Conquerer of Crises

Prayer lamps @ Sankata Mandir - Kathmandu, Nepal

I've been on sort of a hiatus all summer (if you can't tell from the blog posts or lack thereof). Anyway, I worked from our Kathmandu (Nepal) office for almost all of July/August, and also spent quality time with the entire extended family.

It's one thing to read and hear about globalization, but utterly amazing when you are smack dab in the middle of it. Kathmandu is, well, increasingly chaotic. A coalition government is struggling to restore stability, while there are protests of all kinds happening on a daily basis, sometimes going to the extremes of calling a "bandh" (general strike), which mostly means no vehicles allowed on the streets (except for ambulances and tourist buses, after all the local economy badly needs the tourists).

Still, life goes on, people figure out a way to get their business done. For IT-based businesses, these "bandh"'s really don't matter a lot. "High-speed" (usually 128 kbps) connection literally provides the information superhighway to get past the "bandh". Let's just hope no one stops the traffic there.

For logical thinkers, it is hard to explain how the city/country functions at all -- but it does, and has been doing so for quite some time. The rate of technology adoption is just nuts. Entrepreneurship is on the rise. All the while an uncertain political climate looms, but perhaps people have figured out over time -- this too shall pass -- and carry a strange confidence that their families, jobs, businesses will somehow always find a way to survive.

The Sankata Mandir is an old temple right in the heart of old Kathmandu. We got there as I followed my family through lots of temples. I was mostly looking after the kids, not being much for organized religion myself, but hoping somehow this might help our young ones develop an appreciation for the higher powers. Most of these temple, I'm sorry to say, are uninspiring -- but something about Sankata felt different. Perhaps it's the name -- a loose translation will be "conquerer of crises" -- that symbolized the current state of Kathmandu and Nepal.

And so even after all the daily accounts of various "crises" -- I came back hopeful, for just like these prayer lamps in Sankata Mandir, there are enough souls in Nepal that carry a strong yet silent power inside them. While these people claim they don't know what's keeping the place together in midst of these chaos, they don't need to look any further, just need to look inside themselves. I truly hope they conquer all their crises.

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We'll have more women employees, if we only had a separate restroom

Since my earlier post re men vs women engineers, I have had several discussion with our offshore counterparts on why they don't have as many female employees. Something they mentioned a week or so ago was particularly funny, but also a harsh reminder of some of the unusual (from a western point of view) infrastructural challenges:

Here's the issue: the office has only 1 restroom (for a staff of about 10). And women employees don't like that.

And they aren't unique in this challenge. Most of the office buildings have restrooms built as an afterthought, and even if they have multiple restrooms, even allocated as "Ladies" and "Gentlemen" (part of old colonial legacy) -- the allocations aren't honored all the time. So, a typical complaint across all women staff is the lack of clean, and more importantly, dedicated restroom facilities.

Now, I doubt if this is a key reason for the lack of female engineers -- but in a generally reserved culture, I'm bound to assume that the female employees don't discuss this issue as much with the management, and the management (usually male) doesn't think much of the issue either to actually take some actions. Maybe it's too trivial, not core to the business -- whatever, but it is an issue nevertheless. Maybe offshore locations plagued by high turnover problems can use this as a differentiator for retention.

I should point out that our offshore counterpart has a female president.

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