Jan 1, 2007

Jan 1, 2007

At last I have decided to blog :) Hope I will be able to continue this for a long time.

Folks, to start off, Happy New Year...Hope this year cherishes all your dreams....

The day 1 of 2007 started with me reaching Bangalore from Calicut after a 10day vacation. I reached Bangalore at 5.30am and had a short nap. Woke up to see that its 8.30am and the clock is ticking...need to run to office. I made it by 10am to see the whole floor empty... Oh my god!! Is it a holiday?? I saw my manager in his cube and asked him and he confirmed it's not...browsed through all the mails and started clearing my inbox. This mail caught my attention. It’s a one to one discussion about my performance appraisal at 10.30am...what a nice way to start the New Year.

The discussion went smooth with my manager showing happiness in my performance and the challenges for 2007. Lots of new projects, new initiatives, an onsite opportunity and blah blah in pipeline... He (manager) is a nice guy and I like him a lot for his openness, cool attitude and of course for his happiness in my performance :). I had a fruitful discussion with him asking for some specific training on SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server clustering. The things which would have shocked him would be my questions on MBA. I told him that I am planning to take my MBA in Finance and whether Thomson Financials would help me in achieving that goal.

The questions were very specific with respect to Thomson’s policies on higher education

1) If I leave Thomson for my higher studies (MBA in finance), will I be given chance to come back.

2) Monitory wise does Thomson provide any help.

These questions surprised him. He will check with his Manager/HR and get back to me.

Anyways, the discussion went smooth and I got back to my cube. The rest of the day went with me taking a course on SQL Server administration from the Thomson University(Online). This was due by Dec 2006 and as usual I was late to complete it :-).
Don’t take me wrong, this is a must for closing the appraisal!!!!

The day went without any major production issues. Thanks to the clients who were out on vacation.

I was back home by 6pm. There was a red wine at home, but no friends around. Ditched the idea of drinking and started reading as I didn’t have anything else to do. There was the last couple of chapters left in Freakonomics, which I completed. One was about parenting which was very boringJ. Read an issue of The Week and Thomson inside magazine.

The first day of 2007 ended and I am signing off.

PS: - The next post will feature about my interests in stock market, MBA dreams etc.