Mr Wu & my Salsa Woes
Dear All,
March 19,
When there is long period of inactivity on the mail front i get a few mails once in a while asking me to write again. And then i get up and resolve to do something about it. And then one fine day like today you get to read all that you are reading right now. Usually a mail like this starts on a rather apologetic note on how sorry I am and so on and so forth.
Guess lemme do something different. Rather let me talk about Mr Wu. Or lemme take a while before i bring up the topic. Lemme first talk about what i am doing and then I will move on to the more juicier things in life ;)
For all those who are ignorant about my present whereabouts the news is that I am still with coke and presently in the Bottling Corporate Office. My current designation is Assistant Manager Special Projects. My role is something called market execution and essentially it involves activities focused on our customers ie the Retailers. To draw an anology Lays Racks are always placed outside the outlet and the packs are kept in the racks in a particular order. Such a small step at the outlet level can have a huge impact on the sales of an impulse category like Coke.
However ensuring that the racks are set right in over a million outlets in which the company has little control over is a huge organizational effort. And my role is directed at creating systems and processes that would enable anyone at the corporate to get an outlet level snapshot as to what is happening on the ground. We have taken some small baby steps and as of now I have rolled out a project that captured data about around 21000 outlets in the month of Feb. The idea is to extend to all the high volume outlets of the country and then further extend the system to other outlets.
The idea of outlet level data can have huge implications. For one it would mean that experts sitting at the corporate could design a strategy based on high quality data and direct the field to implement it on the ground. After rollout the experts could then go ahead and monitor the progress of the rollout. All this again have implications but I guess its enough gyan for all you guys for a single day ;)
In the process of ensuring that I did all this I had been doing some extremely clerical and frustrating activities. And it was one such day that I was sitting in front on my comp cleaning rows of junk excel data. And needless to say I was agitated and had sort of become numb to whatever was happening around me. I mean at that moment I hardly knew the names of the people sitting around me. All that mattered was there was work to be done and I needed to complete it asap.
And it was then that this avuncular gentleman came over to my desk and with an reassuring smile and said, “Hi I am Kochin Wu”. At that moment all his attention was directed at saying those nice words of greetings to me. And to be honest I was stumped. It was as if the gurl of your fantasies had just proposed to you and you were standing there completely speechless trying to figure out what was going on and forcing some words to come out of your mouth seemed like the most difficult things in life.
All he said were some very mundane things but with those inane things he had just touched me in ways no body had done before. Koch as we love to call Mr Wu is of Chinese descent and during the war of 62 had to bear the brunt of fellow Indians bullying him. Right now he is rather gifted in horizontal terms but in the sixties when he was just a tiny kid. And to help him out his grandpa gave him some martial arts fundas. And ever since no one dared to bully him ;)
Before coke he worked with Pepsi and had done some great work for them in the deep UP. Some our of present MBA friends dread the idea of spending time in areas that Koch had lorded over. I am told that his joining Coke from Pepsi had made headlines during those days. He was at that time one of the highest paid professionals in the country.
And in the days that followed I am told that he could not recreate his magic in coke. I don’t know the specifics but I guess its was partly because of his habit of calling a spade a spade. People would say that such a man is difficult to work with. However in my limited experience of having interacted with him I have seen people stand by him and admiring him. That sorta admiration is something that I would die for any day :)
Well its enough serious stuff for a day and let me talk about the funnier things in life. And what could be funnier than me telling you that I have joined up Salsa classes. Its funny and it would be funnier when I tell you that I had made a similar futile attempt to learn music. That was years ago and I spent three months to learn Sa Re Ga. And sometimes I feel that my then music teacher remarked about my limited success out of sheer pity for me.
These are not things that I had forgotten when I made the decision to join up for Salsa. Franking it was on top of my mind when the topic of Salsa was bought up. In fact I just remember that in the past only the music teacher, her son, her servant and her pet dog had the misfortune of experiencing the sheer depth of my musical talents. And now there would be others to witness my special gift for salsa. And to make matters worse my partner is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer :( I even had nightmares of she dumping me for better male dancers in the group :(
Anjali had described to me her enthu for Salsa and other such things. And to make things really difficult for me she one fine day out of the blue informed me about a certain salsa training classes being conducted near her place. I was in a strange dilemma. I very well knew my capabilities and on the other hand there was that stupid pride of mine which prodded me to say yes. And believe me I was like cursing myself for having gotten myself into such a soup. But then things do happen unplanned and I had resigned myself to my fate and the sure ignominy that was to follow. But the pride inside me kept me from displaying any signs of that to the outside world.
And just to be polite I did enquire about it a few times. And my god she was all enthu about it :( But then out of the blue I saw a glimmer of hope when she told me that her traditional malayali parents (Read father) did not approve of a dance form like salsa. In fact her father went on to suggest that instead of salsa she should continue with her Bhartnatyam and he would get the Bhartnatyam instructor home.
Such unexpected things could give you quite a lot of relief and same was the case with me. Happy i was, but i felt that expressing my relief would be a rude thing to do. And so I expressed my indignation at being denied the opportunity to learn a few salsa steps. But then some guys are born unlucky and I would make all of them feel inferior. Anjali could not bear to see me denied the opportunity to salsa with her. She decided to do something about it and to press her point with her parents and went on a hunger strike :( And to make matters worse for me she got unexpected solid support from her mother. And before I knew it her father too couldn’t say no to the pleadings of such a nice daughter.
I had already resigned to my fate and against all my wishes started attending the classes. And the instructors started with some very basic steps and in less than five minutes into my first class he couldn’t resist remarking about the faults in my steps. And with great difficulty I thought I was catching up and getting some of the steps right. And dashing any such thoughts was his next remark that guys like me were just copying steps and not dancing. He went on to stress the fact that we need to feel the music if we were to get the Salsa right. And I was like, “HOW THE HELL TO YOU FEEL THE MUSIC?”
My ordeals with Salsa continue and whats funny is when Anjali expressed her side of the story. Today she remarked that the only reason for her to join the Salsa classes was the sheer enthu that I had shown ;) She went on to rub more salt when she remarked that she had just mentioned the salsa classes off handedly and would never signed up had I not been so enthusiastic about it :(
March 19,
When there is long period of inactivity on the mail front i get a few mails once in a while asking me to write again. And then i get up and resolve to do something about it. And then one fine day like today you get to read all that you are reading right now. Usually a mail like this starts on a rather apologetic note on how sorry I am and so on and so forth.
Guess lemme do something different. Rather let me talk about Mr Wu. Or lemme take a while before i bring up the topic. Lemme first talk about what i am doing and then I will move on to the more juicier things in life ;)
For all those who are ignorant about my present whereabouts the news is that I am still with coke and presently in the Bottling Corporate Office. My current designation is Assistant Manager Special Projects. My role is something called market execution and essentially it involves activities focused on our customers ie the Retailers. To draw an anology Lays Racks are always placed outside the outlet and the packs are kept in the racks in a particular order. Such a small step at the outlet level can have a huge impact on the sales of an impulse category like Coke.
However ensuring that the racks are set right in over a million outlets in which the company has little control over is a huge organizational effort. And my role is directed at creating systems and processes that would enable anyone at the corporate to get an outlet level snapshot as to what is happening on the ground. We have taken some small baby steps and as of now I have rolled out a project that captured data about around 21000 outlets in the month of Feb. The idea is to extend to all the high volume outlets of the country and then further extend the system to other outlets.
The idea of outlet level data can have huge implications. For one it would mean that experts sitting at the corporate could design a strategy based on high quality data and direct the field to implement it on the ground. After rollout the experts could then go ahead and monitor the progress of the rollout. All this again have implications but I guess its enough gyan for all you guys for a single day ;)
In the process of ensuring that I did all this I had been doing some extremely clerical and frustrating activities. And it was one such day that I was sitting in front on my comp cleaning rows of junk excel data. And needless to say I was agitated and had sort of become numb to whatever was happening around me. I mean at that moment I hardly knew the names of the people sitting around me. All that mattered was there was work to be done and I needed to complete it asap.
And it was then that this avuncular gentleman came over to my desk and with an reassuring smile and said, “Hi I am Kochin Wu”. At that moment all his attention was directed at saying those nice words of greetings to me. And to be honest I was stumped. It was as if the gurl of your fantasies had just proposed to you and you were standing there completely speechless trying to figure out what was going on and forcing some words to come out of your mouth seemed like the most difficult things in life.
All he said were some very mundane things but with those inane things he had just touched me in ways no body had done before. Koch as we love to call Mr Wu is of Chinese descent and during the war of 62 had to bear the brunt of fellow Indians bullying him. Right now he is rather gifted in horizontal terms but in the sixties when he was just a tiny kid. And to help him out his grandpa gave him some martial arts fundas. And ever since no one dared to bully him ;)
Before coke he worked with Pepsi and had done some great work for them in the deep UP. Some our of present MBA friends dread the idea of spending time in areas that Koch had lorded over. I am told that his joining Coke from Pepsi had made headlines during those days. He was at that time one of the highest paid professionals in the country.
And in the days that followed I am told that he could not recreate his magic in coke. I don’t know the specifics but I guess its was partly because of his habit of calling a spade a spade. People would say that such a man is difficult to work with. However in my limited experience of having interacted with him I have seen people stand by him and admiring him. That sorta admiration is something that I would die for any day :)
Well its enough serious stuff for a day and let me talk about the funnier things in life. And what could be funnier than me telling you that I have joined up Salsa classes. Its funny and it would be funnier when I tell you that I had made a similar futile attempt to learn music. That was years ago and I spent three months to learn Sa Re Ga. And sometimes I feel that my then music teacher remarked about my limited success out of sheer pity for me.
These are not things that I had forgotten when I made the decision to join up for Salsa. Franking it was on top of my mind when the topic of Salsa was bought up. In fact I just remember that in the past only the music teacher, her son, her servant and her pet dog had the misfortune of experiencing the sheer depth of my musical talents. And now there would be others to witness my special gift for salsa. And to make matters worse my partner is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer :( I even had nightmares of she dumping me for better male dancers in the group :(
Anjali had described to me her enthu for Salsa and other such things. And to make things really difficult for me she one fine day out of the blue informed me about a certain salsa training classes being conducted near her place. I was in a strange dilemma. I very well knew my capabilities and on the other hand there was that stupid pride of mine which prodded me to say yes. And believe me I was like cursing myself for having gotten myself into such a soup. But then things do happen unplanned and I had resigned myself to my fate and the sure ignominy that was to follow. But the pride inside me kept me from displaying any signs of that to the outside world.
And just to be polite I did enquire about it a few times. And my god she was all enthu about it :( But then out of the blue I saw a glimmer of hope when she told me that her traditional malayali parents (Read father) did not approve of a dance form like salsa. In fact her father went on to suggest that instead of salsa she should continue with her Bhartnatyam and he would get the Bhartnatyam instructor home.
Such unexpected things could give you quite a lot of relief and same was the case with me. Happy i was, but i felt that expressing my relief would be a rude thing to do. And so I expressed my indignation at being denied the opportunity to learn a few salsa steps. But then some guys are born unlucky and I would make all of them feel inferior. Anjali could not bear to see me denied the opportunity to salsa with her. She decided to do something about it and to press her point with her parents and went on a hunger strike :( And to make matters worse for me she got unexpected solid support from her mother. And before I knew it her father too couldn’t say no to the pleadings of such a nice daughter.
I had already resigned to my fate and against all my wishes started attending the classes. And the instructors started with some very basic steps and in less than five minutes into my first class he couldn’t resist remarking about the faults in my steps. And with great difficulty I thought I was catching up and getting some of the steps right. And dashing any such thoughts was his next remark that guys like me were just copying steps and not dancing. He went on to stress the fact that we need to feel the music if we were to get the Salsa right. And I was like, “HOW THE HELL TO YOU FEEL THE MUSIC?”
My ordeals with Salsa continue and whats funny is when Anjali expressed her side of the story. Today she remarked that the only reason for her to join the Salsa classes was the sheer enthu that I had shown ;) She went on to rub more salt when she remarked that she had just mentioned the salsa classes off handedly and would never signed up had I not been so enthusiastic about it :(
Comments
I cant stop laughing :):):):):)
Next time... when you are bored with mundane things at office along with the hi fi strategies you are making, you can take a "salsa" break rather than a "kit kat" break :)