Blog@GraceJunction

Hi Phil,

Here are some pictures that I took on my trip to some of the islands in the Indian Ocean. We started off our journey some six months before we reached our destination. It was basically an adventure trip where we were going to explore some of the scarcely populated islands in the world. Hardly has any man set foot on these islands because of the tough conditions of the ocean, lack of edible food and water and also the dangerous tribes that lived there for many years.

As we closed in on these islands we just wanted to have a look at the underwater creatures and vegetation that existed. While scuba diving, I came across a human skeleton with a nicely sealed bag made out of animal skin tied around his wrist. This was a fascinating sight as I was sure that these were the remains of some tribesman. I went closer to have a look. The bag was heavy and I was getting restless to have a look. I took the bag along with me back to the deck where I opened it in the company of other mariners. (more…)

It was fun to see this Sunday our children enact the story of King Solomon’s judgement on the two mothers. Even though it was not the best performance in the world, the children did a very good job. They portrayed the story in the best way they possibly could and left the audience laughing with their dialogues and honest acting, while ushering in some powerful thoughts in to the mind of the audience.

Let’s rewind, go back in to the room and see the teachers trying to teach the kids the story and then the acts. It’s very important to have the sequence this way, because if the storyline has not seeped well in the children then no matter how hard you try to teach the kids to act, they are sure to goof up.

Now the entire act made sense because they followed the story line of the teacher. Picture this – during the training sessions many of the children would act as they would think right, would want to say the dialogues, as they think is correct and many a times never follow the story line. Some of the bold children would want to change the story and do it their own way, add other stories that they have seen and impose their will in to the act. Some children would never want the role that they are having and sometimes everyone wants to do the lead role and be the hero. The teachers did a good job in making the performance make sense. (more…)

A week ago, people in my organization where busy in discussing only two things. The performance ratings of individuals and the speculations about the amount of increment in the salary. Some people had gone one step further and were planning for a vacation once they got a good bonus and increment. Some intelligent people where busy in data analysis of the trends over the years in pay rise and rankings. You could hear these discussions in the conference room, in the canteen and the tea shop outside the office. Finally when the curtains came down, I was shocked to see that we were running short of bandwith as almost 90% of the people were logged into the HR site for next 2-3 hrs analysing how much increment they got and also comparing how much their colleagues got! (more…)