This and that and that too

This is the longest, voluntarily or involuntarily, that I’ve ever been away from my blog. More than 2 months since I last posted. Credit totally has to go to work. Life, quite literally, had turned upside down. It all began on a seemingly boring Monday morning on 10th Jan. That’s the day Oracle decided to migrate its back-end supply chain, order management and quoting tools from the legacy systems to the new system. We were informed before hand. But no one saw this coming. And that’s when the havoc started.

And the sales guys were the worst hit. Every process in the book had changed and as we all know, change is not always easy to accept. A quote which used to take 2 hours to configure was now taking up to 2 weeks! Orders getting cancelled. Escalations all around. Nervous breakdowns. Suicidal tendencies. Threats. Sleepless nights. It was madness personified.

But all this till we ended the quarter. At midnight on 28th Feb, I finished with 115% of my quarter’s target. Despite all the challenges. Life was suddenly beautiful again. This was my first full quarter in my new role and it was absolutely essential that I get to my numbers. A lot was dependent on that.

So when work was taken care off, next on the plate was health. For many years, I have been neglecting a condition that they refer to as DNS (Deviated Nasal Septum). Basically what this means is that my nasal bone, which should have been like a straight “I” was actually a crooked “S”. That is the example the doc used to explain. Solution was a surgery to make it straight. They operate and cut out chucks of bone to open up the space. Apparently, I had a 90% blockage on one side and 50% on the other. Decided its time to take the leap and got my surgery scheduled in India on 15th March. It was a good 90 min procedure in an OT and had to spend 8-10 hours in the hospital. Was discharged by night. Bandages were off the following evening. Its been almost 2 weeks now and I am able to breathe like never before.

Got back from India on 21st Mar and was off to Johannesburg on 23rd. Did they ever tell you that long haul flights are not the best place to be, specially for someone with a busted nose? Well, lets not get into that.

So flew back on Friday night and was back in Dubai early Saturday morning. And here comes the other news. We’ve finally finalized a 5 BR villa in Dubai. With a big freaking lawn at the back, installation for a small pool in the corner, parking for 5 cars in the front and still have enough place to host a 20-20 game! Almost. And we’ll relocate this weekend. It was all done while I was away, either in India or South Africa. So the first thing I did after I land, was to go and check out the villa, at 7 am in the morning, after spending 8.5 hrs on an overnight flight! Yes, that’s how excited I was.

And you know whats the best part? My drive to work takes 7 min and from work takes 4.5 min. JACKPOT! I drove up and down that route 3 times to actually believe it. Well, I knew that when the house was finalized but still. Some things are too good to be true, no?

These are the good things. Do you want to know a really bad thing? My wife and Ibrahim are still in India. They are not with me. Were supposed to come back with me on the 21st. But since I was immediately gonna head for ZA, I asked them to stay back for a week. And a week has passed. Their stay got extended by another week. That really sucks. But then, it was unavoidable. So gotta suck it up.

All in all, its been a mixed last couple of months. But things have gotten better at work. So I have better expectations in the coming months. Some exciting things lined up but lets leave that for another post. For now, its good to be back.

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