My daughter's summer vacation = stress test for me ;)

1st 3 weeks of August is the summer vacation for school (and kindergarden) kids in Germany. Most of the parents align their office-leaves with this period to have a nice family outing. For them its real fun but for the parents decide to be at home most of the time, I tell you folks, its 'stress-test' ;)

Never mind, I have a very talented and creative daughter who likes to spend her time in drawing or making artwork. She is obsessed with 'designer-purses' she makes using paper. Here is a little video of one of her creations:

If you really liked her artwork, don't forget to mention in the comment :)

To think of working in foreign land is crime...

Imagine you are a qualified and experienced professional accompanying your spouse in a foreign land. Soon after you enjoyed the 'completely-free-time' and prolonged one-on-one with yourself, you think of working. You head to the local government / labor office to find out the avenues. But the fate has planned something else for you - you are not allowed to work because there are local citizens who are the victims of recession and you are in queue after them :)

Few lines that came in my mind, are expressed in the form of Hindi poetry :

| तथ्य |

मेरे इर्द - गिर्द

फैले तथ्य

निर्दयता से

मेरी बर्बादी का

जाल बुन रहें हैं

मूक दर्शक

बना बैठा है मेरे

अन्दर का सच , अपने

मृत्यु के इंतजार में !

मुकेश सोनी

२३ जुलाई २००९

एर्लान्गेन , जर्मनी

Cost cutting at corporates...

This is a real incidence that happened to one of my friends, Mitesh. He narrated me this story of cost-cutting in corporates that truly reflects the saying - "penny wise pound foolish".

According to Mitesh: 

In one of my previous companies, I had to make a visit to USA. Initially I was planned to travel along with another colleague of mine, Misha, but later on my travel was delayed. Finally, my travel was scheduled when she (Misha) was coming back to India. 

There was a kitty (financial assitance) for first time travellers from the company to ensure the traveller has adequate preparation for the travel (like warm clothes, formal dresses, jackets etc.). I asked for the kitty money from my manager to buy a jacket. The manager, fully prepared to show his loyality for the company by saving some money on my travel, rejected my plea. I explained that Misha has informed that it's quite cold in USA and I would require a thick jacket to survive for next 21 days. The manager then recollected that Misha has already purchased a jacket for her and, like our codes/programmes, this jacket could be shared between two of us. He made me mail to Misha asking her to leave the jacket with secretory in USA so that I could collect it from the secretory for my use. The reply from Misha was so embarrassing that I could not dare to reply her immediately. She wrote - "atleast the manager should have known the difference between a lady jacket and that for a man; has he forgotten the difference in our phyical size? Thanks God that he didn't go beyond jacket for sharing of clothes !". Being embarassed, I just went to my manager's desk and told - " if you can let me avail that kitty, its fine otherwise I don't mind spending from my pocket for my jacket. Just few days back there was a half-day training organized for managers that costed some 20,000INR per person. If you are keen on saving some money for the company, please look at such wastage of money."

I was least bothered about whether Mitesh got cost of his jacket reimbursed from the company, what mattered more for me was the discrimination - Can such thing happen to an US employee?.

If this was the situation well before this global recession, I wonder what would the managers have asked to share in this situation !!

Street Cleaning - Machines complementing human

Human-Machine-Collaboration: Perhaps the rare sight in India but quite a common one in developed countries.

I really liked the efficiency of the work - Watch the video of street cleaning in Germany. 

Any comments?

Changing weather - part 2

Sometimes there is hardly any delay is getting your wish fulfilled - I hoped to see snow soon so that I could enhance the collection of 'changing weather' gallery by some snowy pics...and by Nov 2008 end, it was there.. right in front of my eyes !

This is one of the foggy mornings (2:30am... too early in the morning - one could see this only on sleepless nights !) in Nov 2008.

When the temperature drops to zero and you see rains in the evening - snow is on the way !! (this is my version of 'meteorology principles').

and here you go !! The street filled with snow. (Nov 22-24, 2008)

Changing weather..

On 13th of Nov 2008, I am gonna complete 5th month of stay at Erlangen, Germany...and that too without a job. This is the longest break I have ever taken once i started working since 1994 (when I completed my engineering diploma). Since then I was either working or studying. After my Masters in Jan 2001, I had a period of 'no-job-in-hand' for close to 2 months sometime in Sept 2003. But for most of my life, it was more than 10 hours a day job. Well, what I meant is when I have no 'office' sort of job, I have all the free time to observe things around me - nature, people, life and almost everything..

First take a look at the changing weather..

* July 2008 - Summer has not yet gone:

Lush green and thick trees around my apartment. This is the view of the road (that leads to Nuernberg) from balcony of my apartment. Due to the green trees you hardly see the road (just a glimpse of the crossing/signal on the road).

* End of July 2008- On brighter day:

* Aug 08- A rainy morning:

* Oct 08- Fall is on its way..

* Oct end - Leaves are turning red before getting detached from the tree..

 

* Nov 2008 - Winter is not far..

You would see most of the trees without leaves now. This is the view of the same place (remember the road leading to Nuernberg?) on a foggy morning. 

The apartment behind the tree is almost invisible due to fog.

* Nov 2008 - a few minutes back !!

At 10 am on 7th of Nov 2008, another cloudy day.

See the trees with minimal leaves, and the 'clearly-visible' buildng behind the tree.

** I hope I will have pictures of the same place with some snow around.

 

German Discipline & Design

You will be amazed at the way most of the Germans (I refer to ‘most' of them because there are exceptions everywhere ) follow the rules. They follow the rules as if it were written on stone.

• When the signal is red, irrespective of the traffic, they stop. On the contrary, in India I could not dare to cross the road even 5 seconds after the signal turns green for pedestrians.
• I happen to be in a bus that was following another bus very closely. At one of the bus-stops both the buses stopped but our bus didn't open the doors. The reason being the bus I was in was just few feet away from the sidewalk that assists people to get off the bus comfortably. After 2 minutes when the bus occupied the right spot at the stop, the doors were opened for passengers. This is a total contrast to what we see at Bangalore bus stops. In similar situation at Bangalore, the bus driver would have stopped the bus parallel to the one already halted and would have blocked the road. I do remember few accidents that happened due to such ‘improper parking' of buses.

Their thought process:

• I had been to a doctor for my back sprain. Then I went to a medical store (‘Apotheke') with the prescription. The lady at the shop asked me twice if I am aware of the procedure for taking medicine (dosage, how to consume it?) and then only handed me over the medicine.
• The pack of the medicine had a space/field for writing down dosage information on it.
• The name of the medicine was also written in Braille to assist visually impaired people.