Today while walking towards the office, I saw this huge hoarding professing that their “councelors” were unique in that they “listened”. Incidently that was a quality of a good consultant as well (or a good leader, husband, etc etc). But what really intruiged me was that I couldn’t clearly differentate between a counselor and a consultant. Time to Google I thought.

The outcome of the searches were very interesting. Firstly, there were some overlap in meaning for eg:

counselor One whose profession is to give advice in law, and manage causes for clients in court; a barrister

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998

con·sul·tant A physician or surgeon who does not take actual charge of a patient, but acts in an advisory capacity to the patient’s primary physician

Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc

After cursory research, I will pretend to have understood and try to explain. A counselor is one who applies his domain expertise (eg: law) into the client situation, whereas a consultant tries to redefine the problem itself and attempt for, perhaps radically, different solutions to enable you reach your goals.

Thus the goals of a counselor and consultant are different. The counselor seeks to give you the best out of a situation. The consultant tries to alter the situation itself keeping in mind your goals and objectives. The latter is clearly more painful and time consuming, but ultimately more rewarding.

It was a really exciting day today. It couldn’t have been at a better place than Bangalore Infosys, the very birthplace of this famous company! I met my delivery manager Abhishek and had a nice conversation with him. If his idea was to drive me, it worked!!! He also kind of liked my suggestions. I also met a senior consultant Rakesh who was so crystal in his concepts that the session was an eye-opener in EAI! He said I could pursue my research in EAI Patterns if I wished. Sounded good to me :). Tday for the first time at work I got a lot of action items, including applying for my visa to UK and Aus. So I felt real good.

I met a lot of people other than that. They had a interesting thing about them… they wanted to do or go exactly where I wanted to. For eg: I wanted to find a block, the person would need to go to the sanme block for something else. These weird coincidences happened 4 or 5 times throughout the day!! I met a lot, I mean a lot of ESU guys and many of them were pleasantly surprised.

I shifted from the main guest house at Adarsh Gardens to a smaller one called Saptagiri. It is more like a small house with a nice mix of resident. Purohit from CCD Calif, his wife and daughter was the first I could meet. Very friendly and sweet family. I met an young Aussie named Brad and he was very conversant. Later I met the remaining occupant another Aussie named Mark. Brad was finding it hard to adjust with Indian food and water, coz of “all the bugs”. He is planning a 3 week trip all over India, of course, including Kerala before leaving for Australia.

My junies mailed me that they are missing me!!! I was in systems committee and it was the underdog. Now it seems it has assumed a prominent position. My portal and the software I’d developed will be used as “TAPMI Intranet” portal. More importantly professors are after it as a learning tool, exactly as I had envisaged. Aint it cool?

So looks like I’ll be here till sunday, thats plenty of time to roam about this Garden City. This is turning out to be one random decision that I’ll never regret.

A long gap indeed. The fact is that I actually forgot about this blog in the first place. Later, I was trying to look for a new site when I retrieved this account from my mail archives.

So where should I start? Joining infy on 3rd of May we had a wonderful start. The one week stay in the hotel (Fortune Katriya) was too good. We expected to stay in Hyderabad for some time so Dinakar, Danny and I found an apartment in Banjara Hills, one of the poshest residential areas. The rent was low, about 4K for a 2 BHK. We found a maid etc but had no plans for cooking. Despite Dan and Dinky being unsatisfied with Mahalakshmi mess, it became “the” eat out for us.

After the one month stint in ES University (headed by Narry), we got our practises allocated. I fancied EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) for its tech appeal and package neutrality. I and another guy from IISc called Arun Prasad and Vinod (plus a lot of red herrings) ran around a lot for it. But only three of us opted for it and subsequently we got it. My posting was in Mangalore with Arun Prasad from the 1st of June. My roomies were in CRM got hyderabad (or so they thought!)

The rest of the story involves a brief stay (10 days) at Mangalore infy guest house and finding a house in a place called Kottara close to Minfy (Mangalore Infy!). Sadly there was no practice specific training. We waited till 21st june when I came down to hyd for TIBCO training in Infy. Today it gets over (last three days was for the mock prj) and it is time to go back.

So its time to pack. This visit to hyd was very fruitful. I brought number of pirated books like “Da Vinci Code” (finished reading), “Hollywood Wives” (used copy), “Handbook of Palmistry”, “End of Shareholder Value” (used) and “Atlas Shrugged”. Moreover went to places like Durgam Cheruvu (romantic area near a lake), Birla Mandir, Birla Mueseum, Sangeeth theatre, Abids Sunday Book Mart, Big Bazaar (Walmart of hyd!!!) and Charminar. I met a lot of old friends who I’d met in TAPMI interview like Vasudha and Ujjval. I made new friends like Suma and Pallavi (classmate of Preethi Raghu, Saras ‘n Woody)

Thats all folks, time to leave!

Please note that I will not entertain any request for TIBCO “training institutes” in response to this post. I simply don’t know hyderabad well enough, not to mention “TIBCO training centres”!

I’m becoming too dependent on the Remainder feature of my Nokia. Unless, I do that I risk completely forgetting it. It happened yesterday when I forgot about the dinner and yet, again today, again for the syscom dinner. In fact, I already had a semi-dinner at 6:30 pm.

For those who know me, know that 6:30 is shockingly early for me. Apparently, it was because I woke up at around 6pm after a 5 hour nap. Must have been a result of too much of mulling over during the Ad Management class. Now, that would make any man hungry (or woman for that matter. I’m not a sexist but I really don’t know :) ). It was even better to go out with Govind, because he is such a gem of a person. But not all gems are known to the junta, right?

Thankfully, IK (my fellow syscom guy) reminded me while I was browsing in the CC. The junies had an HR assignment, but they agreed (they are learning to cope ;) ). We went to Pit Stop. I was only guy who went for the non-veg pizza and only guy who said 8" rather than 12". It’s called Chick ‘n Spicy. It was, in my opinion, the best of the four. Karthik ordered a spicy one, and was fuming after the first slice. He was visibly surprised because typically the spicy dishes in most restaurants are not spicy enough for him. Curiously enough when IK tried the same, it wasn’t spicy at all. He commented with a red sweaty face that he must have had the piece with all the capsicum first and that too in quick succession. Probably, but unlikely. “A Learning Experience”, as he put it. TV kept us entertained for a while. There, I made up my mind not to see Monsoon Wedding (for its artificial-sounding and hackneyed Hinglish) and definitely see Rumble in the Bronx (for the amazing antics of Chang). We (senies) gave some gyaan on electives and placements and parted with a glow of satisfaction.

Yep, it was my treat today, Saturday night. Well, I got through the Infosys, right? It’s only fair I give my wards a good treat. Kaizad actually pitched in half. Everyone was there: Badsha, Aakansha, Ashish and Himanshu. It was a lovely dinner. I had lamb chops prepared this way (as in, homely prep) after a long time. Guzzler’s Inn was affordable too. We decided that we’ll call Mohan kumar one day for our treat. Played carroms well today.