Author: Rauf Aliev

November 20 2015, 06:26

My vision of how an employee/department/company should develop:

stage 1) work steadily/predictably (i.e., meet expectations; even if it means working slowly and making mistakes sometimes, but within an expected scope)

stage 2) +work with quality (even if not quickly, but steadily)

stage 3) +quickly/efficiently

stage 4) +with others’ hands (but with one’s own mind)

stage 5) +with others’ minds (but with one’s own as well)

If you reach stage 5 and want to go further, you need to find another area/level of complexity/scale and start with stage 1.

November 18 2015, 16:02

The results of the Istanbul marathon have been published. Couldn’t resist – quickly put together some statistics.

Out of 2918 people who ran the marathon, 144 were Russians.

Out of 5000 people who ran 15 km, there were only 61 Russians. Turks were the majority (75%), 4% were Germans, British, Russians, Americans, and French together made up 5%. The remaining share consisted of 68 other nationalities.

The top three spots were claimed by Kenyans in both the 42km and 15km races. Kenyans just don’t know how to run slowly – there were only six of them there, and the two slowest girls finished the 15 km within fifty minutes. In the marathon, all three Kenyans took first, second, and third places. How one can run nearly twice as fast for forty minutes is beyond me. Probably, one must be born in Kenya.

By the way, seven out of the ten best marathon results in history are held by Kenyans. In 2011, only seven Russian athletes managed to run a marathon in less than 2 hours and 15 minutes. This barrier was easily overcome by 150 Kenyans. Interestingly, most of them are from Iten – 2400 meters above sea level.

I took a modest 738th place (out of 5000). Next time, my goal is to be twice as close – for that, I need to finish within 1:10. And the next distance – 21 km. I still don’t know in which country.

Update: the official statistics lied about the average speed. They have the fastest Kenyan running at an average speed of 27 km/h when in reality it was 21 km/h

November 14 2015, 15:24

Today we almost fell victim to scammers in Istanbul.

At the Galata Bridge, we got into a “yellow” taxi. Bargained for 60 lira (~1400 rubles). More accurately, we haggled with one driver but ended up with another. The taxi driver asked for the money upfront, because “his boss was there, and he wanted to go straight home after,” referring to the first driver. An absurd requirement, but okay, we were already in the car. I hesitated a bit but decided to agree, to hell with it.

I handed over two bills – 50 and 10. At first, I was a bit slow and almost gave 5 and 10, the taxi driver corrected me – saying, this is 5, not 50. He took the 50, then immediately gives it back – says, the bill is torn, give me another one. The 10 is in his hands, he hands back the 50 to me, I extend another 50 to him, he returns a 5 instead saying “you gave me 5, not 50.” That’s when I checked my wallet – it can’t be, I had two fifties, now there’s one. The taxi driver insisted he was right. I realized it was a scam.

I got out of the car, trying to keep the door open and my foot inside, dialed 911. I realized I couldn’t read the number this way – went to check the license plate – the taxi driver sped off. Remembered the number, reported the situation to 911. The first guy came running back – says he caught the taxi driver on the other side, apologizes. Returns my “fifty”. Like, everything’s okay, don’t worry. Had to hang up and go call an Uber.