Source Of Interest: Season 1

Claps! Drum rolls! This is the 100^th post in Peppy Talk. I am so happy J This special post was in my mind for the past 2-3 months, but I had put a speed breaker for it to be the 100^th post. In our life, we do / perform many tasks either by your own instinct / would have inspired by someone. How many times you had liked a song only after listening to a particular singer sing it? How many times you had watched a movie after listening to a animated review by your friend? These were few of the actions that I am talking about. I am no exception. I have also done the same. In the recent past (1.5 years), I have been capturing the actions that I picked up after seeing / being influenced by others. I have been noting it down as and when I do a task. The following are the list of actions that I picked up and the people behind it:

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Blog

The mere reason of existence of www.kprabu.com. I have always listened to Vishwanath Surendiran (Ex-MindTree Mind, IIM B Grad as of now) about his blog writing tactics / blog-related-topics. This happened in 2008. This was the trigger to have my own blog.

This blog is still alive and healthy because of Vinay Kudithipudi (Director – IT Global Ops, TravelCLICK). He is one of the busiest person I have seen. I thought – If Vinay has the time to blog, then I should definitely have the time to blog. My blog post numbers that plunged during 2008-Nov-Dec was back into full swing after seeing this person’s blog. You might also read THIS.

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Monopoly Game

November 2008. Ezhilarasan Natarajan (Associate Director IMS, MindTree) invited bunch of friends in Schaumburg to his house for the Thanksgiving dinner. After the dinner, we decided to play Monopoly game. I had played this game when I was in 6^th std, was not interested after that. But, this time when I played the game with 7-8 friends of mine, I was so damn interested and was fully into it. I loved the game. Game continued for three hours, till 1.30 AM. We decided to close the game, I had the highest asset. From then on, I nudged my friends continuously to play Monopoly. One such game started at 7 PM and got over at 4 AM the next day. I won J. Yet another day, out of the blue I woke up at 3 AM. Didn’t get sleep. I didn’t know what I do. Finally, I did the craziest thing possible – played online Monopoly game in internet at 3 AM.

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Database Queries

I am a Business Analyst, so I thought I need not worry about technical stuffs anymore. Allwyn Satvedi (Director of Enterprise Applications, TravelCLICK), is also an SQL expert. I was so much interested and involved in writing SQL queries (single query more than 1000 lines) only after seeing the way Allwyn structures the queries and explains it.

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Mobile Phone

Venkatesh Balasubramanian (Principal Consultant, MindTree) is a mobile fr

eak. He keeps changing mobiles for every season (winter, summer, etc :P). He does not stop there. He explains me about his mobile features and I melt like wax listening to his explanations. Have walked in to Univercell forthe “Mobile Exchange Mela” many times. Have changed two mobiles after Venky’s influence.

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Drawing

Nisha Vickraman (Senior Developer, Keane), BEST drawing artist I have met so far. She maintains a BLOG of her drawings. Very creative, committed and amazing artist. I have decided to draw / paint after seeing her drawings.

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Twitter

Kiruba Sankar (CEO, Business Blogging) and Akbarsait Noormohammed (Module Lead, MindTree), the two people who inspired me to start my own Twitter account and tweet regularly. To be more specific, I tweet REGULARLY only after seeing Akbar’s consistent tweets.

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Travel website, Delicious

Akbar BLOGS about ColdFusion. A consistent and quality technical writer. On seeing his blog, I thought how good it will be if I write about my passion – Travel and Transport industry. There started www.travelhawk.org.

I maintain 30-40 bookmarks in my laptop at home. My lapi crashes often, it runs windows, so do understand. Whenever it happens, I lose my bookmarks and I keep scratching my head for the bookmarked URLs. Akbar explained me that this can be solved by Delicious and from then all my bookmarks sit in Delicious. Have more than 60 bookmarks now. Bookmark-life made so easy.

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Podcast

Suresh Gurumurthy (Program Director, MindTree), sends emails on interesting podcasts. Only after reading the mails, I figured out the Podcast world. I learn so much from Podcasts. www.Podcastalley.com is my home for Podcasts.

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Sticky Notes

Julie Corbley (QA Specialist, TravelCLICK), a person with more than 50 sticky notes in her desk / documents. She organizes things / get things done very well with the help of Sticky notes. I started using Stickies and it improved my daily activities significantly.

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Humour

It’s always better and good to have a humour quotient while talking. Tim Woomert, (Senior Business Analyst, TravelCLICK) does that naturally. I like listening to him and have conversation with him on and on.

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Cooking

Mohan Raj (Module Lead, MindTree), taught me how to cook. He taught me to prepare Dhal, Chappathi, Rice, Sambar, Egg curry, Egg burji and right now I excel in these items J. I am very interested in cooking now. After marriage, I have planned to cook many new items (referring to videos, online) and enjoy it.

Monish Mathiaas (Module Lead, MindTree) cooks so damn well. He BLOGS his cooking. The cooking items in his blog acted as catalyst for my cooking spree.

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Book reading

I have never read a novel until 2005. It’s after listening to Monish’s explanation on booking reading I stepped into the Book-o-sphere. My current book is: 2 States by Chetan Bhagat.

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Drums

Kripal Kavi (Ex-MindTree Mind, ROSS B-School Grad as of now) is an awesome drummer. In 2006, during his leisure time at work, I have seen him drumming with pencils and markers at his work table. Was sparked by this particular action to learn drums and I have my own digital drum pad (Yamaha) now.

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Music, Chess Game

Sudarshan Rengarajan (Senior Developer, MindTree), a music fanatic who is so much interested and involved in music. It was Sudarshan who explained me Western and Carnatic music. His explanation is one of the reasons for my interest into drums and pursuing it.

I have played chess in my school days. But never liked it, so I stopped playing. A year back, Sudarshan called me for playing a chess game. Needless to mention, I fell in love with the game. I am a Chess addict now.

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Business Analyst Role

Dwijavanti Bharath (Ex-MindTree Business Analyst, now Queen of a home in CA, USA) and I have not worked together in a project J But, my Business Analyst role inspiration was her. I have seen her doing all the tasks a BA would perform and that’s how I understood the different responsibilities of BA and my interest inclined towards this role. I still am very happy to be a BA.

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Photoshop Design

Arumugapandian Thangapandian (User Experience Expert, MindTree), THE best user experience designer I have met. Have worked with him closely to design work-UI, morphing, poster creation, backdrops. I was interested in Photoshop only after listening to Arumugam’s explanation on “How to use Photoshop”.

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Dressing

Deepak Gunalan (Business Analyst, MindTree), a dressing mascot. Have seen Deepak’s dressing mannerism (pressed, matching, tucked in properly all time, pleasing colour dresses) to work and then I decided “no checked shirt and dull looking dresses to office”. I have never entered office with a checked shirt since last one year.

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Brand Conscious

Vivek Srinivasan (Business Analyst, MindTree), a very brand conscious person who uses a Mont Blanc pen and a Tissot watch. I was not a brand conscious guy, my favourites were cheap and duplicate good looking products :D. Only after visually seeing the brand appeal, I was convinced to look for only brands in my purchases. Since then I carried only a Parker pen, and picked up only branded shirts and pants.

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Email in Mobile

Until 2006, I was not a fan of checking emails in mobile. Griffith Alfred (Module Lead, Satyam), showed me his HTC Touch and the email checking facility in it. I was so inspired by this functionality and all the phones I had since then was a PDA :)

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Consulting

Vineet Gupta (Program Director, MindTree), took a four full day session at work. His talks refined my consulting quality A LOT.

Karthikeyan Ramasubramanian (Program Director, MindTree) and I discussed about Insurance Industry for about 20 minutes in our cab. I must tell you, I learnt ‘how to explain things to others’ in that 20 minutes from him.

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Frozen Thoughts

Alaguveda Selvappalam (Senior Consultant, MindTree), reads a magazine called Frozen Thoughts (daily in cab). Have also noticed her passing the mag to few more people in cab and asking them to read a particular page. I was too curious to know about this mag and I bought it in Central Railway Station (while boarding Bangalore train). I must say, I loved the mag. THE best mag I have ever read. Will definitely read all the month’s edition.

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Unambiguous English

Krishnakishore Bavaraju (Program Director, MindTree), expects everyone to write and speak unambiguous crystal clear English. I love this. Whenever I sit next to him in cab, I see him reviewing work-related documents and he keeps telling me about the ambiguity in English lines in the document. Whenever he points out an ambiguous English, I keep telling myself “My English should refine day by day, it has to be unambiguous”. I still follow it.

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