Furnishing, Furniture and Fun (and Work)

   There are a multitude of things that differentiates one work place from another..decor..posters..post-its.. tidiness (or the lack of it) and last but not the least the people. But how much is the poster of (semi-)naked ladies in the bathroom related to the work culture?

   Recently I had some of my friends over to my office (I work at a start-up company called MoSync ... it has a very high geek density* so its not a normal office) on a Saturday. We were out practicing for our graduation dinner song and later out for a walk , some of us needed to use the loo. My office was a block away so I offered the use of our facilities.

 My workplace is a organized mess of monitors, macbooks, PCs and wires strewn all over the floor. In a sentence, it looks like the environment where people dream up the 'coolest things ever' and deliver the 'hottest selling software...ever' (Ever is an unusually overused word). Our fridge is half filled with things you would eat at breakfast and beers...a Nintendo Wii has a special place of honour in the common area and it has a huge screen to output pure gaming pleasure.

  I realized by the curious look on the faces of some of my friends that their offices looked nothing like this. They were in their own words, 'more standard'. But even then I understood, each of their offices probably has a completely different look and feel to it...and that there is nothing standard about any workplace in Sweden.

  This is an interesting point to start my article from...because it is the middle of the story..it is how Martin Scorsese tells his tales...and I like Scorsese. 

  The work that you are expected to do usually needs to be compensated by a workplace conducive to such work. I am sure the image of the government offices (Indian one's at least) stuck in everyone's minds is an old building, overpopulated with staff who sit around waiting for their next

 cup of tea, but suppose we take the exact same staff and put them in a sparkling new office, where tea is not served to you but is self-serviced...with conference rooms and white boards with targets and a strict office attire. I have a hard time seeing the same people sharpening pencils all day long.

  The point I am trying to make (and maybe have already made) is the amazing yet often unnoticed correlation between office atmosphere and work ethic. Indian offices are changing in their look as you read this blog, but its not as customized as the offices in western countries (in my case Sweden)..they are clean and neat but standard. Computer Engineers love having free beer and Nintendo Wiis, corporate office staff love having communal kitchens and informal Fridays...its not about having a general standard for offices...its about making sure your office has character!!

  So next time you start your company or join a new company, think about what kind of work you want to get done and change the decor accordingly..!! 

Till Next Time..Ciao

Shiv

*Geek Density : Depends on how many people have seen Star Wars (all the movies), atleast one season of Star Trek and have their own views on social media and internet polity vs entire office population.

Where's the party tonight?

   Sweden, has been my home for the last 8 months and to say the least for the people of Stockholm...I feel way more at home here than in Singapore. Its not because Singaporeans are not a lively people or Singapore is too sterile or Singapore has too many rules but simply because Swedes are lively, active and lagom....they are basically Indians who have undergone some form of plastic surgery.

                                      In my last post I talked about lagom, that is Swedes being very relaxed and easy. But there is also a wild side to Swedes....Swedes like to party, they have pre-party..party..post-party phases to a night and beer to make the transitions between these phases ASAP (as smooth as possible). Again I would be reiterating my previous post, but it is important to keep in mind...I am not a people person..I am not a party person...hell I don't even like large groups of people (and by large I mean any number greater than 3).

 So then how? (A commonly used phrase in Singapore to mean 'so then what did you do?')

 I did what I was sent here to do.....party!!*

 But what happens when you put an average Indian nerd in a Swedish rock pub filled with a representation of the whole spectrum of Swedish society, what do you do to not act like a schmuck....again remember rule ONE of travelling. Always ask the locals for help..

So here are the pointers I was given to start on (they might not apply to you..but then again they might):

  a) Start with a few beers, don't get too drunk too fast. 

My immediate reply) Hey, but I don't drink.

Awkward silence for 3 minutes

  b) Eat a little before you go out you never know when your next meal will be, something meaty is good.
My immediate reply) I am a vegetarian.

Awkward silence for 2 minutes
  

 c) Don't be shy with the ladies, talk normally...and you should be ok
Awkward staring. The advisors were waiting for my prompt reply to bust a hole in their advice
My not so immediate reply) I am really not so shy with girls.
Hi5s all around to imply there was still hope

 So did the advice work? Well lets put it simply, I looked about myself...made a decision...and its been one hell of a non-stop party since then....

So go ahead and find your inner party-person..As Indians or Asians we might have a sense of propriety that maybe slightly above the world average..but experiencing new things is not a bad move...it helps you grow and learn things about other people and cultures but most of all about yourself....

PEACE OUT!!

*If you represent NUS/NOC/NCST or something similar, please know that all parties were on weekends on my time and that I always reached work on time and when I wrote "I did what I was sent here to do...party"..I meant learn, absorb and grow as an Entrepreneur...the reference to party at this point is only for comic effect and nothing else...so please don't get me into trouble with the powers above..

Sweden mein aapka swagat hai.

   This is my first article on this blog, and I feel obliged to give you a short intro about myself, about where I am, about what I do...basically share everything about me short of adding you on facebook. My (full) name is Ramasubramanian Sivasankar..but some of my phonetically challenged friends call me Shiv and the rest call me Rama (not because these guys cannot pronounce the full name...but because they forget why they called out my name by the time they finish enunciating it).

    As is easily discernible (for Indians) I am a South-Indian and both my parents are from Tamil Nadu, but as fate would have it...my dad had had enough of dosas and idlis and moved to Kolkata (West Bengal, go KKR!!) after hearing stories about how different pani-puris were in Kolkata and how one could buy a rossogulla for a anna (4 pice). My mother joined him later only to find that rossogullas had become 2 annas (8 pice) per piece but the never changing prices of puchkas (that's pani puri in Kolkata) made her fall in love with Kolkata.

   I arrived on the scene soon after, but to my parent's horror I liked gulab jamuns better than rossogullas and bhel puri more than puchkas. They decided I would not go far in life with such radical thoughts and I would never have consanguinity with Bengal or Bengalis(how wrong they were). I attended St.James' School and had a ball throughout my 14 years of pre-university education. I was not noted for any extraordinary achievement in sports (except in 1st grade where I held up Sports Day by finishing last in a race where the boy who came in second last finished 15 minutes before me), I never came first in class...but then again never came last either. I was more or less average... But by some fluke (my family calls it the Lord's blessings), I did well in my only two public exams (10th {ICSE} and 12th {ISC} )...followed by a lot of entrance exams, which I breezed through because nearly all of them were MCQs and all it required was more luck (or more blessings from the Lord). After going to IIT for admission counselling (took a whopping 7 hours)..I decided I wanted to go somewhere with less red tape, more freedom, more excitement....instead I went to Singapore to get a degree in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore.

  It seemed initially I had some talent as a coder, but almost immediately I decided I must shake things up a bit...I decided I wanted to go overseas......again. So along came a scholarship program (NOC) to go to Stockholm for a year...hell yeah!! 

Since then, I have settled down into my job at hi-tech startup (MoSync AB, www.mosync.com) and grown up..altogether become more of a man and less of a boy.....

NOT!! 

  So much for my intro, now lets get on with the article at hand. As I had previously indicated, I am currently walking around the streets of Stockholm (often getting lost)..and have been for the last 7 months. I remember the frantic days before I left for Stockholm, I googled day and night to try and find out as much as I could about Sweden. Everything in my research indicated to only one thing....there were going to be a lot of changes...a lot

  You see, I am a TamBrahm (which is rude slang for Tamil Brahmin...), as a caste we are vegetarians, non-alcoholics (cough, cough) and rather meek. Sweden is famous for a lot of things : hot women, IKEA, hot women, H&M, hot women, Saab, hot women.... and somewhere on the list is meatballs (beef!! HOLY COW!!) and the weekly if not daily consumption of lethal amounts of alcohol....and hot women.

  My family was sure I am going to go down the dark path. But alas, given the situation of the weak world economy...future career opportunities outweighed the risks.

  The first few days in Sweden were just nerve wrecking. I was scared to do anything or go anywhere...but time eased my nerves. Took me a month but I settled into a rhythm at work as well...soon I was one of the guys (which wasn't too hard..considering we still do not have any female employees..)!!

  The point of my articles this month is to give voice to some of my personal observations. Some as accurate as Lasith Malinga's yorkers and some as random as erm...Ravi Shashtri's comments on Lasith Malinga's yorkers.

  Swedes vs Indians....

 I know what you just said in your head, "he is going to list the zillion differences between Sweden and India"...I would disagree 

a) zillion is not a number 

b) I am more interested in similarities.

 There are hundreds of observations that I have made, but I do not think I will list them all. Just the major ones...the fundamental ones.

For today's entry,

Lagom : Quoting wikipedia, "In a single word, lagom is said to describe the basis of the Swedish national psyche, one of consensus and equality. In recent times Sweden has developed greater tolerance for risk and failure as a result of severe recession in the early 1990s. Nonetheless, it is still widely considered ideal to be modest and avoid extremes."

This philosophy is so understated and yet such an integral part of Sweden and Swedish culture. Yet somehow I feel that somewhere this is an intrinsic part of Indian culture as well. I mean how many times have you heard someone say in India, "why buy the new one when the old one is fine"...trust me the average Swede says the same thing!! 


Indians all around the world now have a comeback line when someone calls us cheap...we aren't cheap, we just like to be..lagom

I mean I am sure you must have heard about the bald chap under the peepal tree, who declared to the world the wisdom in choosing the middle path. Yes, Gautam Buddha..the world's first hippie !! Lagom is clearly as Indian as it is Swedish.

So from the country famous for having fostered the hippie culture onto the world stage to the country which started it....PEACE OUT. 

-Shiv