So Ganguly is in.
But what impressed me most was the selectors’ logic - Experience? In what?
Why not Mohinder Amarnath?
After all, Mohinder has got much better experience, both in making comebacks and in handling short pitched stuff.
Of late, I found myself cribbing and whining about work, the lack of challenges and growth opportunities in work etc. I thought I needed to give myself a dose of what it means to be an autotelic personality.
The following is an excerpt from FLOW by Mihaly Csikszenthmihalyi. There is quite a bit for me to learn from people like Joe Kramer.
Joe Kramer
Joe was in his early sixties, a welder in a south Chicago plant where railroad cars are assembled.
Joe came to the US when he was five years old, and he left school after fourth grade. He had been working at this plant for over thirty years, but never wanted to become a foreman.
Although he stood on the lowest rung of the hierarchy in the plant, everyone knew Joe, and everyone agreed he was the most important person in the entire factory. The manager stated that if he had five more people like Joe, his plant would be the most efficient in the business. His fellow workers said that without Joe they might as well shut down the shop right now.
The reason for his fame was simple: Joe had apparently mastered every phase of the plant’s operation, and he was now able to take anyone’s place if the necessity arose. Moreover, he could fix any broken-down piece of machinery, ranging from huge mechanical cranes to tiny electronic monitors. But what astounded people most was that Joe not only could perform these tasks, but actually enjoyed it when he was called to do them.
Joe has never been a workaholic, completely dependent on the challenges of the factory to feel good about himself. What he did at home was even more remarkable than his transformation of a mindless, routine job into a complex, flow-producing activity. Joe and his wife live in a modest bungalow on the outskirts of the city. Over the years they bought up the two vacant lots on either side of their house. On these lots Joe built an intricate rock garden, with terraces, paths, and several hundred flowers and shrubs. While he was installing underground sprinklers, Joe had an idea: What if he had them make rainbows? He looked for sprinkler heads that would produce a fine enough mist for this purpose, but none satisfied him; so he designed one himself, and built it on his basement lathe. Now after work he could sit on the back porch, and by touching one switch he could activate a dozen sprays that turned into as many small rainbows.
But there was one problem with Joe’s little Garden of Eden. Since he worked on most days, by the time he got home the sun was usually too far down the horizon to help him paint the water with strong colors. So Joe went back to the drawing board, and came back with an admirable solution. He found floodlights that contained enough of the sun’s spectrum to form rainbows, and installed them inconspicuously around the sprinklers. Now, even in the middle of the night, just by touching two switches, he could surround his house with fans of water, light, and color.
Joe is a rare example of what it means to have an “autotelic personality,” or the ability to create flow experiences even in the most barren environment. In the entire railroad plant, Joe appeared to be the only man who had the vision to perceive challenging opportunities for action. The rest of the welders regarded their jobs as burdens to be escaped as promptly as possible, and each evening as soon as work stopped they fanned out for the saloons that were strategically placed on every third corner of the grid of streets surrounding the factory, there to forget the dullness of the day with beer and camaraderie. Then home for more beer infront of the TV, a brief skirmish with the wife, and the day – in all respects to each previous one – was over.
Here’s another very good interview by the author on how to motivate people to learn
The recent boom in property prices in areas in and around chennai has spurred land frauds on a grand scale. Forgery of title deeds, power of attorneys, selling etc are becoming as common as meter pottadha auto in chennai.
Yesterday I was talking to an acquaintance and he had his experiences to tell. Sometime back, his father had bought some 5 grounds in Navalur. Navalur of those days was not the same IT highway phenomenon we are witnessing now. So our friend had all but forgotten about the land.
After hearing about all the developments happening in the IT highway, he had decided to go and see his land one weekend. He was in for a shock of his life when he found that those 5 grounds of his, has in turn been sold to 5 different buyers and that property has changed hands 3 times hence.
He had to let go of the property because of reasons like this :
1) He had purchased the land at a very low price those days and he would have to spend more money than the purchased price of the land to try and make a fight out his case, and
2) He, being an Indian IT professional, does not have the time to run behind police, real estate mafia and be part of court proceedings.
So, people who are keen to buy land in chennai, puleeeeez be extra careful .