Travel to Spain - Dec 2023 - Part 1

 This is my third trip to Spain as I’m working with a company (for around 3.5 years now) that has offices in Spain. Writing travelogues has been a struggle off late. In any case business trips leaves you with very less time to indulge in general site-seeing and immersing in local culture. Still as its almost end of the year and ‘writing’ has been a constant in new goals, objectives for new year resolutions all those years. I will try my hand once again and see if I can write a nice travelogue (in my own eyes) about this visit.

So, here I am in Spain on a week preceding Christmas, the official agenda is to participate in annual business meeting for taking stock of last year progress and deciding next year’s objectives. The unofficial agenda is that company top management does not want to travel to India so close to Christmas, and they would rather have us travelling Spain. The added cherry on top is that there have been some recent top-level hires at group level. And this visit gives us a chance to meet those guys face to face. Plus, I have been partially promoted and I’m now expected to be a part of these events.

Though I have had my fair shares of overseas trips in the past (courtesy my job profile). The novelty of the experience starts right from airport itself (specially if you are travelling to Europe which is much away from middle east. Total flight timing of around 11 hours plus airport lay overs in between are not a joke, specially if you are wrong side of 40 and has food limitations. The only thing breaking this pattern is horde of Punjabis’ (I’m myself a Punjabi too) queueing up in lines at Airport check-in counters. We are sort of like global travellers and there is a unique class of persons travelling at airports. Normally these are aged parents travelling to be with their children settled abroad. In our culture and society, the parents send their wards abroad by spending their lives saving in the hope of a better future. Then if they become settled enough, they call their parent to live with them. Hence you will find old people from remote places in Punjab at airport. They are very limited in English communication and probably are travelling outside their state for the first time. My flight was from Turkish airlines with a lay over in Istanbul, which is apparently a convenient place for travelling to Canada which is like a mini-Punjab outside India. 

My flight timing was 6 in the early morning, considering international flight and state of rush in the Delhi airport. I had to be at the airport maximum by 2 in morning (or night?). So, it was almost an all nighter for me on the day before I travel. As my travel frequency has increased lately (for both domestic and international travel), I have been trying to plan my schedule to makes it less hectic on my body (enough of early morning and late nights flights for me as I’m not getting any younger now). But I don’t have much of options this time around. Generally international flights are scheduled at an ungodly time in India. Also, my total flying time was around 11-12 hours and adding 2.5 hours of layover and accounting for the time difference, it means I was landing in evening in Madrid and my hotel was further 2.5 hours away in Burgos. So, I was reaching my hotel just in time to catch enough rest before reporting to office next day. I was flying by Turkish Airlines this time and the layover was in Istanbul. Both the airlines and the layer airport were new to me.

I had an windows seat for first leg of journey, and I was looking forward to it. As it means more comfortable journey where you can use the windows as head support, and nobody to disturb you in sleep for bathroom break. But as the luck would have it. I find one old lady already occupying my seat in plane. Apparently, she was travelling to her family in England and as She was in a wheelchair. She boarded before everyone one. She was more comfortable in the window seat, and I don’t have a hear to ask her to move. Even if it means spending a long flight of 7 hours in uncomfortable middle seat. The layover was uneventful even if I can’t find anything to eat and I reached Madrid without any major issue only a bit hungry and tired. The driver was there to pickup us up, his car was as comfortable as you imagine it to be but there was a strange smell of smoke in the car. Either it was some peculiar brand of tobacco or some other drug (I decided that I don’t really want to know). As a result, when I landed at hotel in Burgos, Spain. I was already feeling a bit ill. 

 

 

That time of the year

 That time of the year.

I have mentioned this in many earlier posts as well. About this so-called time of the year. In financial terms, you can call it the last quarter of the year i.e., from October to December. For people like us who live in an area prone to extreme weather conditions. The onset of winters comes as a big respite after months and months of scorching heat. I feel it’s more than sheer coincidence that all major festivals in our religion happen to lie in the period of pleasant weather. In my case, I have added incentive that my (and for that matter even my wife and one of my daughter’s) birthday falls in this period as well.

So, it culminates in a period of reflection, introspection and ultimately planning for next year which coincides with new year eve on 31^st December.

08-Oct-2023

The major milestone is my birthday which falls on 17^th of October. This serves as a reminder for me to spend some time in introspection. More so as I will be officially on wrong side of 40s after this date.  It’s very natural to have this feeling that life is slipping by, and you are a failure or under-achieve at best. Even more in my case as I could have gotten a promotion just before my birthday which would have sweetened the deal a bit more. But the decision was put on backburner for some time due to a bit of corporate politics (a topic for another post when I’m in relatively calmer state of mind). So, to avoid digressing further, I had reasons to be resentful (as anyone will always have). But there are reasons to be happy, content and grateful too, even if it’s not really apparent. Some months back, I decided to work on a smaller set of goals lest I get overwhelmed by the big list of so-called objectives and very litter progress to show. So, I selected only two major objectives if my memory serves me right. One was to focus more on my fitness, it’s still a work in progress but slowly and gradually, I’m building on my consistency on this. The second objective was to learn Spanish. It’s not easy at all, but here again I’m taking baby steps in its direction. Now I feel I can be bold enough to embark on my third objective, which perhaps is going to be toughest compared to the previous two but will help in achieving the previous two objectives as well if I could even partially achieve it. And that goal is...

Discipline against distraction, on social media and elsewhere. Mainly time guzzlers like Facebook, Quora, YouTube, OTT and general random scrolling on chrome.

14-Oct-2023

Getting close to the D Day now. And so-called Fate or destiny has found a nice way to assert themselves and bite me. As I was getting a bit ambitious with my plans and all. And I hit a roadblock in the form of variety of ways. First, I had minor physical discomfort like body pain and tiredness which persisted for the better part of the week. Then my daughter who is not even two years old. Start showing some tantrums (maybe it’s a result of change in weather conditions) But She was not sleeping soundly from last one week. As a nuclear family without the support of grandparents. This effectively means that me and my wife can’t sleep either for the last week. And as if all these things were not enough, I had some urgent official targets as my workload is increasing day by day.

So, it all resulted in a sort of daily routine which was very different from how I want it to be. Waking up late in the day. Feeling sleepy for most of the morning and working till late night to finish the urgent work. So, my so-called daily routine which I had built very painstakingly went down the drain. And the positive momentum is all but lost.

Now I am feeling a bit better at-least physically (I think partially it was due to so called intermittent fasting that I was following to lose excess weight, as you are not in best of the spirits when your stomach is empty. So, I’m trying to recalibrate my approach. Ensuring that I’m well fed and well hydrated most of the time. And slowly increasing my intensity towards the shared goals again. It’s quite frustrating to lose the momentum and start all over again. But still, it’s much better than wallowing in self-pity.

So, I had a very little workout in the morning today (even though I literally had to push myself and my body and mind was screaming to get away). And Now I’m penning down (or typing to be more accurate) these thoughts to ensure that I continue to write as well.

My goals remain the same as before.

Physical Fitness

Proficiency in Spanish

Less Distraction (Phone and PC)

 

17-Oct-2023

So, the D here is here ultimately, the weather seems pleasant today after unseasonal heat wave for many days.  The year gone by has been quite eventful to say the least but ultimately more good than bad. I generally avoid spending too much to dwell on the past too much. I would rather utilize my time in planning for the future. Still spending time in introspection and reflection is a necessary evil. Perhaps I will do that on 31^st December, which is also not very far way by the way. Today I will indulge myself and take it a bit easy. There is a full one year ahead (at-least I would like to think so even if life is very unpredictable.)

My objective as stated above remains fixed, I’m not going to add any other names to that list. At least not officially. You can make the list of your so-called goals as long as possible. But unless you have a small list of priorities. You will find it difficult to focus, and it high time I get really serious about my health (No 1). Also, I’m working in a company with head-office in Spain for around 3.5 year now. And If I really wanted to learn Spanish, I need to achieve this target within next one year. The third target is also not going to be an easy one to achieve as it’s a sort of an intangible target.

 02-Dec-2023

This is the time when you can claim that end of the year is officially here as we are into the last month of the year. Based on my experience and observation, different group of people behaves differently as this time of the year. Some are in the mode of enjoying their life to the fullest, throwing caution to the winds convincing themselves about enjoying one last time before they will turn up all disciplined and focused come 1st of January. However more often than not, it becomes even more difficult as discipline is something that builds up gradually. Another set of people who are actually in minority, use this time to prepare themselves for easing into the new year routing that they have envisaged for themselves. A third and even rarer group is the one who had actually plotted and selected goals for themselves last year, And are actually tenacious enough to not to let go of their goals and try their best even when they realize that time is running out very fast. I cant be in the third group but I definitely aspire to be in the second group.

 

Solitude

Solitude is a very alien concept to contemporary Indian psyche. Its partially due to the sheer size of population that we have and partially due to the innate curiosity to meddle in the affairs of other person. Its a strange contradiction of sorts as we are supposed to be the pioneers of mediation which can be loosely defined as contemplating and focusing in solitude only. On perhaps these are two different aspects co-existing in our society. Even human personality is actually an amalgamation of big five traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Still we are not really new to concept to solitude on mental level thanks to spirituality and meditation. Drawing on my personal experience, my mental state is like a pendulum which swings from one extreme to another depending on various factors some tangible and some intangible. As this multi-variance analysis is beyond my cognitive abilities right now. I'll avoid the temptation of delving into probable causes for my so-called mood swings. But the fact remain that sometimes we really crave solitude (mainly when we have realization that we are running in circles in this rat-race), On the other hands its really difficult to draw the line between solitude and loneliness. On the other extremities we felt lonely even while surrounded by tons and tons of people. The contrast is right there when you look at empirical data and find that being burnt out and depression are two common factors affecting mental health today.

Ironically, one of the major areas for me where I need solitude is the one that I'm focusing on right now, writing. For last few weeks. I have outlined few areas where I'm tying to be more consistent. And reading and writing both figure quite prominently on that list. Out of these two, reading is considering as the easy part more-so if you don't set your expectation too high and compromise a bit on the quality, In other words, searching for good book to read can be quite a challenge. But if you lower your expectation, Than there is no dearth of matter to read. 

Writing on the other hand, is far more complex and demanding endeavor on my part. I do run into the very cliche writer's block. I start writing on something and after first few lines, run out of ideas to explore it further. Also the strains of personal and professional responsibilities is making it tougher and tougher to find solitude as a certain degree of mental piece is required for writing anything worthwhile. Even 5-10 minutes are enough for me to read few pages at least every day. But I need longer slice of me time to articulate my thoughts and put it on paper.

As I have indicated few times already in previous blogs, I'm prone to neurotism aspect of personality types. I'm guilty of indulging in overthinking or day-dreaming in the past. One of the option to keep this tendency in check is to keep yourself busy. But when you are trying to find time for meditation, then there is a risk that you can fall back to these habits.

The other part which is quite pedantic compared to first one is pure laziness or sleepiness. I have a little one a half year old devil in my house who neither sleep herself nor allows others to sleeps. She wants to play with me (and her mother off-course) at 3am in the night. I have prided myself as a early riser for a long time (I even have tried my hand at so-called 4am club for a while). As the body conditioning does not happen overnight and even it does not deteriorate overnight too. I still can wake up early in the morning without much of an issue. But... the cumulative lack of sleep shows after a while and you tend to feel sleepy all the time. So sitting in a relaxed posture and closing your eyes is not a good idea at all when your body is craving sleep.

As I touched earlier too, both physically and mental fitness is required to keep up with an increasingly demanding job and in a way, both of them are actually related to each other. 

Pune - Gurgaon and Back

 Actually the correct title should be Gurgaon to Pune and back. Because that's the title of an email that I write monthly to travel agent for ticket booking purpose.

However my relationship with Pune City goes beyond my first company. So as a (im) famous politician has said. You have to understand the chronology. I started working after I completed my education in 2004 (a good 19 years back). And since 2006 I'm associated with project based job which involves fair bit of travelling. Apart from some abroad visits (which generated quite a buzz in my personal circle), My major travel used to be in Delhi NCR or Mumbai. So though not directly to Pune, but I had started traveling to Mumbai region quite early. I always had a funny feeling even back then that these places are my so called karmabhoomi in future.

I moved jobs and shifted to Gurgaon in 2011. Which I now relate as my actual home. So one of the wishes come true.

"Back on Track" or "Finding your Way"

 The dialogue "I'm back" has such a nice ring to it that many movies, novels etc. had look to use it. Strangely we find it much more powerful than lets say a dialogue like "I'm here" or "I got it". Mainly because the story of loosing your way and than making the comeback is the universal story that appeals to everyone. 

Okay, to come back to the main point without further digressing. I'm in a short of comeback mode from last few weeks. That is, I'm trying to restart the activities that were put in a standby mode. The reason or should I say 'excuses' were the usual ones. No free time, No mental peace, I'm not that interested or invested in this anymore or I have got a new and better plan, objectives. Even though I should have known better, still its easy to fall back to this line of thinking.

Anyways, now that I have at-least succeeded to get my immediate attention back on the original objectives. I have been trying to build the momentum and side by side trying to learn from my last failures (and there have been many, a bit more than I would have liked). So that I try different ways of attacking the same problem and see if I can succeed this time.

PPS : One of the main challenge that I face whenever I embark on this endeavor is how to make effective use of my time.  Based on my experience and one of the book that I'm reading right now (12 rules by Jordan Peterson). I have realized that total active time available to you in a day (excluding of sleeping time although you can cut on your sleeping time to inflate your active time for short-term), Can be divided into 3 major groups. Time devoted to your official endeavors (basically the time which pays your salary), Second is the family time (your obligation and responsibility towards your family). Third and the last slot is so called Me time (which is actually a very cliché word and most often than not a very misunderstood and abused concept. 

Now all the activities and task that you plan for your holistic growth will eat up this personal chunk of time only. So either you compromise on your official time. 

I have experienced that at the starting point of my carrier and upto some extent I still experience it, I had friends who were pursuing distance education side by side while working in full time job. But very evidently, this education was equally important for them as the job. I, on the other hand, was into this education thing a bit half-heartedly, As my main focus was on my job. I was working longer hours even eating into family time (there was almost no me-time for me at that period of my life). In the hindsight and after a good old decade has passed, Its interesting to see how that experiment went for me and any friends. Initially I found good success in my present company and I was ahead of the curve slightly, then the work-related pressure got to me and to add to that, I had serious personal issues cropping up in my personal life. As a result of it, I was asked to resign from my job and I came very close to having a nervous breakdown. My friends on the other hand, were initially growing at a smaller pace but later on they managed to clear their exams and went on to get high paying jobs leveraging  that degrees. I agree that this is not a multi-variant analysis and should be taken with a grain of salt. There were multiple factors at play like my and their personality traits. Our family background. There is so much I don't know about them and off-course there are some thing within my psyche that I don't even know about me either. Still I can draw some conclusion from this episode. Number one conclusion sounds very cliché but its actually true that you should love your job, not your company. Secondly more often than not, its your job insecurity which forces you to work longer hours at-least you want to be perceived as someone who works longer hour than others. And last that confidence is supremely important in your corporate life, Imposter can be pretty successful in the long run. 

If I have to define myself back then in terms of personality traits. I was very high on Neuroticism and Agreeableness. Which is a recipe for disaster ever. And to make it worse, I was very low on Extraversion. Even if I was high on conscientiousness, it was not going to save me. I'm not really sure, where do I rank on Openness scale. 

PS : Very recently one of my friend (we are from same college) has enrolled in a reputed institute in Gurgaon to pursue his executive MBA. I think it was a big and brave step on this part. We are on same age (40) and finding the time to invest is a major challenge. Not to mention the financial aspect of it which is also an substantial amount. This further motivates to work harder on my goals. I know he has to attend classes from Thursday to Saturday every week which runs till 10 in the night. His job is quite easy and like me they also have two small kids. So I know its not easy to manage this for the period of 2 years. I also know from my personal experience that if somehow if you could bear and manage through this period. You only stand to gain in longer run.

Another friend and ex-colleague of mine has moved into software and control system (He was selling conventional printing solutions for many years). He is around 6-7 years senior to me if I'm not wrong and to be able to pivot your job at that age and side by side maintaining / increasing your salary is commendable in my books.

My travel experience to Philippines - part 1

As someone who loves to travel. I consider myself reasonably lucky to land in the job where travelling is part of my job profile. And to add to it. I'm based near Delhi (Gurugram) and my company's India head office is in Pune. How we came to arrangement is topic of another post. So to cut long story short, I have been travelling a lot off late, Mainly within India but sometimes overseas too.

Recently I had to travel to Philippines for some office related work. The duration was around 1 week. My past experience with such business travel proves that these kind of trips are very hectic. Generally the only places that you see are airports, your hotel room and customer factory. But this trip and the background related to it was quite eventful. So here's what happened.

I started working quite young in 2004 as I travelled overseas for the first time in 2006. At that time, things were not so user friendly. To apply for VISA sometimes we need to come all the way to Delhi (I was working in Chandigarh then) and to reach embassy in the early morning. The era without stuff  like online banking, Ola Uber etc. seems really ancient whereas its only around 10 years in the past. Now we take getting the VISA for granted. So I was not really prepared for the teething problems that I was about to encounter while applying for the VISA. Seems like government of Philippines is making conscious efforts to discourage people coming from other countries, specially South Asia and Africa. When I heard their conditions from my travel agent like original copy of the invitation letter from the inviting party which should be verified by Notary. I was surprised to say the least. On top of this, initially it was planned that our top management will also join us there. So there was added pressure on me to finish the documentation related formalities at the earliest as I was perceived as the bottle-neck in scheduling the trip. For getting Philippines VISA, I need to go to their embassy directly (they don't have facilitation center). They have made one small make-shift office for VISA application in the main embassy itself. Few weeks later when I will be in Philippines itself (no this story has a happy ending in a way that I did managed to get my VISA and travel to Manila), I realized the this country is still quite close to Europe or America in the pop culture which is one area where I find my country quite different. So in VISA process itself they are special provision. And there I'm not talking about the privileges' bestowed to European nationals to visit Ph without any VISA requirement. That's purely a case of how strong your passport is in my mind. I found out that if I have US or Schengen or for that matter even Japanese VISA. I can travel to Philippines without any further additional documents. Other remarkable thing is the number of people from my home state (Punjab) applying for this VISA. I very well know that we people (Punjabis) do travel a lot and are a sort of global expats. We have almost reverse colonized Canada and Australia but even Ph seems to be quite a popular destination for us. Some of the poor souls who were probably travelling to meet their children and grand-children were like deer in front of headlight there. Understanding English was already a challenge for them and to add to it the Pilipino accent was making it almost impossible for them to decipher the questions. 

I also had some minor issues as the original letters that I have already asked our agent in Ph to share, has not reached me yet. I had to convince the lady in counter that I will duly submit the original at the time of collection of VISA. Also I wanted to process the application in fast track mode but apparently my agent has paid for normal mode only. Anyhow this issue was settled (I paid the extra amount in cash). And I got my VISA just in time for my travel to Manila.

The whole trip planning was done in a great haste and I was not really in sound state of mind when the travel agent booked my ticket and itinerary for the visit. My stress subsided a bit on receiving the VISA. And then I realized that my ticket to Manila (with a halt in Kuala Lumpur in between) has the half of only 75 minutes.  As I have lived in Kuala Lumpur for 7 months, I know that they have two terminals connected by train. So I asked our agent to reconfirm that both arriving and departing flights in my case was from same terminal only. Still I had a bit of stress on my mind when I boarded the flight. And, as the luck would have it, the flight take off good 15 minutes late. Even though flight carriers (even in domestic circuit) has lot of in-build buffer to cater for such delays. Still, somehow the flight landed also 15 minutes late. Just before the flight was about to land, I asked the air-hostess if the flight to Manila will also depart from the same terminal. She replied in the negative. And I was left with no option but to stand up the queue in aisle anxious to get off as soon as possible (I used to laugh at people who has no patience and start queueing up as soon as the plan lands (perhaps, it was karma getting back at me in a way). Murphy law was also in play on same day (my queue was moving slower than other). As soon as I got of the plane, I asked for the way to get to other terminal and started running. 

Few other Indian guys who had a same connection started following as we Indians are quite good in following other blindly. Last time when I went to Malaysia (a good 6 years back), they used to have train coach connecting one terminal to another. For some reason those were out to operation and instead they were using buses to ferry passengers between terminals. So I had bigger distance to travel and also had to ask for directions time and again so that I don't get lost. Somehow I landed at the right place and get into the bus in time but alas.. I had to wait till the bus in full before it started moving, In a funny sort of way, It reminded me about back in India when I used to go to my native village from Chandigarh (I used to live in Chandigarh back then). I had to use the infamous state transport buses to reach the last mile stop. These bus operators want to earn as much as they can so they use to cram passengers into the buses like chicken. If the bus is rated for 50 passengers, they will load at-least 200 to 250. People who have already boarded the bus used to get annoyed and anxious. So here I was getting really anxious and annoyed as the bus-driver was waiting for the bus to get filled in. My Indian companion who were trying to follow me while I was running without giving them full instruction also managed to get in and were giving me wicked smiles when the bus moved out to parking slot. I would still reached my boarding gate with good 10-15 minutes to spare but had no time to eat. Fortunately I was carrying some snacks in my bag. So after around 2 more hours, I landed in Manila but I had one final adventure to undergo before setting feet outside the airport.

I have had my amount of run-ins with the immigration officials, both in India and outside. The last major one was few years back in China in my previous company. As I had to travel to South China, the most convenient part was to travel via Hong-Kong and take a ferry to Mainland China. Somehow because of this fact or any other point, the lady at immigration was downright hostile. She makes big point of the fact that I don't have details about the taxi driver that will pick me at airport (I told her that my host company is arranging that and that driver will be ready will placard showing my name at departure). She almost threatened to deport me back before relenting.

That was sometime back and I could attribute it to various reasons. I don't really think much of this episode. After that I had travelled to Middle-east and Europe without any major issue. However the atmosphere at Manila airport was quite different. I was also hungry (the last connecting flight from Kualalumpur to Manila has no vegetarian option for me) and a bit cranky. 

There was a really long queue at immigration desk which did not helped my case at all. On top of it, the lady at immigration desk has a really strong accent and I was having difficult deciphering her statements. I had to ask her to repeat herself which did not improved her demeanor. She wanted to know where I will be staying in Manila. My office colleague (Who was coming from Spain to join me) has already booked room for both of us. So naturally I showed her the email exchange between my colleague and the hotel. But the lady was objecting that the mail only says room for two but did not mention my name. It was a precarious situation as my colleague was probably in the flight at that time and not available on call. Anyways somehow she relented and at-last I was out of airport and in Manila at last.

Continued in second post...

Some reflections

  This is not my standard time of the year for reflection. But off-late life is not really following the standard template either. Generally, I reserve these ramblings for my birthday (when you feel the pressure to make some meaning of your life) or in the starting of year (when you are fueled by adrenaline of new year resolutions and stuff). However, I realized that it’s almost two years since I have last written any blog post. Writing helps to clear the cobwebs in my mind and like any place which has not been cleaned in two years. My mind is also in total disarray and perhaps putting these thoughts on paper will give me some clarity. 

So here we go.

If I look into the past few years. I had these episodes of restlessness before. The most dominant feelings during those episodes have been of stagnation, of getting stuck and not really moving ahead with my plans. And this applies to both my personal as well as professional life. But this time it has been different in so many ways. The change has been drastic. Personally, I'm in the post Covid phase now. And for me, Covid has been a life altering (almost becomes life ending) event. I had my second daughter in October 2021. And my life will not be the same now as it was before these two events. Professionally, even though I'm in same job for a bit more than around 3 years now. Still our journey in India is reaching the tipping point. I have found success and growth in the company too. My last promotion involving a bigger role was at the starting of the year (it involves monetary benefits as well). I also added a professional certification to my name last December. 

As we are full of contradictions as part of basic human nature, it’s very difficult to pinpoint a a specific reason which caused me to reflect and introspect. Perhaps, it’s a sign that my mental state is a bit disturbed now. Just like an average common person only remembers God when he is in trouble. Else he is too busy in this life to bother about it. Similarly, perhaps my life was too smooth and rewarding last year. And now that I have hit a roadblock, I need to recalibrate my mental balance and writing is one of the tools available to me to achieve the same. 

Or Perhaps, It totally different case. I was too busy in this mindless rat race that I had no time to indulge in the luxury of introspection. I have experienced that too much work can have that effect on you. You work like mad at ungodly hours and often, you don't even feel the impact of this rush, this lack of time on your mental and physical well-being. 

Anyways, irrespective of the underlying cause, the fact remains that I find myself in the zone of self-reflection and introspection. My experience says that I tend to get really stuck up in this zone even at the cost of taking actions. So, after a nice break of a few years. I'm again going back to the metaphorical drawing board and chalking out my plans. Let’s. see how it goes as far as this try is concerned. As always, time is very limited and you feel overwhelmed just by the thought of things that you want to achieve, Practically I want the whole world when it comes to my personal and professional goals. A very natural consequence of this is that you try to do too much of everything at the same time and end up achieving nothing. No matter how cliché it may sound. The way forward is only through prioritizing and focused work.

Leaning Spanish: As cliché as it sounds, this was the goal I had chalked out for myself when I last tried my hands in setting goals for myself. My progress has been disappointing to say the least over the last 3 years. I was full of enthusiasm and curiosity when I joined what is my present company now three years back. As our head-quarter was in Spain. I was very keen on learning Spanish. However, the air released out of the metaphorical balloon pretty soon. I have tried and retried enough different methods to learn Spanish that I can write a blog post on this topic. Unfortunately, I still cannot write or speak even basic conversational level Spanish.

Fitness: Again, this has been my default goal for many years. As fitness is difficult to objectively measure. I can’t really quantify my progress or rather the lack of it. Going back 25 years back, I was a wafer thin, almost malnourished boy in school with no interest in outdoor sports of any kind. In my limited ways, I have tried to be more fit and increase my stamina. I had episodes of frequent illness; chronic lower back pain and I have flirted with border line sugar as well. I have a family history of diabetes and heart problems (which I have used as excuses on more than one occasion). But I have some of my high points as well. I used to cycle from home to school in advanced classes, which I continued even in my college as well. I had tried my hands in some adventure sports like rafting, rappelling, bungee, paragliding and some trekking. I participated in the half marathon (technically 10km run) twice and managed to finish it. And very recently, I had a severe bout of COVID and survived it. Still its an ongoing journey and I'm trying to build some consistency here. I'm not getting any younger and COVID has given me long lasting aftereffects. 

I'm going to draw a line here. As I have stated before. It’s easy to fall into this trap and make listing your goals a goal in itself and spend majority of your time in only planning and doing nothing. One of biggest achievements in my life is just doing it again and again without focusing much on the planning.