song of the road

I have another 30 minutes to go before I need to run for a meeting. Somehow I am continuously facing a problem concentrating on work. I must, today. I have a load to do. Also I need to stick it out in this job till my certification is through. Otherwise it may become difficult. So I just have to dig my heels in, remove all unwanted thoughts from my mind and focus on what I have to do now. I need to clear up my load in office and finish catching up. Also need to study hard for the certification. Also figure out a way to go to gym everyday and lose weight. In this last month or so, I have gained most of my lost weight and not feeling so good either. That was to be expected but now is the time to heal. At least with R being out of office, it is going better. Hope I get better enough before he returns. I need my focus badly because I must stick it out here at least till June of this year, as I see now. 

I did a little better in eating yesterday. I am a sucker for the evening snacks that the company provides for free. It was not a good one yesterday. So I did well with eating a couple of small bananas that I brought from home. It’s not a big deal but a start. I think I have no bananas today. But I will try to not have snacks today as well. A few cups of tea should tide me over. Also at the worst case, I will have a few biscuits which won’t be so healthy either but it can help me to break the snacking habit. 

I mixed a spoon of my newly bought protein supplement with my oat meal breakfast. It has a strong pineapple flavor but doesn’t taste bad. Thank God for that. Now I can have it regularly enough with my breakfast plus may make some smoothies with it. Hope it will give me some strength and stamina while working out. I will try to have a smallish smoothie before going to gym. Also noticed it has a very low fat content which is another good thing. Though it does have high carbohydrate content, I figure that should be okay for breakfast. I will try to figure a way by which I can skip dinner which is very late for me or have fruits/vegetables instead. Let’s see. I must do something to lose the weight. As it is I lost weight slowly enough, to have gained it back is such a shame. 

I had bought a small box of about 12 bags of green tea. I had a cup using one tea bag. It is really nice. I was worrying that I won’t like it. But I did. It is green tea flavored with ginger, mint and lemon. The mint flavor was rather nice and it kind of bursts inside the mouth with a sip and is very refreshing. So that is one more good thing is my office drawer. I wish with so much preparations, I would do better work. I really need to do things at work perfectly, to justify the salary and the confidence of my employers. But I can’t now. So I guess I will take round’s advice – sometime good enough is good enough. Instead of feeling bad about not doing well, if I spend that time working, it will be better work. I need to look after my guys a bit more too. Two of them are less than 80% productive. With the kind of work expected to flow in, I need them up to full speed to pull everything through. For all of it to happen, I must be on my toes. 

My time is up for now. Hope you all are doing great. Love to you all. 

This is later. I couldn’t post this before leaving for the meeting. So will write a little bit more before running for lunch. You know I have this perverse tendency. Now that I should not do anything but work, I feel this uncontrollable urge to write and do everything else but work. Well, I guess I will have to stop giving in to my urges and must work diligently post lunch. 

We had this skip level kind of meeting with our CEO. He is a surprisingly nice guy. I mean at least he is ready to listen to us. Looks like many issues haven’t reached him. Most probably no big changes would happen but still it was a pleasure to be in that meeting. We had a center manager joining us a few months back. He is now on long leave because his mom is seriously ill. He too had a meeting where he apparently wanted to “hear” us. Oh Boy! That meeting was bad. He would simply answer back on each and every issue and will prove that it is not an issue. Like I put forward a suggestion for making the client happier and be able to give better service. I said I know there is some client unhappiness brewing. He said we don’t need it because we are already doing an excellent job and client isn’t complaining. I work day-to-day with my clients and have some clue about their feelings. But he who has joined a week back and it will be a year or never before he even meets any end user client for the first time, he knows we are doing an “excellent” job. I was so pissed off. Okay, I understand that lot of things cannot be changed due to many limits and problems, but at least acknowledge the problem when you say you want to hear about the problems. That too I was not complaining but actually proffering a workable solution. You may not agree with my solution, but what kind of a manager will not listen to people who do the day-to-day work. Well, apparently there are many. There had been cases, when others in our extended team have brought work and deals because of their hard earned good rapport with clients, they have been told to mind their own business and those deals were let down the drain.  

Okay that is enough of my rant. Whether I work well enough or not, I seem to have enough problems about others. :) I actually do need to mind my own business and I have enough business right now to take more than my mind. 

See you all later. Have a great day!