Category Archives: Women

Double Happiness – A masala love story – Prelaunch Information

Dear Tributes and Fans,

Our Queen Vivienne and her entourage are honoured to announce:

“Double Happiness” is here to stay and “A masala love story” (Part 1 of 4) will soon be delivered throughout our kingdom by the major seller of electronic reading material (also known as amazon.com). (“Tatatataaaaa”)!

Check your amazon site on Friday, 13 December 2013. 

What a coincidence that a true amazon such as our Queen Vivienne will publish on amazon.

The queen replies: “There are no coincidences.”

(Vivienne M Sharma in “Double Happiness – A masala love story”)

"Double Happiness - A masala love story" Part 1 of 4

What you need to know about “Double Happiness – A masala love story” (before all your friends):

Vivienne M. Sharma, born in 2023, is the daughter of Vivienne Wardi and Arjun Sharma. She discovers her late mother’s diary at 12 years old and is drawn into an adventure spanning generations, her parents’ circle of friends, sisters and brother. The first part of the “Double Happiness” series “A masala love story“ starts out as a Bollywood-style love story and turns into a political drama that manifests a love which should never have existed.

Thank you from yours truly,

VMS

BTW: Please tell me if I am reading too much “GoT”.

 

Postponing life again and again

Our lives have become so hectic. We think in terms of optimizing our time. We want to maximize output while reducing input. We give ourselves targets. We rush. We run. Sometimes we force ourselves to take a break and stop for a few minutes to meditate. Relaxation is forced upon us as well as a healthy nutrition. Sometimes I ask myself about purpose. What is the point of this? Where do we struggle the most? Breaking our own barriers, fighting against the slack persona in ourselves, the couch potato? Or is it the aggressive marketer within us that goes beyond shame, overcomes shyness and speaks to strangers on the train. I laugh when a child shouts out in the middle of a game. The child uses a swear word. It is so natural and so different from the other people on the trains. We, the professionals hide behind our laptops and smart-phones. We want to seem busy because busy equals important. Important equals successful. Successful means we will be loved. Ultimately.  BUT:

  • Tonight we are too busy to spend the evening with the man or woman we like.
  • Tonight we miss dinner again and come home when our baby is already asleep.
  • Tonight we have a pizza instead of the healthy salad we planned to have.

Maybe we will even have a drink because our boss was unfair, our husband did not call or our client just cancelled an appointment. If I feel like this I try to do something completely different like dancing. Have you tried?

Mother’s Day 2013: Tame your EGO, woman?

Men helping wife to carry the load.

True love: Men helping wife to carry the load.

 

 Guest post by @angieweinberger

In light of Sheryl Sandberg’s book „Lean In“ I recently pondered about the question of my ego. I have always been ambitious and had targets in my professional life. I still do. Ms. Sandberg inspired me to write down „I want to be the #1 expert in my field Global Mobility.“ Basically I want the world to think „Angie Weinberger“ when they think of Global Mobility / International Assignments and expat issues.

This is a high ambition. It is almost ridiculous and totally against my values and education BUT I can see a point in telling myself that if I do aspire to be #1 I might have a chance to end up in the Top100.  My area of expertise is a niche and rather specialized. Many HR Professionals avoid Global Mobility as if it was the holy grail of doom.

Well, it is actually because every case is different. With international assignments you get the variety of humankind. Every expat struggles in one way or another but usually they all have a different story. Some patterns are similar, some processes can be aligned but you deal with every single expat at a time.

In my view it is a wonderful profession and it requires a lot of different skills. So assuming I am rather good at this (which is already hard to write) why do I still tame my ego and tell myself: „You will never be #1. There are so many other GM Professionals out there who are a lot better than you are.“ Why do I already limit myself? According to Ms. Sandberg it is because of my gender. So it is a mental or biological barrier that can be overcome through coaching for example.

In a discussion with a friend and other women I currently often hear that they gave up on “being successful” or “managing it all”. So are we going back to 1950 now? Women can have a family and shall be happy with that.

Why are we not allowing ourselves to be successful and at the same time have children? What are we waiting for?

“Like, share, RT” this post if you think women should allow themselves to be ambitious and help each other achieving their professional goals!

Happy Mother’s Day

Angie

PS: Thank you Mama for having shown me how to be a mother and still work. Thank you for showing me that even in tough times you can be the breadwinner and educate a daughter to be creative, resourceful and intrinsically motivated. Thank you Grandmother for having worked while raising six children after the war. Thank you Auntie for helping out when Mama was too busy to take care of me.