jaadu hai

I’m outside. I hear the bell ring. I did not press it and I am in front of it. How is that even possible? I open the door. Smoke flows out of the house, I can’t see anything inside. There is too much smoke. Against my better judgement I step inside.

I’m falling.

Breathe! It’s just a dream. It’s nothing. Sometimes you fly and sometimes you fall. It’s just a dream.

if all your words were in a <div>
i would style them with <em>phasis
i would take even the weak points
and mark them <strong>
i would put them all front and centre
with “margin: 0px auto;”
and i would put around them
a blue dashed border with a width of one
though if all my words were in a <div>
i would style them with “display: none;”

revenge is a dish best served cold, cut into thin bland slices, with heated ketchup.

She looks right and then left as soon as she steps out of the office building. Out of the corner of her eye she spots smoke. She knows she has found him.

“I’ve been looking for you all over the place, where have you been?”, exasperated, she catches her breath.

“Here”, he says nonchalantly.

“Smoking will kill you and it gives you bad breath”, she knows her advice is unsolicited and will probably be ignored.

“Okay, thanks for the unsolicited advice.”

“Fine, at the very least don’t throw the butt on the ground. It’s disgusting enough that you smoke. Throw it in a garbage bin.”

“Okay.”

“You have to stop hiding.”

“I’m not hiding. I’m just taking a break.”

“You’re late for the meeting, they’re waiting for you. You can’t just disappear, you have to stop hiding. Are you listening to me?”, she notices that he’s drifting away.

He takes a big puff and lets out a rush of smoke.

“Come on, we can’t keep them waiting for too long”, she turns around and starts to walk towards the building.

He takes his last puff, flicks the cigarette butt onto the road and follows behind her.

A lot of management folk I’ve dealt with have brought this up enough times that it’s worth talking about. I cannot stress how wrong this is, but I will try.

The idea is that if you bring up or voice a problem that you must also present a solution.

Any managers that say this or propagate this are practising weak management. They are not doing their job properly.

There are many reasons for this. Most important of all is that organizations that truly excel and improve have a policy of transparency and brutal honesty. Problems and concerns within an organization must traverse the entire management food chain.

In my opinion, bringing up a problem is the most crucial part, regardless of whether you propose a solution or not. Problems equal opportunity, and that opportunity ought to be shared amongst the team/organization. To assume that the person who finds the problem will be the best to solve it is foolish. Having the “no problems without solutions” policy leads to people bottling up problems until they’re able to draw out a solution. This leads to a collection of problems that should have been addressed a long time ago. You cannot afford to have people afraid to voice problems and in general their opinions.

Bringing up problems provides everyone a chance to collaboratively find solutions. Delaying problems simply magnifies them in the future.

The idea is not to create an environment where people are whining, no. The idea is to foster an environment where people are free to voice problems, and collectively discuss and solve them. So as a manager when you tell your team that they shouldn’t voice problems without solutions. You’re failing them. You don’t know what you don’t know, it’s okay to accept that.

I’m trying my darnedest at school not to be sucked in by grading systems. Marks are wrong. The system by which we are graded is extremely flawed. I’m not saying I know a better way. I do not. I simply see what we have currently as flawed.

It’s not conducive to the process of learning at all. Not to mention how the competitive nature of the ranking process often discourages creative collaboration.

In one of the classes a girl was asking a series of questions to see if her approach to the a problem was correct. Her last question was, “But I won’t get a zero will I?”. This highlights the problem with marks. Students are tailoring the way they think and approach problems so that they achieve the highest grades. This, as opposed to thinking about ways to best solve the problem.

In fact, students will often only do assignments because they will be graded on them. Marks become a reason for getting students to do things or else they wouldn’t be interested in doing anything. The grading systems we have are poor substitutes for proper teaching techniques. Grading schemes allow teachers to be lazy in the way they structure the “learning” process. They don’t have to make lessons involving or interesting. They simply need to attach a value by way of marks.

Clearly the system is broken.

More on this later.

I think night school is a brilliant concept, if you have nothing to do during the day.

the moment was full of awe, not to be confused with: an awful moment.

You know when you think something is totally gone or lost, and you won’t get it back and then stuff happens behind the scenes unbeknownst to you and you’re able to get it back.

It’s kinda nice when that happens.

the glass is fully empty.