"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...