Category: Work

Late Night Shifts

Love working at nights. No phone calls. No pesky bosses. No door bells. No girlfriends. No traffic. No Aaj Tak. No breaking news. No where to go. Nothing else to do. Work. And bliss.

While writing this, I was in the middle of composing a long email (to VP and RK), working on a sitemap (for SS), a phone call (from VG) and a session of poker (on FB).

Written at 1:31 AM, Friday, December the 4th, 2009.

Work Better

I have realized that I work better when …

  1. I am facing a wall. I this helps me keep distractions to the minimum.
  2. Listening to music I like. This helps in concentrating.
  3. The background noise is at bare minimum. For obvious reasons.
  4. There’s a glassful of water next to me. And a loo within 10 seconds walking distance.
  5. My feet are free. Or read as, when I am not wearing any shoes. May be my brain is in my toes?
  6. I have a notepad and few pencils to scribble things on. I like taking notes!
  7. Lights are dimmed. Not too much of a brightness fan. Blame it on q3?

I am trying to build this list. Lets see how far this goes. Once I have everything in place, I would move!

What helps you work better? Any more tips?

Mental Masturbation

Just came out of a brainstorming session with my boss. He calls these sessions as Mental Masturbation.

Someone on Urban Dictionary has defined Mental Masturbation as

The act of engaging in useless yet intellectually stimulating conversation, usually as an excuse to avoid taking constructive action in your life.

For us, its usually one short 20 minute session where we talk about things that we dont really get time to talk about. It could be things like the future of business to way people think to why people communicate to why are we what we are to anything under the sun. It generally starts as one person introducing a subject and then everyone debating on things. Awesome ideas come out of it and its as satisfying as an orgasm can be.

And it gives me immense satisfaction to be a part of mental orgy. I think if I can do this day in and day out, it will be simply awesome. And in my humble opinion most of the radical ideas that have moved the world have come as an outcome of mental masturbation. If anyone wants to engage in a mental orgy, please drop a line.

One year at Creativeland Asia


This day, last year, I moved from GE Money to Creativeland Asia and its one of those few decisions that I have not regretted or reconsidered.

Reasons are two fold.

1. GE was not my kind of place. It might be very very good place to work and might have very good work policies but it did not work for me. May be I am not programmed to work under structures and rulebooks and guidelines and policies and checklists.

2. Creativeland Asia on the other hand, has been a very rewarding and enriching experience. Its my kind of place. Its my land. Just about over an year old, its not really perfect. It can obviously be better. And I, we at Creativeland are working towards it. Hopefully will see some results soon.

I have learned lots of lessons and have made tons of mistakes in this past year. And Creativeland has truly given me a canvas where I can make mistakes and learn from them. At Creativeland we are moving towards that fictional Utopian world.

Hope the coming year is even better and we get closer to making that revolution happen.

P.S.: Why do I always talk about revolutions?

Fake Characters

Inspired by work done by Phonethics, I also thought I would create some characters. And some lives. Here is the first draft.

Koncious Kapoor

KK is our typical metrosexual Indian. He belongs to a very small time in UP and his is the first family to have stepped out of their town. They hence have an elevated status amongst their peers. Kconcious Kapoor has studied in a boarding school and although he has a modernish outlook towards life, he is still conscious of his background and upbringing. Like any typical young Indian, he wants to get rich quick, become famous and is really scared of facing an audience.

Khoob Bai

Everyone knows that KB is 35ish, claims to be 25ish, looks 30ish and is 45ish in real. She does everything including cleaning utensils, scrubbing floors, acting as the informal communication channel between young lovers, delivering gossip and obviously peeping on personal affairs of her employers. She knows more secrets than the FBI, CIA, RAW, The Mossad, MI6 and KGB combined. And she keeps dropping hints about her (in)famous access to information. She promises her loyalty to everyone but she is loyal to only one thing – money.

Totaram Sharma

better known as Sharma Ji in his colony and Sharma Babu in his office. He is a struggling middle aged government employee who has been a clerk since last 30 years and has seen two salary hikes and one promotion. He is a perpetual landmark on his office canvas. All the kids in his colony hate him for his never ending cribbing about noise and ruckus that these kids make. He has two teenaged daughters that add to his agony in life. He is also known for speaking for hours without making any sense at all.

Toofan Kumar

is in a perpetual state of hurry. He is rushing for something or the other. He even talks as fast as he walks. Folklore has it that he was last seen relaxing when he was standing in the visa queue to US of A. He thinks that world today is full of opportunists and he needs to do something about it. He feels very passionately about all the popular social causes and actively participates in debates around these. Motive is not to save trees or prevent child abuse but to pave a road for his political dreams. And of course the visa was rejected.

Happy Singh

is a typical surd. Happy go lucky, content and hungry – all three at the same time. Thanks to his beard, no one knows where his smile begins and ends. Or if he is smiling at all. He is on the heavier side and has an insatiable appetite. Every time he sees a cow, goat, chicken or any other animal of edible quality, his hunger pangs strike him. He is still single with no immediate plans or chances either. His family lives in Ludhiana and thus he has all the money he needs to live comfortably without working.

This has potential to become a huge business by itself. Not on the lines of what Phonethics is doing but something else. Keep watching.

Future of War of Words

Few Facts First

1. No one reads your personal blog if your last name is not Hilton or Spears.

2. Even though people dont read your personal blog, it still hangs in the air (stays on the Internet) for everyone to see and read.

3. It still reveals a lot of things about you. Lot of them desirable (that you think, that you are honest, that you like straight-forward, that you love adventure sports) and lot of them undesirable (that you are old, that you are a MBA, that you are getting balder with each passing day, that you are still single and that you dont want to get married) etc.

As I have said earlier that I am thinking what to do with this blog (here and here), I will try to pen down the arguments against and for the decision.

Reasons against shutting down

1. 4 years of effort (first post ever here)

2. Emotional attachment (even though no one else reads this, I write because I want to write and I like venting out whatever I think is relevant to me).

3. Very strong identity (Google for Saurabh Garg and this is amongst the first results).

Reasons for shutting down

1. 4 years of effort – with every passing day this 4 years is growing and would be more difficult to shut tomorrow.

2. Very strong identity – I started this when I was a student. Today I am looking at creating businesses. Every new contact I make in the real world would search for me on the Internet. And they see this blog – which is a good thing but does not talk about my work and other professional interest areas. One way to go about this is to brand this as a personal blog and move on (this is a good idea – I will do this right away).

So basically there is only one strong reason for me even thinking about shutting this blog. Point to ponder is that is it that big that I shut this down (wow three “that”s in six words – a new world record?). Will keep on adding points and thoughts to this. And come to think about it, this could be an interesting personal marketing and branding problem.

How about selling this on ebay? May be I get few interesting bids and money can motivate me to finally end this? Any offers from any generous people around?