15 years and counting…

The first ever memory I could recall of planes, is of a young boy who rushed out of his home following the buzzing sound of an aircraft flying way above our tiny town called Changanacherry in Kerala. Since that day, to being associated with the wonderful world of aircrafts now close to two decades, if there is one thing that still drives me crazy is the love for aviation!

Among the countless moments of living in this passionate world of airports, airlines, and ground handlers, I still remember the excitement with which landed in this wonderful city of Dubai and walked through the doors of The Emirates Group, 15 years ago, this very same day!

It had been nothing short of a blessing to be associated with two of the greatest known brands in the world of aviation, Emirates and dnata along with being pampered by one of the youngest and most dynamic cities in the world, Dubai!

Thank God for everything till date. Looking forward to remaining committed to the city that added countless meaningful moments to our lives and adding even more value to the industry till the time I breathe the air filled with molecules on which it is written in big bold letters – AVIATION!

Tale of a Bridge

Once upon a time two large cities flourished on the valleys of two mountains. There was a vast lake that separated these mountains. The administration of these two cities decided to build a ten kilometres long bridge that was to connect these two cities. It was a mega project predicted to catapult both the cities to exceptional levels of progress.

Plans were drawn, preliminary work started and the dreams for two cities getting merged into one big city started taking shape. Esteemed members of city councils visited the location regularly. The top brass from the government bragged about their vision and the benefits, the bridge project was going to bring to the region.

As the calendar progressed, one day a junior-most engineer while going through the plans, noticed a significant anomaly. One of the many pillars of the proposed bridge was short by a few inches in height. That was at a critical point in the design of the bridge which could pose a grave threat to the very existence of the structure once built.

Now, the junior engineer was a simple and straightforward girl who promptly presented her finding to the top executives and even proposed an alternate course of action to correct such mistakes in future. 

As soon as the authorities, heard her out, all hell broke loose! The young girl was severely reprimanded for highlighting such a major mistake which put the whole project team in a bad light. She was even given an ultimatum to do only what was asked to do and nothing more. The backlash was so harsh that she even wondered why she even bothered to highlight the anomaly! 

Another sincere employee died a painful death that day.

The above story is a pure work of fiction. But if it did remind you of any experience, you had or heard in the corporate world, do not be alarmed. There will always be bridges that are built with design flaws. There will always be sincere junior engineers who highlight the anomalies. And there will always be corporate martyrs.

Learn from the mistakes of either yours or others. Diplomacy is an underrated skill, especially if you are unaware of the power of it.

Life goes on. So does the corporate world.

Water water everywhere…

As I mentioned in one of the older articles, the first international trip we did together as a family was to Mauritius. We checked in to the resort we had booked and obviously being a beach destination, we headed to the beach which was right across the resort.

After having a good time in the pristine waters of the island nation, we returned to our room extremely tired with thirst. We reached the resort counter where they sold water bottle and asked for a couple of bottles. It was a moment of truth for me! All what I learned about pricing based on demand and supply in my Economics class came full steam. The price of a bottle of a 500ml water was an exorbitant one, since we were in a resort environment, in the middle of nowhere in Indian Ocean where literally everything consumed was imported from elsewhere in the world.

We were to spend the next one week in that place and the sheer math of water prices threatened to put a large hole in our budget planned for the trip which we did not anticipate. The next day, while we were out, an idea occurred to us. We had visited a shopping mall from where we picked up water in bulk which obviously did not cost as much as the resort. While in the resort, we still had to buy water from there, we could manage our budget quite well while we went out supported by the water bottles purchased from outside.

Life teaches us many things, especially when we travel. One among them is, there will always be complex problems with simple solutions.

Happy vacation!