare to accept it, if you have to. Once you have accepted the worst, you will immediately feel better, relieved and relaxed. Now, calmly proceed to improve on the worst. That's the crux of this chapter. Again, Mr. Carnegie quotes numerous real life examples to illustrate this Magic formula.

The essence of the third chapter is "Those who don't know how to fight worry die young." Worry not only creates lot of mental stress, but also complex diseases such as high blood pressure, heart problems, stomach ulcers, etc. Though, this sounds silly, I could vouch for this as I am currently witnessing this personally. Perhaps, I would write about it some other time.

To recap, remember three things:

1. Live in present moment
2. Apply the Magic formula (What is the worst that could happen? accept it and act to improve it)
3. Those who don't know how to fight worry die young

Hope you find these concepts helpful and looking forward for to hear your experience about this topic from you.

Will write about the next part soon, until then "Be happy and make others happy." :-)

Wanna buy inexpensive textbooks

Education is U.S. is typically quite expensive. On top of that, textbooks costs hundreds of dollars. If you are a student, I can empathize with you, since I paid my graduate education (MBA) out of my pocket. I always strived to save money, wherever I could. One such avenue was textbook purchase. Here is how I went about saving money in textbook purchase; obviously the choice was online / Internet shopping:

1. School publishes textbooks few weeks before the beginning of the course. I make sure that I order the textbooks at least 3 weeks in advance for timely delivery. If school doesn't publish the textbook, I would recommend contacting your Professor regarding the same. My professors were always helpful. Make sure to get the correct edition though. Sometimes it matters a lot. [Check with Professor whether older editions would work for the course. You can find older editions at significantly lower price than the current edition.]
2. Pick up the ISBN or Book Title and check out the deals at GetTextbooks.com. This website gives the list of deals and the provider.
3. Choose the "trusted" provider and order it from them. I have had couple of bad experience with buyers from Half.com and other provider (I don't remember it now). It is typically few buyers in those sites, not the provider itself has issues. I never had issues with Amazon.com and its buyers.
4. Remember to read few comments and check the rating of the buyer, before placing the order. Read the item description very carefully.
5. Note, you will be ordering the paperback edition (not the hardcover one). While ordering the paperback edition, do NOT order the Indian or black & white edition. The paper quality is usually not good. Other eastern country editions are usually good. This will have the exact content as U.S edition, so no worries about the content.

Btw, another inexpensive source is to borrow it from friends or families. Don't be shy and, in my opinion, it is not a crime. In fact, there is nothing wrong in it. They will be glad to lend and share some financial burden from you.

I haven't sold any textbooks, as I plan to use them in future for reference purposes. But few of my schoolmates did; so, you can make some money by selling the books. If you plan to do so, then sell them immediately. Otherwise, publishers come up with new edition and old editions loose value significantly. You can sell the textbooks online at well known sites (e.g., Amazon.com, Half.com, etc). Hassle free option would be to broadcast email to student aliases and find buyers within your school.

Happy reading and good luck!

I am interested to learn about other tricks that work or worked for you.

How to make friends in an unfamiliar party?

Couple of weeks back we were invited to the birthday party of my daughter's friend. Let me call him Alex. My wife has met Alex's mom at the Gymnastics class that my daughter goes to and they knew each other for a while. But, I am a newbie to Alex and his family. My wife prodded me for a while whether I want to attend the party. Clearly, I wouldn't know anyone in the party, unless the world has shrunk to the size of a peanut. To be honest, I am not an extrovert. At the same time, I am not an introvert either. So, I contemplated for a while and decided to take up the challenge to explore the uncharted world.

Last afternoon we were at the party. My strategy was to get to know someone through my daughter and socialize with them. She is adept at socializing and making new friends. I thought that she can be a gateway to meet her friends' parents. But, as soon as my daughter entered the party hall, she vanished among kids. My wife is new to the crowd as well, except the hosts. Well, you can imagine how busy the hosts would be in the party. So, can't expect them to take care of us all the time. With no backup plan or tactics on hand, I started fiddling with my blackberry for a while. Soon, I got bored with the old toy. Then I remembered the following quote from bible:

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you
shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you."

I started working out the room. I spotted couple of active (or extroverts) folks in the crowd and mingled with them. Unfortunately, they took up charge as official photo and videographer for the party and they had to do their duty. I was pushed to ground zero. I went fishing again, but all the attempts ended up with brief introductions only. Finally, I was able to converse with a person and able to socialize with him. In the end we even exchanged our phone numbers and planned to meet up some other time.

If you are like me, then here are some tips to break ice and make friends in an unfamiliar party:

• Smile - If your kids' leave you sinking in an unfamiliar crowd, then smile will come as a rescuer. Even otherwise, keep smiling always - You never know who is falling in love with your smile. This will serve as a gateway for networking or socialization. Folks would almost always reciprocate and depending on that you could make a call whether that is the person whom you want to socialize.
• Search - Search the room (or party hall) for extrovert folks. They are easy to mingle with. With them you don't have to work hard. They will carry the conversation. :-)
• Topics - Here are some topics that you could ponder to begin and continue the conversation for a while. Remember! you are not interviewing someone. You need to "develop or build a conversation," but not make someone run away by asking too many questions.

1. Name
2. Home - Local and/or native
3. Work
4. Travel
5. Family
6. Hobbies/Interests

• Read - One of my professor has recommended How to Work a Room by Susan RoAne on this topic. I began reading it, but haven't completed it yet. Perhaps, that could be helpful to prepare you. Also, read newspaper or be familiar with the current news. This would help to easily discuss about any topic.

Btw, I am not an expert at this; socializing is a soft skill and there is no strict formula. Hope you find these helpful to you as well. I am interested to know what worked for you and what didn't. Looking forward to hear from you.

Got Google Voice?

Hurrah! I got an invitation to sign up for Google Voice. I immediately registered and got a local (San Jose) number. I fiddled with the application for some time and it has lot of cool features. I haven't tried all of them yet, but few.

1. Voicemail - Nice voicemail feature with the transcript. Notifications sent as email and SMS to your mobile. Transcript was mediocre given my accent. Perhaps, I was spoke too fast. But the cool thing, is you can "read" the voicemail and helps you if you are in "boring" meetings (which happens very often in today's corporate world), but couldn't really call your voice mailbox and check it. :-)

2. Incoming call - rings "all" your phones depending on the setting. This is quite handy if you are running out of your mobile phone minutes. You can pick up the call on your home or office phone.

Google Voice is still in beta and hope it would get better and better. Boy! those folks in Google are really innovating. Go Google!

Oh! wait, did I mention that you can place calls within US for FREE using Google Voice? Whatz your experience with it?

Aloha Travellers

I am on blogging spree for past few days. After my speech blog, I am happy to launch my travel blog today. My initial blog is about the 10 day trip during July 4th (independence day) weekend to east coast and the Chicago trip. In upcoming days, I intend to write about other places (Washington DC, New York and Niagara) we visited during this trip. I hope you will find the information and tips useful for your future visits. Please check it out and feel free to drop in comments. If you need some information about these places, please drop in an email. I would be glad to assist you.

Happy Traveling.

Beta Gamma Sigma

I was thrilled to be qualified for Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS) on my academic achievement in MBA. Beta Gamma Sigma is the national honor society for business students, and signifies that you are in the top 20% of your graduating class. This is the school's highest academic honor. The prestigious character and wide renown of the society make this a nationally recognized distinction. More information on BGS is found here. Now, I have to accept the invitation to become a member of BGS.

My Speech Blog

Finally, I got some time to upload all the speeches I have made in various forums (Toastmasters' club: SCU MBA Toastmasters - SCUMBAT, TGIF Toastmasters and Warren's speech workshop). I contemplated whether I should create a separate blog URL for a while and I am convinced that keeping it separate would be clean and easy to maintain.

Thus, Ladies and Gentlemen I am proud to announce the birth my new blog "Sudhagar Speaks."

PS:
On the same token I have revamped all my blogs for the same look and feel with the exception of template. I have created an empty blog to write about my travel experience. As soon I write about my travel, I'll announce it here.

Happy reading.

IE 6 on Linux

IT has rolled out Outlook Exchange calendar replacing Meeting Maker in our office. However, most of the Engineers in our office use non Windows workstation. Outlook exchange over web interface (Outlook Web Access light) from non-Windows platform was painful. Here are the shortcomings that I have encountered:

1. No pop-up reminders about meeting
   
2. No weekly view
3. User interface is not intuitive (Microsoft! Are you listening?)

Please note most, if not all, of these problems are not applicable if you use IE on Windows machine.

If you are put up with (or forced to) a similar situation, here is what you could do to save your life. Please note that for brevity I am keeping the instructions simple. It is very easy to follow the instructions that accompany these softwares and install them.

1. Install Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator). [Wine 0.9.9 was already installed on our Linux machines!]
   
2. Download and install IE for Linux. The software can be downloaded here.
3. You are not done yet. You need to edit the registry to set the User agent parameters. [Courtesy: PC Tools]
   
• Execute wine regedit
• Create the following key if it does not exist
• [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
• Create the following string values and set the value as shown below
  
• Compatible - "compatible"
  
• Platform - "Windows NT 5.0" or "Windows NT 5.2"
  
• Version - "MSIE 6.0"
• Change the "Default" value to "Mozilla/4.0"
• Exit regedit
4. Start IE, access and enjoy the feature rich Outlook Exchange Calendar using your browser.

In case if you have issues, you may have to try the following.

1. From IEs 4 Linux forum
   
• Download the missing registry settings from here
• Export WINEPREFIX= (e.g., set WINEPREFIX to /home//.ies4linux/ie6)
• wine regedit.exe
  
• Import the downloaded registry settings (Registry\Import registry file)
• Restart IE.
2. Try creating following registry entries
• [Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Internet Settings\\User Agent\\Post Platform]
• “Windows NT 5.1″=”This String Doesn’t Matter I think”
• [Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Internet Settings\\User Agent\\Pre Platform]
• “Windows NT 5.1″=”This String Doesn’t Matter I think"

PS: Though I haven't tried, I believe it should work on any Unix/MAC platform that supports Wine. Use at your own risk :-)

Ciao,
Sudhagar

Hello, World!!!

This is my maiden post at blogspot. I started writing blog, well some form of blog, on my home page since March 2006. However, I wrote once in a blue moon. Yes, so far I have written only twice :-) Well, I am sure you would have gotten a glimpse of "Who am I?" in the "About me". For those, who find that cryptic, here is the version 2.

I am Sudhagar Chinnaswamy, born on 21 Aug 1977 (Sun sign 'Leo'), in a South Indian city called Tirupur. I started my academic journey at Gandhi school and continued at SIV school till standard XII. I did my undergrad in Computer Science and Engineering at Government College of Technology at Coimbatore and currently doing my MBA at Santa Clara University.

My professional journey began at Wipro Technologies with few stopovers at Network Appliance (Consultant from Insight Solutions Inc), Mobility Networks, and Azaire Networks. I am currently working for Redback Networks (an Ericsson company) in software development team.

A word or two about my family. I am a son of two parents (Foster and Biological parents). I am married to Vidhya and a proud father of cute little princess Kirti. Kirti has brought lot of good things in my life. Though she was inside my wife's tummy, she was the ultimate reason for starting my MBA journey. After her birth, I switched jobs. The new company, Redback Networks, got acquired by Ericsson. After her first birthday, I started doing meditation (Art of Living) and engaging myself in spiritual path. In short, she is my Angel.

Well, I believe, that should suffice for now. My current plan is to blog about my MBA courses, Toastmaster speeches and other interesting stuff.

Ciao,

Sudhagar