Laughter is the best medicine

The last two weeks had been crazy at work – I had been returning late everyday. This week things are starting to look better.

Here is what I ensured to make sure we start leaving on time:

• Setting right expectations with onsites – pushing back on deliverables that I do not foresee team completing without stretching
• Trying to plan the day better

I realize that it is a continuous learning process and mistakes will happen. There will be days where we have to stretch, but things will get better as well. We just need to keep faith in ourselves.

The other thing that really keeps me going is the kind of fun environment we have at work. We are all mostly of the same age, so there is a open camaraderie. We are constantly cracking jokes, making fun of each other over silly things and laughing it out. Due to this, even during the most trying times, we can stay cool.

Tell me about some hard times you faced at work. What did you do to make things better?

The Mu Sigma Times and Other News

I recently got plunged into a number of things at work. Japanese classes were already there, and they are drawing towards an end. We shall have the ‘graduation ceremony’ in two weeks’ time. Me and my teammate are planning to do a small skit for our graduation ceremony.

Besides that, I applied for the position of field writer in Mu Sigma Times.Mu Sigma Times is Mu Sigma’s live news channel – one stop where you can get to know what is happening across different accounts in the company. It also features other varieties of articles ranging from travelogues to lives of authors to different trends sweeping through the analytics industry.

The idea behind applying for the post was to keep in touch with writing. As it happens, due to the day job, I am not able to devote much time to writing. Being a ‘jouranlist’ for the MST shall be one way to keep myself close to my passion. That said, it is an added incentive that I get to don the hat of a journalist in a workplace which has nothing to do with media/journalism. It is so cool!

We had the first meeting with the editors today and they held a very engaging session as to what the goals were with respect to Mu Sigma Times. For the first time, being among people who actually enjoy writing, I felt at home. I felt as if they were my people.

I also met a very interesting person, Debdeep Basu. He is also a fellow blogger at The Pensieve. Post the meeting we had a very lively conversation about writing, books, and movies over coffee.

Don’t be surprised at all if keep bragging about Mu Sigma Times on the blog in the coming days.

Oh, also, I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo  (July) today. I am planning to finish a non-fiction book this time, something that has been pending for about eight months now. Anyone amongst you doing NaNo this July? Let me know in the Comments.

Happy weekend, guys! Cheerio!

Does your work define you?

Since this is May, I thought I’d write a few posts on our work lives. After all, work is where we spend the most part of our day to day lives.

Today, let me tell you what my work is like. I completed engineering and joined Mu Sigma, one of the core analytics company based out of Bangalore, India. My current project is related to an online travel agency. On a day-to-day basis, I look at the data the client sends us: how much which flight cost and what is the gross profit the client generated etc. We then use that data to build models that can help to predict certain future trends.

The work is interesting, as I am still finding my grips around learning the business. Work pressure is there, of course, but it is healthy. That is to say I don’t end up leaving office past midnight or something.

I have been in this industry not long enough to claim that my work defines me. But my work definitely has given me a lot of opportunities to learn. I have loved coding since college, even though I am not too great in it. We keep having good-code practice measures across the company to ensure we write good codes from which I learnt a lot. I guess this is what job experience does to you – the learnings that you acquire from the work you do leave their impact beyond the four walls of the company you are working for. You learn to value planning and time. At my workplace, we are always under pressure to give our best – if I fail to do all the tasks I plan for in the morning, I realize there has been a planing error. Next time, I try to plan better. There is a corrective force that is always in place.

What about you? Today, tell me what you job experience is like. Do you enjoy doing what you do? Does you work indeed define you? Tell me one challenge that you have faced at work and overcame successfully. I am all eyes to read your responses.

P.S: In case you are not comfortable commenting publicly, you can share your thoughts with me in the Message box below.

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Dear WordPress blogger, what do your search terms say?

Dear blogger,

Have you ever looked at what the search terms on your WordPress blog say?

I have a weird fascination of checking out search terms. I keep going back to the Stats page of my blog, and look at which search terms led viewers to my blog.

This morning, armed with my knowledge of Python, I decided to draw some insights from the search terms. What are the items that are most searched to reach my blog? What does a certain search lead viewers to my blog? These are questions that would help me understand my blog traffic better, and hence plan my blog posts better.

So, I wrote a little code to segregate my search terms and check the frequency of each. Here’s an overview of each:

I find it interesting that most people have reached my blog by doing a search which contained the search term ‘magazine’ or ‘publish’ or ‘short story’. This leads me to believe that my old post about magazines to publish fiction and nonfiction is India is still relevant. I’m glad!

When people are searching for my blog, many search ‘scribbles @ arpita’ as well, so that resulted in a few search terms containing my name. But there were a few really weird search items too, like the one highlighted in the picture below:

Hand-cutting? Blood? OMG, what was the viewer looking for?

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of understanding viewer motivations. As you all probably know from an earlier post on my other blog, I love using the skills learnt in office to my day-to-day life. I’m glad I’m finding more and more interesting problems in my real life that I can solve using my newly acquired skills.

Enough about me. Now, to you – have you ever looked at your search terms before? If not, please do. Maybe you’ll note some interesting trends in data, which will lead to to write more reader-oriented posts!

Day 1 of Japanese

Tuesday, 22nd March, 2016

As the clock strikes 3.55 PM, me and my two teammates get ready for our first Japanese class. We get new notebooks at the reception and walk two floors to our class.

On the board is written: Konnichiwa. Watashi wa Charubeena desu.

Our instructor is a short, energetic young woman named Charuveena. She greets us all and gets straight to the talk. She tells us that there is no ‘v’ in Japanese. So, for the next few weeks, she’d be Charubeena to us. We are surprised to learn that none of our names will remain the same in Japanese. I already feel interested.

The class goes fast. Charubeena tells us about Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. We all are given a sheet with Hiragana characters. One by one, she takes us through the pronunciation of each character. The characters look difficult and overwhelming to me. I wonder how long it will take to master it all.

Throughout the class, Charubeena teaches us Kanji – characters which stand for distinct words. Kanjis are far more complex than the Hiragana that lies in the sheet before us all.

We also learn why Japan is called the land of the rising sun.

Slowly, and steadily, the clock strikes 5. We have learnt a lot, scribbled pages worth of notes. In the end of the class we are handed out a worksheet. It contains a list of words in Hiragana characters. We are to find out the meaning of each word and write the word five times and bring it to the next lesson.

Even though I know it is going to be a tough going, I am super excited. We walk back to our desks  chanting, Watashi wa… Hajimemashite… Genki desuka…

The ball has started rolling. The baby has taken her first step. Will she be able to really learn the language in the next 10 weeks? Be a part of my Learn Japanese journey. Share your thoughts about learning a new language.

Until the next post, さようなら! (Sayounara!)