The Pursuit of Happyness

A colleague happened to remark today - if the work's good, the boss is bad, and if the boss is good, the work happens to be bad! The discussion we were having was a typical workplace discussion about work, bosses, projects and so on. But her remark got me thinking. It's true with most of us, isn't it? As professionals, it seems to be our destiny that we can only have one thing - either a good boss or good work. Seems like a case of 'You can't have your cake and eat it too'!! And so, it seems like while we can pursue happiness, we can't (always) expect to actually lay our hands on it. If you ask my take on this colleague's remark, I would say that of the two I would choose good work. Bosses, good or bad, are people, at the end of the day... Like you and me.... It takes all kinds of people to make a world! And bad bosses just end up teaching you about managing difficult people. Now in a corporate environment, bad work is bound to come your way at some point of time, but doing good work is finally what gets you noticed finally. Not only in your organization, but outside as well. And however philosophically one might look at it (no work is truly bad, there's a bright side to everything, blah blah), there's no denying that having work that's not proving to be any value addition over a long period of time, is going to harm chances of further growth. To sign off, how do you know if you're really doing 'good' work? Or what's the definition of good work? A friend of mine had this to say: "If you open the Times Ascent, and see the (kind of) work you are doing figuring in the work profiles, you're doing good work!"... Neat, I would say...

Window shopping... but at a price!

About half an hour of browsing in the Pepe Jeans store proved costly for me today! The cost of the browsing - 300 bucks :( ... Had planned on meeting a few friends, and we decided to meet in Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) at around 6 in the evening. To avoid the peak hour evening traffic, I left early and was there at our rendezvous point about half an hour earlier. After parking my motorbike on the pavement in front of CCD, decided to check out some of the brand stores next to the CCD outlet. After spending some 25 minutes checking out the new arrivals in the store - and talking to a friend I ran into - I came back, only to find my motorbike missing from the spot I'd parked it in! A guy standing by the 'parking lot' told me that a towing van had come a few minutes back. Now I'd thought that the parking was for CCD customers, and parked it without a second thought. To get the motorbike back had to go to the nearest police station, and pay the fine and towing charges. Well, one helluva costly round of window shopping!!

A White Elephant?

So the iPhone 3G has finally launched! With Airtel and Vodafone going in for an unprecedented mid-night launch. But has it really generated the kind of interest that it generated when it was launched elsewhere (in the US, in Europe)? For starters, the price of the set is bound to be a dampener. The 8 GB model is priced at INR 31000 and the 16 GB at INR 36000. So the iPhone risks ending up as a luxury device that many can covet, but only a privileged few afford. But the pricing apart, there are a few other aspects too which put a question mark on whether the iPhone will really catch on in India. Here's a review in the Economic Times. But the question that begs to be asked is whether an iPhone owner will really be able to exploit it's features, when 3G roll-out in India is still quite a while away. For the iPhone is really a internet and multimedia device, that you can make calls using it is quite incidental! A few practical issues exist as well. The change of battery being the most crucial one. You can get the battery changed only at a service provider outlet (Airtel and Vodafone being the only ones currently). Now this does not seem like a tough thing to do, but Blackberry users will definitely tell you otherwise. Another reported issue is about call-dropping and battery life. And then of course the fact that you cannot forward messages! All this apart, the interface is really cool (especially the accelerometer, which is sure to enhance the mobile gaming experience)! But will this really drive me to buy the iPhone (assuming that I could afford one)? Well, probably not. But a few months to an year down the line... With 3G rolling out in India, and hopefully a lower price tag, and better features (forwarding of messages, better battery life)... Well, I might go for what I feel is a "White Elephant" right now...