Since many past days I have been struggling to find time and motivation to add a post to my blog. It has been devoid of a paragraph for more than a year. Now here I have held on to my once-gathered thoughts again wherein I believe I would be able to deliver a worthwhile point.

A year. I haven’t compared this past year with history but intuition tells me a lot more has happened in this year. My problem for long has been that I struggle to form opinions about any otherwise serious matter. But cursing myself has born its fruits and now it seems I have a view on the things that matter. Long time back by way of watching a movie I came to know of a phenomenon called Butterfly Effect. It is the flutter of many wings in one’s past that make up a person. A person is nothing but the person’s history, hardly matters whether his visualization starts prior to his birth or otherwise. So here starts my journey of arguments which are mostly with myself. Yes I form and express my opinions now. I opine that every evil in this world has its roots at ego satisfying desires, hunger for power and the resulting corruption. I opine that everyone can desire this world to be a peaceful place but it never will be; not without a miracle. So would everyone desire that an event of flutter of some butterfly’s wing would occur in near time and some space around the earth which would cause a chain of events that would lead to an end to whatever evil exists in this world.

There is a very controversial documentary film doing rounds on Web called Zeitgeist, meaning ‘the spirit of the time’. It no doubt helped my handicap of not being able to form strong opinions. But I would rather be careful. It presents a very dangerous point of view. The points it tries to prove by gathering of facts are really thought provoking. As an example, it attributes the power of decision making at Federal Reserve to some major influential international bankers. It says whatever wars America has fought during and post World War I was just to print more and more money and make the bankers richer. This may not sound that ridiculous when you watch this film for yourself. The other two major issues this, propagandist or not, film deals with are Christianity and 9/11. The director of the film tries to show the ‘evolution’ of Christian faith. 9/11 part is just an emphasis of what Michael Moore showed in his ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′. But Peter Joseph, the director of Zeitgeist, provides the reasoning behind too and also deals with truth behind 7/7 London bombings.

An opinion among a considerable number of people exists that US government is controlled by a secret agency. It does not matter who is elected in this week’s elections if that’s true. Be it a $700bn bailout, Afghanistan (no oil country), Iraq, Iran, 9/11, Pearl Harbour, blowing up of US Submarines by Germans, Vietnam and God-knows-what-next; who knows it could really be greed of the amount of interest that goes along with every legal tender called US dollar that is printed and is pocketed by international bankers a lot of whom could be forming blood of the undercover organization. This is just a point of view. An opinion. Expressed by someone and either because of lack of better imagination or intuitive realization of authenticity of this opinion, I endorsed it. Will sustain the endorsement until my research digs into something more rigid and easier to digest view point.

I seriously hope this undercover bunch of members do not form the wing of the butterfly whose flutter could have devastating effect on the world. This year, not much may have happened, but subprime, Lehman fallout, surging crude and a bail out: pray that these were not the planned moves of the dangerous intellectuals sitting at the invisible top. Pray that least of the Zeitgeist ‘facts’ are actually facts. Pray that the sanity and compassion prevail among the hearts of world leaders and pray they be equipped with vision to solve the disputes surrounding Palestine-Israel, North Korea, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Russia-Georgia, and take steps to alleviate poverty in many Asian and African countries to make this world a more worthwhile place live.

]]> http://arifshora.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/of-worldus-and-a-dangerous-possibility/feed/ 3 arifshora http://arifshora.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/youthsoft-labs-the-uncertainties-of-a-start-up/ http://arifshora.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/youthsoft-labs-the-uncertainties-of-a-start-up/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:46:50 +0000 Arif http://arifshora.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/youthsoft-labs-the-uncertainties-of-a-start-up/ ]]>

Following is a case study prepared by me for a start up run by one of my acquaintances. If you can think of a good solution you can contribute the same either by commenting here or dropping in a mail at arifshora@indiatimes.com.

A hardcore software buff Ashfaq was always passionate about computers and programming. He did his certification from DOEACC in the year 2002. While studying for the certification he along with a fellow programmer started coding for some reputed schools in Kashmir valley. He got good feedback and a first income source. He replicated the same for many schools. Seeing the market stagnated in Kashmir he planned to move out and serve some good software company. He went and did the same for a fresh start up in Gurgaon. He came to know about some details, problems and potential growth that were in store for a start up. He got to work very close to client and management because of the company being very small. Doing a similar sort of thing back in his home was the thing that did not let him sleep and he packed his bags and left the job.

Now back in valley he started striving for the projects that could get him a breakthrough. But he was looking for some international or at least outside-the-valley projects. Finally he got it. Only he and his partner in the dream did the work with the help of a couple of assistants. The name that he had given to his dream company during his studying days stayed: YouthSoft Labs.

Now YouthSoft Labs has some important projects in the pipeline. There is uncertainty of business because it does not have enough management expertise to do resource forecasting and planning. In the wake of certain project YouthSoft Labs has recruited a bunch of people and are training them in a particular technology. These recruits are the people who do not want to leave their homeland for a coding job that they can get there only.

Now here are different aspects of this start up and some of the problems it is facing or might face in the future in the respective departments:

Finance

Currently hosted in one room apartment YouthSoft Labs does have financial constraints. In order to have a decent facility and the legs to pay a salary to each of a dozen workers it does need some serious financial planning. Currently it is paying its trainees( half of them) some half of what it would be paying them once they are on a project. It is completely a company based on partnership. The owners have invested initial amounts and now the company is running with the help of one good project which is getting money flowing into their bottom-line.

They do have certain financial liability which they are catering to very easily. The point is that with the scale of business they are having they have enough liquidity to support their staff. Now the question is:

1.) Should they go for more leverage?

2.) Would it make sense to bring in additional partners to get the money flowing?

Human Resources

Current status as mentioned above is that some trainees are on and some projects are in pipeline. If the owners have aggressive growth plans they can attract many projects and start hiring and launch themselves to the stars.

But the problems are:

1.) The quality work force may not be available instantly. How to go about planning the recruitment? How to fill that void of uncertainty?

2.) The quality work force may not be attracted to work for a very uncertain bunch of people?

3.) Is it possible to prepare a small level incentive scheme to attract talent?

4.) Where to hunt people?

5.) What to give them for a career graph?

Marketing

The company has a zero market presence. There seems to be no other method than networking and building business through contacts until the name is recognized. They do not have much marketability. That is to say they have not anything to flaunt so that others get attracted. Nevertheless considering the possibilities, how about following:

1.) How about attracting the work force by placing ads in your local newspapers?

2.) Participating in seminars both within the valley and other parts of India.

3.) Direct marketing This can be done only at the local level. Going to various institutions and proposing the automation solutions directly to them.

Considering there are enough projects but a lack of planning and vision, we can focus on strategy and more so HR Strategy.

Strategy

There is fear of launching YouthSoft Labs into aggressive growth phase that it may fail to do justice to the projects. But a careful strategizing and planning can make the journey to top much smoother than it seems.

The main aspects that need attention are:

1.) To design a timeline for each hiring phase.

2.) To do forecasting about the needed resources.

3.) Think about the facilities provided to resources.

4.) Give them a career graph to retain them.

The answer to above questions is going to provide a perspective to YouthSoft Labs and give them an idea about going ahead with the aggressive growth path.

There are different levels of details that each of us can afford to delve into. Whatever concerns you, that attracts you, you tend to dive so close to the surface of that particualar abstract-or-not thing that you can see the most unseen of the details. Those details which are a mere minutaie to the person sitting next to you. I know that by now you have got the idea what an unimportant thing is being discussed in a blog. But for goodness sake you can help me figure out this confusion that I have been having ever since I was a child.
Is it not imperative for us to imagine and feel the pains of hunger suffered by below poverty in India and some other countries for that matter? We call ourselves human rights defenders but are we even concerned. All of us know that there has never been anything perfect about the world or will never be so. But is it not imperative upon us to think, feel and act.

In the above stack of words I did exactly what I discussed. I went into detail leaving alone the big picture stuff. What concerns me is a human being’s limited use of energy. There is enormous amount of stuff filled in a man. The thing is that the seeking of pleasure and the bids to enjoy his ego massage block the more productive and rational things that he could think about and thus achieve a change.

The confusion I have suffered is simple: Why cannot we feel the importance of others and visualize as much as we are capable of, rather than just some ten percent of it as proved by the research. There has to be among people a better understanding of their own egos, they got to break it apart, analyze it and realize some more rational stuff that they should be doing.

As a fresher I always wished if I had spent some time in some organization before going for an MBA: that would really have settled the concepts and facts much more firmly in my mind. Now that I have completed more than three months in Wipro Technologies doing my internship, it seems as if everything has fallen into place except the moments when I have to scan Wiki pages or when I feel the need to google out the facts that I so desire to recall!!

But I must say that the time I spent here was one of the most satisfying periods of my life. It is true that the amount of work I expected (like the rest of my batch mates) was never given. But whatever it was, completing it gave a blissful feeling of finally applying some zero-point-zero-something percent of whatever I had printed and shaped in my head. I believe in reviews of books and movies and its organization extrapolation has me believing that Wipro is too good a co to work for. If they wish, yeah sure, I would like to keep working here, unless someone else peeps more closely into my Johari Window.

Wondering what is the purpose of the above chatter. Well if you thought that some jinx had caught the blog since long, it was to break just that!!

These days I have got a habit of checking out the rating of movie on IMDB before I watch it. Let me tell you, it helps. The ratings are accurate, at least as far as my taste goes. Recently I checked the rating of 1992 movie of Al Pacino called ” Scent of a Woman”. It showed 7.5 out of 10. Normally I feel interested in anything above 6.5, so this one was kind of must watch. By name it seemed to me a romantic flick, which I normally do not prefer. But Al Pacino persuaded me!In this movie Al Pacino plays a retired blind Lieutenant Colonel named Frank Slade. He is sort of a tough guy as anyone would expect a retired colonel to be. A high school kid named Charlie, played by Chris O’Donnell, is hired for a weekend to take care of him as his family would be going for a vacation. Frank reveals his dominating personality very early to Charlie. As soon as the family goes off, Frank asks Charlie to accompany him to New York where he has some important job to get done. Charlie resists that he cannot go. But Colonel is too dominating to resist for Charlie.

Colonel does not confide to Charlie why they are going to New York. The purpose of his visit to New York is nothing but to enjoy all that life has to offer within a span of two days and then Go!! Yes he has plans to end his life because he cannot live as blind man for the rest of his years.

What I found captivating and awe inspiring in the whole movie was the way he gets Charlie freed of the punishment that he would be given if he did not reveal the names of three school boys who played mischief with a senior faculty of the school. The speech that he delivers is so real and impressive that everything is clear to the jury and they decide in favour of Charlie.

The principal wants that Charlie tell him the name of culprits otherwise he would be punished. But Charlie keeps firm with his integrity and conscience intact. He does not let his career take off at the expense of his three friends. That is the argument Colonel builds his commanding speech around. He tells the committee that it makes no sense to punish a guy because he is not ready to compromise on his integrity. The Colonel attacks the very foundation of the school which proclaims to produce leaders. He tells them that Charlie would be the best example of a leader.

The Colonel gives his own example telling that he too has been at cross roads where he has had to take decision whether to take right path or smart path. He says that he knew the right path always but he never took it, because it required a lot of courage. He points to the courage and bravery of Charlie who, without caring for his future, did not let his integrity and conscience die and took a right path.

Overall the film was enjoyable and it was well made. Al Pacino the Colonel is able to tell the name of the perfume a woman is wearing by smelling it, and there goes why of the name. Sometimes he is able to tell her cultural and educational background as well!!

I would say I loved the movie!

Every particle is connected to everything else in the universe. For yourself you can increase the odds of this being possible by realizing the fact that at the subatomic level everything is intangible. It’s all a convolution in space and time!

With me the coincidences happen so often that I have to believe that some super natural power exists in the universe or beyond it. These coincidences are too nominal to mention but their timing is phenomenal. I just cannot understand how some word, number or incident can occur just when something related is going in my mind.

I know that there is a level of universe which is beyond our conscious mind. There are phenomena like relativity and quantum mechanics that cannot be explained to our five senses; we need to imagine beyond. No one has been able to solve the mystery of mind till date. Philosophers have pondered about the behaviors and attitudes, morals and religion, soul and thought but they could not get to the root of it all.

Our thoughts are nothing but some ripple across the unknown convolution of space. When two pieces of magnet attract each other, they do not use physical contact not even air to get closer to one another. But there is a disturbance in space around those two pieces which cause one thing to move towards the other. I believe this same invisible force that we cannot explain is there within atomic levels and if we imagine more carefully we can realize that all there is but various attractive forces holding some particles together. What are these particles made of: Nothing but more particles but where does it end. It ends with space. Here I bring a crude analogy between some properties created in space when two magnets attract each other and the properties of space that exist when we reach the ultimate sub-sub-atomic levels. And that is what everything is made of. As we know everything is made of atoms, so we can say that everything in this world is nothing but certain properties of space.

But as we know that space is all integrated and continuous, we can conclude that everything in this universe in somehow linked to everything else in this world by the continuous medium which we know by name ’space’.

I crave for the day when I come to know about the source of coincidences that occur to me. I have come to know it is all connected but the lack of details makes my knowledge utterly useless.

I have no other option but to believe that He is there!!

Journalists in present times have got a real power of shaping up the public opinion. There are many incidents and events that take place across the world. A relevant piece is brought out by a journalist and the public comes to know about it. It all depends on where the news presenter wants the news or editorial to bend towards. His power of revealing or hiding a piece of information has a great bearing upon how the reader or listener is influenced. Now it all depends on how gullible one is. If you are able to look rationally into the matter with a good imaginatory work then you are likely to get a different picture then what is being told or what has been written.

A government has a huge control over media as to what sort of news it wants to hide from people. Suppose a country X is in war with some other country Y and the country X does badly and many of its soldiers are killed which are more in number than the enemy casualties, will the country X dare to tell its people that they have lost the war and these many soldiers are dead? No. That will severly hamper the morale of people of nation. Moreover the youth will get reluctant to join the forces.

It takes no genius to guess that there are more number of American soldiers dying in Iraq than actually reported by CNN or Fox. The revealed toll of dead is just about low enough that somehow the President is able to justify the occupation of Iraq till this time.

There was such a massive coverage of 9/11. There was just a single interpretation and thus a justification for America to demolish Afghanistan and an opportunity to show its might was created. There are online and offline communities of native Americans and Europeans who hold that 9/11 was a hoax.

There are also a huge number of proponents who ask “Did they actually land on moon”..? These guys also claim to have a way to prove logically that they did not.

Another good example of distortion of minds is the way the Indian government controls the information that goes out of Kashmir. It ensures that an issue against its army dies down fast and is not hyped. There are great number of incidents that were hoaxed by Indian army in kashmir and the media was kept oblivious or not allowed to broadcast the news.

What Israel Army does to Palestinians in their own land is deplorable. They are the real terror to Palestinians when they come with their huge tanks to destroy them. Yet CNN will call them honourable Israeli Army rather than terrorists, just to set the conditions for the justification of Americans supporting the Israeli cause.

Well these are very complex issues and there are many more which demonstrate how the control of media is important for a government to force its rather unjustifiable policies.

There were times when I was at home and used to celebrate Eid with full vigour. Now here I am far away in some eastern corner of India where the most reputed of the institute lies. I could not fast this year’s Ramadan because of lots reasons each of whom is absurd by itself but when combined made me realise that I better not! I hope that next year I will complete all my obligations and try to be home on Eid

This year I celebrated Diwali instead and it was great to see the competition of illumination and rangoli among different residential halls here at IIT. It was massive not for me only( this was my first experience of Diwali) but the whole batch was awed by the scale. All of us contributed in lighting some ten thousand diyas. A huge vertical plane was erected ( size of three storeyed building) and a beautiful theme was drawn and the outline was covered by diyas! It looked great!
But our Hall could not win the competition but still it was fun and it was an event that none of 120 of us is going to forget ever.

This is the first time I am away from home all alone and am going to be so for the next ten days. Anybody’s guess I am missing my parents and old time and all time friends…..especially Irfan and Nazim.

This is my first educational course since my first school without Irfan…(my school time friend who became more of a mentor).

Whatever institute it be…school, college or for that matter a coaching institute……we did it together. Nazim was also with us for sometime but then he got a chance to his way a little earlier. Three of us still have fun together whenever all of us are in Srinagar. The occasional appearances by other two good friends: the Banglorean(Ovaise) and the Lawyer(Faheem) do occur, but they somehow manage to remain out of touch!

There are so many memorable instances all of us have experienced together. I don’t remember all of them now but will write them as I recall in subsequent posts. Nazim, the prolific output function, has always something to deliver….I do the most of listening while Irfan proves sometimes a potential argument to him at times…but then he always manages…

Let me tell you something about our picnic trips….they happen at an unusual time….they happen spontaneously…they are long drives….and when we reach there for some reason or the other we have to turn our car back and rush towards our homes and the picnic spot space vanishes and enjoyment time tends to zero.

I hope next time this does not happen when all of us might be in Srinagar….next summer.

The Durga Puja holidays have almost started at IIT. Almost three fouths of the students have left for either their homes or for some trip. It feels good that I m not the only one staying back. Lots of other guys have stayed here itself for their different respective reasons. These times I feel are very weird: this is the first time here that I am not feeling any pressure and feel a little directionless.

Ramadan has started and not as usual I m not able to fast regularly. But I will surely try to…….

Lots of free time, so lots of movies and a little bit of reading……
Plus chatting, plus Table Tennis…well I am beginning to feel that I too can play it!

Lots of time to spend with myself…

More entertainment than hard work….

More sleep than back pain….

More time with laptop than books..

.

….

And I really miss my home and my Kashmir…