Its been a while since I blogged. Today again felt the mood to pen down stuff, hence back to the drawing board. When I tried to list down the various feelings that coursed through me during the past one year, I found the list very surprising and thought provoking.
- Fear of the unknown
- Grief
- Increased confidence and self-respect
- Strategic planning to overcome challenges in delivering work
- Uncertainty
- Happiness from getting more time for my hobbies and passions
- Closer bonds with family
- Need to let go
- Planning for a better future
Because each of these needed time to identify, analyse and resolve, it took lot of thinking and musing. Maybe that’s the reason why I didn’t find the time to post anything new for at least six months. Or maybe, it’s just sheer laziness.
First my garden. The summer in UAE is very hard for the plants. All my winter plants like tomatoes, some varieties of gourds, some flower plants wilted in the dry heat. Though I tried watering them daily, it just didn’t work. Then I decided to plant some new veggies like beans, bitter gourd etc and they are now shaping up nicely. The Jasmines and Bougainville were able to handle the heat. It is nice to see greens in the balcony, and though it is work, it’s something I would gladly do. I look at it as extra work now because I have to go to office daily and reach back late as well. But it’s my responsibility, so I do it. Even if I don’t feel like doing it, I just do it.
Office started. Well, it has its own advantages and disadvantages. Good to be out and meeting others, though keeping a safe distance. But it is easy to forget such steps when we are in meetings or discussions. I have seen people walking around without masks, sitting and talking without masks. Its not a comfortable situation, unfortunately, we need to live with the masks and steps such as social distancing. I don’t know how long this kind of working will continue. Especially when team mates get infected, it starts a sense of panic and illogical thinking amongst people. However, looking at work, it’s very easy to see that productivity is very high when working from home, especially in IT. There is advantage of meeting people of course. But with online collaboration tools like Teams, Zoom etc, its not very difficult to get everyone together. Anyway we cannot see the smiles and the grimaces and the emotions even when meeting face to face. So I have a bit of mixed feelings about this.
I got into forex trading. Its something very different from the normal share market trading in equities and bonds and mutual funds and IPOs. Here the trading is so dynamic we can win and lose hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes. Of course, losing is more common than winning. And I am a living example of that. However, the feeling of analysing the performance and looking at the EMAs and Stochastic curves and trends and RSIs of forex, commodities, index etc is very different from the normal work I do. It pulls me in, and the satisfaction of getting some gains is too much to be described. Of course, I haven’t put too much, so I am not worried about the losses. We should never get into such activities, where the losses will set us back. As my boss says, this should be an activity for so many years into the future. Not for one year or so. So I am trying hard to be a good trader. Let’s see.
Nothing much happened from a photography perspective. Though I got some cool shots of the moon. Once on supermoon day. Somehow I woke up at 5am on both the days I got the shots, and I pulled back the curtains from my bed, and there it was. The beautiful lunar surface, shining and beckoning. I always wanted to try astrophotography with a telescope and camera bundled. But for now, it’s just my telephoto lens.
Since I believe that vaccinations are a defense against this virus, and since I am vaccinated twice, I go out to meet with friends and sometimes have dinner and outings. Though we try to keep the numbers less and only to people we know. However, every time there are holidays, I worry that people will be careless and the numbers will just increase after holidays. One good thing is the availability of vaccines of all kinds, and also good medical care.
Flights from India are still cancelled. There are rumours that by July end they will start. I will wait for it to happen, since I am also looking forward to travel to India and meet my parents. It’s been a long time since I saw them. They are also vaccinated and so I believe a visit is less risky for them now.
On the work front, it’s been a very busy time. Work is back with a vengeance and the company is also willing to spend money to get good returns on investment. There are some interesting projects to be taken off the shelf including some key upgrades to critical systems. I also had to devise some new outsourcing models, to ensure that we retain our cost efficiencies, while keeping our development partners also above the red lines. Everyone needs to win, right? So the last one year was a period when I had to spend good quality time on strategic planning and implementation. While organizations almost shut down their IT departments and laid off staff, I can proudly say that we didn’t lay off anyone, and also completed several key projects during this slow time. It was a good opportunity to show case our ability to manage all IT systems of the airline internally, with a very lean team. Obviously it also brought to the fore some gaps which we need to fill, but overall I was pleased with how the team performed during this time. Attitude, not aptitude, determines the altitude – and that’s what my team is full of.
On a personal front, I suffered several losses due to Covid, including relatives, friend and classmates. I can only pray for their souls, and thank God that we are all safe for now. Some people are taking upto four doses of vaccines under the impression that only some vaccines will be approved in USA, Europe etc. Who knows what the impact of all these least researched actions are. On the other hand, they are living in the moment, so they may not even regret it a bit.
I will sign off with some images from my album. It amazes me what we can capture with the kind of photographic equipment available now, and that too not very expensive. Even a cell phone camera is better than some of the available point and shoot cameras. Other than the moon, the images were shared by my friend in Canada, who wanted me to post them on my site. Glad to do it. Images and memories are meant to be shared.
Just looking at these photos make me feel relaxed and peaceful. We had a long break due to Eid, and i just went for short trips and drives nearby. Normally we would travel outside the whole week. How the world has changed. Maybe in a couple of years it will be back to normal.