Few Lessons Learnt from Gaziantep

 Taking the inter city bus from Konya around mid night I was traveling towards the city of Gaziantep. This city is located near Syrian border with many camps for displaced people located around it. The city is so well known in the surrounding region that people are asking for ‘Made in Gaziantep’ materials instead of naming the country, Turkey.  The bus was as usual comfortable with all in seat entertainment and refreshments. However being night most people preferred to sleep and so did I.

I arrived in Gaziantep early on the morning around 06:30 am. Decided to take tea and something to eat. This time I had to make it to hotel myself so there were two options, I take the taxi or use the local transport system. Local transport system in most of the cities in the country is comparable to any European standard but knowing which route to take and which stop to use was a problem. Therefore I decided to ask the young guy serving tea. When I asked him he explained to me the public transport system. I then asked if I use taxi, his reply was ‘brother isn’t it pity that you pay 15 dollars to taxi when you can go by bus in just 1 dollar’. This was the first lesson I learnt in Gaziantep. However this guy in his good intention forgot that I don’t know the city well and there is a worth of time (some times) exceeding the costs.

I was not convinced so simply left for the doors on opposite side of his café so that he doesn’t see me taking the taxi all against his advice. From the other side I took the taxi for the hotel. The taxi driver after formal introduction started telling me about economy. His deep analysis was really astonishing like…’yes we are exporting a lot but most of raw material we import’. He also talked about political situation. The lesson I learnt was, it did not matter if you are taxi driver or a professor, it is all about personal development based upon your very own preferences.

On second day of my visit to city I met Mr. Ozhan, an old friend of mine. He is a regional business man but knowing the world better than many analysts. We talked about the huge amounts of credit loans the city’s municipality was planning to take or already taken. His reply was, this is a good indicator for economy. I was surprised a lot so asked him for clarification. He said, ‘look 10 years ago leave the municipality even the central government was afraid of taking any internal or external loan. Now they are taking bold steps and taking loans for heavy investments’. The reason he put forward was the right type of management and leadership country or local governments have got which made people confident to take risks and see an ability in them to pay back. Then when I asked why some of the European countries are in trouble, his straight answer was, ‘the people over there do not work, I work from 6:00 am till 20:00. I said but this much work is also not good. His reply was another lesson never to forget. He said, ‘it is the system, not the people who work. System makes people work. Why the USA is so strong? Because the system over there makes every one work!’.

Its all about Preference & Effort

Few days back a very nice friend of mine shared her feelings with me. She belongs to a well off family with no financial problems but she started feeling that something was missing. This something is in general related to soul search. Being living in Konya the city of Rumi there were many places to fill this gap. She asked for my opinion about joining some soul search gatherings. 

Believing that true knowledge comes from only two resources, one from the person who is very near to the one who has all the knowledge and other from the person who has developed himself/herself through gaining knowledge from those who knew or who wrote. Books are important but teacher is more important.  Like prescription is important but the doctor writing that prescription is more important.

I took her to one of the best teachers on the subject, Prof. Erkan Turkmen who wrote his famous book, Essence of Rumi's Masnevi. We talked for some time and then he said that there are two choices available, one to learn Persian and read Masnevi and the other is to attend bi-weekly gatherings to discuss Masnevi. But both have costs related to them.

My friend like most of people said to me later that soul search should not have costs attached to it. I in fact agreed because it is something like guiding someone to the creator with the knowledge given by the creator. Later that evening I had to change my mind and I came to the conclusion that its all about Preferences & Effort.

We who study science, engineering or medical put all our efforts in terms of time, money and potential to excel. The reason is, we consider such achievements good for our life. But when it comes to soul search we don't want to put any effort.. because that is some thing down in our preferences list. Similarly when we need to consult a psychologist we are ready to pay her a good amount just for listening to us most of time but in cases where someone is going to tell us and may guide us to the right ways towards happiness and soul search we hesitate!

Once again I say, life is all about Preference & Efforts just as a good teacher of mine Prof. Coskun Yurteri says, America is all about Exposure (topic of next blog hopefully).

Calling the Creator

A very fine senior and life long teaching institute Prof. Akyurek once told us a story. By some way he came to know 2 young ladies who were transferred to a remote district of Van city located in South of Turkey. They were to serve as teachers at a local school. He himself being well known in the area introduced them to the deputy governor of the region. The deputy governor told the young ladies to contact him in case of any need especially considering that they did not belong to that specific area. One evening the deputy governor received a call from one of the ladies saying ‘respected deputy governor we have a problem with our water taps, can you get them fixed’!

Any reader may conclude immediately that a request of this scale should never ever been made to the executive level of deputy mayor. We in our worldly affairs are very careful to ask some one in accordance with our need and position of the counterpart. If the problem is of minor level we proceed to those in power in accordance with the need.

The great expert on human civilization Ibn Khaldun wrote in his book clearly that worldly affairs are cared to minimum by the  creator of this system. He further elaborated that after giving all the sense and power to humans the creator has given them choices to make. However the results are prefixed in accordance with the choices made. If some one chooses not to study for example he or she can not be expected to pursue an academic career with rare exceptional cases. 

Most of people living in developing world consider the creator responsible for their every task smaller or bigger. This goes against all the logics. As president of a country is not responsible for every day matters but instead is considered responsible for creating and implementing vision for a country the creator is also responsible for some mega projects only. He has full authority over all issues but has empowered humans also to a degree so that they can take care of their lives to a sensible level. There is a certain system which we cannot understand and that is huge difference between people born under different circumstances. Many may have clear advantages over others like their economical status or family situation. These disadvantages do not hinder a person to improve his/her situation although he/she may not move up the ladder with ease but he can certainly improve his life through his choices. It should not be forgotten that choices made and hard work spent to pursue them makes the real difference. Calling the creator for every bit of problem or daily life course is not the solution.

Rise & Fall of Nations

Especially people who belong to nations that ruled the world once, the changed situation might be quite frustrating. Nations which were or are given chance to mange the world affairs have one common trait. It is their ability to manage the affairs in a way better than others. Many from countries against current world manager may say that it is not always 'better'. Those from Muslim civilization are frustrated due to their existing conditions. They are frustrated due to two reasons i.e they can't accept how they (rulers of the world a century ago) are now humiliated at all fronts and secondly as per their belief they were chosen to manage the world by the creator (as per their belief) but current situation is far from that promise. 

For those either muslim nations or other frustrated ones I generally state a very simple example. Lets say that you have established a beautiful production facility for some products, what would be your preference for its managers? Would you prefer those who are not able and lack capability to manage the facility? Never! So you'll select the capable.

Considering the creator who created flawless universe would never leave his creation to fools or incapable ones. Therefore we see in past from time to time different nations managed the affairs of this world. This happened because they were considered capable of running this facility by its creator. Therefore instead of cursing the nations ruling the world or managing it others should try to prove themselves capable for the task. 

Lastly always follow what Khalil Gibran wrote,  Pity the Nation.

Pity The Nation…
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave,
eats a bread it does not harvest,
and drinks a wine that flows not from its own wine-press.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strong men are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation

Environment, Genetic Code and Happiness

Dear all I am so sorry for delay in new post. My previous blog was about the lesson a clock in Zurich taught me.  While still in Zurich I heard about sad demise of a close friend of mine then I was planning to write about two topics i.e. Dead End and Song of life. For the later some material is till missing.

In the mean time on Friday the last, I had a chance to take dinner with a great teacher of mine Prof. Coskun Yurteri and also his teacher Prof. Selcuk Soypak. During the dinner Mr. Yurteri mentioned about a book stating that in order to understand nature one must observe behaviour of all living beings especially animals. He has also observed that animals while passing each other do say hello and also give regard to to territories of each other. Secondly he mentioned that as animals live in wild nature they always have fear of death or trouble especially during night time. However when they wake up every morning they are happy mainly because the fearful night has passed and actually they reset themselves for each day.

This implied that although environmental factors are important some genetical codes can not be altered or in other words should not be altered. In Eastern cultures it was very common to see especially the older generation people to thank the creator every morning they wakeup.  In fact people were reseting them every morning. The famous book The Secret written few years aback also highlighted this very same issue. It stated that when in morning one touches ground with the feet he/she should thank God. This triggers the wave of happiness and thankfulness. 

Reseting oneself every morning is very important for the success. It helps people to go in to mode of happiness and gratefulness from the mode of stress and the fear. Therefore leave every day's problems there when night falls and restart your life each morning. However don't loose the ground you made till that time and if you need to consider the old problems, consider them from a new angle each morning!

Lessons a Clock in Zurich Taught Me

Today early after noon while standing at a small railway station just at outskirts of Zurich a traditional clock hanging at platform taught me a wonderful lesson. Swiss are famous for their watches and time keeping but the lesson this conventional hanging clock taught me was some what very remarkable. 

When I arrived in Zurich today, I was very calm to enjoy the re-experience. One tip I would like to share about travel is, don’t hesitate to pay a little more if that makes you reach any  place well in day time. At airport exit by chance I met a person Alberto who accompanied me to the train station mentioned above. We took tram, walked and talked. He seemed to be a warm blooded European and soon I discovered the reason, he was an Italian!. 

Any way coming back to the clock. Please watch the video embedded at the end of blog of that clock. All clocks work in same way but this clock was remarkable in sense it was clear and attracted my attention. It is story about continuous movement of second’s arm and movement by minute’s arm by one minute. I noticed that second’s arm start from 12 (our starting point for the case), passed towards the minute’s arm slowly, passed it and moved towards the place of 12. The minute’s arm only moved one minute ahead when the second’s arm passed the position of 12 and not when it passed the minute’s arm.

This was great lesson of the day and based upon that lesson I prepared following illustration. It presents a wall clock with Minute’s Arm and movement of Second’s arm in two colors, blue and red. Lets analyze this illustration starting from top right corner numbered as 1, and move in clock wise direction. 

In the top right corner the minute’s arm seems  to be at number 1 on clock. In second figure it is about at 5, in 3rd it is at 8 while in last one it is at 11, nearest to ultimate goal i.e. 12. I call the blue track of second’s arm’s movement as Asset while that in red color as Credit. The clock taught me following two lessons about success in life especially in career.

When you are in starting phase (like figure 1) you have very less amount of Assets and you have to put a lot of effort as Credit to move just one step ahead. As you build up your skills, the amount of credit required decreases with being minimum shown in figure 4. In this case you rely on your asset and need very small extra effort to move ahead.

The second and more important lesson was related to the instance when the minute’s arm move a step ahead with respect to the position of second’s arm. As you’ll notice from embedded video below, the minute’s arm did not move a step ahead when second’s arm reaches it or crosses it. The minute’s arm moved ahead only when a certain amount of extra effort was put in place beyond the existing level of existence of minute’s arm.

In simple words, you always need to build on assets to maintain your position, always need to invest (credit) to move ahead and finally in order to move ahead a single step you may need to apply an effort of few steps (depending upon your assets value).

Here is the mentioned video, please comment.

Professionally being in Quadrant IV

In my previous blog dated 15 August 2012, Professional Life, Where do you Stand? I introduced a simple Quadrant Tool to find your position in professional life. Following was the mentioned simple Quadrant.

One needed to assess him/herself on two scales i.e. Passion about what he/she is doing and his/her ability to do that certain work.  Scoring was done with 1 as least and 5 as the highest score for each category. Based upon this scoring one would be located in one of the quadrants shown in figure.

We have already discussed Quadrant I known as quadrant of Satisfied people and Quadrant III of struggling people. Today we'll discuss the Quadrant IV which is labeled as of Incompetent. 

It is easiest to understand but very difficult to diagnose & figure out. No one would like to call him/her incompetent and that is true. No one is incompetent but the most important issue for this tool is to make assessment against the work being done at the moment. You might landed in type of work you are currently doing due to one or another reason. You might have also developed some skills and passion for it. If this passion is natural or you developed it to limits above score of 2.6 with ability still below 2.5, you'll be in Quadrant IV.

People in this quadrant might be under great stress, much more than those in quadrant I of struggling people. People in Quadrant I are struggling both with ability and passion but they have less degree of frustration because they also don't have enough passion for the said work. However those in Quadrant IV have enough of passion but can not perform the job and this creates a lot of anxiety, stress and frustration.

There are two ways to get rid of this problem. The first one is to develop passion for something you are able to do, which seems less practical. The other way is to develop the skills in the work you are doing with great passion. Now-a-days as lot and lot of skills building tools are available like online learning the two most important issues are about selection of appropriate tool and devotion of time.

You must invest a good amount of time and may be financial resources also to find the most appropriate skill building forum. There are many free but in actual there is no free lunch. Quality level training and development needs financial investment to some degree. You must also be patient while developing your skill and follow the learning curve without trying to jump over to few stairs up in one go. This seems appropriate if you are experienced in the field you are studying but it will for sure leave some connections in the chain weaker. A chain is as much strong as its weakest link is!

In summary if you have passion for the work you are doing but lack the ability then you and your work both deserves improvement. Choose from simplest doable tools like free reading stuff, listening to gurus of your profession at Youtube, reading books, attending seminars and webinars and finally attending the paid on campus or online courses. If you find a master who is willing to teach also then you can also learn a lot but don't forget no matter what you learn you have to validate it through a certificate or diploma. There are only few professional branches in which you can move up based upon your work but that movement is also limited. CEO of Yahoo,  Scott Thompson was able to move to top but his work could not keep him there as he could not validate his skills through a legitimate source.