2006 Changes

Following are my personal significant changes for the Year 2006:

1. Resignation: On 30th December 2005, I submitted my resignation to my company. This is my first full-time job. This is the first company I have worked for, since August 12th, 1997. Eight loong years! Never thought I would work for one company for so long. It has mostly been a good experience, however I wish the resignation had not happened under less pleasant circumstances. It is quite true that people's loyalties and departures are more towards their managers, than to their companies. I am not giving a clean chit to my company though. I am not happy with their policies, processes and attitudes as well. I hope that my exit process is at least quick and efficient. That is all I can say for now.

2. Joining an American company: Having resigned from my India-based company, I am going to accept employment from an authentic American company. This denotes an important stage of my separation from my beloved country. Although I am happy about the new job, I can't say I am happy about the separation from my country. We shall see how it goes.

3. Relationship silence: Starting from the last week of December 2005, I have opted for a great deal of electronic silence in my personal life, at least until the end of March. What this basically means is to cut off all communications from two people who have been closest to me during the past year (they are both in India, hence the communication has been mostly electronic - over phone and the Net). I had to do this because, as I told them, there was too much noise in our relationships and the noise was drowning out the music of love. Electronic silence also means that my contribution to online forums and this blog will be to the minimum. I shall continue to compose blog posts, but they will be saved as drafts until I am ready to publish them. This is also a partial reason for me to disconnect my cell phone connection starting from January 2006.

4. Cell phone disconnection: As I just mentioned, I have disconnected my cell phone connection - partly to maintain electronic silence, partly because I have been using so few of my cell phone minutes ever since I got a voIP phone, partly because I want to get a new phone (most probably, the new Motorola V360) from T-mobile and the discounted rates I want are not offered to exisiting customers, and partly because I want to see how long I can go without a cell phone. Perhaps I will write about my cellphone-free experience in a future post.

5. New Year Resolution: Finally, my new year resolution is not to be late for any meetings. I have been late to far too many meetings, far too consistently in 2005. Everytime I am late for a meeting, I shall put aside a dollar. We shall see how many dollars I will end up collecting. I was almost late to the very first meeting, on the very first working day of 2006 because I accidentally switched off my laptop before the meeting and waited for it to start up again. I abandoned the start up mid-way and rushed to the meeting... just in time!

Happy artificial New Year to all! I think Ugaadi, the first day of the Hindu calendar, signifying the beginning of Spring is the real and more natural new year's day, celebrated through all time, by cultures all over the world, regardless of what name they called it by!