beobachten (observe)

its a beautiful day here today - cant help gazing outside :)

1. its 'break time' for the kids at Merian Schule, and they are out playing in the small play area outside the school:
   - sliding down the slides...
   - hanging on parallel bars
   - run around the place chasing each other
   - the girls playing with a skipping rope
   - hop scotch...
   - jumping down from stairs
   While the world of 'computer' games have advanced so much, the things kids do outdoors has not.
2. while most kids are playing, some of 'em wearing florescent vests have put a chain and guarding the boundary of the play area and the road beside - ensuring that the kids dont run on to the street.
   - Discipline! and saftey! I recall my days of being a 'prefect' in school and had to ensure all my fellow students formed their lines properly...none were left behind.
3. the break lasts for 10 minutes, all the kids go into the school except the ones wearing the florescent vests - one brings out a can, the others bring out long sticks...its their duty to pick up pieces of  junk/scrap - dump them in the can, place their equipments in the storage area beside the cycle stand then go back into the school.
   Its great to see how early this orientation to clean up and clean up yourself is instilled. Perhaps thats where 'civic' sense training needs to start - early, in school (and at home ofcourse)

I stand 'converted'

Today I finally decided to give up my fight and struggle to share my 'outside' and 'bigger' prespectives on design among my colleagues. In the past 5 years of my career in this team, I was always 'appreciated' for doing so. My inherent hope and this encouragement kept me at it all along.

It suddenly dawned upon me that 'hey, i am not in the same set up anymore.' Somehow I remained blinded to this fact. Out of the 5 years, I spent 3.5 years with 'managers' (both line and project managers) who genuinely supported me to "ask questions", bring in "ideas" of improvement no matter how difficult they maybe, "encouraged" me to stick my finger into a can of worms if I believed, was confident that it is worth it.
While, not everything I brought up found its way to something tangible, the key thing for me was, I was never seen in 'negative' light for being so. I could be honest and give frank opinions even if they were NOT what people wanted to hear. Yet, be able to go out for dinner together with the team few hours later.

We did have pretty good successes out of this too...the typical concept of, "more the ideas, the better. there are no stupid ideas"...we truly lived it.

However, the past 1.5 year, I am in a different set up - one that is FAR MORE rigid than what I was used to. Here, things are done in a certain way because thats how it has been done since 1976...
Does not matter if it is the right thing to do
Does not matter if the world outside has changed dramatically...
We know what to do and we know it best.
There is a sea of people who believe in this approach being the "right" approach.

Therefore, any whiff of 'fresh air' is shut out completely.
Anyone who 'questions' (even has potential solutions to problems) is shunned off.

The 'culture' around me no longer encourages me to be honest, frank about things. The repurcussions of being so is not good. But ofcourse, it is 'politically' correct to say, "you should be honest. we really appreciate your honest feedback."

I finally tasted the "pinch" of salt that such a statement is loaded with.
Ive learnt my lesson.

I am now "officially" a convert to being a compliant; good employee of my company. I will finally "fit in" with the sea of people around me...I will function as 'programmed'.

ofcourse, this new, converted me, is the "face" of me that people at my workplace will see. i am too level headed to be converted to this in my heart of things ;)
the org culture cannot really kill my self-motivation. it perhaps did not deserve it. i'll figure out something that does.

'understanding' a new 'work culture'

i am trying to understand:

• what is the 'career orientation' of people here?
• how do they percieve, define, professional growth?
• in a 'normalized' set up, how is excellence differentiated from mediocrity/ under performance? (if so)
• what are their underlying motivations at work - if any? (other than salary and perks)

i realize that these aspects of a person's professional life here is very different from professionals in other parts of the world. i need to delve deeper into understanding this.

the current trough of motivation among my colleagues isnt helping!

Tight rope walking

• I am supposed to do 'Pranayama' 6-10 times in a day for 5 min each of which atleast 4 times should be with the prescribed oil.
• I am supposed to do an oil massage twice a week (in weekends)
• Eat at the same time everyday
• I should eat dinner by 7 pm
• I should be getting ready to sleep by 10 pm
• I need to spend 8 hours at work, working
• Need to sleep for 7 hours
• Cook for both of us
• Get physical activity for minimum 30 minutes everyday
• Drink minimum 7 glasses of water
• Eat 'warm' food
• Clean the apartment
• Do grocery shopping
• Eat 1 fruit everyday
• Plan vacations
• Call up and converse with families twice in a week for approx 30 min each
• Stay in touch with friends - Facebook, emails, chat
• Do paper work of Bank, insurance, medical stuff, office stuff, company car, house rental etc
• Socialize with friends
• Catch up on reading
• Manage my photos - print them, upload them, download them, frame them...
• Learn 'how tos' of a Digital SLR
• Stay up to date by listening, reading, watching the happening on the world; in my profession
• Soul search to constantly reshuffle my priorities in life
• Stay focussed on goals of my life
• Water the plants
• Relfect on my career and identify ways forward
• Worry what i would teach my child IF and when I have one
• Be there for my husband
• Drive
• Clean the car
• do the laundry

phew!! I am stressed!!

 

Obviously, I do not end up doing all of the above. In the end here's what I am SOMEWHAT able to accomplish:

• Pranayama 2 times a day all times with oil
• Body massage - maybe once in a month :(
• Sporadic physical activities :(
• Eat my meals at ALMOST regular time everyday
• Eat my dinner between 7-9. I really try to eat between 7-8 but latest by 9
• Go to bed by 11 
• Shop for groceries once a week
• Call family twice a week
• Sporadic 'reading'
• Cooking for both of us
• Working 8 hours a day at work
• Socializing with a circle of friends
• Am disorganized with my paper work
• Am constantly multi-tasking and feeling that i am neglecting something else :((

V has taken over some tasks :)
But still I desperately need to set my priorities again and manage my time more effectively. With so much in my 'to do' list, I am extremely disoriented and distracted.

The things I 'want' to do do not even figure in this list yet!!! :(

For 'health' reasons, I am told I should stay FAR AWAY from stress!! How can I accomplish that??? Would love to know!!!

India's "soft power"

Some time ago, I heard Sashi Tharoor's talk on this topic in TED India. Listen to it.

Given the context of TED, I really liked it. I agree to most things he spoke about.

Living outside my country, I am faced with questions about my country very regularly. I try to explain things to people with a caveat that it is my "personal perspective" because I feel that I dont do justice to India's diversity by giving a generalized explanation.

As I travel around Europe, I really EXPERIENCE this 'soft power' of India.
I have been travelling in Europe for the past 4-5 years so I have a time frame that allows me to compare the 'before' and 'now.' Some of my experiences:

• There was always 1 vegetarian main dish served during lunch in my workplace. However, EARLIER, this was often restricted to Italian pasta/ Thai or some improvised dishes from other cuisines. The increasing activism about 'vegetarianism' has been pushing our caterer to give some more thought to the vegetarian dishes.
  
  Our caterer decided to seek public opinions, suggestions for recipies for this and over time, there are days when I really look forward to lunch. NOW, many of these vegetarian dishes are 'indian' / india inspired.
  
  Further, almost on a daily basis there is a side dish of lentils and rice; the seasoning counter includes 'Kurkuma' (curry powder - a mix of different spices and turmeric powder) and Chilli poweder too.
  For an India, the availability of 'dal-chawal' in Europe is a blessing right?

• Earlier, Indian restaurants were a common sight primarily in big cities and places frequented by Indians.
  I was very pleasantly surprised to find an Indian restaurant in Bratislava - Slovakia (Eastern Europe). I never imagined stereotypical 'spicy' Indian food would be something people in Slovakia would like to eat.  

• The Indian restaurants in small German towns around where I live are almost always full with locals.

• In Florence (few years ago), my colleagues and I were having trouble finding something vegetarian in a restaurant. We see an 'Indian' looking guy walk upto us and speak to me in Hindi asking if we needed help to find something. Whoa!
  
  He helped me order a traditional bread soup with vegetables. Yumm.
  
  Later learnt that he was from Nepal, married to an Italian and lives in Florence since.
  
  A couple of days later, in a pizzeria, the lady who took the order from us was very curious to know if we were from 'india.' She told us the 'pizza maker' in the pizzeria was from India :D :D

• Earlier this month, V and I was in Kiruna - northern Sweden - 145 kilometers north of the Arctic circle, searching for something to eat other than Reindeer meat. We came across a Chinese restaurant and walked in to look at the menu. We could not comprehend much off a menu in Swedish. I tried to tell the owner that I am looking for something vegetarian which also excluded sea food. The owner tries to converse a bit in his Swedish-Chinese English. Then takes a pause and asks, "where are you from?"
  We: "India"
  Owner: "So you speak Hindi?"
  We: "Yes."
  Owner: "To aap machli bhi nahi khata hai?" (so you dont even eat fish?)
  We: "Nahi. Sirf sabzi" (No. Only vegetables)
  Me: "To aap Hindi kaise boltey hain?" (how come you speak Hindi?)
  Owner: "Guess kariye, hum kahaan sey hain." (Guess where I am from)
  Me: "Dharamsala?"
  Owner: "No"
  V: "Darjeeling?"
  Owner: "No. Hum Kolkatta sey hain" (No. Im from Calcutta)
  
  The rest was easy. We got ourselves a nice custom made, vegetarian soup, fried rice and noodles.
  Would have never imagined talking in Hindi to ANYONE in a town in the Arctic Circle - let alone an India of Chinese origin.

• The owner of our Bed and Breakfast accomodation in Stockholm (the base camp of our travels in Sweden) at some point was involved with an Indian lady.
  
  When we returned to this accomodation from Kiruna, we find some bread and Dal (cooked by the owner) waiting for us. phew! Dal made by a Swedish guy. It was really very good. Much like the home-made dal we eat at home. All the right ingredients.

• We get a map of Sweden - among all other advertisements, there is one with a picture of Deepika Padukone - brand ambassador of Tissot watches.

• When we arrive back in Frankfurt airport - digital kiosks of an India Circus week greet us.

• In many Chemists I find a lot of Ayurvedic medicines available over the counter. They tend to be general wellness medicines, however, I never saw them before. Nobody knew of a stream of medicine known as Ayurveda before.

• I wont even get into the well known facts of Bollywood stars having huge fan clubs abroad. I have often watched popular Bollywood movies on German TV with Sharukh Khan speaking German :) If only I could speak the language as well as he does ;)

All real life examples of the kind of 'soft power' Sashi Tharoor speaks of. All these Indians/people from the sub-continent I have bumped into in Europe - running their businesses, speak the local language fluently. they have understood who their primary audience is; understood this audience enough to know how to cater to them...fascinating!!

First wedding anniversary

We stayed in a hotel that claimed to have Gothic foundations dating back to the 14th century on the main Karlova Street - two minutes from Charles Bridge. Aparently, the building originally housed goldsmiths. Looking at the building and its architecture, I could believe how old it was. The entrance was through a big black wooden door and each room occupant had a bunch of old fashioned keys (not chip based plastic readers) to first open this big gate; then, a smaller wrought iron gate; a new(er) wooden door to the gallery of rooms; finally open the room door. It had two levels below the ground level...very interesting, maze like place.

We welcomed THE day, sipping Champagne and watching the hustle bustle of this east european city, the lit up castle providing the backdrop. Having been to Bratislava, we discussed how Prague/Czech Republic looked and felt a lot more prosperous than Slovakia...
12:00 midnight, the city was still bustling, younger generation all set to hit the night life - Prague is so well known for.

 After ages we shook a leg untill the wee hours of the morning at Lavka. The music was not our favourite, the crowd around us was way younger...but what the heck!!

It was definitely cold, but all those Christmas Market goodies kept us warm. There was a lot on offer even for vegetarians like us. The mulled wine, along with some yummy Trdlo, Langose, roasted Chestnuts kept us warm enough to walk around the Old town, braving the weather.

The decorations and lights everywhere with light snow made it all look quite pretty.

Other than the 'romance' of celebrating our anniversary together, Prague, to me, offered lots of interesting aspects that could be delved into and explored further. Some of them are:

• The Marionette (puppets) scene...I learnt that Prague has a long tradition of puppet arts and theatre.
• Walking through the city, browsing various books, looking at paintins, I realized there are very many characteristic styles of illustrations to be found here especially for childrens books and storytelling.
• Wooden toys
• The 'Black Light Theatre' : We watched a 1 hr show 'Aspects of Alice' presented quite a fascinating show.
• The place of Kafka

[View photostream]

Overall, loved being there!

Learning by introspection: 2

For an Indian like me, cultural diversity starts at home. I have been an advocate of cultural diversity all along. My family breeds it. We have different religions, different nationalities in it. I always considered cultural diversity as an opportunity to learn from one another and get different perspectives to things. So, here I am:

• Living and adapting to a new culture in Germany
• Working with the most culturally diverse set of colleagues ever
• Married to my husband who is from north india - a different cultural background than mine. I belong to south india.

While the positives of cultural diversity still remains, I now experience the darker sides. The whole concept of diversity falls dangerously when:

• one culture starts to be judgemental about the other
• one culture starts to force itself on the other
• one culture claims superiority over the other
• when the parties are not open minded to give each other their space and time

A multi-cultural experience can become a nightmare when any/one of these situations come up. There are lots of challenges involved in making a culturally diverse relationship to work:

• Striking a balance between keeping ones own identity and integrating with different cultures so one does not stick out like a sore thumb.
• Stereotypes are the first point of easily available reference of any culture. One has to make efforts to break some of them down and communicate the realities that these stereotypes tend to generalize/over simplify.
• Language and spoken communication has its challenges. The sense of humor is different - phrases mean different things in different cultures.
• Remain objective and refrain from being openly judgemental about a culture (despite personal opinions one may harbor within)
• Sometimes visuals work better than words while communicating...because translation can often miscontrued the meaning of words.

However in my experience a BASIC prerequisite to making any headway and achieving the potential of cultural diversity is to be OPEN MINDED and NOT JUDGEMENTAL.

If we start out with a judgement - especially a negative one, on a particular culture, most often it will be counter productive. This is like closing doors instantly on someone who MAY have been curious or interested in knowing more about your culture otherwise.

The idealistic me still looks at cultural diversity as more positive than negative...and I wish people were more receptive to it - treat it like an opportunity to unravel what was a mystery...treat it with the surprise and delight of opening a gift - not knowing what will be inside...

I also realize that every country has its domestic cultural differences as well. A learning here is that dealing with "international" diversity is RELATIVELY easier than "domestic" diversity because domestic diversity carries the baggage of some deep rooted social stigmas, social heirarchies etc - things one tends to be (initially) oblivious about when dealing with an "international" diversity scenario.