Lessons of Love(LOL)

Entertaining Speaker - Speaking after dinner

LESSONS OF LOVE

Fellow Toastmasters from all over the amsterdam, I would like to use the few mins of your life to talk about my love. My love for last 15 years. It is not a real person. Or a dog. The love I want to introduce you to is coffee. With every sip that I drink, with every cup I had prepared, our bond has only got stronger. The heat of time and situation has only grown our love stronger much like coffee itself, the more you boil it, the stronger it gets.

It all started as a simple experiment when I was sitting at home and my sister showed me the new instant coffee brand in India. You can make coffee in 2 mins now. I had never tried it before so I did and did not liked it much. Days months and years went by. We never met each other for a long time. Until I landed here in The Netherlands.
It was cold. Wind was so strong that my left ear was touching my mouth and my mouth was touching my right ear. And how can rain be left behind. There I was in my T shirt just landed from 40degrees. The only solution that stuck me was to get something warm to drink to keep the cold away. I ordered coffee. A latte with extra cream. And there it was. Our paths crossed again to be never part again. This time when it touched my lips, I knew immediately there was a connection. From that day to this day, we have been in love. Like participants in true love, we admire each other, we like each other AND help each other without expecting anything in return. What spirituality calls SELFLESS LOVE. Whenever coffee is feeling lazy & lonely, I help her out of the capsules or packets and let her free. And when I am feeling tired or low, she has always rejuveniated me with her aroma and warmth.

Our long lasting love story has three important characteristics or lessons of love or LOL that I would like to share with you all.

1. Freshness
2. Never ending Fascination
3. Loyalty, honesty and Trust

1. Keep it fresh. Beans/capsules. 
- different flavours/variety : cappuccino, machiato, latte, mocha.  Variety is secret ingredient .. it is like the "lemon juice in paella" or "coriander in butter chicken" which no one can see but leaves a signature in the taste. And if it is not there, then it is the same feeling as you have when sitting on a cycle seat for 4 hours without getting down. It is there and is useful but it hurts as well.
- Small acts of love towards each other every day always help to keep the fragrance in the relationshiop. like dropping a sugar cube in the coffee, adding milk with extra creamer (but low fat) or on a hot summer day, two ice cubes to cool her down a bit never go unnoticed.
Monotonity or taking each other for granted should be avoided.

2. Partner : Still continues to fascinate each other. From its history to its political/religious connection to its contribution to present day technology.
- Coffee was discovered by accident by an Ethiopian farmer who found some of its goats were more active than the others and they were eating coffee beans.
- Word comes from arabic which means "Wine of the beans

- Kopi Luwak  most expensive coffee. Beans partially digested and defecated by Civets  a mammal found in tropical weather of indonesia.

- Espresso is regulated by italian govt as it is essential part of the day.
- Church in 16 century approved of coffee drinking

- First webcam was invented in cambridge university to let people know if coffee pot was empty or not
- JAVA .. named after coffee.
Coffee is one thread which runs across different regions, religions, cultures, time zones, generations and genders. Vote for Coffee to be the Time personality of 2018.

3. Loyalty, honesty & Trust : Do you know 80% of married men cheat in America. The remaining 20% cheat in europe.
 Loyalty, honesty & Trust are the three pillars on which all historical love stories stand. Romeo juliet, In any relationship. there are ups and downs, highs and lows or in TM terms .. speeches and evaluations. But that is what makes the relationship complete.  Accept someone as it is. Coffee also has its effects. Too much coffee can be harmful. Brewing coffee & POT can have its effects. But that does not mean I will start drinking tea. Even if I am at a station at 1100PM and it is cold and so windy that my left ear is touching my right ear. And I walk towards a kiosk and ask for my favourite .. Coffee. If the person behind the bar responds negatively, I do not decide to go for tea instead. No. I am loyal to my coffee and we like it that way. Relations expect and deserves hard work. It is not investment. It is a way to show you care and value the other.  You need identifying beans, roasting them, grinding them, brewing the coffee. the water the temperature the time. Only then a perfect coffee is ready.

Before my speech drags longer and starts challenging the BREXIT timelines, I would like to conclude by saying : Next time when you see someone savouring their coffee do spare a moment for your loved ones. Think about how you can do something which will bring happiness to them, make them feel special. And that do vote for coffee for the time personality of 2018.
During the past 10 mins, if some of you had reached for your coffee, I will take that more of inspiration from my speech and not the boredom of it.

Corporate Ladder

Reorganisations have become a part of culture. A company which is not re-organising is considered stale and non-progressive. It lacks the vision and its leaders are not daring enough. The Banks and stock analyst tag such companies as stagnant and below red mark. As a result, whether needed or not, all companies are moving to re-organise their business and department. In this turbulent times, how can we manage to keep our job afloat and make sure we are not a victim of such re-organisation. As with many things, the preparation starts way before the re-organisation. I outline here three

USE JARGONS WHEN TALKING. MAKE IT LOOK SOPHITICATED BUT VERY SIMPLE FOR YOU.
When talking to your colleagues at work or at lunch or drinks, make use of some jargons which can help you standout. If you are in technology, use management jargons. if you are in management use technology jargons. And if you are in technology management, use financial terms.
For example: When asked in team meeting, what are you working on, you can say: I am trying to amortise the capital control using deep learning so that we can deep dive into the yield curve and zoom in on to a design pattern. Aka making project plan & budget for the next quarter.
OR if someone asks you what did you cooked yesterday or had for dinner:  A glutinous mixture of herbacious viands, succulent meat and pulverised legumes daintly stewed over an inferno of oxidised fossil gas. or SOUP.

ACT AS IF CEO IS WAITING FOR YOU.
- Once a day, run towards coffee machine or printer looking on the floor with a worried look on your face. Do not talk to anyone , dont make eye contact. Give a feeling of urgency to everyone. As if you are onto something really important and that needs your undivided attention. And only you can conquer this problem and make a difference in the company. This will imply to other you have some important work to do while they are just looking around. Your deemed importance will grow.
- keep your calendar booked once a week with items like research or brainstrom with , google or Harvard professor or Mckinsey, BCG, KPMG, Deloitte team. When someone asks, never forget to mention this."Oh actually I have a meeting on a research project I am working on"

MAKE YOURSELF VISIBLE.
- Organise meetings on any topic between different teams. Even if you are not an expert of the field, you can still organise meeting/conference/meetup. Just google what is the hot thing in your domain.. blockchain, supply chain, cycle chain .. what ever you find, put it as a topic, make posters and paste them on the entrance. Don't forget to put your name in "if you need more information" section. You would be surprised how many people are willing to give a talk on arbitrary topics and even more how many people show up in such meetings.
- Attend seminars and sessions for any topic as long as you get an invite. It can be of health, economics, technology, new office building or quaterly update. Be there 5 minutes after the start of the meeting and dont forget to carry your office laptop or phone with you. If you like to add nitro boost to your career, always ask questions in such meetings.


Follow these three advice and you will see your ship sailing at warp speed.
USE JARGONS WHEN TALKING.
ACT AS IF CEO IS WAITING FOR YOU.
MAKE YOURSELF VISIBLE.

Hocus Pocus Focus

HOCUS POCUS FOCUS

I have a confession to make. In the past 1 year, I went too far with a friend that it started hurting my personal, family & professional life. It all started as a friendly - help each other relationship. I did not realised how this friendly relation became serious or rather an issue that I had to deal with. This friend was "Mobile". I would be constantly on phone. My productivity and contribution in the team was at all time low. I realised that this was not me 9-12 months back and wondered how I got so misaligned. I analysed my behaviour and found the below three symptoms.

- ADDICTION:
Waking up in the morning and first thing checked is mobile phone. Before I slept, I will check my phone and put it next to my bed. 
When one is alcoholic, he/she moves with the glass from living room to kitchen to bedroom. I was doing this with my phone. When the last bottle is half empty, you become a bit restless about re-filling the supplies. When the battery of phone is at 10%, you start looking for power plugs and charging cable frantically. You cant even imagine how No internet connection impacted me.

- DISTRACTION:
I was constantly distracted and what I  call the FITWYG Syndrome.
FITWYG -> facebook instagram twitter whatsapp youtube google. I would have checked my whatsapp alerts, tweets & instagram in 5 mins. I will be checking my email and watching videos parallely.In a meeting or sitting on my desk or having lunch or while talking to my family. I will constantly keep my fingers moving over my phone clicking something. The result, I will be missing on what was discussed or agreed upon. In team meetings, colleagues will discuss our roadmap and I would be checking what donald trump was saying about north korea.

- Lack of patience aka INSTANTGRATIFICATION
We get pizza in 20 mins , noodles in 5 minutes. In 140 character a complete message, News flashes through out the day.We order today and wear a new dres the next day. I did not had time for nonsense. I wanted to understand a whole email at work which was 400 words or so in 2 mins. And if I was not, I will quit reading it excusing that I will read it later and then never open it again.

And funny part is the first instinct on realising this was is there an app I can install to de-additc/rehab on my phone.

So what did I do: I countered each of these three problems.

1. ADDICTIONS: are habits and habits come from behaviour and behaviour comes from thought process. To break addiction, start small. I made a decision to check my phone for messages and email once in an hour only. Sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't. But no big deal. I tried and now in a day I check my phone about 20 times a day. Still a lot but far lower than 100+ times before.
2. DISTRACTION: I decided to remove the source from my zone of vision. I started keeping my phone on my table instead of carrying it everywhere I went. Now I make a concious decision  to not take my phone in the next meeting. Since there is no phone, my source of distraction is removed from the environment. I still keep my phone near my bed as it is my alarm clock but I do not check it first thing in morning now.
3. PATIENCE: I tried to steady my brain. I paid attention to my breathing. Started with 1 min focus on how I was breathing .. whether it was deep or shallow, from left or right nostril, how long was the inhale and how long was exhale. In few days, I was able to regulate my emotions that were playing underneath. Emotions: Energy in motion(Dr. Alan Watkins): if you moderate your breath, you moderate your energy and hence your emotions.
Mind is like a universe. It stores everything in it. All our memories are there and all our answers as well. Our school days, friends, parties, get together, wedding, family,parents, demise.. to what happened on a whatsapp groups, facebook photos and posts, blogs, holiday updates from friends etc etc etc. Focus is the telescope you need to direct your attention towards a particular aspect of brain. You can only focus on one part at a given moment in time. You can only observe moon or jupiter or a blackhole. Similarly our brain can only focus on whatsapp or work or study or family or talking or email at a given moment in time. Frequent re-focussing of telescope will only result in blurry images. A noble saint once said "Life is a manifestation of where you direct your focus/energy".
I am still on social media as we live in times when technology is solving problems in all spheres of our lives. It has shortened communication lines and eliminated the need leaving our living room to get anything. Technology is good but like all other things it is good when consumed in correct quantity. Technology should be used in complement humans and not as a supplement. We should dictate when we want help of technology and not be enslaved by it.

Blue Hat Movement

New year 2018. New year brings new aspirations and new hopes. But new year also brings one more thing... that is SALE.. discounts, offers, Clearance sale, Last Chance sales.

Imagine a Polar Bear who wakes up after 4 months of slumber. And finds himself in a supermarket. He will be a delighted soul. Running from one counter to another. Chicken, beef, fish, pork, vegetables. He will be running confused what to eat and how much !! Replace the Polar Bear with 50k homo sapiens and the supermarket with a shopping street or shopping mall. I was one of those running like crazy.

It was then that I realised this is not fair. All these brands are discriminating between men and women. In the present day world, such a ruthless and blatant gender bias was totally unexpected.

- 40% of the shops in any market in any city in the world are only for ladies.
- 65% of the shop area in the shops for men and women are for ladies.

Let me illustrate this with concrete example

a. De Bejinkorf : 6 Levels of splendid stuff. 4 levels cater to women. Office wear, business casual,party wear, evening wear, sports wear, fitness, accessories, bags, shoes...
Male stuff is entrapped in a single floor.

b. Primark : Shop has 6 levels, 4 are for woman. 1 for kids. Men's section is half a floor in the basement where even sunlight does not enters.

c. CnA :  Same story

d. H&M : They have 6 stores in the amsterdam centraal of which all 6 are women. Men related materials are in 4 of these stores. But do not dare to ask how much shop area that accounts to. you would be disappointed.

I agree men have different shopping style. The parameter which play role while shopping are different for men than for women. And men do not have a rich vocabulary of colours. Probably the brain is not yet evolved to identify all the shades. I picked shade book of paints for a grey colour and after the first 4 shades, the remaining were all BLACK for me.
Do you know Vermillon, crimson and cadmium  are all different shades of RED and they are different from strawberry red. My point is, if we will not learn, how will we evolve and until we evolve, how can we improve.

That is why I would like to start a movement. I am calling it "BLUE HAT MOVEMENT". This movement is aimed to undo the gender bias which has creeped into the shopping streets. To free us from the clutches of BLACK, GREY and BLUE and liberate ORANGE, PURPLE and RED for which our wardrobes are starving for. If you would like to join the movement, feel free to drop me a message.
Let us join the BLUE HAT movement and save the mankind.

Lessons from the Happiest place on the planet

Link below is presentation on things we can learn as a business from DisneyWorld.


Link to PPT

Big Data 101

This is my first serious attempt at  technical Talks.

Big Data Presentation

My Trauma and its rational

Sadness... somehow somewhere someone would have always experienced this feeling. Parting ways with your loved ones, experiencing your nature's fury. Or for less fortunate ones .. watching your own wedding video for Nth time where N > 253. Add to this sadness, Misery and helplessness and you get TRAUMA.  To give you an example: You might be sitting alone in a small dark room  may make you feel sad. The point that in the next room is President Elect Donald trump waiting eagerly to meet this person might make him feel miserable and helpless. TRAUMA!!!
For me the sky breaks, hairs fall down, water flows from all pores when I hear the word SHOPPING!!!
Fellow TOastMasters, Most welcome Guests. For people who know me and my family, this is an innocent and first attempt at humour by me. For every one else, this is a true story.
Picture this.

 A Sunny blue sky with clouds scattered frequently, birds chanting the morning rhymes, trees throwing their leaves and branches in all directions, wind was gaining strength as if it has just pumped a lot of iron, the last of the after partiers had safely reached their beds. The city was still silent and the smell of coffee was getting more and more frequent. In short it was 11 Oçlock on sunday morning in Amsterdam. And I was about to embark on an ordeal which lasted 8 hours in total with two meal breaks of 30 minutes. I had to brave many many people who wanted to sell jeans, shirts, shoes, trousers, skirts, cosmetics, accessories and there after more jeans , more clothes, more cosmetics, more shoes. I survived the battle which was going on way after it got dark. But it got me introspect why I hated Shopping. For as long as I remembered, I always hated shopping. Irrespective of the nature of activity. I always felt miserable and sad. I  have identified three reasons which I am sure made me feel traumatized when it comes to shopping.

 1. Imagine there is a new wine shop in your neighbourhood. You go and buy a fairly expensive bottle of wine. The salesman tells you this is an offer and you are really lucky. You come home happy. In the evening you try to show off a bit your bargain to a friend of yours. Doesnt each of us have atleast one friend who always know how to buy something cheaper than you?? Did you checked online? You could have bought it cheaper from Gall n Gall. Now I am sad and to get rid of my sadness, I drink wine. But as soon as I take a sip, it reminds me of my bad purchase. This is called COGNITIVE DISONANCE in psychology.: The two mutually conflicting thoughts in your head and you are not sure which one you should accept.

 2. PAIN POINTS: I hate spending money over and over. No I am not Dutch. I dont mind paying money at once but the act of paying over and over does not help me. Interestingly enough, there is a study which was done in this aspect. People enjoy or hate doing certain things .. for example in this case spending money. Now the act of spending 100 USD 10 times  will give me more pain than spending 1000 USD. The pain or pleasure associated with actions does not follow the arithmetic progressional path. To give you an example, imagine during next few renewal, you pay Lee the fees in 5 euro bills.

3. Impulsive shopping: Most of men like to plan things. They strategise, optimise, refine before they execute. This period could be anything from 1 week to 6 weeks. For me the shopping was planning took 6 weeks. Everything was meticulously organised. Where we will start from, what we buy from, what we will avoid and where we will eat. Now after entering the market, you are exposed to so many new shops, new offers and new trends. The whole plan goes down the drain. Now two things can happen. Either paralysis due to analysis of excess data. Or You grab that as an opportunity and start buying. But in both the cases, you will feel sad. Either becasue you purchased too much or not at all. For example. A puppy who enters a warehouse of dog food. He will overeat or get confused and do not eat at all.

Fellow TMs, honoured guests, This is why I feel I get traumatized. My TM friends, this was my first attempt at humour. My Guests, Do not come under pressure of "Let us go shopping"

Cashew

This story is about a MALE black labrador, a gentle soul with habits
of high society man: eating & sleeping. And his name…. (pause)CASHEW.
(SPEAK IN A QUESTIONING TONE)"That is a rather unsual name for a dog:
Cashew?”. When we got him, we thought of various popular movie
characters like pluto, milo and even Earnest.  We contemplated naming
him google looking at his search ability. But nothing fit his charming
personality.
One day I heard some noise from the kitchen and rushed in, only to
find him feasting greedily on scattered food. I learned two things:
1. Never trust a dog with your food
2. Cashew was NUTS  about cashewnuts, as he only ate those and left
the rest for me (to clean)
We decided to call him CASHEW and got ourselves free from the moral obligation.

Cashew is fond of food and footwear (may not always be in this order).
When he was a pup, he would always run away, with my mother's
slippers, Somehow he always loved female shoes more than men´s.
Another particular Cashew-esque thing was his philosophy ... when in
doubt …. (pause) Lick.  He has drenched so many people(family,
friends, pizza delivery boy) with his slobbering. Even the postman
wore a raincoat when he had to deliver a letter to us in warm summer
day.
Everytime I came back from office, he would know before anyone else
and would be waiting at the door. Our walks were the times when we
boys had some fun together. We would walk, talk, run, chase squirrels
and play FETCH. No matter where he will be, when I said FETCH, he
would come dashing and try to find anything which was moving and bring
it to me. There is a study on internet which says if a man is with a
dog, he has 3 times more chance of getting a girl's phone number. Do
Not trust this study. It is a LIE. But I did had my moments of glory
when some girl would come and talk to me mostly about cashew.He had
some cuteness powers which attracted girls better than I could. I used
to call him George Clooney and I was hi wingman. There was onething
Cashew did not like…. He was scared of THE VET. Whenever we went to
vet's clinic, he would freeze. He will be the most un-cooperative dog
ever. HE will use his 4 paws and the thick black tail like breaks
..kHEEEHHHHH   and you can actually see the skid marks that he left
behind when I had to push him into the clinic.
I moved to Amsterdam in the meantime. Dec'2010. I was in India for a
family wedding. And like Indian weddings, there was music, food &
dance. On the 12th Dec2010, I stepped out to run some errands when I
got a call "Cashew is not well. Come back soon". I hurried back home
immediately. I saw Cashew lying on the floor. He lifted his head to
see me and moved his tail when he recognised me.  I ran towards him,
sat on the floor and placed his head on my lap and slowly caressed him
with my hand. His eyes were RED. His breathing was slow and irregular.
His nose was dry. Once in a while he moved his tail. Our eyes met.
(TALKING TO CASHEW)"We are going to VET. You will be fine." But I felt
something was wrong. There was no breathing anymore. The sparkle in
eyes got replaced with a hollow. I shouted CASHEW CASHEW. No response.
I felt as if he was waiting for me to arrive before he bid adieu.
Cashew was NO MORE. (LONG PAUSE)
I lost him to the blood infection that he contracted some time back
but I have him in the blood that flows in my brain and heart.
In the days that followed, I could not think of anyone but cashew and
the time we spent together.
It is always sad to see someone die let alone your loved one. But from
the grief dawns the gratitude towards them. For me it was the
gratitude towards Cashew for being part of my life, for loving me and
his departure reminding me that my time on earth is also not
unlimited.My Friends, His death taught me a lesson about life. I
learned that 3Ls :
LOVE : Unconditional and selfless. Cashew always met with love and
enthusiasm even though he knew it might not be reciprocated.
LEARN : Always be prepared to learn something new even if it is from
your mistake. Like cashew learned to differentiate between strawberry
flavoured shampoo and strawberries jam after being admitted to
hospital for 2 days.
LEISURE : Make most out of the what you have as that will be the
memories you will leave behind when you go. I can still see him trying
to catch a bouncing ball after I called FETCH.

3Ls; Love, learn and leisure
The gap cashew left was unfanthamable. But the simplest way to fill a
hole is to sow a new seed(as long as it is not from Monsanto). Enters
Junior.. a black brown rottweiler pup. He is no saint, he is not
gentle and he is not george clooney. Infact he is more like Jim Carey
from the movie THE MASK. But now we love learn and leisure together.