Reflections on 2006

As a recap for anyone who just stumbled across this blog - I started out 2006 (and this blog) with 4 goals for the year; 2 personal and 2 professional. This setting of imperatives for the year is a tool my company uses to provide direction and are a set of measurable benchmarks to evaluate performance; and doing the same for myself ultimately turned out to be as helpful for me. So the upcoming blogs will feature some reflections on how I did for my goals for 2006, some high and low points for the year and my imperatives for 2007

Performance against 2006 goals:

1. Clearing CFA Level 2: Managed to do so after much heart ache and a lot of late nights after work and wasted weekends. So officially achieved this goal - but am still not sure what I achieved by getting it done. Since I do not want to change industries right now, and do plan on going to business school - what will the CFA ultimately get me? Am I getting into the herd mentality and pursuing this just because everyone else is? Am I giving up too much in terms of personal time to achieve something of questionable value? Will it add anything incremental over an MBA? These types of questions have convinced me that I will NOT take Level 3 in 2007, and will only complete it once I have a better idea of its role in my career.

2. Running a Marathon: This was my biggest disappointment for the year. I was not able to run a marathon. I did have some issues with my knee this year, but dont think this was the reason. The biggest issue was just drive, motivation and frankly time. I am not increasingly of the view that giving up on my health to accomodate more work is just not worth it in the long run - this general health aspect is sure to figure prominently in my 2007 imperatives

3. Getting Married: #1 achievement for the year - the first half of the year was consumed with preparing for the wedding; not going to take up much space to talk about this as enough has been said about this

4. Exceptional Rating: working on this; will only find out Feb/March

Coming up - highs and lows for 2006, and imperatives for 2007

Pranav & Keya Wedding Reception Skit Part 3

Skit Video Part 3

Pranav & Keya Wedding Reception Skit Part 2

Skit Video Part 2

More on Hawaii later (whenever I can get around to it) -- in the meantime, check out the skit that our friends performed at the reception

Pranav & Keya Wedding Reception Skit Part 1



Skit Video Part 1

Aloha Maui!

This is the first in a series of posts about our honeymoon on the Hawaiian island of Maui: read on to find out more about the wonderful 7 days we spend on this tropical paradise!

Day 1

“Spectacular”: can’t think of any other word that can adequately describe my first impression of Maui as we stepped out of Kahului airport. All the tiredness stemming from the long long flight from DC to Maui was washed away when we caught our first view of the breathtaking landscapes outside the airport.

Got our car (Soft top Jeep Wrangler), and headed out to the hotel – the drive itself was a taste of things to come: the single lane road was lined with tall palm trees and sugarcane fields, and hugged the coast giving us an awesome view of the blue waters of the pacific. Got to our hotel, and saw the view below, which told me that even if we did not step out the hotel even once, we
would be alright!

We had an early start planned for the next day, so we hung around the 2 mile long Wailea beach front, had dinner and went out like lights!

Unrelated thoughts...

First -- Andre Agassi played his last match today; I played a lot of tennis as a kid, and many of us of my generation have grown up watching his antics, idiosyncrasies, but most of all the awesome brand of power tennis he played. So watching him limp off the court was in effect like watching the end of an era. His farewell speech, which did seem a little too perfect to be spontaneus, was neverthless very very apt and will probably pass into tennis lore for ever. I've got to admit, even though I consider myself to be as macho as the next guy, I was choking up a bit at the long long standing ovation that the NY crowd gave him -- yeah the same NY crowd that tramples over each other to get into the overcrowded trains: Anyways he's gone, as are all the other big names I grew up with -- the new crop of guys Nadal, Roddick etc. just dont seem to have the same charisma as Sampras, Agassi, Becker etc -- hopefully someone new will come along soon

Second, just finished watching "Crank" , which for me at least was the best movie of the summer. Finished watching it over an hour ago, and am still on an adrenaline rush. Its a very simple premise: Jason Lantham (the guy from "Transporter") has been injected with a chineese poison, which will shut down his heart, unless it keeps getting large doses of adrenaline -- think of it like a biological "Speed". So while he looks for the antidote, he does crazy crazy things to get the adrenaline rush (like having sex with his girlfriend in the middle of Chinatown with about a 1000 people watching; including a busload of japaneese schoolgirls -- yeah the short skirt and pigtails kind). Warning: lots of gore, nudity and foul language -- which obviously are all the ingredients of a must watch movie: GO WATCH IT!

2 out of 4!

Referring to the genesis of this blog -- my 4 goals for the year ; here's a mid year check in:

1. Getting Married - Done!
2. Clearing CFA Level 2: Done
3. Running a Marathon: Reset my own expectations, now aiming for the 10k portion of the Marine Corps marathon
4. Exceptional Rating at work: working hard at it!

getting married in a few hours !

..... And I don't think its sink in yet , and it probably won't for some time now.

Today is going to be extremely hectic, and will be the culmination of the six months that we have been planning this thing ... Hopefully everything will go well

If you asked me a week ago if I was looking forward to this day , my reply probably would have been that I was looking forward to this day getting over soon , but in the past few days as I have seen my family from all over the world getting together , I now wish that this would never end !

Apologize if thus post is all over the place , I am in no state of mind to blog !

D Day - 6

Today was a strange day; was feeling tense all day thinking about everything that could go wrong, and imagining worst case scenarios -- and to think we will probably go through all this again when our kids get married!

On the bright side, all the wedding spending is earning me so many rewards on my cards, that i should be able to sponsor my travel plans for the rest of the year with them!

Only 4 days from tomorrow!