The Infernal Diurnal Journal

    I remember this day every year. It happens to be Tata Founder's Day- and it reminds me of my roots in a very direct way. Often, I reflect as to which place I call home. And while I have lived in different places right through childhood and subsequently adulthood, the town I call my own is Jamshedpur. My folks live there still and so I get to visit often enough. The lack of an airport makes it a trek, but it's all good. When I am home, I am home. Of course, living as I do in Dubai, the desire to visit India is not nearly as strong as when I lived, say, in the US. Not only is it not far to India from here, but culturally Dubai has all the trappings of India- and then some. Jamshedpur, for me, is not just India though. And today is the day when it was formed. There is a delicate fondness and a funny feeling when I think about going there. There really is nothing much to do- in any case, every waking hour is spent online anymore. Each location has little to offer that is so co...

 It is just as well that the year did not even really start so far, particularly at work. I was wondering what was going on because clearly something was up. Many members of the executive team were missing and there had been no formal meetings for two months into the new year. Well, now it is becoming clear. There seems to have been an investigation on some of the senior executives in the company and the outcome of this is now playing out. It is also opportune, as all of this had to be dealt with prior to the onset of Ramadan- which happens to be today. There were some cryptic emails sent yesterday by the boss regarding a couple of executives going on leave and a naming of the substitutes. Why they are going on leave is not clear. What is clear is that their IT credentials do not exist as of yesterday. We can make of that what we will for now. For my own part, I still don't know what will be the end game here and whether I will be impacted as well. But for the moment, I have receiv...

  I don't know what it is about February, but I end up not writing much. It seems as if there are things that weigh on me during this period, right after the new year has started with some gusto. Last year, I was ill for most of this month. This year, I have felt a flu coming on a number of times, but did not really get palpably sick. So one would I expect that I wrote regularly this month. I didn't. One of the reasons is that I cannot get the Electric Utilities installed in my new premises. DEWA- the utilities monopoly in the UAE is usually a remarkably efficient outfit. However, if you make a small mistake in how you apply for a new connection, I am learning that there is pain. Much pain. And this is true for almost all things in the UAE. Resilience, Plan Bs and alternatives- are a weakness. Consider what happens when you miss an exit on any highway. You can be delayed by up to an hour- which seems ridiculous, but it is patently true. Highways are not designed for you to make...

There is information misalignment and assymetry everywhere. I hear from every SaaS provider that they are going to create "one source of truth". Really. Even with all our data eventually being housed in SAP, we have the balance sheet reflecting something about inventory which is different from what is on the ground. The issue is not usually an IT system. Sure it helps to put something from paper into a computer but this hardly solves the information alignment issue. Many memes in Supply Chain make this point eloquently, so I am not saying anything new. But it is an important point to make far more elaborately than throwing a few soundbites. Let us first try and understand if everyone in an eco-system actually wants or desires to have one source of truth. An organisation is a power-oriented hierarchy and information is power. There is information that is not for everyone's knowledge. There is also information that can be claimed to be proprietary and that is somehow "...

  A few things are occupying my mind at the moment. The return of my boss from his vacation is at the forefront of it all. As expected, we had a board room meeting immediately upon his return to discuss something about Succession Planning. And as I have now come to expect, these meetings very quickly become confusing, circumlocutory brawls where it is best to stay silent and get it over with. There will be much more of this in the new year, this much is clear. I felt somewhat sorry for the two new additions to our team, an American of Korean origin and a Brazilian who was formerly a resident of Chile. The two looked rather hapless as the somewhat argumentative meeting went rambling on. I am sure I had a similar expression in the first few months when I started. Aside of work, I happened to serendipitously bump into a group of eclectic musicians from India who happen to be a well-established International Touring Band, based in Delhi. They call themselves Peter Cat Recording Co., ...

    Today one of my colleagues gave me some feedback. He said, “you need to work on your branding”. To paraphrase, he was disappointed with my lack of presence or activity on LinkedIn. I agreed with his observation but I was not sure about his conclusion. There is so much fluff on LinkedIn, as we all know and privately acknowledge- and yet we still jump on this bandwagon for fear of being left out of some sort of race for talent that is being observed on this forum. This particular colleague of mine, posts something every other day and has divulged to me his modus operandi in doing so. Basically, he thinks of a topic to write about and then uses a prompt on Gemini AI by Google to get some text which he then re-formats or edits- adds the odd picture from google and off he goes. Now, there is very little chance that there is any content worthy of note is these type of repeated posts that come at you at 90 miles an hour. It does improve visibiilty because the moment you get on ...

Today we had an invite to a dinner event at a friend's place in the old part of town. These are apartment building that used to be the gold standard 30 years ago in the GCC, until monster developers like EMAAR arrived on the scene and provided ultra-modern apartments in more central areas- these tended to be occupied by more international expatriates while the older part of Dubai still was largely inhabited by South Asians. As a consequence, there were many small grocery stores and Indian cafe restaurants in the neighborhoods which made for a very convenient lifestyle that included just-in-time and inexpensive home deliver for just about anything. On the other hand, there were more posh parts of the city that beckoned to anyone who wanted to feel like they belonged to a "higher-fidelity first class travelling set". Each had it is points. In any case the rooftops of these buildings almost always had a nice sized terrace and a swimming pool and made for excellent party venu...