New work place

well, i have joined my new company on monday.
how do i feel?
SCARED....

yes, it might be surprising to hear that i feel scared...
it's not because of any incident which happened or things like that.

i am scared because this is the time when first impressions get created about me in this new environment...and also after college, this is my second job...so change in itself is new.

donot know how to go about doing things... donot know how others feel about us...

yes, i have got a few friends now...and HR people are very friendly...and also it's a small company...
but still, i think it'll take some time to get the comfort feeling...and i think this period is very crucial.

and another problem is i donot know what to talk with every person, because i donot about them...am i talking too much with a person or am i talking a boring subject with him?

yes, i might console myself that i am in the learning phase and can't expect things to fall in place in these 3 days...
but still the problem is, i need to be a bit skeptic in every activity i am doing...

or maybe, as my brother says, i am thinking too much...maybe i should learn to take things as it comes...

Indian Railways

This week, I read an article in Outlook Business about IndianRailways.
I remembered a mail which i sent to my friend in 2004. Here is the email.

From:
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 9:17 PM
To:
Subject: Getting India’s railways on track by Christoph Wolff

Check this attached Mckinsey article.

When i was returning back to hyd in train,was thinking that Indian Railways is one typical example of a govt Organization

1.with Huge employees and hence with less productivity.
2.with lot of untapped growth areas like goods carrying.

And this thought got strengthened,when i saw the Railway goods area last week,when i went to get the vehicle sent from CBE.

Strangely,it is still not computerised and the godown is just so horrible with improper maintainence and they track the goods by the sketch writings on the sack.

There were so many old uncollected goods and the place was a real mess.

This author has captured all the thoughts and expressed it in such a structured manner...it's really great.
(maybe thatswhat they'll learn in MBA!!)

But at the same time,he hasn't covered or expressed the varying fields in which Railways can earn revenue.(maybe this will be explained,when the government appoints them for consulting :))

Below one is an example of a missed out thing.

There were plans of laying down fiber optics cables across the railway network...such a great idea...but don't know to what extent it's really happening now...check this site for further details on this...

http://www.tenet.res.in/rural/rail.html

Hope our government does something to Railways soon,instead of trying to split into several more regions.It's a great organization with untapped potential.

rgds,

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And strangely the article which i read about Railways was how IT is changing the way Railways is working....Below mentioned are 3 such cases...
It talks about something called CRIS(Center for Railway Information Systems). Strangely as per this website, http://www.indianrail.gov.in/abcris.html this was established in 1986 and the effects are slowly seen only now...
The another one mentioned is FOIS (Freight Operations Information System). Railways has made good profits this year thanks to the improvements due to these systems in place..
A good case study about this is present in CMC website..
http://www.cmcltd.com/case_studies/transportation/fois.htm

And one other obvious example of IT in Railways is IRCTC website. Nowadays, i think anybody who has access to Internet, books tickets only thru the website. And this is supposed to the No.1 online website in India. Imagine how much revenue can be achieved by advertisements, reducing resources...

Infact after reading the article, i really felt happy that not everything is bad in our system.

Thinking is in the right direction...but the problem lies in planning and execution.

Why does a CRIS setup in 1986 took so much time to really execute things?
This delay would've costed thousands of crores as loss to Railways and also the productivity of the industries which are dependent on Railways.

And i think this is the one of the problems in Infrastructure development side...

First of all, there are not many highways being constructed....still the major blunder is, the few parts where highways are being constructed, it is only 4 lane...this is not right, it should be atleast 6 lanes..

the cost involved in making a 4 lane highway to 6 lane might be equivalent to coming up with a new one...and 4 lane is really not enough in a country like india where we have all type of vehicles being driven on the highways...

when something of this scale is being done, it should be done right at the first time..

Exit interview

somehow i never believe in the Exit interviews...
what is the use of these feedbacks?

yes, we can give general fundas that feedbacks will help in improving the team, the working environment and stuff...
but the points mentioned in these feedbacks will never be something new...if it was new, ppl will not quit for that..they'll try to convey it and try to change the system.

People quit because things are not working even after feedbacks were given or because they are just fed up with things and want to try something new...

maybe few people might feel happy that the company wants to know feedback from him/her, so company values the individual's opinion...

so from this emotional point of view, it feels good...but if we think of the usefulness of this feedback,atleast i donot see any.

Baatein Hawaa

there are few songs which uplift our mood a lot and make us feel elated...it's as if we just won a lottery or maybe we got a 2 weeks vacation in a remote island ;)

and these songs are very seasonal...

for ex, 6 months back, a song from Fanaa, "Mera Haath mein" used to be a big influence point for me.

now it's "Baatein Hawaa" from Cheeni Kum...the one with Amitabh's comments interlaced...
i understand Amitabh's comments which is in english and this tune is based on old tamil song...

apart from that, i don't know a single line meaning of this song...still whenever i listen to this song, i feel light and happy...

and what is more strange is, after few months, the effect might not the same.

till then, i am really enjoying this song....