6 years ago [25th July 2008]...

Can't believe my son has turned 6 MA ! He is turning out to be a great kid - who is observing and imitating our each and every dialogues/behaviors - gets freaky sometimes.
Some of the key characteristics that will give us some insight how is personality is shaping:

- Has some sort of identity confusion which is part and parcel of having parents on either side of LoC
- Speaks and understands Urdu which we are very proud of. [Will be joining French immersion school from September IA]
- Carnivore by hereditary.
- Loves Soccer, Cricket and Basketball. Not too fond of Water sports. Enrolled in Gymnastics, Soccer and Swimming classes.
- Goes to Quran classes every weekend [not by choice]
- Good ear for music - enjoys Pakistani songs more. With 'Aloo Anday' being the top in the list and 'Kola veri' last
- Loves playing and taking care of his baby sister Sheza
- Style sense - sometimes gets adamant of what he does and does not wants to wear. Prefers long sleeves.
- Superhero fan - Spider-Man and McQueen(if counted as a Super-Hero) being his favorites (5th and 4th Birthday cakes respectively)
- Sleeps in his room and not experienced any 'accidents' so far
- Nan/Paratha Lover. Loves when my mom makes 'Tikkiya' and 'Warqai Parathas' for him. He once said "Ammi makes the BEST rotis in the WORLD" (He calls my mom 'Ammi' and all the bread variations as 'Rotis')
- Loves to play with his cousins and wants to be part of 'League of Big Boyz'
- Loves making new friends and participating in activities
- Displays leadership qualities by giving instructions to his friends
- Traveled to UAE(Abu Dhabhi, Dubai, Sharjah,Al-Ain), Turkey(Istanbul), Italy(Florence,Rome,Venice), Saudi Arabia (Riyadh,Jeddah,Makkah/Madinah) and France(Paris) and counting (*hint: Europe again)
- Favorite destination - Disney World (Florida) - duh !
- Inclination for playing Guitar. [His mom suggests to make him learn Piano instead - still undecided but I have to agree]
- Loves watching belly-dancing without a blink
- Loves 'his' iPad. That is his companion wherever we go.

Parenting is no way easy, especially when it comes to the first one. By far we are not the perfect parents, have erred numerous times but to acknowledge your mistake and make sure it does not affect him negatively is the key. More than the worldly possessions, it is the values and high morals that we need to inculcate in him.
For a plant to blossom one needs to provide a conducive environment for optimized growth. Parenting is no way different: provide an atmosphere where one is nurtured, cared and loved.
I read a quote which was from a child to his father "The best gift you can give us is by being nice to our mother" . Couldn't agree more to it. In today's time - the quote should be modified by swapping the mother and father from the quote (To wife: "joke tha jee....tussey naraz mat hoo")
We strongly believe in providing highest education as that is the main reason why our parents migrated to Canada to begin with. Have a RESP account for him which I started when he was born. Alhamdulilah that has been growing well. I want him to be an Engineer and my wife wants him to be a Doctor - another part and parcel of having brown parents.

Some random stories from the past:
- I remember picking/dropping him off at DayCare. Got to hear tons of DayCare stories - some of them were hilarious. Initial Days were the most challenging part for all of us but Alhamdulilah overcame that albeit in 4 months or more.
- His hand 'fracture' on his 4th birthday. Had a Red color fiber-cast
- Spending father-son day with him on Friday when I used to work from home. We used to play, eat and pray
- He was shocked when got to know SRK is Indian. His voice almost became chokey. Later said "Does SRK hates Pakistan"
- Took him to the funeral of Majid Uncle (I picked him from DayCare after work and went straight to the funeral proceedings). Explained him why Majid Uncle's kids were crying and where did Majid Uncle go. [Later censured by wife]
P.S - I have tons of more - will create a separate blog entry :)

Hope to give him more love, care for him more, nurture him more! Parenting is a journey where we are constantly learning. Hope to learn and grow with him and have the best Father-Son relation with him IA!


Below is the Note I wrote on Facebook after 2 days when Shayaan was born {July 27th 2008]:

Assalam Guys!
Thanks a lot for the immense love and adulations showered upon us and to the newest member of our team! By the Grace of Allah, on 25th July Friday @ 12:06 am, Saba gave birth to a healthy baby boy. We have named him Shayaan Ali Farooqi. I am so proud to say that he resembles his mother a lot! Subhanallah!
The joy of holding your baby in your arms is extremely over-whelming. With perpetual stream of tears rolling from eyes and the humbleness towards the Giver, the Provider, the Greatest is beyond any words to do justice to the feeling.
I and Saba would like to thank each and everyone from bottom of our hearts. Please continue to make duas for us 3. We are indeed very touched with the incessant calls/text messages since Shayaan is born. Just a matter of few hours after Shayaan was born, my facebook posts jumped to 1891 (3.2% increase) from 1851 (I sound more as a Stock broker now lol). Visited by so many friends which were either coming during break or after work. We received so many bouquets/sweet boxes too! The whole point is that we are very very touched and would like to thank again and again for your gratitude.
I will post the pictures soon . And by the way, congrats to you guys as well for becoming cha-chas, mamus, khalas and phoppus. I am sure you guys must be feeling young now ;)
Love you guys!

Ali and Saba

Towing Data Analytics?

       

Data Analytics-driven Telematics holds a bright future for CAA

        Winter 2009, when the dispatching unit of CAA South Central Ontario (CAASCO) was getting bombarded with calls from members for car assistance. It was a brutal snowstorm paralyzing half the GTA. GTA had experienced the highest casualties related to automobile in that year[1]. It was also the most financial drain for the company as property and auto claims depleted our pool of reserves. By end of 2009, CAA SCO (South Central Ontario) was in a loss of $29 m. Tethering into bankruptcy and by 2013 in a surplus of $ 1.9 m. Miracle isn’t it? What magic wand did we acquire that turned our fortunes? Ironic how we look elsewhere for solution when the solution exists right in front us the whole time: data and people.

In corporate circles, executives vouch for data being akin to gold. I have a different tale to tell: Data has the potential to be gold. Data is worth stack of hard drives collecting dust in company Data Centers unless we churn data into gold!

“Leveraging customer Data and doing some simple eye-balling was the need for the hour ” Jay Woo - President and CEO CAA SCO

 A home owner claiming for sewerage repairs for three consecutive years without Premium go up a cent1. An auto insurance policy holder heaping demerit points for impaired driving and still manages to retain the same Premium by threatening to dessert us. Under pressure from increasing competition, we recognized that our viability and sustainability depended on taking a hard look at analytics at each of our pillars – customer, operations and finance.

Jay Woo, President and CEO of CAASCO said: “Leveraging customer data and doing some simply eye balling was the need for the hour.” We had reached our inflection point. We identified our ‘Analytically Challenged’ framework and processes and re-evaluated and aligned our strategy to being customer-focus and data-driven one.
     
Business Intelligence and Data Analytics was the key component in reaching our goal and thus keeping us afloat. We did cherry-picking in terms of whom to target for our home and auto insurance. We segmented the market and focused on the piece of a pie that we were most interested. The pilot project was named ‘Risk Segmentation’ which was put in place in 2010 to increase our market share.

Enterprise-wide KPIs were laid out by business which enabled us to exploit those areas in our ‘analytical sandbox’ or ‘Center of Excellence’ for analytics. Same methodology and processes were scaled to other product lines and business units within the organization. We were able to minimize our loss ratio and by 2013 we were leading insurer with the least loss ratio. This by no means was a flash in the pan, detailed and articulate analytics enabled us to see value hidden in the data and realize its true potential via analytics.

By transforming insights into actions, we are now able to prioritize our future investments. We are now aiming to being ‘Analytical Innovators’ from ‘Analytical Practitioners’. This will enable us to be achieve competitive differentiation as well as fine tune our market segmentation. Adopting analytics made us turn challenges such as customer-retention, anti-fraud practices and misaligned marketing campaigns into opportunities. True strength of our analytics will be tested when we start gathering even more data ‘gems’ from our telematics this year (We have recently launched our UBI-tool called Telematics last year). This will shift us from being in ‘What happened” and “Why it happened” mode to “What is happening now” mode. The amount of data we will collect and to realize the data’s value is the essence of data analytics. To exploit the ever-increasing data with degree of rationale in real time is where we will be focusing our attention to. Driven by analytics, we can provide BPO (Best Product Option and BPA (Best Product Action) to the customer.

Data Analytics is by far not the domain for growth seeking companies only. Established companies can leverage data analytics in seeking efficiency, seeking new markets or even fine tuning their strategy based on analytics. Data analytics should be ingrained in a company’s DNA, driving forward its strategy and implementing its goals. Over-time, companies will witness data-driven decision making branches out across companies cementing more value and trust in analytics 

 As I write this article, one should be cognizant that the data is being accumulated at an exponential power and the ability to churn data into gold is the bottleneck. To identify ‘strategic information’ from ‘noise’ that is being flooded from structured and unstructured sources and mold them into ‘single version of truth’   is only half the battle. To ‘predict’ with reasonably amount of accuracy , mitigating risk , providing timely customer engagements are some of the opportunities that will drive our company forward – after all we are in the business of ‘making bad days good  and good days better’ .

[Disclaimer - The article above was written for a Management Course about Analytics practices in current workplace. The thoughts are of my personal and does not represent the company's (CAASCO) view points. Many details have been omitted from the blog.]

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[1] CAASCO Portal

Rebellion by Heart

        Heard that song "Batameez Dil"? That songs really reflects my attitude. I like to trod on the untrodden.
In part to be classified as 'cool' and in part to explore the other side of things. I end up being called 'Chuppa Rustum' for doing the unexpected. To defy the conventional custom or norm in culture has always given me satisfaction. Being raised with my twin, I was always touted as the 'mischievous twin'; lead all the pranks and menace while my twin  obediently followed my instructions. Going against the tide was restricted to cultural domain only ; wish could had been more courageous in different domains.
        I am reminded if this trait when I skip Taraweeh in Ramadan. Although my not praying Taraweeh stems from apathy and not from ignorance or rebelliousness. I am no scholar or hold authority to issue 'fatwa' nor I want people to get judgmental about it either. Discussion of "pray 20 or 8 Taraweeh" , "which taraweeh is the quick one" and packaged with fund-raising and Islamic talks disturbs me and what is more worrisome is when people consider skipping Taraweeh tantamount to skipping a fard (obligatory) namaz.
      For me praying Taraweeh in congregation is akin to mechanical drone following the lmam from one posture to another for an hour plus. It can be made self-entertaining when mind wanders and hatches thoughts or can be an ordeal affair if standing next to a burp gun.
      Devoting oneself to religious act for self-realization, self-improvement and inner-peace should be the ultimate goal of a religious act; with out it - you are simply wasting your time. Since Taraweeh is an optional prayer, it has the same reward when prayed in solitary - but that it is to laborious to recite 16 or 40 (depend on 8 or 20 taraweeh) different Surahs when you can simply stand behind the imam and boast about your religious commitment.
      Having said that, 10 days of Ramadan has passed, with time totally a constraint - hope to do whatever religious act or remembrance I can with pure intent and dedication. After all, it is having heart at the right place :)

 

TGIF

      After starting my MMA program at Queen's University, weekends are not the same any more and more worryingly Fridays are not the same any more. The joy of being end of the week , wearing casual clothes (it is business casual for rest of the week), waking up lil late and taking extended lunch break (includes Friday prayers) has all ebbed away. Putting things in perspective negates or reinforces emotions.
      Having able put 'things' into 'buckets' simplifies your life emotionally. It acts like a 'shocker' that absorbs the extreme emotions. The outward forces impacts or shapes your perspective and the resultant behavior.
'Friday' is not an outward force, it is just an event that is cyclic in nature and one can not react and re-adjust constantly for this.
      Everyone reaches an 'inflection point' in their life, where they see themselves thrust in different domain or pushed out of their peripheral zone into a new, uncharted, untrodden path. But what makes you realize that you have reached your 'inflection point'? Translated into simple terms, this can be considered of maturity process :). At this age , I shall comment "dair ayaa durust ayaa" (better late than never)