Sunday Posts

This is the end of another working week - the second as I am counting from the submission of my visa application - and though I haven't achieved any major milestone in the last few days, I end this week feeling far more content and in control than I was last Friday. There are several reasons for this, but the biggest one surely is that I could instill a bit of discipline in life. I start travelling starting next Monday, but I have to watch out and not lose control again. The next week is sure going to be rough, as I am mostly staying away, with limited access to Internet, and attending so many meetings. However, considering that I haven't travelled since the 7th of May - OK , wrong, haven't travelled for work since then - this is going to be a bit of a break and return of normalcy. Today there is also the big birthday party for Nelson Mandela in the Hyde Park, which I spent time watching. Mandela was late, but when you are 90, no one minds if you come to your birthday party...

I did write something wrong on my previous day's diary, and I must start with a correction. I said that most of the legislation labour government passes excludes themselves - the public sector, by implication - and cited as example how on one hand, government is legislating against age discrimination but on the other, has a clearly ageist immigration policy. The correction is that the latest Equality legislation are indeed focused on the public sector, where the gender gap and ageism is very common, and it has been indicated that these legislation will be expanded in future to cover the private sector as well. So, I was not exactly correct in saying that labour government always excludes itself from its good-intent governance. However, my point about the immigration policy will still stand. Britain has a fairly muddled immigration system. All the people like me, who wanted to come and settle in Britain because of cultural familiarity, has suffered from inconsistent policy and ve...

I had an unexpectedly good day as work is building up again. I started early in the morning - and this is always helpful as I consider myself a 'morning person' - and got some work done. My day was good as I could intervene and part-solve a crisis, read books, and even our accountant told me that I should not consider there is a closed door and if I need money, I should indeed turn to him. I couldn't expect more surely. One issue resurfaced again. This whole thing about long term/short term thinking. I would think this is a bane of modern society - the inevitable drift towards short-term thinking. It is not about people, really. It is about how things are structured. Professional Management, Democratic Politicians, Public Listed Companies - by their very nature are biased towards short-term thinking. I am not saying that this is necessarily bad - politicians should not start thinking Long Term like Robert Mugabe, surely. And, also, quite obviously, there is no set rule for ...

I guess I am somewhat superstitious in many ways. It is tradition mixed in my mind with habit. There is this old Bengali saying about Tuesday being a good day to start things. This is ingrained in my mind, and however much I try to appear rational, I invariably tend to start things on Tuesday. This is something I shall surely never admit - but there is no point denying that I do think this way. It may not be exactly superstition - as I don't mean to say that I don't do anything on other days of the week - but some sort of prefernce and habit that I live with. In that sense, my week tends to be a Tuesday-Monday week. Today was a fairly eventful day. There are a number of social relationships that I had to work on. This is interesting, as I am otherwise not very social. But, somehow, I did work on a number of these relationships today and had to do something about it. I also realized that I am wasting an undue amount of time on chat - something very tempting in the always-on worl...

Here I am, in the second week, and as I reviewed my last week, I thought with satusfaction that I have achieved many things that I needed to, cleared many pending to-dos, and feeling a bit satisfied that I feel in control of my life. How much of that is due to this focus strategy, and how much is due to the simple fact that I am not travelling now and hence have more time and more predictable life style, it is difficult to tell. But, indeed, travel is surely life-wrecking, specially when one is trying to adjust to a new culture, give time to family, study a new subject and keep fit at the same time. I know my respite is only short-lived, and soon, come September, I am due to travel quite a bit. So, I am trying to make the best out of what I have - the next 90 odd days to fix my life! There are quite a number of issues I need to address within this period of sanity. First, where am I going to stay. This is not about going to Northern Ireland or not, which, I am now convinced, that I nee...

I am sure I can be forgiven to combine the last two days together. Diaries almost always do it, governments do it too; combine that with the fact that I did not do anything much, it looks perfectly justifiable. This has been a weekend in a long time when I was relaxed, did not have to work and did do things which people should ideally do in the weekend - cleaned the car, shopped, bought books, watched movies. Though I have just now turned down an invitation from a friend to go play Tennis in the Park to write this blog, this has been a near-perfect weekend. Also, importantly, I restored some of my reading habits. Started reading a long-overdue 'State of Denial' by Bob Woodward. I have read his Bush at War and Plan of Attack earlier, and did decide to go ahead with this 500+ page tome. That says a lot about his writing. As one reads, one may wonder - how does this guy know so much - and feel as if the author was sitting right there with Bandar Sultan, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney a...

I behaved as if today was Friday, and thank god it was. I almost got used to this British habit of switching to weekend mode at 2pm on Friday. This is curious considering that I have to work most of Saturdays and Sundays as well. Of course I forget - I am possibly looking at a slightly relaxed Sunday because from now on, day to day operations in our Dubai office is being looked after by our Recruitment Director. I am still involved in business planning and new business development, but she is the one our Dubai representative is supposed to call if she needs anything urgently. That will allow me to relax on Sundays, for the time being, at least. So I switched off today and did not do much. But I dont really feel guilty. So far, this has been a good week, work-wise. I managed to achieve certain key things, and covered ground on a few critical issues. Managed to get a job offer and refuse it. Thought about certain specific career goals and as that crystalizes in my mind, hopefully I shoul...