Occupational hazards of being an event manager

Last three years, apart from dabbling into other small time things, I spent most of my time as an event manager. And as an event manager I planned, executed and managed events of all sizes. From audiences as small as 5 guests to crowd as big as 20,00,000 over a period of five days, I managed it all.

So first things first. Unlike other "office" jobs where you are supposed to just play the role of an email jockey, you need to be out there on the ground and be a live witness to all the "action". In most cases, rather than being a mere witness, you end up being part of the "crime scene". I did not mind any of this action; on the other hand, I loved being at the middle of all these crime scenes. And more time I spent in the middle, more time I wanted to spend. It was like an addiction. The way you get addicted to dope, I was getting addicted to spending time running shows and getting things in place.

Panorama, from an iPhone,of an event that I managed last year

Now that I am not actively working on events and I have time to zoom out and look at my time as an event manager. And I realized a few truths about myself. And most of them can easily be classified as occupational hazards!

Here's is a quick list.

1. You learn to live with a perpetual depression. I dont know about others but after every major event where the event ends on a high with dinner, I get majorly depressed. I get sad. So sad that I want to bury myself neck deep in sand somewhere and not do anything. Not even sleep, sleep anyways wont come because you are so high on adrenaline after an event well done. You just lie on your bed, staring at the ceiling and waiting for a kick in the butt.

And I can clearly see a pattern. Every time, without fail, after an event, I get into a major depression. Most of my colleagues get drunk after an event and by the time they wake up next morning, the previous evening is all foggy and I suspect that leaves no room for depression. But for a teetotaler like me, events can be hazardous. The very thought of writing this post came to me after a large event that I did a few weeks back. Never got around to writing this that time.

Funny, while I write this, I can sense a tiny amount of depression creeping up on me, for, I haven't really been at the center of action for some time now. Its one of those things, you cant live with or live without.

2. You get addicted to a state of constant excitement. Ever read about junkies, alcoholics and gamblers? Why do they keep going back to their poison? Not that someone forces them to. They crave for the rush that they get from that next injection or that next vodka shot or that next bet of a thousand bucks. The outcome is not important. What is important is living in the moment. The moment when that drug hits your blood stream, or when all the attention of other gambler is on you and you are supposed to bet a lot of money. That rush. You get addicted to it. You know its taking you on a downward spiral but we are humans. We give more importance to immediacy. We want things now. There is no time for later. We can deal with consequences later. Time is unlimited. We would fix. But right now, let me order just one more peg, play one more hand, do another event.

You get the drift? Ok, compare it to driving an open top car at high speed on a long road without any bends. You can see mountains in the distance and there is no trace of humanity on your right or your left. Its you, the road, the open roof car and that wind in your hair (even if you are bald). Or compare it to writing. Like when words magically appear on your screen without you planning for those words. When a small note expands into a long narrative. When you forget that you had to meet the love of your life for breakfast and you cant not go to meet her. You dont want to stop the dance your fingers are doing on the keyboard? You cant decide. That!

And if you dont get the drift, try stopping an alcoholic friend from his next outing and ask him to explain. He may do a better job.

3. You become superstitious. I am the kinds who thinks that the concept of God is created and popularized by weaker people. Yeah, judge me. And yet, before every event, I do my bits of stupid rituals to ensure that event goes well. I know that I have done my homework well and I have planned for contingencies. I know that I have backup of the backup of the backup and I have my entire team on standby. I know that there are way too many variables than I can not control and yet I am prepared for every eventuality. But then I want that extra element of help. Like the weaker people that I spoke about. I want the event to go well. So what do I do? I create my rituals. And I participate in them religiously, despite no apparent evidence of those rituals of being any help.

What rituals you may ask? There are plenty. The evident ones are bowing and saluting to the stage where the speaker would talk from, apologizing to my crew in advance for eventual outburst of profanities and emotions while the event is running, holding onto my breath when an AV is beaming on screen.

Thankfully this superstition did not transition from an event day to my daily life. Actually I dont know if it has transitioned. Did I bowed reverently to a car before I starting driving. Or did I pray to water god before my dip in the pool? I dont remember. I'd take note next time.

4. Blatant disregard for hotels and their opulence, grandeur and snobbery. And of other such fancy places (office complexes, expensive malls etc). Since my work often required me to walk into these places at all hours and in all states of dress (and undress, shabbily dressed etc), I got used to hostile glares from hotel staff. At first it is intimidating but then you get used to it to a point that you enter in the Dont Give a Fuck Mode and you start operating on auto pilot. This disregard has stayed with me even after I stopped working on events and that is why I am perfectly comfortable walking into a five star lobby with broken bathroom chappals and tattered clothes.

Of course your very presence makes other patrons uncomfortable, but then like Col. Jessep's "...sleep under the blanket of very freedom that I provided...", I provide these patrons with an opportunity to enjoy an active social life by planning and executing an impeccable event.

So, I believe that I am justified in the disregard. Of course there are causalities but then which battlefield does not have em?

5. Sleep deprivation becomes your secret superpower. Most people, when sleep deprived, cant think straight. I, on the other hand, thanks to my stint as an event manager, am totally comfortable with less than four hours of sleep every day. In fact ability to operate efficiently even with few hours of sleep is like my superpower that most people dont have. You see, I did not work for a big company and we did not have events everyday but there is so much happening all the time that you ought to be on your feet all the time. And since its a small company, you are expected to do everything at the same time and don multiple hats. Some may argue that its about managing time well but trust me its not. You have to be physically alert. All the time. And that means, no sleep.

In fact, a confession. I miss this secret superpower more than anything else now that I am not working on events. I need my ten hours of sleep now and the day I dont get my ten hours, I am drowsy and I am irate. I just need to get the sleep mojo back. How? 

6. Family becomes a set of acquaintances and friends become strangers. Being an Indian, two most important sets of people in life are my family and my friends. But then thanks to my role as an event manager, there were months when I just did not see my family. I would leave home at wee hours and return at an ungodly hour. I would see them in various states of drowsiness, to unlock doors for me, to pack lunches, breakfasts for me, to ask me about medicines that I may need because I have been tired and working constantly.

Friends and notion of friendship is probably hit harder. You live in the same house with your parents (even at 30, we are Indians) but friends live at some distance. And they have their respective jobs. So when you meet your friends after a few fortnights you dont even know what to talk about. That silent camaraderie that you felt when with friends, its suddenly missing. You can no longer relate to them. Things that made you laugh with them, they dont seem funny no more.

I dont have a girlfriend so I dont know how being an events manager affects your love life. Any opinions on that? I do have sgMS (ok, not her but just her thoughts) but I think my job just got me lot more closer to her - I would constantly think about her and try and guess how would she react to a certain thing, what part of my job would make her happy, so on and so forth.

7. You become an overpaid coolie. You need to work on events at different cities and countries. That means you get to travel to all these places. For someone like me who loves to travel, its a great thing to happen. But then like most travel for work, you are restricted to certain places.

There are times when I have been to really exciting destinations in different counties and all I have done is checked-in at the airport (on the foursquare app) and the hotel where I am supposed to get the event done. I dont even step outside the hotel. Most people would be ok and content with just the foursquare checkin at the airport and hotels but I am slightly old fashioned. I believe that there is so much more to a place than the airport or the hotel.

And when you are in a new city for a few days, its all easily accessible. You just need to step out. I mean you travel all the way to Sydney from Delhi and all you do there is spend four nights in a hotel. You dont even step out of the periphery of the hotel. And stuck in your room on the 34th floor, you think of all the great things that Sydney is famous for. And then you start cursing your luck. And you forget that you are luckier than most other people you know of in life and yet you are complaining and whining.

You know, its like a lot of foreplay but no action. And then the craving for action, in terms of exploring the city you are in, is no less than craving for action after a prolonged foreplay. If you know what I mean.

Oh, did I use the word coolie? Because while I am traveling for events, I am expected to manage and carry all the equipment and other things that an event may need. Often translates into 300 KGs of material. And all airlines hate you for that. So much so that now that I am not an event manager, they still shoo me to a distant counter that is reserved for lowly people, like event managers!


Ok, this is about it. Though, when I started writing this, I thought that the list would be longer. I was so wrong. Do you have any more things to add here? What do you think are occupational hazards of being an event manager?

And before I end this, standard disclaimer. I have worked for some seven years now and have worked for a global MNC, a start up, an advertising agency apart from an events company. And trust me, there is no job like running a show. The kind of faith your clients exhibit in you, the kind of things you do that you thought you couldn't, the amount of quick thinking that you get attuned to, the rush, the excitement, its something that no other job in the world can give you.

I think if the book I am working on does not happen by the end of this year, I would be back at running around running shows.

Just hope, I get the damn naukri. Wish me luck.

First posted on Medium here.

Review: FindYogi.com

The other day I was trying to find a touch screen phone for my dad and I did not want to spend a lot of money. So rather than going to Flipkart and doing a random search for phones, I thought I would use FindYogi.com (a friend is a co-founder. Please see disclaimer at the end of the post).

Last few years, online shopping has proliferated like mushrooms and its time that some kind of filtering system came up that helped users sift through so many online destinations, each destination claiming to be cheaper and better than the other. FindYogi is one such "decision engine" that aggregates prices and data from multiple online shops. More than mere aggregation, it also enables the users to make an informed choice - both on the what to buy and where to buy from.

Since I had to buy a phone anyway, I gave FindYogi a spin. I started by browsing through the home page and looking at "popular products". I am assuming that this list of popular products is generated by amount of search traffic that each product gets.

FindYogi.com homepage

So I clicked on iPhone and was taken to a page that had detailed specs (albeit too detailed for someone non-technical like me). Apart from details, FindYogi showed a long list of stores where I could buy it online and I could go directly to seller. And the stores were listed in an increasing order of price. Sweet.

Next thing I tried was the comparison feature. I went back to the home page and selected three phones that I am vaguely aware of. Nexus, Canvas and iPhone and added them to the comparison basket. And then I did the side by side comparison. Few things immediately caught my eye.

FindYogi highlights the best feature amongst the three phones that I compared and I was in for a surprise (I did not know that iPhone is dual core and Micromax Canvas is quad core - whatever that means, but I did not know that iPhone was inferior to other two). Coming back, FindYogi also throws a result by recommending a phone, as evaluated purely on features (everything else like Brand, emotions etc withstanding). 

Comparing three phones on FindYogi

While doing my comparison, two things that helped me shortlist (and reinforce my belief in the decision) were the Yogi Index and Feature Score. They are simple ideas really but can make life so much simpler for users.

Over time, if I was FindYogi founder, I would try and make these ratings impeccable and try and get these ratings out to the market. I would love if users would say, "this phone has a FindYogi index of 4.1, just buy without any questions". More on this in the good things bit.

All in all a good and intuitive comparison engine. Separating "brand" from "product" does not come naturally to us humans. And engines like FindYogi help up over come those biases. And, yes I do hate the fact iPhone is not the best phone out there.

So, next, I entered the word "touch" in the search bar and I got a few interesting results

Search results for "touch"

The top result was a phone by Acer called BeTouch. And other results were phones that had the word touch in their name. Though its a good idea for a search engine to find items from the catalog that has the words "touch" but I ideally wanted FindYogi.com to identify "touch" as a feature on mobile phones and give me an option to show only those phones that have that feature. Of course in the database, FindYogi does have a classification like that, scroll down and there you have options like touch, numeric etc, but I want to see it used better. This "feature" search needs improvement.

Also on the search results page, I could use the slider on the price range and multiple selection to make a shortlist of phones available to me. But then this shortlist was limited to phones matching to the keyword "touch" that I had initially used.

Thats about it I guess. And here's the summary. In terms of good things and things that need improvement.

The good things

1. The Yogi Index. It is a brilliant idea. It helps me save time because I dont have to read long pieces of texts or browse through multiple websites. Its like that star rating that often decides the future of a movie on the box office. However, having said that I would love to see Yogi Index include ratings (on price vs value) from the members. May be a weighted average or something (50% weight to editor's rating and 50% to reviewers and mode reviews you have, higher your weight). A great feature none the less and has immense potential.
2. The shortlisting and comparison. Awesome feature. Shortlisting was intuitive and its a neat little effect to see that phone getting added to the list at the bottom right. So much so that I actually played with the list for some time before I resumed my search and shortlisting. Comparison also works well.
3. The good and the bad on the product page. This is probably written by an editor manually for each product. While I can create an algorithm for everything, I can never replace human intelligence. And this is what helped me shortlist the phone I want to buy. To me is the winning combination - someone gathering all the data points and then adding a layer of opinion on top of results. How I wish search in general was like that (remember Mahalo.com in its earlier avatar?).

Things that need improvement / suggestions

1. A better "feature"search, as explained above.
2. There is a feature score in place for each product. Ideally I should be able to filter my choices on this feature score and Yogi Index. Right now, I can merely do a sort on this data. This would help establish credibility and reach of the two numbers that FindYogi "owns" (everything else is "owned" by the brand). If I can start popularizing these numbers, I can sell this data to brands. I guess this is more to do with marketing, rather than anything else.
3. What if apart from just the price, FindYogi also had a store rating (they may have to gather this data from their users, dont know how though), it would help as well. The price difference in the phones category across merchants can't really be a lot and if there were a rating, I would rather pay some more money to buy from a reliable place. But then it may be just me? 

The End Note
FindYogi is brilliant with their focus on user experience and convenience. As a customer I would love to use it and recommend. Do check it out when you want to shop for a phone or a tablet.

However, they need to do a couple of things before I become a devout convert. Hope I get to see those soon!
 

Disclaimer
Naman, co-founder at FindYogi, is a good friend and advices me often on my startup ideas. And yet this post is in no way biased.

Note. Starting now, every now and then, I shall try and post review of few start ups ideas that catch my fancy. I used to do this a few years back and it helped immensely to structure my thoughts better. Now that I have time, I want to restart this and exercising my grey matter.

God Mode vs I Don't Give a Fuck Mode

All my life, actually since I've played Q3A, I have often dreamed of a real life God Mode where I could get immortal and do whatever I want to. I have written about it in the past as well. I thought I have but I havent. Anyway the other day I went dinnering at a friends place and while talking about life and other things in general, we started talking about a guy that we knew some years back. According to my friend, that guy was irreverence personified and stood for everything anti-establishment. I thought that he is talking about that guy being in the God Mode.

Fast forward, while driving down a highway, most of my best ideas have come in while I was driving, I was thinking about the conversation and I realized that I was wrong. God Mode and the mode that that common friend seemed to be operating in, the I Dont Give a Fuck Mode are two distinct ones. Let me elaborate on them.

God Mode is:

• When you are not scared to take risks because deep down you know that you can't die and hence there is nothing that can touch you. 
• The mode you get in when you become the part of higher management at a large organization where you are just a number.
• When you fly. You fly as in fly. There is no Gravity. There is nothing to hold you back. You can soar. Soar like a hot air balloon. And then then soar some more like something that is in orbit. And then may be even escape the orbit. Fly like that.
• When you know that its temporary and God Mode can end any instant. You merely live for the adrenaline rush that the God Mode gives you. The rush that you may get addicted to, like a junkie.
• And because you know that God Mode is temporary, you try to make the most out of it. You run faster, you fly higher, you gather as many power ups, you back stab more people and so on and so forth. Because its all temporary.

I Dont Give a Fuck Mode is:

• What August operated in, throughout Upamanyu Chatterjee's brilliant debut novel.
• When you know that Dont Give a Fuck Mode is a perpetual state of mind. You know that you can get killed in an instant but yet you dont give a fuck. You are not scared to die. You dont welcome it either, but when life or death is immaterial. What is important is the flight of fancy. Important is you doing things as per your whims, not because someone else expects you to do something else. Heard about not being part of rat race?
• The mode that you are born with. The mode that you are hard wired to have. You either know about it since forever, or you realize that you have it as you go along. But its there.
• The mode that is evident in all your endeavors. The mode is visible to everyone around you. You may or may not know that you are operating in such a mode but its there. Its screaming out loud from your entire countenance. You know that swagger some people walk with? That. Of course it could get you killed if you met someone else with an even bigger swagger but that's the point. Right? Of I don't give a fuck?
• And finally, when you do NOT have to work hard to develop and operate in the I Dont Give a Fuck mode. Its there. Or it isnt. 

And all my life, I lived in the delusion that I operate in God Mode and hence I was untouchable and I could do whatever. But I dint realize it, till I sat with my friend and discussed with him about the common friend, that I was so wrong. So so wrong. Wrong like fuck. Actually, fuck is not wrong. God Mode is. Ok, now I am just rambling.

But I do have a coherent question though. And a pertinent one at that. Which mode do you operate in? 

Credit Note. Starting this post, I shall try and include these credit notes. For this one, thanks Parijat for inspiration. Thanks AR, the common friend that I have talked about. Thanks James for this post. And I used Inkscape to create the header image.

Gaming Mumbai. Part 1 - Managing Traffic

I wrote this originally as Mumbai Part 2. Now that this is Part 3 of my affair with Mumbai, I would post this as a part of Part 3.

Mumbai is a tough place to live in (compared to Delhi - where I come from). There is never ending traffic jams, air so polluted that you cant breathe, roads and potholes that could put minefields to shame and so on and so forth. If I was to scribble it on paper, the list of rants against Mumbai, the trail could go to the moon and back and yet not get over.

But then this post is not about the rant list or the distance between earth and moon, but is about how I plan to game Mumbai and its travails while I am here. I mean I know that I am going to be here for some time, so I better get used to it and start gaming it. Gaming as in manipulating, scheming it to suit my purpose.

So the plan to game Mumbai is in nascent stages and shall evolve over a period of time. Right now I would talk about how to avoid traffic, that is probably my biggest crib against Mumbai.

And few assumptions. Unlike a lot of people I can control my time most of the times. I have the luxury of not going to office and hence I can control my time and meetings, except a few times when I am supposed to meet people. I realized that the gaming bit has to start with managing life around traffic. If I can do that one thing, my life would be so much sorted.

Here is the list that I shall take up seriously to avoid traffic in Mumbai.

1. Avoid rush hours. Never never never (three times for emphasis) travel between 8 AM and 11 AM, and between 5 PM and 930 PM. Leave home at 11 and be back by 530. All the meetings, interviews, digging out, sniffing out, research and other work related chores must happen between 11 and 530. This is a good 6 and half hours and this is enough time for three, one hour long meetings. And the commute time to reach from one meeting to another. If I have to have to leave before 11 AM, leave before 8 and reach destination by 830 and wait. Numerous McDonalds across the city are open and they serve really good breakfast. If I am somehow left on the road after 530, I'd park myself at the nearest coffee shop for few hours and not waste time getting stuck in traffic. And while at the coffee shop, order the cheapest beverage - a bottle of water.
2. Meet when absolutely necessary. No more socializing and making new contacts. Phone calls and emails work as well. If I have to travel to meet, club meetings as per locations, as much as possible. If not at the same place, stay within a particular locality. So one day I could have meetings at Bandra, the other day at Powai and then one at BKC and so on and so forth.
3. Stay close to highways / stations. So, for example, an ideal place to meet is Oberoi Mall if I have to meet someone Goregaon.
4. Use peak hours for self. The time between 530 and 930 could be an ideal time for a catnap. And socializing could happen post 930. This time can also be used for gymming swimming, reading, dinnering etc. 
5. No first thing in the mornings. If someone insist a meeting “first thing in the morning”, politely decline and schedule a “last thing on the previous evening” meeting. 
6. Spend time frugally. Always carry some reading material. In case I am getting stuck at a coffee shop without any inspiration to write or create, I would rather read, than idly surf the web or tweet away to glory.
7. Maker hours. Use a tweaked version of maker hours. A concept I borrow from PG, maker hour is defined as a time where you don’t have any meetings. I actually do something in those maker hours rather than just push paper. So two days in a week (Monday and Thursday), I plan to use as maker hours. I would write for longer duration, update the blog, design and do things that I need to do on a computer. I am writing this post on a Saturday, the first half of which, I am using as Maker Hour.
8. Multi task. Get a car and a mobile phone headset and use the commute time to make phone calls and get work done on the phone. It could be a good idea to keep a list handy that would have all calls to be made during the day. Unless there is fire when the call flow would become unpredictable, this overall is a good idea. Not applicable for jobless me.
9. Know my traffic. And shortcuts, back alleys, city etc. And use Google Maps for traffic predictions. It is fairly accurate and when I know that I am heading into an area with a lot of traffic, I can avoid it or take a detour.

Thats it. If I do these things well, I believe I can cut a lot on useless commute and I may actually do something, rather than merely talking.

Of course one may argue that I dont have to stay in Mumbai if I am peeved so much about traffic and I need to think so much about getting out off my house. I can just go live in Delhi, Bangalore etc if I have to. But then, despite all my cribs against Mumbai, there is no denying that there is something about Mumbai that brings me back over and over again.
 
Anyway, more on Gaming Mumbai in subsequent posts. May be a list of places in Mumbai where I could park myself without paying a lot of money while I am in transit.

A tragedy etched in wood

That writing table that I got, remember? I even wrote it and the pic that you see on the left. So that table, is of no use no more!

Its got infested with termites and the wood has already started to chip. I thought furniture was meant to last generations and all that but this table had other ideas.

I paid a mini fortune to buy that table, thinking that I would recover my "investment" in it by penning (aka typing) my best seller. But thanks to my world famous addiction with procrastination, I havent been able to. Of course I've had excuses for not writing but since I am jobless now, I shouldnt have no more excuses and I must complete a book. Before the table is rendered useless by humidity, moisture, termites and boredom.

Oh, by the way, I bought the table from Shoppers Stop, you know that big retailer? And despite repeated calls to Shoppers Stop, no one seems to be doing anything about fixing the table or giving me a refund. I dont know what to do about it, except making noise on the Internet about it. And since I am Joe Nobody, dont think my voice noise would get heard.

Longer than the longest day of my life

Today, whoever is reading, ladies and gentlemen, for the records, was the longest day of my life. No wait, longer than the longest day of my life. One of those days when you spend one entire day, about 12 hours of your life doing something and yet there is no output to show for it. Not show it to the world but show it to yourself. Like when you are lying awake in bed late at night and you are talking to yourself, about things your did during the day. Those things. That output. And the worse part, its not even a step in the general direction of output. More so, now, when I am apparently the master of my own destiny, days like this suck even more. I should be on my way to greatness, riches, pursuit of vain hobbies, wild parties, world travels and other such things. But here I am! Stuck and confused and dazed likes its nobody's business. Or as Siddhu would say, as a child in a topless bar.

Sigh!

Four Months of Frugal Life

Credits: This Link

Update. This post that you are reading was made in end of July. Since then, here are the updates on how I fared on living a frugal life. Here is the update from August. 

Now that I am probably the most expensive city in the country with no stable income, I need to somehow stop spending as much I used to once upon a time. In fact lot of my gurus in life (Warren Buffet, VS, VK etc) are proponents of Frugal Living. I never understood the importance of the same before this. Now that I am jobless I will try an experiment with it. It cant really hurt more than a bank balance of Rs. 3417. No?

So first things first.
At any given point in time, I have had just one stable job. And that has been my only source of income. So whatever I make from that job, I survive on it.

I have used buxfer and a custom made excel sheet (mail me if you need the sheet) in the past to track my spends. And the categories where I spend the most are petrol, travel, flights, eating out, gadgets and gifts. Apart from petrol, I could have avoided pretty much all other expenses. When I had a steady paycheck, it did not matter much, now they would. I would work on not spending money like I used to when I was earning.

My spending policy has been, its one life and rather than saving money to help you when you are old, save experiences that you can recall when you are old.

Second.
Thanks to my attempts at tracking where money goes, I can clearly see there are few areas where I could stop spending immediately. Gifts for example. I have always given expensive gifts, even when I couldn't afford them) to friends, family and strangers. I was like the secret "secret Santa" that I even I wasn't aware of and even the recipients did not realize that they have been on the receiving end of pseudo-largesse. I dont know why was I doing it. Now I will stop it all. Family and friends would understand. If they don't, good, Id know who to avoid. Strangers wont care anyway.

I can completely avoid eating out. I can reduce it to bare minimum if nothing else. I would stop working out of coffee shops and make my desk my best friend. I would spend more time at home and thus reduce the cost of intra city travel.

I can live without buying any more gadgets. I have the best smartphone in the market and I think I dont need to change it for another year or so. I have a decent laptop that I am ideally supposed to return but I wont unless my office calls for it. And I dont really need anything else. I would want a large television and a playstation and all that but no. I would give it all to younger cousins etc and try and live a simpler life. More on it later.

Having said all this, I will not compromise on

• Cost of living. I would continue to stay at my current place, expensive by all standards and continue to maintain the same lifestyle (food etc). I dont booze so that saves a lot of money and heartburn.
• Travel. This is my biggest passion in life. I would not let travel opportunities go by. Even if they are expensive, I would take up loans if required.
• Internet. Whatever I am and whatever I am not, is because of my excessive exposure to Internet. I would not stop it. But I would change the consumption pattern. More on this later.
• Time. And finally, I will save time, rather than saving money. So if this means taking a flight to Delhi, rather than train, I would take a flight.

Baby steps to Simpler Life
I read somewhere that its better to err on the side of action. Its been a few months and I have taken it to my heart. So before I wrote about a frugal life, here are the things that I have actioned already

• One of my two phone connections is a Blackberry. It translates into a fixed bill of Rs. 399 per month. I stopped using it. Although this is not a big number, its more of a symbolic thing. I am thus no longer connected on email 24 x 7. Also this would mean that I am no longer stuck in the rut of immediate replies that push emails demand.
• No to long phone conversations that I am dearly fond of. I dont know of an alternative but maybe less talking would help me save money, energy and time that I could use on other pursuits. 
• Reduce the amounts I spend on coffee shops and eating out. I would ration em out. And Even when I am forced to wait a ta coffee shop, I shall do so by ordering the cheapest thing on the menu, without any add on. I am ok with facing the wrath of social proof but I wont spend money. In last three days, I have spend some 300 bucks on coffee. If I was not jobless, I would have spent atleast 5 times than this.
• When traveling I would try and use public transport (read local trains) as much but I would not compromise too bad on this. Its expensive and I would live with it. I would thus walk a lot more and try and spend time close to home only. No more extravagant travel bills to meet random people. This also means that I handpick people that I meet and thus avoid all unhappy, depressed, sad people. I would ofcourse spend on meetings that can get me work et al. I would maintain a separate account for it. Last two days, I have walked lot more, compared to what I would have done in regular situations.
• And no more expensive gifts. Period. 
• And no more gadgets, like I mentioned already. Except one. A music dock. I dont really need it (I evaluated it on this flowchart by Vishal). I  WANT it. Dont know why. I am in that waiting period of ten days that Vishal recommends

On Internet and On living a simpler life.
When I say Simpler Life, I mean a life where I am completely free and I dont get emotionally attached to objects and hoard them in closets. Probably to never open them again. Us humans have that stupid tendency to attach ownership and names to stupif things like books, gadgets, objects. I have been guilty of that. I never give my books to anyone, not even to VG. Starting now, I will start parting with these lifeless objects. They would hopefully free my head of conversations about ownership et al and let me think of other things.

And on Internet, I have been the connected kinds. I have million updates all the time. From facebook, twitter, foursquare, emails from five email accounts that I have, membership to multiple groups (MDI Alumni, Mensa etc). When my phone doesnt ring, I tend to get jittery and am scared to know if the world was falling apart. I always wanted to be the first one to know about anything happening anywhere in the world. Now that I dont have a BB and I have disabled all push notifications, I select times when I login to Internet and check everything. This is keeping my mind at peace and I am not in that constant state of living multiple lives - one in present and other on the TL. Someone said on twitter, "life is what happens to you when you are refreshing your TL". Its a brilliant insight. I would live in the moment lot more. With no notifications to drag me towards them, I would have only one thing to focus on. The present.

Plus I believe if there is something that I need to know, it would permeate through my network and reach me irrespective of my use of Internet or not. So, if the world does fall apart, I would get to know about it. Sooner or later.

Thats it.

What next?
I would spend these four months chasing frugality like its nobody's business. I would try and write about it as well because I have realized that writing makes me structure my thoughts better, apart from helping me hone the craft. I would also continue to make changes in my lifestyle to help me get fitter, calmer and happier. Of course I want to get richer as well.

Do help me if you think I must know of something that would help me in this "project".

The keywords for next four months are freedom, frugalily, life-hacking, simplicity and action. More on these in the next post. Dont know when, but soon.

Summary!
Yesterday I called up my mom and I have never been happier while talking to her. Its probably toughest to mask real feelings when we talk to our folks. My mom, despite all the distance between us, she could sense and see that I was happy. Happy as in the Pursuit of Happyness happy. And I was totally loving it. Never before I have been so relaxed and happy.

And, do pray for me. This time, for a change, I mean it. 

Jul 27, 2013. Ajeeb sa din.

Bill Gates, on a couch, cooking up ideas. Source: Unknown

Today was day 1 after that july evening. And I had told myself that starting today I would watch every penny paisa that I spend. And I would be super selfish about my time. And Id become nobody's fool. And other such things.

But destiny, or rather I, had different plans for me. I dont know why but I decided to go to a mall and I ended up wasting half a day. I did nothing at the mall. Just walked and window shopped. I did not even eat there.

I then had to run a couple of long overdue errands that I got finally out of the way today.

Then I booked a wrong flight and ended up paying twice the fare that I should have.

Then I accepted a meeting request from an acquaintance and then I ended up waiting for a couple of hours for a friend, for dinner.

And in between, since I was so bored, I spent money. And lots of it. About a week's salary. A salary that I no longer earn get. And on things that I didnt need. And on things that are of no value to me and things that I know I would not use.

But then, the meeting with an acquaintance went really well. I got a few ideas that I could work on in the next few days. It actually made that light bulb in my head spark. Like that image of Bill Gates where all he does is cook up ideas. That was a favorite when I was growing up (posted with this post). I then connected this acquaintance with a friend (taking Altucher's advice) and I know the two of them would find each other interesting. And in the end I am really happy that I accepted that meeting request. What if I had to rush like crazy, park my car at a metro station, take the metro and spend an hour to reach him?

The friend I had to meet, she was fun as always. I wish I was even half as cool as her. She does not read blogs or something. She things blogs is for wusses (whatever that means).

And finally I was worried that I had lost papers of my car but I hadnt. I found them in the glove box.

And on top of everything else, I managed to move the Nidhi Kapoor story a bit further.

And yes I read some pages from Eat Pray Love and I am totally loving it. You must read it as well. If there was a man's version, it would have been great. Maybe I'd write one?

But this was an ajeeb sa din. A strange sort of a day. A day that kept me on my toes and kept me cribbing and yet made me content, as I am writing this. Would love to have more of these.

Yet another july evening

This day, in 2009, I quit from Creativeland Asia. And in 2007, on the 8th of July, I quit from my role at GE Money. For the curious cats, this is what I have done in life (my linkedin profile) so far.

I dont know whats with July, but from this day onwards, in 2013, I am taking a break from my full time employment at Gravity India. To work on a few personal projects, that include the Nidhi Kapoor Story (other things are listed below).

However, unlike the other two July dates that I mentioned above, this time the break is temporary and I am hoping once I have done things that I have planned to do in this break, I am accepted back at Gravity. I think they call this sort of an arrangement a sabbatical.

So, while I am on this sabbatical, I want to focus on the following...

1. Achieveing the goals I setup for myself in the beginning of 2013. Some may be almost impossible, for all I have is five months, but bring them to closure for sure.
2. Finish Nidhi Kapoor story. And publish it. Even if it requires me to publish it myself.
3. Travel as much as I can. In fact I am willing to work for free if I am given an opportunity to travel. See below.

Thats all I want from the next few months. Simple.

Oh, for the concerned, I have enough savings to see me through till the end of the year at least. So I think I would be comfortable. But then you never know with the money matters, I can only hope for the best. To mitigate the risk, I would indeed try and take up few freelance assignments with things that I am professionally good at, 1 - Brand Planning and 2 - Events conceptualization, ideas, planning, management. Apart from these two, startups and writing excite me as well. I thus want to explore opportunities to work with, 3 - marketing / product management with startups and 4 - writing (anything and everything).

I do not want to compromise on free time available to me and thus I would look for temporary arrangements only. If you are looking to hire a freelance professional to work on any of the disciplines listed above, please do write in and I'd send my credentials (here is my Linkedin profile). If you cant help directly, please do point me to leads, inputs, tips and anything else that you think I may need to know while I am by myself.

My contact details are here.

And thats about it. This is the second time I am taking a leap of faith. First time around, it dint really work for me (in the hindsight, we were doing some good things but we were doing a lot of bad things as well). I am not really anymore wiser this time around but this time, Inshallah, the leap of faith would help me take off, rather then send me crashing down a steep hill.

Hello, Dear Existential Crisis

Once upon a time when I was young, I took pride in my inability to cope up with the QLC that I knew I was going through. I just did not know how to live through it. There were confusing thoughts and emotions. So much so that I even boasted about it in parties.

But thankfully this was way back in 2009 when it was still in vogue and people would ask what was QLC and you'd get 15 minutes seconds of fame. But then like any trend wave, everyone I know seems to be riding onto it now and everyone is seemingly clambering through it.

Like a real trend setter and "early adopter" I thus needed to move on. And thus, now I have a new muse. My suffering from Existential Crisis.

Every morning before I set out to seize the day (hello Mr. Cliche), I lie in bed and try to focus my old eyes onto the ceiling and think about purpose of life and the reason why I am here. Despite concentration that can put a yogi to shame, I cant seem to find the reason, purpose or meaning of life. Not all life mind you, but my life. Saurabh Garg's life. Everyone else around me seems to have figured out things. Some people are happy playing the cog in a giant wheel, some are happy in the rat race, some are content with being just a number in large payrolls at giant corporations. Hell, I am not even a number. But then I cant think for the entire day, the AC bill would be huge that way. So I am forced to move out from my bed and find answers to my perennial  problem.

And like any other thinking human, I am trying to drive the blues away by indulging into various experiments (and projects). Thankfully, I am so much of a scatter brain with attention span of few nano-seconds, I have been able to hop on to multiple projects easily. While I continue to explore more, the notable experiments have been

• re-reading English, August (everytime I read it, it gives me a new perspective on life, so much so that I believe that it must be made a mandatory reading for anyone older than 18)
• discovery of interesting music (now a days my favorite song is this song called Harvest Moon by Neil Young, here is a cover by Pearl Jam)
• watching interesting films (amongst all the films I saw, notable is Eat Pray Love. Do watch it. It can change your life. It may change mine as well. Time shall tell. It did give me my current favorite song)
• learning to write code (I started with Python, moved onto PHP and now enjoying working with CSS. I use Coursera and CodeAcademy. These tools are amazing. Do try them out. And I think I would end up as a front end guy rather than complex behind the scene code)
• writing (the blog and Nidhi Kapoor Story) 
• playing lots and lots of tourneys of online poker (for play money of course and losing miserably at all those)
• toying with multiple business ideas (been toying since I was 10 and yet havent been able to close on any)
• watching a lot of TED talks for inspiration (but inspiration for what?)
• and finally evaluating myself on the goals that I had set for myself when 2013 began (there are more on my Evernote and at the half way mark, I seem to be failing on every count).

Of these I am very kicked about the code bit. If you know me, you would know about Kunal (linkedIn) and my exploits with C when we were in college. And there is no reason why I cant get good at code again. Just that I am on the wrong side of age and common sense says that I need to work on things that I can delegate, rather than getting involved into. But then I know I am scatterbrain and I would move on. Lets when the fatigue sets in.

And most disappointed about my mid year review and my inability to stick to medium term goals (6 mo). Thankfully there is time and I can still take corrective actions. 

On an unrelated note, since I have been spending a lot of time on TED, here is a screenshot of a slide from this TED talk on flow.

This slide is apt here because this slide demonstrates the reason of my existential issues. I think my problem is that I am in the Apathy and Boredom zone of the chart. To be able to find meaning and other such things, I need to move right and up. Ideally I would want to reach the Flow zone but even a shift to Anxiety would do. The question that I cant seem to find an answer to, is how do I move to the Flow bit.

Any clues?