Sunday, June 12, 2005
Tagging Wagging, II.
So, we had this sales training today, and guess who was the charismatic management guru dispensing pearls of wisdom to a room full of three trainees? Frankly, I could have done a lot better, if only I had dedicated more than four hours to preparing for the first ever sales training I was to conduct!
Its been like that with me for as long as I can recall. Actually, sitting through the late hours of the night yesterday, poring over all that reference material, I was transported by the nostalgic tunes, which started emanating from the stapler, to a world I had thought I had left far far behind. A world where Madi and I used to wait until the eleventh hour before we would get started with the task at hand, which could be an exam in less than 10 hours, or a presentation in 10 hours, or an assignment due in 8 hours. Getting started, however, was a ritual. It included going down in Lahore's kadaake-ki-sardi winter to Barkat Market, picking up "Jolt Cola", and a few snacks to go with it, and getting back in an hour's time.
Barkat Market was not more than a kilometer away though. What took us that long was the irritating tendency of the Barkat Market walas not to stock up on "Jolt Cola". "Jolt Cola" earned the inverted commas during one of our quests to locate a 1 litre bottle of the drink. Madi had, on that day, decided to quit Coke and Pepsi both. His reason was simple. Our sole hope against the rising corporate dominance on our lives lay in supporting the smaller corporations, which had not yet attained growth of conglomerate proportions. Once the biggies had been driven out of business, and new conglomerates established on the back of our unwavering support, we could support a newbie to dilute the conglomerate influence of the new biggies. This, he said, established corporate harmony with the world, where constant replacement is the name of the game.
My objection lacked conviction as well as logic, "But, no one drinks Jolt Cola."
Madi made what seemed quite a valid point, "Do not start your sentences with 'But', and if no-one drinks Jolt Cola, how come they are all out of Jolt Cola?"
I was jolted into reality. In an instance, he was able to demonstrate to me, with empirical data on his side, that the whole city was in it with him, in his drive to send Coke and Pepsi packing.
We continued with our quest for "Jolt Cola", and find it we did. While the discovery in itself was close to nothing out of the ordinary, because if you look for something for long enough and hard enough, you do eventually find it; what was extraordinary was the exclamation that Madi uttered, rather more audibly than necessary, upon seeing crates and crates of Jolt Cola in a bakery,"Jolt Cola!!!Yahee to hai jis ki mujhey talaash thee!". Saying so, he grabbed one of the 1 litre bottles lovingly, and turned to face what can only be called collective amazement, and what I perceived as utter disdain, in the bakery. Being the perfectly logical people that we were, we decided "Jolt Cola" could never be seen without the inverted commas. We are still trying to figure the logic out.
When it was not "Jolt Cola", it was something else that stole an hour of our precious time right from under our noses. We would get back, and work diligently towards establishing an ambience conducive to us studying, which included opening our books at the right pages, getting the notes from classroom lectures in chronological order, and our ball point pens ready to roll. Half an hour later, when the ambience had been created to perfection, we would decide we deserved a breather, and one of us, yours truly most often, would doze off.
An hour later, the other would wake the sleeping study partner (SP1) up, who would then go brush his teeth, and wash his face, just so there was no chance of any of that neend sheend coming back to threaten his GPA. He would come back to the room to find the hitherto waking study partner (SP2) sleeping, with a hand written page containing ten points summarizing half the project/presentation/assignment.
SP1 would then get down to business, gulp down a couple of glasses of "Jolt Cola", go through the ten points, complete the ten points on the rest of the project/assignement, and wake SP2 up, just before dozing off. SP1 would then go brush his teeth, wash his face, lest he get sleepy again, and go through the ten points left for him. By this time, it would be an hour or two to go, so he would wind the clocks up, leave instructions for the household to wake us up (as a back-up plan), and go to sleep.
Oh, and if it were a presentation we were working on, we would be joined by NAB, also known as SP3. SP3 was good with powerpoint, so he would make the presentation, Madi would do the typing, formatting, and subsequent to my editing, printing. Because SP3's services were often not required till early morning, he could be allowed to sleep till three in the morning. It worked so well for us, we managed to score well on each one of our projects/assignments without so much as lifting a finger prior that one long night.
So much so, when for our Strategic Management course, where we were all in groups of six and seven, we managed to employ this division of labour and nocturnal bliss strategy and score an A. This despite the fact that at three in the morning, when the case study had been finalized and slides prepared, Felicity had called in to say she had reservations about our assumptions on that case study. With the very premise of our solution thrown in doubt by the most intelligent person in the group, we set about discussing the case once again, and came out with a totally new solution to the problem. Yet, we were able to catch up on our sleep, prepare new slides, print the report, submit it on time, and score an A.
Yesterday, as I sat here in my chair, trying to figure out how to pack three books worth of information in a two hour presentation, and then make powerpoint slides too, I was reminded of my amazing and wonderful friends. I got the data right, and managed to scrap by with a semblance of a presentation too, but I hardly slept at all, and there were no slides.
Anyhow thats done, and the next session is scheduled for Thursday, so if any of you guys pass by the Shaikh Zayed Road at four in the morning of that day, and see an almost bald, almost fat guy squinting at his monitor, you can wave. I will wave back.
Since it does not look like I will be getting around to responding to AA and Yasmine's tag any time soon, I think I should take this opportunity to complete this task here too. After all this has been due since March 30-31, 2005.
This tagging was done with the false assumption that I am a voracious reader, while it has been months since I finished a book I had started in the same month. Here goes:
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Luckily, by the time I have got to responding to the tag, this question has been much clarified. I have not read many books, which has served to keep the number of books I did not like to a minimum. There was a book in Urdu I had read in my school days, thinking it to be a book of knowledge on the history of Prophets. It was called Qisas-ul-Anbiyaa (Stories of the Prophets, though I have seen a wonderful, wonderful book by the English title). It has to rank amongst the most offensive books I have ever read. The book aspires to dramatize the Prophets' lives, and in doing so, often borrows from 'fsanwi" themes and settings. Many an account has been embellished with stories which have no authentic basis, and some of the things I remember having read in that book border on blasphemy.
If I were stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, the one book I would want to be would be "Qisas-ul-Anbiya".
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I don't think so. I was too busy having crushes left, right and centre in real life. If ever they had an exam about crushes, I would have passed with flying colors. Then I got married, and that was the end of it all. Wives, they say, come with these inbuilt antennae that detect a crush from afar, and if you are any smarter than the next guy who got the bailna treatment, you will know not to have any crushes...not even on fictitional characters.
Frankly, I should have had a crush on almost each of Naseem Hijazi's heroines. They were these brave and proud girls, who were wise beyond their years, and rode into the enemy lines with swords strapped to their waists at some point or the other in the book. Naseem Hijazi wrote some 19 books, 15 of them historical novels covering the rise and fall of the Islamic powers from the shores of Spain to the fields of India. But, I was twelve by the time I finished the last of those books, and I was too young to be having crushes on ladies older than me.
The last book you bought is...?
The Circle of Innovation by Tom Peters. For details refer the first paragraph of this post. AA and I discovered the one second hand bookshop in Dubai, and we bought quite a few titles from there. Mine included Catcher in the Rye, Three men on a bummel, and White Fang. This in addition to a couple of titles by Wodehouse, the Yousufi of English as far as I am concerned. I am sorry, I have not had the time to even open the books, so don't even know the authors by heart - how is that for ignorance?
The last book you read?
For the umpteenth time, Khakim ba Dahan, by Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi. This is his second book, and I had first read it way back in 1991. It was also the first book by Yousufi that I had read. I had not finished the book then. It was 'too dry' for me, when compared with Shafeeq-ur-Rehman, Karnal Mohammad Khan, and Pitras Bokhari whom I had read by then.
In 1993, when I had rediscovered Yousufi with Aab-e-gum, his third book, I had gone completely crazy. Ever since 1993, I have not been able to read much Urdu literature. Nothing seems good enough, humourous enough, tragic enough, philosophical enough and worth my time enough. In the meanwhile, I must have read his four books, Chriagh Taley (1956), Khakam ba dahan (1962), Zarguzisht (1973), and Aab-e-Gum (1987) tens of times, and still when I read these books today they leave me wiser as well as amused. Jalali Baba, I might have got the years wrong, please do not crucify me for that.
Yousufi is perhaps the only common factor between Jalali Baba and me, it was definitely the main reason we became friends.
What are you currently reading?
The Circle of Innovation, Selling the Invisible, Jerome K. Jerome's Three men on a Bummel, and Aab-e-Gum.
Five books you would take to a deserted Island.
The Holy Quran with Urdu translation, preferably by Maulana Maududi, because in a deserted island that might just be my sole survival kit, my one guard against regression, and my only beacon of hope.
Saheeh Bukhari, because my heart will long for love and passion.
Aab-e-gum, Zarguzisht, and Khakam ba dahan bound into one, because I will need to keep my wits about me.
Collected works of P. G. Wodehouse, because he is in the same league as Yousufi for me.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, because it is my favorite book in English, and will probably be so for a long time to come, and because at a deserted island, I will have ample time to empathize with Yossarian.
... and if I am allowed a sicth book after above, my blue book of Yawariyat, for one would like to see what one had felt when one was in the company of fellow men, and compare it with feelings when one has no company.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Jalali Baba, because he is a voracious reader, and his knowledge retention capacity far surpasses that of his unholy disciple's. He is also the closest thing to photographic-memory-made-hazy-by-Marlboro Reds, I know.
Da Momma, because she along with her blog-celeb daughters has, in the past month or so, gone through more books from my humble collection than I myself have in a year's time. Wonder if this family left a book unread in Isloo.
Half Past Nomad, because he is newly married, and has a job to go back to, and will hate being tagged. Also because he is a fellow Catch-22 fan, and that alone warrants his inclusion in this list.
AWK, because she is one other voracious reader that I know personally, and because she introduced me to Karen Armstrong.
Saadat, because he has one of the most wonderful blogs ever, and because he relishes being a blog-celeb, and enjoys seeing people beg him to update, before he comes back with one of his trade-mark, lovely, insightful posts.
Sh_Guf, because she is perhaps the only person I know who is better read than Jalali Baba is in Urdu.
More than three? There are still those who are left out...
There, I have, with this rather lengthy post, paid my dues bam'aa sood, as the proverb goes. ¶ 6/12/2005 09:45:00 PM
Its been like that with me for as long as I can recall. Actually, sitting through the late hours of the night yesterday, poring over all that reference material, I was transported by the nostalgic tunes, which started emanating from the stapler, to a world I had thought I had left far far behind. A world where Madi and I used to wait until the eleventh hour before we would get started with the task at hand, which could be an exam in less than 10 hours, or a presentation in 10 hours, or an assignment due in 8 hours. Getting started, however, was a ritual. It included going down in Lahore's kadaake-ki-sardi winter to Barkat Market, picking up "Jolt Cola", and a few snacks to go with it, and getting back in an hour's time.
Barkat Market was not more than a kilometer away though. What took us that long was the irritating tendency of the Barkat Market walas not to stock up on "Jolt Cola". "Jolt Cola" earned the inverted commas during one of our quests to locate a 1 litre bottle of the drink. Madi had, on that day, decided to quit Coke and Pepsi both. His reason was simple. Our sole hope against the rising corporate dominance on our lives lay in supporting the smaller corporations, which had not yet attained growth of conglomerate proportions. Once the biggies had been driven out of business, and new conglomerates established on the back of our unwavering support, we could support a newbie to dilute the conglomerate influence of the new biggies. This, he said, established corporate harmony with the world, where constant replacement is the name of the game.
My objection lacked conviction as well as logic, "But, no one drinks Jolt Cola."
Madi made what seemed quite a valid point, "Do not start your sentences with 'But', and if no-one drinks Jolt Cola, how come they are all out of Jolt Cola?"
I was jolted into reality. In an instance, he was able to demonstrate to me, with empirical data on his side, that the whole city was in it with him, in his drive to send Coke and Pepsi packing.
We continued with our quest for "Jolt Cola", and find it we did. While the discovery in itself was close to nothing out of the ordinary, because if you look for something for long enough and hard enough, you do eventually find it; what was extraordinary was the exclamation that Madi uttered, rather more audibly than necessary, upon seeing crates and crates of Jolt Cola in a bakery,"Jolt Cola!!!Yahee to hai jis ki mujhey talaash thee!". Saying so, he grabbed one of the 1 litre bottles lovingly, and turned to face what can only be called collective amazement, and what I perceived as utter disdain, in the bakery. Being the perfectly logical people that we were, we decided "Jolt Cola" could never be seen without the inverted commas. We are still trying to figure the logic out.
When it was not "Jolt Cola", it was something else that stole an hour of our precious time right from under our noses. We would get back, and work diligently towards establishing an ambience conducive to us studying, which included opening our books at the right pages, getting the notes from classroom lectures in chronological order, and our ball point pens ready to roll. Half an hour later, when the ambience had been created to perfection, we would decide we deserved a breather, and one of us, yours truly most often, would doze off.
An hour later, the other would wake the sleeping study partner (SP1) up, who would then go brush his teeth, and wash his face, just so there was no chance of any of that neend sheend coming back to threaten his GPA. He would come back to the room to find the hitherto waking study partner (SP2) sleeping, with a hand written page containing ten points summarizing half the project/presentation/assignment.
SP1 would then get down to business, gulp down a couple of glasses of "Jolt Cola", go through the ten points, complete the ten points on the rest of the project/assignement, and wake SP2 up, just before dozing off. SP1 would then go brush his teeth, wash his face, lest he get sleepy again, and go through the ten points left for him. By this time, it would be an hour or two to go, so he would wind the clocks up, leave instructions for the household to wake us up (as a back-up plan), and go to sleep.
Oh, and if it were a presentation we were working on, we would be joined by NAB, also known as SP3. SP3 was good with powerpoint, so he would make the presentation, Madi would do the typing, formatting, and subsequent to my editing, printing. Because SP3's services were often not required till early morning, he could be allowed to sleep till three in the morning. It worked so well for us, we managed to score well on each one of our projects/assignments without so much as lifting a finger prior that one long night.
So much so, when for our Strategic Management course, where we were all in groups of six and seven, we managed to employ this division of labour and nocturnal bliss strategy and score an A. This despite the fact that at three in the morning, when the case study had been finalized and slides prepared, Felicity had called in to say she had reservations about our assumptions on that case study. With the very premise of our solution thrown in doubt by the most intelligent person in the group, we set about discussing the case once again, and came out with a totally new solution to the problem. Yet, we were able to catch up on our sleep, prepare new slides, print the report, submit it on time, and score an A.
Yesterday, as I sat here in my chair, trying to figure out how to pack three books worth of information in a two hour presentation, and then make powerpoint slides too, I was reminded of my amazing and wonderful friends. I got the data right, and managed to scrap by with a semblance of a presentation too, but I hardly slept at all, and there were no slides.
Anyhow thats done, and the next session is scheduled for Thursday, so if any of you guys pass by the Shaikh Zayed Road at four in the morning of that day, and see an almost bald, almost fat guy squinting at his monitor, you can wave. I will wave back.
Since it does not look like I will be getting around to responding to AA and Yasmine's tag any time soon, I think I should take this opportunity to complete this task here too. After all this has been due since March 30-31, 2005.
This tagging was done with the false assumption that I am a voracious reader, while it has been months since I finished a book I had started in the same month. Here goes:
You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Luckily, by the time I have got to responding to the tag, this question has been much clarified. I have not read many books, which has served to keep the number of books I did not like to a minimum. There was a book in Urdu I had read in my school days, thinking it to be a book of knowledge on the history of Prophets. It was called Qisas-ul-Anbiyaa (Stories of the Prophets, though I have seen a wonderful, wonderful book by the English title). It has to rank amongst the most offensive books I have ever read. The book aspires to dramatize the Prophets' lives, and in doing so, often borrows from 'fsanwi" themes and settings. Many an account has been embellished with stories which have no authentic basis, and some of the things I remember having read in that book border on blasphemy.
If I were stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, the one book I would want to be would be "Qisas-ul-Anbiya".
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
I don't think so. I was too busy having crushes left, right and centre in real life. If ever they had an exam about crushes, I would have passed with flying colors. Then I got married, and that was the end of it all. Wives, they say, come with these inbuilt antennae that detect a crush from afar, and if you are any smarter than the next guy who got the bailna treatment, you will know not to have any crushes...not even on fictitional characters.
Frankly, I should have had a crush on almost each of Naseem Hijazi's heroines. They were these brave and proud girls, who were wise beyond their years, and rode into the enemy lines with swords strapped to their waists at some point or the other in the book. Naseem Hijazi wrote some 19 books, 15 of them historical novels covering the rise and fall of the Islamic powers from the shores of Spain to the fields of India. But, I was twelve by the time I finished the last of those books, and I was too young to be having crushes on ladies older than me.
The last book you bought is...?
The Circle of Innovation by Tom Peters. For details refer the first paragraph of this post. AA and I discovered the one second hand bookshop in Dubai, and we bought quite a few titles from there. Mine included Catcher in the Rye, Three men on a bummel, and White Fang. This in addition to a couple of titles by Wodehouse, the Yousufi of English as far as I am concerned. I am sorry, I have not had the time to even open the books, so don't even know the authors by heart - how is that for ignorance?
The last book you read?
For the umpteenth time, Khakim ba Dahan, by Mushtaq Ahmad Yousufi. This is his second book, and I had first read it way back in 1991. It was also the first book by Yousufi that I had read. I had not finished the book then. It was 'too dry' for me, when compared with Shafeeq-ur-Rehman, Karnal Mohammad Khan, and Pitras Bokhari whom I had read by then.
In 1993, when I had rediscovered Yousufi with Aab-e-gum, his third book, I had gone completely crazy. Ever since 1993, I have not been able to read much Urdu literature. Nothing seems good enough, humourous enough, tragic enough, philosophical enough and worth my time enough. In the meanwhile, I must have read his four books, Chriagh Taley (1956), Khakam ba dahan (1962), Zarguzisht (1973), and Aab-e-Gum (1987) tens of times, and still when I read these books today they leave me wiser as well as amused. Jalali Baba, I might have got the years wrong, please do not crucify me for that.
Yousufi is perhaps the only common factor between Jalali Baba and me, it was definitely the main reason we became friends.
What are you currently reading?
The Circle of Innovation, Selling the Invisible, Jerome K. Jerome's Three men on a Bummel, and Aab-e-Gum.
Five books you would take to a deserted Island.
The Holy Quran with Urdu translation, preferably by Maulana Maududi, because in a deserted island that might just be my sole survival kit, my one guard against regression, and my only beacon of hope.
Saheeh Bukhari, because my heart will long for love and passion.
Aab-e-gum, Zarguzisht, and Khakam ba dahan bound into one, because I will need to keep my wits about me.
Collected works of P. G. Wodehouse, because he is in the same league as Yousufi for me.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, because it is my favorite book in English, and will probably be so for a long time to come, and because at a deserted island, I will have ample time to empathize with Yossarian.
... and if I am allowed a sicth book after above, my blue book of Yawariyat, for one would like to see what one had felt when one was in the company of fellow men, and compare it with feelings when one has no company.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Jalali Baba, because he is a voracious reader, and his knowledge retention capacity far surpasses that of his unholy disciple's. He is also the closest thing to photographic-memory-made-hazy-by-Marlboro Reds, I know.
Da Momma, because she along with her blog-celeb daughters has, in the past month or so, gone through more books from my humble collection than I myself have in a year's time. Wonder if this family left a book unread in Isloo.
Half Past Nomad, because he is newly married, and has a job to go back to, and will hate being tagged. Also because he is a fellow Catch-22 fan, and that alone warrants his inclusion in this list.
AWK, because she is one other voracious reader that I know personally, and because she introduced me to Karen Armstrong.
Saadat, because he has one of the most wonderful blogs ever, and because he relishes being a blog-celeb, and enjoys seeing people beg him to update, before he comes back with one of his trade-mark, lovely, insightful posts.
Sh_Guf, because she is perhaps the only person I know who is better read than Jalali Baba is in Urdu.
More than three? There are still those who are left out...
There, I have, with this rather lengthy post, paid my dues bam'aa sood, as the proverb goes. ¶ 6/12/2005 09:45:00 PM
