Mittal, Amit - My Passions

Punctuality and Discipline: Virtues of a professional or of a perfectionist?

nospam@example.com (Amit Mittal) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:34:32 +0530

Four years back, I had relocated to USA and was undergoing driving classes there. Each class was for 1.5 hour and Instructor used to come to my office to pick me up. Once, I was in meeting so got late for half an hour to the class. Instructor spent only one hour that day.

Punctuality and discipline are two important virtues I took from this experience. I always try to reach on time for any meeting/appointment. In case, I am running late I would call the other person and let her/him know. Simultaneously, I prefer to engage with such professional institutions that follow these values.

Last year, I started learning martial arts. The institute I joined was pretty good in skills but was missing the two values. I used to drive around 40 km for attending the class total in the day compare to 25 km in case there is no class. One day, I reached the institute for class and found there is no class as Instructor was on leave. I felt quite disappointed as I would have been informed about it before hand so that I would have planned my things accordingly. After that, I had the similar experience the week after as the staff went for new-year vacation without informing the class. This was the last experience I had with that institute and preferred to move out

On the other hand, I joined one dance institute and it was very professional in all these terms. It informs students before hand in case of any change in schedule. This professionalism kept me linked with it for more than 1.5 years.

Are "punctuality" and "discipline" really that good for professional success or these are still virtues of a perfectionist?

Indian:What's the definition?

nospam@example.com (Amit Mittal) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:21:34 +0530

I have been listening the media and people around us. In our talks, we occasionally identify any person as Indian. Confusion of this term forced me to think about the question, "Who is an Indian?"

I struggled hard to understand it and then came out with four different categories of people:

1. Who chose to live in India and actively participate in solving the problems here.
2. Who realized a significant gap between current India and her/his dream India. Then, planned strategy to fill that gap and might decided to relocate outside India for that.
3. Who fought to do something here in India but because of some reason, the local circumstances didn't allow her/him to do that efficiently. Hence, s/he chose to move out of this place to pursue her/his dreams.
4. Who realized that there are better options outside India so chose to move out.

Undoubtedly, all four categories belong to India (as per definition of ethnicity ) but does that really mean for all practical and ethical purposes?

If I have to game, then I would game for first three categories on being Indian and would strongly oppose by giving unnecessary hype to category 4 people.

I know people from all four categories and all of them are attached to India from beneath of their hearts but giving any kind of media coverage to category 4 people is unacceptable.

Why am I not going for an MBA?

nospam@example.com (Amit Mittal) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:47:00 +0530

Recently, There are lot of my friends asking, "Why am I not going for an MBA?" I believe before answering this question, it would be better to tell all of you, "Why did I decide to go for an MBA?"

Since first year of my college, I was very much passionate about my field (i.e. semiconductor industry) and I wanted to have my career in the same. During that time itself, I decided to have my own company in this technical industry and to achieve the same, I chose my courses Even in the final year campus selection process, I didn't appeared for any software giant just to focus on my goal. I faced lots of criticism from my friends at that time but at last I managed to get in one ASIC company.

My bad luck hit me as the industry conditions were not good when I passed out. Because of that, I lost my campus job and getting into another job took almost 2.5 years. In between, I worked with couple of companies on contract basis (of course in my field ) and rejected 3-4 offers from different software companies to keep my focus aligned.

After working for almost 3 years, I started realizing that there is very little growth in this field after certain amount of time because of lack of opportunities. I started thinking of going for an MBA, which will give me a strong networking in the form of classmates and alumnus. This will help me in creating the sort of opportunities I am looking for after 10 years or so.

To get that, I chose some top notch schools that can give me what I was seeking for. I gave my best shot in writing applications. Now, If I am not getting a call from these schools it doesn't meant that I should go for any school in this world whose name no one would have hear in my surroundings Just for the sake of getting a degree will not make me achieve my goals. Also spending 2 years of my life and around $250K on a piece of paper is not a good idea according to me.

The life outside India also didn't lure me to a great extent. Addition to that, my long term goal is to start a company in India (read the second para) so this factor is also of not much importance. In the end, I decided to pursue my passion with Plan A and i.e. to continue in the technical domain.

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