Munich Travelogue - The joy of finding your way

This is the first time I am traveling to a country alone, for an international workshop and conference. I got a chance to present my paper in the international workshop in Munich, Germany. I was not sure of how much value would it be to attend this workshop, but I wanted to experience how international workshops and conferences are! Also, my husband Sriram motivated me to attend it and give a try. So I decided to fly alone and try couchsurfing for both reasons of cost savings & new experience that I can try when I am alone! A short travelogue about my first solo trip.

About couch surfing
Johanne from Denmark living in Munich hosted me at a short notice. My loads of thanks to her for trusting me, because I just registered to couch surfing community few hours before sending a request to her.I later came to know that people hosts only those who have good references or reviews. So I was fortunate to get my first quick request accepted. Her room was very close to city centre and she was very friendly. She briefed me about sights and gave a city map & public transport map which helped me not getting lost (or actually finding way back after being lost). I realized that I could not mingle well with her lifestyle, because I don't drink beer & don't smoke! Neither I could give her company nor I enjoyed being in a bar for long hours. Nevertheless I enjoyed talking to her. My first couch surfing experience is truly memorable.

About Munich
Wooho!!! Munich is such a lively city. When I landed late night, sub-urban & underground trains were packed with people and most of the people were friendly and approachable. Almost all the people I asked for help could talk in English. The city's public transport with sub-urban, metro, tram and bus is planned so well, that one could easily & quickly travel around.There are quite good number of churches & museums as with other European cities.

River Isar is a good one to pay some nature time and enjoy its flow. Europe's largest inland garden is located in Munich and is called English garden. It hosted landmarks named Chinese towers & Japanese tea house - strange isn't it? Munich hosts a favorite landmark sight for car lovers - the BMW welt & museum. I got to know that BMW expands to Bavarian Motor Works as its base is from Bavaria region whose capital is Munich.  I personally don't have an interest towards cars, but paid a visit for my son and husband. He had been asking some curious questions and thought would get it cleared there :-)

BMW employee explaining why racing cars have rudders in back & front!

One of his questions was "Why racing cars have a plate in the back above the back door?". I thought initially that its just a design for style. But the BMW employee explained that it is for a purpose-  that the speed of racing car could make it fly above road and these plates (called rudders) make the car push down and keep it running on the road! Lot to learn from kids questions!
 
Olympia park & stadium is close by to BMW museum and may be okay to visit as well. I did not find anything new there though. If you like museums visits then keep it on Sundays for many of them offered 1€ entry charge. I got two full days to roam around. On one day covered most places in city center by walk and opted other day to explore distant places by underground train. I initially dreamed of visiting Alps (Bavarian Alps) and Austrian country side which are near to Munich. but kept them for our next family trip.

Traveling alone

I have to say that I did enjoy traveling alone - walked for hours, getting lost, took some risks, survived eating fruits & bread and experienced solitude. Route maps remained my best company throughout the trip. Whenever I reached a place by guessing a route without asking anyone, I patted myself as a good map reader. Indeed map reading is a joy and wonderful experience. But I truly missed the company of my loving husband & son. It would have been an entirely different itinerary & trip, if they would have accompanied me. This time when I am alone, I took advantage of the ample time to reflect more about the trip experience - things I saw, I learned, I liked, I didn't like, my dreams & aspirations and spent time on penning them down as well (yes, including this blog post). And did some sketches.

And never to forget, about my actual purpose of visit - the workshop & conference, which is the next section.

Workshop/Conference
Sadly, the workshop was not professional as I expected. In fact, I have to say that it was organized poorly. Someone reading till this, would leave a smirk smile, when I say paid myself for a trip to an international workshop with 5 participants - yes, I am not wrong, it had only 5 people! To be honest, I was disappointed initially, but cheered myself that I should not be a victim of a poorly organized workshop, but have to take advantage of it. Saying so, I participated actively in other participant's projects which were similar to mine & gained some important points to be applied further in my work. Worth mentioning learning points that are reinforced are,

• Choose to address one problem at a time
• Prototype & test it. A smaller sample of user base is perfectly okay
• Determine what kind of analysis will be done on user testing & how results will be interpreted. Employ user testing methods accordingly.
• Every single thing in the world is evolving; nothing is perfect & every effort of yours is worth a try!
• You can always work on your interests, as a hobby. But if you want to make it as a living, you need to know how you sell your interest. 

With these interesting experiences & learning's, my trip to Munich is ever memorable. Its good to have a solitude trip alone once in a while to get to understand & talk to yourselves! Know thyself better!

A day of KaNaMeNaSe peeping out of window

This is a bed time story I told on my own to my son. I wanted to share it here to spread positive thinking.

It was the dawn of a sunny day and KaNaMeNaSe was browsing through her favorite book when she heard her mother calling out “Let’s have breakfast”. After finishing the breakfast, KaNaMeNaSe’s mother told,”Kiddo, play for a while inside home and let me finish some household chores before taking you out.” KaNaMeNaSe, a happy girl by nature, walked slowly towards the window of their living room and got interested in watching the hustling bustling morning lives of different people on the streets.

Her eyes got caught on a bread-seller who approached few houses before their home, rang his bells in the bicycle and stopped to sell some bread. He then continued his bicycle journey, but this time without ringing his bells. As he crossed KaNaMeNaSe’s home, she yelled out, “Bread uncle, Bread uncle have a look here behind the window”. Hearing someone calling out for him, he stopped and looked back and saw KaNaMeNaSe peeping out through her window.

KaNaMeNaSe spoke out, “Why you did not ring bells when you crossed our home?”

He replied, “Oh, that’s because I know your mother won’t buy breads from me and so I didn’t ring the bells.”

KaNaMeNaSe astonishingly replied, “But you know, I have asked my mother yesterday to get me sweet bread. Perhaps, if you would have rang the bells and yelled out, my mother would have brought it from you! Who knows each house could have similar stories, if only you ring the bells you will sell more breads, isn’t it? 

Now some bells started ringing in the minds of bread-seller, he replied.

“You are right; I used to do it before. Off late I have somehow missed it as a result of my routine boredom. Thanks sweetie for reminding me of it. Please accept bread from me.”

Saying so, he continued pressing his pedals and yelling out “Breads, Breads, fresh sweet breads.”

Now KaNaMeNaSe was looking forward to catch up with another chat. There came the postman who delivered letters to her neighbor aunty. As he crossed her house, KaNaMeNaSe called out to him.

Postman replied from a distance, “You have no letters for your home KaNaMeNaSe”.

KaNaMeNaSe continued, “I want to ask you something, can you come close by?”

Postman came near the window and heard her voice, “Postman uncle, though we did not

have any letters for us, can I get some letter from you”.

Postman got amused and replied, “I cannot give you any letter to you now!”

“But why?”

“I do not have any paper to write a letter”

“You should be having some advertisement papers, give me that as a letter”

“Perhaps, but I do not have a pen to write something for you on that”

“Do letters need writing; can’t you make something and give me?”

“Make something? I don’t have time for that!”

“Oh, it’s very easy, I am sure your kids would know it. I can make a small paper airplane with it and you can give it to me”

Saying so, she quickly folded the ad paper and made a simple airplane in seconds. Postman was astonished seeing her dexterity and gave her a pat and the airplane! He did pay attention to the steps in creating airplane, to impress his kids by making one.

“KaNaMeNaSe get ready, let’s go out to see doctor” mother called her.

KaNaMeNaSe slowly got down from her seat near window and took her pair of crutches and started walking using them.

 

Spreading  positive thought not only energizes others, but also oneself. Let's cheer others with our positive thoughts amidst our own problems and challenges.

ASSIGNment mindset - a problem?

I am writing this post just after I came out of a lecture on "Corporate Organizations and Leadership", after I heard the experiences of a Finnish manager in managing an Indian team, after I heard him say "Manager presence and interruptions are surprisingly increasing productivity in India!" This is not a NEWS to me, as I personally kinda think the same. This post is my own reflections on how I was brought up, grew and how the environment around me was!

 Briefly about the experience Finnish manager shared was that,

•  My expectations of self leading team did not happen and most team members were expecting me to "Assign" tasks to them

•  My personal presence and inquiry about progress of the tasks increased productivity (or fast response from employee)

What does this mean? Employees are not voluntary in coming up with tasks and not self-motivated by themselves! When this thought trickled in my mind, the first question I asked was, "Does it apply to me?" and the answer was "Yes, till few years back".

• Yes, I was looking up for some tasks to be assigned to me and I am best in completing them on  time, successfully!
• Yes, occasionally I do rise up and propose some new tasks! (Ah, wondered how many times, despite high pressure in completing the assigned tasks.)

So once I accept my state then, I was interested to identify why I felt it that way. Perhaps it could be because,

•  At universities, we were often given lab exercises, short assignments, and jobs to accomplish! I had not done a single learning diary exercises to reflect on what I learned from the course.
• At schools, it’s even more competitive as the marks decided the path we will be taking in our future. So most of the time was spent just to attend classes, tuitions (if any) and study, study, study.. Hmm, any learning? Yes, perhaps I should not shun away all those precious learning’s of mine from my school days. But was there any learning of how to mould ourselves? How to identify our strengths, weakness? How to survive difficult situations? Unfortunately NO. Not only was there any curriculum or activity for developing such skills, but also there was no conducive environment to develop them. It was all about to get good marks and percentage! 
• At kindergarten, it was still listening to teachers who teach ABCs and sing rhymes together. When I hear from parents these days about kindergarten interviews to kids, I feel how blessed I was those days. Nevertheless I really feel pity about those kids and schools.
•  At home, we the parents "teach" kids in a traditional and boring way to repeat alphabets, numbers and prepare them for their prospective future!

So what's going wrong in all these? Isn't there lack of giving space for self-understanding, being curious, being responsible not only to gain something, but for the sake of it! From the day being a child, student, adult and in a family, we are ASKED or ASSIGNED to do something. Our actions alter when there are some personal interests behind it. I have a vivid anecdote from my experience.

My beloved granny Paruvatham patti used to assign me some tasks and I remember how I performed it on her presence and absence. She used to utter, "Parthal oru karyam, parkalena oru karyam pannakoodathu" means, "There should not be two forms of doing an activity like while watching and not watching. The work should be done the best always, for the sake of it."

As it is with all teenagers, I looked at it as a cynical advice. But now, I realize how important it is to get that attitude. Especially when they are expected from employees! Ah, yes unless you get that attitude from childhood, it’s not easy to build it.

Another interesting anecdote from my granny again is about self-lead team. When she was at work and I escape from being ASSIGNED any tasks, she used to say "Kannu parkanum, Kai seiyanum" means "Watch out and do it". She placed emphasis on how to take part in a group activity say cleaning the house, by contributing of what you can do for that without being told. As simple as that. Yet again, being a teenager I shunned away those words as boring advices.

While I reflect these thoughts from my childhood, I could clearly understand that the way we are brought could be a mix of right and wrong things. But what is important is to provide space and environment for SELF-LEARNING AND SELF-MOTIVATION. As a crux I could sum up as,

TEACHing -> easy learning, productive but lacks cultivating motivation or understanding self.
LEARN by self -> takes time, productivity could be seen later (like bamboo tree growth), inculcates self-confidence and self-understanding, natural learning of leadership qualities and management skills.

So it all starts from HOME, which mould us as how we are and our attitude. Having said that, I should not do the same things even after knowing the shortcomings. Me being a mother of a small son, how do I provide a conducive environment for my son to be more curious, more creative, learn by self and self-motivating – most importantly all of them should seen as FUN by my son.

This is the experiment I am doing these days through my Kids play activities!

Okie, enough of my talking, would love to hear from you, your thoughts about this post and your ideas as well!