Piet's Annual Employee speech

My partner, Piet gives an employee speech every year ( well, almost every day but 'annual' sounds more interesting)
It is very inspirational. I hope some day I could give such insightful speeches too.

http://www.mindpillar.com/pietspeech/PietSpeech.mp4

NYC Auto Show 2006

V, Prashant and I went to the auto show in NYC over the weekend. V 'saw' a lot of change between the 2001 autoshow and this year's. Honestly, the only thing I noticed was that there were no skimpily clad women on the floor. In fact, there so few women that I was wondering if there has beena change of policies.

Here are some of the pics that I took from my MDA :-)

Our office. Or a warehouse?

At some point, my office used to be very spacious and well lighted (It's a corner space with huge windows).
Now, as we have grown and cramped more people in the same space and given more and more space to handheld boxes, we look like a warehouse. It's really bad. We were the model office that other people looking to move into the building would look at. I haven't seen anyone for a while now.

Check this pic out. (It shows part of the office but you can make out the warehouse part of it) This is supposed to be taken from a 1.3megapixel camera in my phone however, it looks very pixelated.

5.5 Year Anniversary

Vinit and I celebrated our 5 years and 6 months anniversary a few weeks ago. It worked out great 'cause it was a weekend and we spent two days having fun.

The first day was a typical NYC date- lunch by the river, a walk by central park, MOVIE!(ICe Age 2!!!) and a kabab mein haddi late night movie with Vivek and Ruth.
The second day was more fun with us taking our Ducati out to the Seven Lakes. I love summer!

Here are the pics:

Almost a summer day. :-)
Brooklyn bridge is also almost in the background.
The almost drunk guy wasn't able to focus.

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Beautiful!

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This one is my new desktop

Hiring Married Women in India

Women in India, on the whole are pretty smart and maybe a notch more transparent than men in the same position.

I am talking about none other than the hiring for IT people. My companies (www.adeena.net) and (www.mindpillar.com) just opened a new Bangalore branch a few months back. Of all the small problems, getting the space, furniture, setting up the accounts etc, Hiring is the most troublesome for me. It is doubly so because I, for some insane reason (now that I think about it) , want to hire some women in our office. You might think that's a good idea and it will help with keeping a balance of sexes and in some minute way, help the cause of women in India. A few men might even say that it helps with attrition rate. :-)

What I did not imagine and did not comprehend when it started happening at first, was the mentality of women- particularly married women in India.

Unlike men in the same position they ask for less money- this is good. In fact great! At this stage of hiring, I was ecstatic and had thoughts like, "wow! I can get the same quality of people for a lower rate AND I can complete my ulterior motive of filling our office with women! WooHoooo!" (Now, Now, I know what you are thinking- "How can I let this happen to women being a women myself? Women should get equal pay!" People, I am a business owner- my bottom line is money. I can help in little ways like trying to hire them but I am not foolish enough to offer more when they ask less!)

After the negotiation phase, came the part that I was completely unaware of and not ready at all- these women do not want to join the company 'cause their husbands/inlaws/any other 'influential' believes it will ______ (feel free to fill the blank with some stupid reason such as work late, travel 20 minutes at night)

Maybe I am crazy but whatever happened to making your own decisions? And why do you have a problem with coming home at 8pm when your husband does the same? There can be no increase of rights without an equal increase of duties.

My Own Religion- A Logical One

My religion follows my life's theories and practices- if you don't like other people's software, build your own; if you don't like your goverment's laws, get them changed...

This blog will be my exploration into my own mind as I progress through life's revelations. As this is a personal blog, most of my writings will be interspersed with other musings. I will however, be extremely generous and spare you, the reader, any poems! :-)