One of mine

In the private sector the word “team” gets abused and over emphasized. At least that is my opinion. Seemingly when there is no team the managers keeps on throwing the word at you thinking that just by repeating the word “team” will automatically make the team to appear. In some sense I understand that. At a certain education level that might be the case. If you are dealing with people who are able to think for themselves, they will form their own opinion no matter what the managers do to make up a team. The moment that happens the managers effort becomes useless.

Talking to our HR managers I have realized office politics is a very common thing. I agree too. After all it is people from variety of backgrounds and educational levels working together in any given work place.

Recent happenings at work made me thinks of how to be in a team. To be precise what conditions one would have to fulfill if I am to be a member of their team. Please do not misunderstand this. I don’t have a separate team. I belong to the team of my company/team/department/etc., but I will call that my team. In my mind if the person  next to me to be included in my team (or the person next to me wants me to be a member of his/her team) him/her needs to fulfill certain criteria. So I list…

1. I should be able to trust the person. If that person get caught in playing double games, get caught in lies, get caught spying on me, I will not be in a team with that person.
2. I should be able to have faith in that person. When that person needs me, I will be there for him/her but reciprocity of that is expected. You could call it selfish but I think the TEAM is a collectively selfish concept
3. That person should be able to speak his/her mind (may be at least in confidence). If that person speaks someone else’s mind or to put it in other words mouth piece of someone’s, no can do…I will not be part of that person’s team.
4. Independence is the key. If you don’t have independent mind, if your thoughts/ideas are someone else’s or they are being controlled by someone else, I would be reluctant to be a part of your team.

At the moment that’s all which comes to my mind. I will expect readers to add more. That is if anyone reads my blog any more

By the numbers…

One year has past from my first post. I did not even noticed. This is the 50th post. Now, that one I noticed. Unlike Taboo, people have read me only 6000 times. Every one cannot be Taboo. In any case I like reading the other bloggers. Lately, I missed that too.

One of my bosses at the new job gave me some solid advice. He told me to keep up with my reading and writing. I whole heartedly agree with him. I am usually a lousy writer. Sometimes my brain works when I sit in front of the computer, sometimes it freezes.

Talking about the numbers, our education minister is trying to make Mathematics not compulsory. I have written about this previously too. This proposal has been rejected by the cabinet twice. He still keeps on talking about it. I wonder why he could not do this about religion. Religion should not be a compulsory subject.

Another one of my bosses writes a column on daily FT. In one of them he was writing about the number of astrology columns vs the number of astronomy columns. Sri Lanka lacks a culture of science. I find it very hard to get the word nanotechnology out to the public.

Here is one example. We ship 80,000 metric tons per year of Ilmenite to foreign countries. We only earn $ 8 million for that. Ilmenite is use to extract titanium dioxide, which is a vital ingredient used in the paint industries. The point is we import titanium dioxide. Only 5000 metric tons per year. We pay $ 12.5 million for it. I guess math should not be compulsory after all. It doesn’t seem to work.

I see people have given up on the country. They have waited for things to fall on their laps and have forgotten how to work hard to get what they want. It is easy to dig and sell rather than invest and work hard to  add value.

I must say, Not every industry is like this. Tea finally learned the lesson. The tea industries got together and finally passed the earnings of Kenya on a smaller volume. So hurray for Sri Lankan Tea!

There are some gloomy numbers too but everyone is talking about them. So I will let that “deer skin” go for this time. On the 63rd independence day, let’s try to be independent from our own selves!

Time to write again…??

Well….after a long silence I realized it is time to write again. Apologize to anyone who followed me.

I am back in Sri Lanka. Have been for little more than a month. Have been working in a fast pace private company. The only legitimate nanotechnology company. It has been fun. Unfortunately due to the sensitive nature of things, I will not be able to talk about my job.

YET..

There are tons of things I wanted to write. Frankly I have been very tired after work. Mostly because the  travel to and from work takes the fun out of everything. I have tried every form of travel possible except for walking the 20 km. Buses waste lots of time. Roads are crap. Yes some roads like the road in front of my house is carpeted. I am not sure why. That has made it very hard to cross the road as people drive very fast. Also it is very hard to walk as there are no side walks. Instead there is big dip on either side of the road.

When we were little, we were told to walk on the right side of the road. How many people do it now? Even on the right side all the vehicles drive within inches from my face. I met a school teacher today on the way back home. She told me how the school kids have deteriorated compared to our school days. We both arrived at the same conclusion the TV. Man..I have never seen so much crap on TV anywhere else. People watch them (including my peeps at home) religiously.

Cricket is everywhere. I am losing my cricket love. Every round about, every junction, every TV station, even on school note book covers, cricketers are there. If you want a kid to learn something at school, why not have a scientist’s face on a note book. What possibly could your kid learn from Jayasooriya on your kid’s note book. I can list few things but I rather not.

Oh yeah, I have been waiting to write these in Sinhalese but again tiredness makes my brain to freeze. So until I really get used to Sri Lankan system, bare with me.

Finally, there is a bo tree about 100 yards from my house. Every morning at 6 am pirith is being played at that place. So no late sleeps anymore. Funny thing is that I heard through the grapevine that the guy who takes care of the place is a petty thief. Now that is one step closer to the “Dharma Rajjaya”. May all religions attain nibbana.