something about nothing

This blog has moved!

2009-10-26T06:19:00.003+05:30

This blog has moved to http://cheezo.dumpstack.com/blog !

[Update]
And more importantly here is the RSS feed for it.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cheezoblog

Has your blog been Redanyway'ed ?

2009-08-21T23:37:00.001+05:30

If you check my blog, you would see a widget at the right hand side name Redanyway which looks similar to a Google Friend Connect but it is much more than meets the eye.

A bit of background first, Redanyway is developed by a startup run by some of my engineering college buddies.

It is like the Google Friend Connect widget (which shows who all are following your blog) but it also allows you to show off your Twitter Followers on the blog.
Also it lets you autopost your new blog posts directly to your Facebook and Twitter accounts eliminating the need for a third-party twitter RSS feeder like twitterfeed .
Hence it achieves the effect of Google Friend Connect as well as twitterfeed. So your blog becomes more "social"ly shared across multiple social networks which are the most popular these days i.e Facebook and Twitter.

Thats why this service advertises itself using the catchphrase "a social way to follow a blog".
This is not all though !!
It has google reader like capabilites where you can find friends, follow them which in effect means you are subscribed to their blogs . Also your friends can follow you (your blog) which again you can show off with the cool Redanyway widget.

So increase the social awareness of your blog and build your social network around your blog by checking out redanyway. Moreover its free!!!

Quotes from The Shawshank Redemption modified for I T Industry.

2009-08-21T22:54:00.002+05:30

These are some Memorable quotes from The Shawshank Redemption modified (applicable) for the I T Industry.

Orientation for New joinees (especially freshers): Put your trust in the management your ass belongs to your manager.
One coder( moving into management) to another: Get busy livin' or get busy coding.
Assigning/Blaming bugs/issues in your code onto others is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
One employee after completing few years in the industry, to a fresher: On the outside (in the college etc),I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come into the I T industry to be a crook (Fake status reports, fake sick leaves, misuse internet connections for torrents, produce fake bills etc).
One senior employee to a junior searching for a "better" job esp during recession: Let me tell you something my friend. Hope(Finding a better job) is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.
Salvation lies within (self-code/design review, testing one's code).
Employee, after spending more than 10-years in the company to new joinees, These cubicles(walls) are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.
One coder: Hows' life? Second coder: Same old shit, different day

Difference between Indian and American Colleges

2009-07-29T17:41:00.009+05:30

Notice put up in Indian College:

Notice put up in American College:

3 years old !

2009-07-12T21:13:00.002+05:30

I completed 3 years in the software industry last week. Its a milestone though a small one. Its also time look back, reflect and share some of the lessons i have learnt.

1. Quality of Work:
Chances are that you are not happy with your work because it is not challenging, repetitive, and/or there is nothing new to learn. Now frustration sets in, and typically one's productivity reduces. I faced this problem more than once fell in the same trap mentioned above. Yes, i did tell my manager and tried to get better work and eventually did, but that is only solving half of the problem. It is not always for possible to get a team change/project change due to various reasons like economic recession amongst other things.

Along with crossing swords with your manager another thing one should do, is to try to see if you can change something about the current project/work. Improvise some code/some feature, automate something, add some more features. Look around and surely something can be done. Something can be learnt.
Also, another thing is capability. Even if there is some work/project to which you can be assigned; are you capable enough? How do you prove you are capable? e.g You are doing QA work and some Dev work opens up which interests you. Now what?

The solution to this is obviously, try to take on some more work which is challenging (along with you actual work) that can prove you are capable. Hence when eventually some new work comes along. You are in the radar.

Initially, i failed on both counts and found myself miserably frustrated. Along with frustration, self-doubt set in. I started doubting my capabilities also. Was i ready good enough for a better quality of job?
Luckily for me, my mentors/seniors at work helped me, guided me out of the rut.

Another aspect that comes out here when you hate your work is lack of productivity and interest. When you are in the right frame of mind, ideas flow; you are more creative. When you lack interest/hate you job; this flow stops.
Hence remember, even if your job sucks. Try to be most productive and give your best, while looking around for
other opportunities.
Its tough, but not impossible.

2.Ask for Feedback:
Always talk to your manager and ask for feedback. It helps in evaluating your performance throughout the year.
At my previous employer, i never bothered asking my manager about my feedback even though we had numerous one on one meetings. At the end of the year, i was surprised when i got a not-so-good rating in my review.
I make it a point to ask for feedbacks atleast per quarter. It gives good insight into where i stand and what i need to improve.

3. Communication:
Supplementing the above point; Always have one-on-one meetings with your immediate managers. Let them know of any issues you have. Don't crib that the manager doesn't ask. Its your job to tell them anyways.
Another thing is, letting people know you exist.

Once my manager asked me, how many people did know on this floor. There were atleast 100 ppl on the floor. I knew around a quarter that too because we were in the same team.
Let people know you exist; across teams. Interact with people in common areas like cafeteria, sports room etc. (No, not in the toilet!). This helps in the long run especially when you want to know about openings in other teams .
Also, talk to senior people in your team. You can learn a lot from them. In turn they know that you are active/forthcoming and will get you more involved in important activities.

4. Peer Pressure:
Another important lesson i learnt is handling peer pressure. Too often, we spend time comparing ourselves with others. Do I have better work than others? Is he getting paid more? Does the manager prefer him over me? etc. Don't let yourself be bogged down with all these thoughts.

Remember the competition is always with yourself. It a very tough but important lesson. Try to find your own weaknesses and strengths and find work accordingly.
Note, its good to observe your co-workers and learn their good qualities both work related and general.

5. Gossip: Indulging in gossip especially one which spreads ill-will about your team, manager or the company is harmful in general. Criticizing companies policies etc are ok to some extent. But idle gossip brings the morale of the whole team down. This may not affect people who have been in the line for a while, but affect the freshers who have just joined. Try solving problems instead. Bring it to notice of your seniors and upper-management

Enough of fundas for now. These are the lessons i learnt after failing/falling multiple times. I was lucky enough to get chances to fix them.

Interview Tips

2009-06-30T10:01:00.001+05:30

Having given quite a few interviews over my short career and taken a bunch of them in my new workplace; i think its time i share some tips for people being interviewed.

Firstly, preparing your resume. Remember the KISS funda. Keep it simple stupid. I have seen a lot of resumes which have an overload of information; which confused more than informed me. The main thing is that one's resume needs to inform not confuse. Customize your resume for the company to which you applying i.e highlight the work you have done which relevant to the profile they are looking for. Mention relevant skills-sets.
Highlight Awards/special recognitions/papers/patents who you have got/published/filed. Put this at the very first.
Don't mention tools like gcc/gdb or even cvs/svn/clearcase etc. If you have done C coding you surely have used gcc/gdb etc and no one cares abt which code mgmt system one has used.
Don't misguide or provide inaccurate information in resume. I have interviewed people who claim to be "developers" or "maintainers" and give an impression that they have done a lot of coding but are in fact doing most maintenance/bug-fixing kind of work.
You will easily get caught when the interviewer starts digging deep.If you have done bug-fixing, say bug-fixing.
Also don't lie about your known expertise/skill-set. eg. One candidate i interviewed mentioned C/C++ as known languages. When further probed he said he learnt it in college and never professionally worked on it. That was the end of his interview.
Mention skills sets acquired while working professionally or even on college projects.
Also interviewers don't care about you hobbies/interests.
Old adage but worth repeating: If you don't know don't lie. You are surely going to get caught. Its better to say that you don't know or haven't work on it so don't know it.
Brush up on your basics. Although we understand/know most of the basics, we tend to forget them over time. Brush up ! Read your college reference books or other books that talk about the basics. This is the single most important advice
Typical questions asked are "briefly describe yourself", "explain what work you are currently doing". Come prepared with these answers especially what work you are doing currently. Interviewers will check how deeply you understand the current product/system on which you are working.
When asked to solve a particular problem, like writing a C program / solving a puzzle; take some time to think properly and use the whiteboard (incase of face to face) or use paper sheets (for telephonic interviews).
This is stating the obvious, but people try to solve problems in their mind; then lose patience and although they could have given the right answers; they screw up.
I have done it in the past and seen people doing it.

Real incident: Once, during an telephonic interview i asked the candidate to solve a certain C problem, he thought for a while; got impatient and asked me to move to the next question while his brain processed the current problem in the background.
I was ROFL ! I wanted ask if he had a dual-core brain!
Don't interrupt the interviewer with questions about the work/company etc during the interview. Once the interview is done, typically the interviewer will ask you if you have any queries. If not then you can tell them that you have some questions. Don't hesitate in asking about the type of work/general info abt the company but only at the end.
Lastly, if you mention you worked on a certain technology or have knowledge about certain concept. Make sure you know it in and out else don't mention it at all.
eg. If you mention something like IPSec or RTOS and don't really know it properly, then its quite a turn-off and your chances of going ahead are close to nothing

Once upon a time on a Sunday..

2009-05-10T19:13:00.011+05:30

Sundays are meant to be fun, meant for "chillax"ing, watching movies, sports, IPL etc . One tries to minimise work as much as possible. Order food from outside, postpone the work which was postponed from the weekdays to the weekend to the next weekend and so on.

Most importantly experimenting (which often fails ... rather always) should surely be avoided at any cost. Some folks though don't heed such sane advices and learn their lessons the hard way.

It was a usual Sunday morning with my spouse in deep slumber while i was booting my laptop to watch a movie, suddenly i heard couple of blasts that sound similar to bomb blasts.
Neither was i close to any war zone nor was the Indian Cricket team winning any matches. Also there was stink .. really bad odour . I dreaded the worse ; Chemical Warfare.
( Disclaimer: I didnot fart ! as opposed to popular belief )

I instinctively (like Spiderman) turned around , ducked to save my life and then i was shocked to see the merciless carnage around me.

Lets move back in time to Saturday evening where we were visiting the exhibition for household items. We found a very useful item that would save us some effort during the early morning rush to get to work daily.
Rush? Is my job hectic? No man.... there is free AC at work . Only way to beat the heat !

It was a Microwave Egg Boiler. Wow... thats a really handy item. Place some water; then eggs and microwave it for 3-4 mins.. Voila ! Boiled eggs in no time.
The stall owner convinced me that against popular opinion eggs will not burst/break .
I as always was first very eager to buy it and then even more eager to use this contraption.

Hence, on this very unfortunate Sunday i decided to experiment boiling eggs in this device.
Instructions were simple.
Fill water in the vessel, place the perforated cover on it, place the eggs, cover the lid and microwave it for 3-4 mins.

I did egg-actly that and as being an expert in multi-tasking ( No, i am worse than Windows 98 at multi-tasking. One process hangs... system hangs) decides to boot up the laptop the same time.

As soon as i heard the alleged bomb blasts, i instinctively turned around and saw something devilish flying towards me. I ducked ! Phew! Then there was the stink .
I opened my eyes; Yes, the flying towards me was the lid of the Microwave Egg Boiler and the eggs had been overboiled; they burst all over the microwave, the floor, the otta . I was shocked at the turn of events and then the failure of my experiment.
I attempted to move close to the microwave and removed the utensil which still had one egg intact. I keep the vessel near the sink and turned around.
Then there was another blast ; sadly the last remaining egg also burst.

Not only had the lovely breakfast gone away;
I was in shock for sometime . Now What? Then it dawned upon me.. i had to clean up before my wife woke up.

Also, i could no longer use the old trick that i exercised daily and was really tired. Why ? See here.
Hence, now I a software engineer who most important decision of the day whether i should share this link on Twiter or not had to actually do some work ... i.e cleanup!!

But fear not, i have receiving training on fixing household disasters. Yeah! Really ?! Are there classes where do they teach all this?

If you come to my aerobics class... you will surely learn the subtleties of cleaning the house.

How??? I shall gladly enlighten ! Follow my lead

Take your left leg forward; raise your left hand ; bend all your fingers ; Raise your ankle. Now your rotate left wrist and left ankle to the tune of Main Hoon Don! Main Hoon Don!". Voila! you just learnt to change a bulb . Now you can confidentally change all the old spoilt bulbs in your house.
Keep a distance of a foot between your feet. Raise your arms to chest height. Keep your arm and fingers straight. Now rotate your wrist to the tune of Bappida's legendary "Tamma Tamma Loge". All you need is a dusting cloth in your hand and you just learn to dust. You can bend your back and clean that dirty centre table also.
Raise your hands (arms straight). Now take a broom and clean those decade-old cobwebs.
An extension of the above step is keep one stand still and rotate the other . All you need in the dirty dish in your steady hand and a scrotch bite in your right hand... Now you are a dish washer !
Now, again keep a foot's distance between your feet. Keep your hands on your waste. Lift your left ankle. Rotate your left foot. Repeat the same for the right foot. Do this to the tune of any of Jitendra's song prefably one where he wears white shirt/shoes/underwear.
All you need a cloth under you foot and you have learnt to do swabbing
(pochha in your native tongue).
and there are many more.... You can learn the sweep, clean your clothes and even fly kites.

Hence using the above super cleaning skills i was able to effectively clean up the kitchen and thus hid the experiment from the Mrs. Though the stink was difficult to get rid off; and my wife smartly sniffed out that a crime had been committed.

I told the whole story, but my loving/charming wife understood and helped clean the stink .

I was let off so easily? Really?
Alas! No... my wife played the song "Aao Sikhao Tume Ande Ka Funda Yeh Nahin Pyare Koi Maamule Banda " and made me do those embarassing aerobics steps.

Have mercy.............

Testing Again

2009-04-27T09:53:00.001+05:30

Testing....

Testing

2009-04-26T08:17:00.001+05:30

Testing a new blog post with twitthis,reddit,digg,reddit etc widgets....

See the Trees By William Lambert

2009-04-24T11:03:00.001+05:30

(A very good mail fwd)

I lived in Alabama on a half-acre lot blessed huge oak trees that were 40 feet in diameter. They were HUGE! The house was laid out such that every bedroom faced the backyard. Each bedroom had a large picture window. The view was breathtaking. I enjoyed just looking at the trees. In the fall I would identify a particular leaf that was falling and watched it for what seemed liked 5 minutes before it fell to earth.

One day I invited this married couple over to enjoy the view from the bedroom window. I took them into the bedroom and excitedly pointed to the trees out of the window and exclaimed, "just look"!

After about 20 seconds there was no comment from the couple. I however, noticed a big frown on the woman's face.

I said, "What's wrong". She was reluctant to reply.

I insisted and again said, "What's wrong?"

She relented and said, "Don't you see those fingerprints on the glass?"

I turned and looked and there were what seemed to be fifty or more fingerprints on the glass. I ran for the Windex to clean the glass. The lady "Oh, I didn't mean for you to clean it now."

The morale here is this. That lady never saw the trees. Even when I tried to point them out, She missed it! I didn't see the fingerprints. I was looking through the glass not at it.

When the fingerprints were pointed out to me, I saw them and removed them. The lady never saw the trees. She focused on the fingerprints and she never got passed them.

Life is much like that. There are things in life that are good and things that are bad. You choose which things you want to focus on. I focus on the trees.

What are you focusing on?

What do some ads really mean?

2009-04-22T19:28:00.009+05:30

1. Set Max's ad for IPL-2. "Kabhi sau crore logon ko ek saath ek hi cheez karte dekha hain?". ( Have you seen 100 crore ppl do something together at the same time?)
I am pretty sure 100 crore ppl (or even more) do empty their bowels at 0632 daily, and No i haven't seen them and i don't plan to !

2. Unwanted -72 : We have Bollywood starlet Tanaaz Currim in this ad, who realizes that she didn't have protection while "doing it". She regrets doing it and now she needs a contraceptive to fix the problem. Besides her a sitting a real idiot (probably her real life husband) with a face saying that i-wanna-crap-i-dunno-what-the-heck-the-lady-is-talking -about.
After seeing the sad excuse for an ad couple of times; it struck me that she is regretting sleeping with this guy more than not using protection and surely doesn't want him to father her kids.

3. The New Bournvita Ad : I heard that Sania Mirza had allegedly faked her age while playing on the domestic circuit. She has allegedly been eighteen for a lot of years.
Now, of course we know the secret. In the Bournvita ad, in one scene Sania Mirza first drinks Bournvita then the camera pans towards her mother and when it pans back... Voila! Sania Mirza is a small girl. Hence everytime she reached 18; she drank bournvita and she became small again.
How come we (normal people) never got this Bournvita ??
Well, she was their guinea pig all these years. Now that they have realized that works; we see the ad.

4. The New TataSky Ad:
TataSky's package scheme/rates are quite bad. Sport channels cost extra . ZoomTV extra. and so on
Seen the new TataSky ad, where Mr. Aamir Khan is dressed as a sardar gives away his own TataSky set-top box to a random person on the road (and surprisingly only person on the road). The first time i saw the ad, the television was mute.
I exclaimed, "Wow, Tata sky themselves have realized how pathetic their Package schemes are that they themselves are encouraging people to ditch the set-top boxes !".

On that note, yes! their packages are pathetic and they are a bunch of cheapskates. I have to pay extra for Star Sports/ESPN; even more for Neo Sports and Ten Sports !! WTF am i going to do with DVD-like/real-life-like quality when half the channels are missing ??

5. The Airtel Ad:
Airtel's network coverage in the city i live in is pathetic. Most of the times the network range low or very low. I am "out of coverage area/mobile switched off", even if i am at work !
The new Airtel ad shows a cute little kid calling his dad from a fake phone. Airtel says in the end that "People believe that they are close to loved ones who are far away and Airtel enables people to believe so !" .
Well unfortunately due its poor network coverage at many places (esp my work place), I only have to believe that i am close to my loved ones coz i can't call anyone anyways and no one can call me !

6. The Airtel DTH Service Ad:
In the new Airtel DTH Ad, every room the house owner enters he sees some one there. Even while watching TV at his own home, he surrounded by people and he is cramped.
Does it mean that when one gets Airtel's DTH service in their house, they will be cramped for space ??

7. The new series of Vodafone Ads:
Now Vodafone ( or Hutch or BPL or Essar) have realized that their network being pathetic all over India; surely it is not going to follow you wherever you go. Even if the pug does (after being bribed) their network can't/won't. Even if one goes to a remote village you will find a lot of dogs following you but not their network. Hence they got rid of the dog.

Now their new campaign focuses on costly services which 99.8% of the population don't give rat's ass about.

Once upon a time in an Aerobics Session

2009-03-22T12:28:00.005+05:30

My wife suggested i attend an aerobics class which was part of the package deal i had got when i joined a nearby gym. Now the gym serves more than the purpose of losing weight.
It allows one to avoid housework; watch the cricket match on the large screen LCD TV;
read the newspaper/magazines leisurely when its crowded;
when you come back you are exempt of any further housework; My beloved wife would say "You must be tired honey!".
Then I shamelessly watch the remainder of the cricket match on the home TV .If i reach home late you exclaim that "Oh there was a lot of crowd today at the gym!", when you actually were give some chick what-not-to-eat tips.

The chances of me actually exercising are shown here:

One fine day, i was forced out of the bed and then out of the toilet and then out of the house to attend the aerobics class. Regretting the decision to wake up in the first place, i treaded slowly into the aerobics room.
The instructor arrived early (sigh!) and the session started.

Few minutes into the session and i realized i was in an 80s' song-and-dance sequence with Jitendra and Sridevi lip-syncing to "Toofah Toofah Toofah, laya laya laya". I just needed whilte overalls and some white shoes. I could have easily passed of as one of the dancers in the last row who does not know what the hell he is doing.
The lead dancer (aerobics instructor) felt more of a B-grade Mithun lookalike; similar to the B-grade Harbhajan lookalike in the new Aircell Ad. He was very fast; hard to keep up types.
and in worse-case he expected us to be in sync.

WTF?! We weren't some wannabe-dancers competing in some reality show but were a bunch of sleep deprived slow-witted folks with hardly any sense of where we were.

There were chicks in the front ( I come from an engg. college so imagine my definition of chicks) who were able to actually follow what our Mithun lookalike was doing. I was *innocently* following their steps.

The feeling of being part of a B-grade movie dance sequence became overwhelming when i realized the aunties around me were gyrating.
Slowly the dance steps changed from Jumping jack to Govinda and now the centrifugal forces around me were thrust onto me with greater effect.

When i narrated the experience (i.e 80s style dancing not the chick staring part) to my beloved better half; she was laughing her guts out.
Now i will always ensure that i would surely attend these sessions.

People often ask when i get time to think/write these things.

Well in the aerobics session i am pretty sure the people behind me must be writing a blog about some fat jackass who even though looking at the chicks was doing something totally different (obviously hilarious and most importantly entertaining) than the rest of the class.

If .....

2009-03-10T12:06:00.001+05:30

(Thanks to Jitesh for this poem)
Simply superb stuff!!

If
By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;


If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Traffic Signal Personalities!

2009-02-27T18:36:00.004+05:30

I proudly say that i do follow the traffic rules and do stop at all Traffic Signals even if it is the wee hours of the morning or late in the night. Did i mention i also wait behind the zebra crossing?

During the self-righteous act of virtue, i have come across a lot of different personalities and their behaviors.

I-believe-in-time-wrap: When the signal counter shows 20 seconds or so pending. Most folks have their engines turned except these species. They start honking and honking a lot. Is that really going make the counter move any faster? or have you Mr Einstein discovered that honking loud ( in turn make everyone deaf) can actually make time wrap or will it cause the signal counter to become zero?

Another behavior exhibited by these species is to keep accelerating the engine. Thats the other way to make time fly.

There-is-no-signal: Remember the famous dialogue "There is no spoon " from the Matrix. These species apply the same funda to traffic signals. There are no signals. People standing here are just a bunch of idiots. Come; stand; look around for cops; zoom past.

Left-turn-is-always-free: Another species believe that the left-turn/U-turns is always free to take. They will honk and honk until all standing in their way are forced to take the turn.

Sleeping-Beauty: This species is the entire opposite of the first one. They occupy the first or second rows . Even when the signal turns green, these folks are looking in some other direction or talking on the mobile and are completely unaware that standing at a signal doesn't mean that time has stood still.

What-are-lanes?: These species don't believe in the concept of lanes just like the "There is no Signal" species. Standing in the right lane, i can cut across to the left. Standing in the centre lane, i can take the right lane suddenly and obviously glare at everyone honking.

What are indicators?: A sub-species of the above, don't believe in showing indicators and just take the lane/turn they want to . This is true especially for women and such.

I feel, we need indicators just to say we are going straight.

What are zebra-crossing?: Another non-believers are these species. They move their vehicle way beyond the zebra crossing or on it itself . Its not a white-stripes-on-black-road for show or to beatify the city.

The last
When-the-signal-turns-from-green-to-yellow-zoom past: These species believe that once the signal turns yellow from green, its means raise your accelerator and zoom past. If its car, then try to zoom past; get stuck in the middle; while the other signal starts; look like an idiot; while the other species from above think what am idiot.

Wait, is the signal yellow or orange? I will never know... i just zoom past! :)

Right time to Change Your Job (Take 2)

2009-02-27T17:57:00.002+05:30

Here is Take 1. A couple of folks i know, are confused about changing jobs. They are bored of their current profile and see exciting opportunities elsewhere. But the biggest problem on their mind is the recession.

Is it right to change your job during an ongoing recession ?

An easy answer is "There is never a wrong time to do the right thing!". But this is oversimplified. A common myth that people fear is the Last In First Out myth. The employee will be the first to asked to leave. I have seen a lot of forwarded mails from so called expert Economists who warn about this.

When a company decides to hire during an ongoing recession, it means that the decision to do so is very well thought over one. The reason i say this is because, hiring folks and laying them off within months is very bad management. This shows that particular dept. in bad light and obviously a lot of tough questions from the higher management would have to be answered.
Also, a lot of companies have a complete hiring freeze. Not even if the best candidate comes along, would he be recruited. So the one in need would need to try very hard to justify the need to hire to the higher level management . Also the higher management would want to shuffle work among existing employees instead of hiring new folks. Hence, if such a company is hiring chances are that they really need you. It could also lead to some challenging and interesting work/responsibilities for you. Here is an excerpt from the above links:

But a recession can be an excellent time to take a new job, provided you've done your due diligence, says Sam Gordon, a recruiter with Harvey Nash Executive Search. "Firms that are recruiting in a downturn are doing so because the roles they have to fill have a major importance to their organizations," he says.

Such strategic roles are unlikely to be cut if a company has committed to investing in them in spite of a downturn.

Another thing is that your current job is not entirely secure anyways. Hence, if your job was not challenging enough or you were doing repetitive work, chances you haven't learnt a lot. And if you are fired, you are stuck.

Also, the screening process for available positions will be tough. The companies would look for the best fit not just-good-enough fit or ok-but-not-sure fit. So brushing up knowledge is surely not a bad thing to do.

Earlier, i was convinced that one way to beat recession is to go get a degree or such. But after reading this very interesting insight , i rejected that thought. Some excerpts from it :

Most jobs are better than they seem: You can learn from any job.
When I worked on a French chicken farm, I thought I’d learn French, but I didn’t, because I was so foreign to the French farm family that they couldn’t talk to me. However I did learn a lot of other things, like how to bargain to get the best job in the chicken coop, and how to get out of killing the bunnies. You don’t need to be learning the perfect thing in your job. You just need to be learning. Don’t tell yourself you need a job that gives your life meaning. Jobs don’t do that; doesn’t that make you feel better? Suddenly being in the workplace doesn’t seem so bad.

Applications to the military increase in a bad economy in a disturbingly similar way that applications to graduate school do. For the most part, both alternatives are bad. They limit your future in ways you can’t even imagine, and they are not likely to open the kind of doors you really want. Military is the terrible escape hatch for poor kids, and grad school is the terrible escape hatch for rich kids.

Graduate school forces you to overinvest: It’s too high risk.

Lastly, obviously one should just follow their heart it always know whats right.

Yes, its easy blog about such things . Easier said than done right?
I am blogging about it after following my heart and changing my job during the so called recession.

hash-hash-adda

2009-02-13T11:43:00.001+05:30

In the world famous sitcom Friends, there is an episode where Ross's Grand mom expires. They are cleaning out her stuff when they find an old group photo of her friends and her in it. Later on in the episode, 6 of them look at that photo.They say, what a fun group it must have been!

The camera slowly zooms out . It shows another fun group.

In life its rare to be part of such a fun group. I am lucky that i am part of one such;

fun, crazy, and most importantly borderline insane.

hash-hash-adda(##adda) is the FreeNode irc channel where all of the above(and some more) hangout.

Movie Review: Ghajini

2009-01-26T17:48:00.006+05:30

Lot has been said about this movie. Here is an excellent statistical analysis of the same.
It has many graphs, but this one caught my attention.

I had the pleasure of seeing this movie during my bus-ride from Pune to Mumbai in the Volvo Bus. After that experience, i have extended the graph as below.

If you have seen the movie and liked it, do others a favor; dye your hair blonde call yourself britney!

In the presence of Greatness

2009-01-26T15:18:00.004+05:30

Pandit Birju Maharaj (72) and Ustad Zakir Hussain (57) are two living legends who performed together 12 years ago. Since then, there have been a lot of people who have unsuccessfully tried to get them together.

Deepak Vaze of Anant Vaze Sangeet Vidyalaya was successful in getting them together.
One of my relatives, was one of the main donors of this program and also part of the organizing committee.We were lucky enough to watch these legends together from close quarters . To top that ,we also got a chance to meet Pandit Birju Maharaj personally.

Pt Birju Maharaj (2nd from Left)

He loves kids

Pt Birju Maharaj (centre), Shasavati (near his feet) . She has been training under him for 40 years.

Ustad Zakir Hussain starts the show.

Pandit Birju Maharaj makes his appearance.

Jugalbandi

Madhuri Dixit, who has trained under Pt. Birji Maharaj graced the occasion

Sashavati performs as the multi-talented Pt Bhirju Maharaj performs on the tabla

and now on the Harmonium giving vocals to one of his own compositions. Truly a genius.

We were all mesmirized by the jugalbandi and spellbound by the performance. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Why Did BigB Slam Slumdog Millionaire ?

2009-01-19T10:30:00.000+05:30

The much hyped Golden Globe winning Slumdog Millionaire was slammed by none other than Bollywood's most iconic personality Big B.(who claims never to have worked in movies showing reality because again, he claims knows the crowds want fantasy not the reality) for showing Mumbai's seamier side.

Here are the actual reasons why he has slammed the movie :

1. Big B was the original host of Kaun Banega Crorepati (Desi version of Who wants to be millionaire?). Anil Kapoor who plays a similar host for a similar game show in the movie not only does a good job of emulating Big B but also does a better job of mocking the contestant. He almost matches the panache of Big B, but eventually breaks into a Lakhan-style tapori dance. Big B was mortified by the dance and felt he would danced better. He felt the role should have come to him as he would given a natural feel.

2. Big B, although an icon amongst generations in India has never been offered any role beyond a beggar in any Hollywood movie. Even an unknown actor like Gaurav Chopra has done a cameo role in the Oscar Nominated movie Blood Diamond. Given the fact the movie does have a duplicate playing the role of Big B himself. Big B felt that atleast if not KBC host, he should have surely been offered this role where a kid covered full in shit runs into a crowd to touch the great bollywood legend and take his autograph.

3. Slumdog shows the plight of poverty and poverty in the slums of Mumbai. Big B has no problem with that really! The scene that has really ticked him off is the one where a car parked in a slum of Agra ( in Uttar Pradesh, his home state, where he used to own land by claiming to be a farmer) is robbed of its essentials like tyres, head lights amongst other things and driver calls the kid a robber, essentially calling all "such" people a robber.
Firstly as per Big B, there is no slum in UP and certainly given the fact it is the most progressive state, there are surely no robbers. "UP men hai dam, jurm hai kam" remember the ad?

Lately, Big B has reportedly said that he had been misquoted by the media again. My guess is that the only purpose of his blog is to say something which is borderline controversial. Knowing the Indian media, the borderline controversy would become real news(read controversy) and then Big B's next blog will say he was "misquoted" which will be another headline . Shit Happens!

Book Reviews: Tigers, Lexus and more

2009-01-14T19:14:00.007+05:30

The White Tiger: Arvind Adiga's first novel which landed him with the Booker Prize. Now i am not judge of the whether he deserves it or not nor am i judge of the novel's literary quotient. One thing for sure, its a hell of a novel. The novel portray's the dark side of India shining. It shows how people trapped in this "darkness" or "chicken coop" remain there forever; accept fate as it is. But this novel is more than that, its a story of those few "White Tigers" , who dream of the "light"; who want to move out of this "chicken coop" and eventually do breakout of it. That what makes this an interesting read. The unlikely rise of a entrepreneur, from being a normal taxi-driver in Delhi to owning an fleet of cars and running a taxi agency in Bangalore.
The style of writing is lucid and the pace is fast. The author describes the grim darkness very neatly, potraying the truth.
A lot of people have been turned off by this novel or say that its showing India in bad light; the reason they say so is because they haven't seen the "darkness" or witnessed someone fight out of this "darkness".
I won't go into the details of the story etc. Find out about it yourself.

The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Thoman Friedman's second book; a prequel to the world famous "The World is Flat" set in the pre-9/11 era. I picked up this book couple of times earlier, got bored; found it irrelevant and never went beyond a couple of chapters.
I picked this book again with an aim to finish it. The book suddenly turned out to be quite interesting, and very relevant in today's economic turmoil (Nope, doesn't give any insight into Raju's Books though) . This book tells us about how the foundation stones of current crisis were laid. Not only that it even predicts such a downturn as a possibility. If you want to know about Globalization; its roots; how it all began, then this is surely a good read. The stories and incidents that the author narrates are very interesting and fun to read. It talks about the pros, and cons of Globalization. Mostly pros though. Why some countries/people are against it or are even angry because of it. How most people in developing countries misunderstand "Globalization" for "Americanization" How companies/countries are adapting to it and so on. Sometimes though the book gets repetitive and boring; though overall the style of writing and his interactions with people world over make it worth a read.
Why the name, one might ask? The Lexus, Toyota's luxury brand denotes one end of the world where Globalization has been accepted while the Olive Tree represents the other extreme where people are fighting for gaining control over others' olive trees and protecting their own; where globalization treated as new word for US imperialism.

Q and A: Vikas Swarup, an Indian Diplomat's first novel. The story of an ordinary waiter who wins a million dollars on a KBC type quiz show. The producers think its a fraud. How can a waiter know the answers to tough General Knowledge questions. He says he just knows those answers. Not by luck, not by guessing. He just knew those answers. How did he know this answers, well thats what the book about. His life story; his experiences and his encounter with various type of people from which he came to know the answers to the GK questions. The book has similar undertones as the White Tiger about Dark India. What makes the book different is that ; although the certain description of people and places are life like, overall its pure fiction with twists and turns and a stunning ending. Yes, fit to be made into an movie.
The movie is already made. This book inspired the multi-award winning "Slumdog Millionaire" movie. The book again is fast paced and the style of writing easy. The author has focused on the characters and their emotions and less on the surrounding and the situation, making it a quick read.
Incase you are looking for some action on a lazy Sunday afternoon; chuck the TV and pick up this thriller.

Another pic from the trek

2009-01-13T18:32:00.002+05:30

This is another great pic . Thats a Superman T-shirt inside.

Caption: Superman who needs to have a bath, needs to be shown directions to the treadmill and also some training from Frankflin Air hostess training institute.

Courtesy: Image: Pallavi, Caption: Chirag,Hemanth

National Himalayan Winter Trekking Expedition (Reaching Dalhousie)

2009-01-12T08:52:00.004+05:30

We were part of the "National Himalayan Winter Trekking Expedition" starting at Dalhousie organized by Youth Hostel Association. Name sounds fancy? Well only the name does.
More on that later though.

There is a great saying, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Duh! Isn't it obvious?
But my first step was actually in the reverse direction i.e cancelling the trek as Leena fell sick. Hence she had to drop off the trek. Our original plan was to do the trek and bring in the new year in Himachal itself. But instead, i cut my trip short and decided to return after the trek while Leena took rest at her mother's place at Nasik.

I met the Gang (i.e Varun, Arun, Amit and Uttaran) at the New Delhi Railway Station.

Yeah, all of them are smiling(seems more like they are doped). Uttaran seems fit for the Center Shock Commercial. He is losing hair but claims to be in denial. He trying all sorts of Hair styles; wants to do a "Bucket List" of his hair before them falling. What does the hair think?
"I just want to fall off before freaking people out!"

Anyways, now we had a whole day to kill in Delhi. The train to Pathankot was in the night. So First Stop, was Karim's in Old Delhi near Jama Masjid. We took a tonga ride. tonga - horse driven cart for the uninitiated.

Oh wait! What about the after-effects of a 36+ hrs train journey from Bangalore to Delhi ?

Uttaran, the self proclaimed foodie and also the person who claims to have lived in Delhi for 4+ years gave the orders.
The food looks tasty and obviously unhealthy.

All satiated after the meal

Now, after the meal "normal" people would do some sight-seeing in Delhi. We headed to Connaught Place. Stood outside a cinema hall comtemplating whether to watch the [cough]horror[cough] movie, "Rab Ne Baani Di Jodi". I wished "Rab" would "rub" some wisdom into us. And guess what? Next Stop, TGIF !! Yayee, an overpriced pub. Now thats something you don't find in Bangalore.

Uttaran with his rusty knowledge then directed us to another pub which supposedly played decent rock music. The rock music playing club was now a sports bar with all TVs all over the place showing anything but the current "Test Match between Ind and Eng" and playing Disco songs with the singer going "OOww!" every now and then.
The rates were high, the happy hours freebies were quite sad. Hence after half-an-hour of free water and AC, we coolly walked out.

Next stop Barista!! Obviously. If you want have the best coffee its Delhi dude, not Bangalore!
After Ozzy and Arun showed off their out of tune guitar skills, Uttaran his writing-random-numbers-in-empty-boxes appearing-to-solve-sudoko skills and Varun his just-sit-and-stare-in-the-sky skills, we finally headed to Old Delhi Station.
Once the train started chugging along, I got to know Varun's entrepreneurial ventures during his college days which still funds his overexpensive wardrobe. We discussed everything under the sun including office gossip, emacs v/s vim and so on.
We reached foggy Pathankot next day morning. If you want to know, Pathankot is a dusty and dirty litttle town (just like any other town i guess) with a strong military presence.

We had breakfast (lovely parathas) and headed down to the bus stop.

Yeah, i know we look like two shady guys trying to sell dope to school kids. Alright, i don't but Varun surely does. and yes we seemed on a high.

After 4 hrs of travel, we reached Dalhousie. Dalhousie is a town with a old-world charm slowly giving way to tourism and everything that comes with it (tourists, garbage etc). Our base camp was just a 5 min walk from the bus stand. It had a building with beds to sleep, hot water to have bath, mobile charging points and also had free wifi access. Sadly we all work for a company where no one can afford a mobile with wifi capabilites.

Wait a sec! Building? Beds? Hot water? I thought this was a trek! and also wheres the snow?? I was roaming around in a half sleeves T-shirt . Was it winter, really?

Yeah, Coming back to the title "National Himalayan Winter Trekking Expedition" . Himalayan ..no snow! Winter no way. Trek? Wait and watch, things are going to get worse.

We got ourselves registered, dumped the luggage, cleaned up (in all sense) and headed down market place for some shopping. Rest of the gang, sans Anna reached the camp at night. We had our first encounter with a mountain goat a.k.a God father.

and then next day, we had another encounter with another [cough] mountain goat [cough] whose toothbrush had been used to clean everything except his teeth.

Take A closer look at the brush.

We had a early morning exercise where the leader caught Uttaran faking his exercise (You can fake that too) and called him a 60-year old man and also an insult to Bangalore in pure Kannada.
Then we headed to Panch Pula(Bhagat Singh's Uncle's memorial...yayee) for our acclimatization walk.
The great Anna, joined us for the acclimatization walk and complained. " Its not cold, lame trek, comparisons to Sar Pass and so on". I got to hear this till i found a cure, more on that later though.

We mostly walked on the road. What kind of acclimatization walk was this? I later realized, it was actually to get acclimatized to walk on the road with heavy shoes, heavy jacket and heavy bag because this is what we did exactly on the first day of the actual trek.

Yeah so no trek, just a hike for the first day atleast.

You can have a look at the Trek Pics
Stay tuned for part 2 .

Three pics from the trek!

2009-01-06T19:01:00.001+05:30

Here are 3 pics that at best describe my antics during the trek. A blog is surely in order. But for now..

Collecting Garbage.

Collecting Money.

Don't ask what i am doing to Hemanth.

Similarities between Terrorists and MBAs !

2008-12-05T16:19:00.001+05:30

A small bunch of them can create havoc in the entire country.
They are used to bringing down things.. Buildings, Companies, Economies.. You name it. MBA = Masters in Bringing down Anything.
Both go through extensive training from the top in the their field.
Their jobs are high risk.
For any project, their planning is extensive.
One is promised 74 virgins in heaven, other gets 7 figure salary.
No matter what they do, they can screw you and get away with it.
They will give a valid reason for all their actions (like bomb blasts, screwing finances) .

Any more suggestions folks? I'll append it to this list and give proper credits. :)

Mindblowing advertisment by Baba Ramdev!

2008-12-05T11:56:00.001+05:30

Courtesy: Tango!

A "jihadi" Thereom

2008-12-03T12:58:00.001+05:30

Thereom : A "jihadi" goes to heaven for a righteous act (read suicide act) where there are 74 virgins waiting for him.

Corollary 1 : Once the "jihadi" reaches heaven, he finds the virgins are 74 of his "jahadi" brothers who died in the righteous act.

Corollary 2: If you die a virgin, you might get to make love to a dead jihadi

Corollary 3: No one dies a virgin, Life "screws" everyone.

Update: I forgot to thank prempanicker and vedang from twitter world from where i got inspired! So here it is guys...a big thanks !

Definition Of Democracy.

2008-11-29T07:06:00.012+05:30

India is the largest Democracy in the world. What does Democracy really mean?

Democracy means :

Anyone can shit/spit on the road.
There are no need whatsoever to follow traffic rules.
Anyone can protest on the roads and damage personal and public property.
Anyone can launch verbal/physical attacks on certain communities while the govt. sits and watches mutely.
Where arrests of "influential" individuals are more of a shenangian and their bailouts are faster than Shoaib Akthar's bowling.
Money can buy almost everything including votes and ministers.
Polticians use the British divide and rule policy to get vote banks.
Internal Enemies are more than external ones.
Cricrket/Bollywood/Politics gets more coverage than the "real" Heros who sacrifice their life for the Nation.
Where "potential" terrorists are arrested, then released on ground of "not enough evidence" who then certainly go on and cause terror
Anyone can enter from land or sea and terrorize the entire nation.
The Police have to use Normal Revolvers against AK47s, grenades and top cops die needlessly.
Media can broadcast vital information about Marcos, NSG during their counterattack on terrorists, and the terrorists can watch TV and get live updates.
Media continuously broadcast the count of dead people and time since when the standoff is going similar to live updates of cricket matches.
Media are allowed to cause panic because of anything from LHC Collider to bomb blasts.
Peoples' memory of bomb blasts is that of a goldfish and we shamelessly say Citizens spirit cannot be broken .
Government promise the sun and the moon, but not a zero tolerance to terrorism.

Definitions of democracy on the Web:

the political orientation of those who favor government by the people or by their elected representatives
a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them
majority rule: the doctrine that the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions binding on the whole group

I also Blog at Linux-Hacks.

2008-11-27T08:47:00.001+05:30

Visit the Widget Gallery

Quantum Of Solace: Movie Review

2008-11-16T20:29:00.002+05:30

Quantum of Solace is the latest flick from the James Bond Franchise.

Daniel Craig does certainly stand out from other actors who have portrayed the classic super spy over the years. His panache, cold blue eyes and personality stand out. Coupled with hand to hand combat, chasing criminals over rooptops sans the usual gadgets is what made Casino Royale (prequel) stand out. They could have really give the Bourne franchise a run for their movie. To some extent in the last part they achieved this.

But in Quantum of Solace they went overboard . To make matter worse, the movie lacks any story but has the usual hero sets out the avenge the death of loved ones, two timing villians etc .(very common in 90s' Bollywood movies) . This is where the movie falls flat and fails to impress.

The usual Bond fan expects 4 things ... Gadgets, Cars, Larger than Life villians and most importantly hot babes!

Unfortunately coupled with a bad bollywold style story lime and total lack of the above, means that almost everyone is disappointed.

Daniel Craig does anything but act. He runs, chases villains, drives bikes, cars, flies planes, run agains, chases villains again and so on.
Also You need to have seen the Casino Royale to get any link of what is going on.
The action sequences are good but not good enough to carry the film through.

Overall. i would say this movie is watchable only if you have nothing else to do, otherwise do yourself a favor and go see the Bourne Series or even the Transporter ones.

Stress: Are you really stressed out?

2008-11-16T19:40:00.000+05:30

I spoke about the above topic at my 2nd speech at Toastmasters'
I have expanded over my previous post

Good Afternoon to all,I am Chirag Jog.
My topic for today is "Are you really stressed out?"

Do we feel you all are really stressed? Too much work pressure, travelling in so much traffic, rash drivers, drivers
talking on their cells, etc

Do you feel life was easier, simpler in the past? And do you feel your life will be more stressful in the future?
Lets see if this common feeling is really justified.

My was talking to my father the other day. He was visibly irritated because a rash driver
speaking on his cell, carelessly overtook him. He said "Life has become so stressful."
So much traffic! complemented by bad drivers.

Once the Nano comes out, traffic condition will worsen and we will be more stressed.

Life in general seems stressful. People say that competition has increased manifold.
Competiton for jobs, for education, for getting the right life-partner.
Along with that the inflation rate is high. Petrol has become costly.
The list is infinite. Things were so better in the past. Life was so simple.

Or were they really?

Lets move back in time a bit. Say 1980s. Was life less stressful then?
One would say, there was no rat race, no competition ! Yes thats true!
There were no jobs either! People today with just a degree can atleast hope to
work in a call centre if not anything else.
I remember when i was a kid i met a rickshaw driver who was a double graduate but couldn't find a job.

This surely would add stress to our life!

Lets talk about communication.
Life was so simple no cell phones, simple landlines

A parent wouldn't know when would she talk to her son who is working in another part of the coutry.
She also wouldn't know whether the letter she wrote will reach in time or would reach at all.

This surely also would add to stress. right?

Also the traffic then was so less. Not a lot of vehicles on the road.
Well, yes thats true!
When you actually wanted to a buy Bajaj scooter, the waiting period was more than year.

Now the maximum you have to wait is 3 weeks.

Now this unnecessary waiting period would surely
to stress. No?

Lets move back in time even more.The prehistoric era.
Where humans lived in caves. Was there less stress then?
Man didn't know when his next meal would come from?
would it even come at all. Man didn't know which wild animal will he have face and when?

I am sure all these things surely did add stress to one's life!

I am surely all these examples are self explanatory.Stress is a negative human emotion just like anger,frustration,sadness etc.
The surroundings have nothing to do with it. It is something that is generated in our minds.And hence
it is can be controlled just like any other emotion! So just relax, and enjoy the pollution, traffic and
the fellow rash driver as much as you can!

Back to the toastmaster!

KDE 4.1 or Gnome ?

2008-11-16T15:55:00.000+05:30

I have been using KDE 4.1 for sometime now on Fedora 9. Prior to that, i have used both Kde and Gnome on Ubuntu.

So which is better? Which one wins the game? Well i am sure there would be a lot of blogs, articles etc abt kde vs gnome.

The applications/tools i use most often are:

1. mutt + getmail + postfix : For Sending/Receiving IMAP mails

2. Firefox : To Surf the Net

3. Amarok: Listen to Music

4. xchat-gnome : For IRC

5. Pidgin : Chat client for ST/gtalk/yahoo

6. IBM proprietary stuff like Notes, WECM etc

7. VLC Media Player: For watching movies.

8. For almost everything else, the Konsole, i.e the command line.

Over the past couple of (busy) months, i have realized it doesn't really matter which Desktop environment i use, as long as
these applications work fine for me; and these applications do work fine for me in either settings.

Yes, KDE 4.1 has the new jazzy plasma desktop and GNOME has its own Compiz-Beryl features. I have never used them
and surely do not need them. They are cool "candy-floss" features though, but surely not useful.

This is what i felt after i got my Salary Hike !

2008-11-04T16:49:00.000+05:30

This is how i felt after i got my salary hike ....if you can call it a hike!!!

An Update for Oct 2008!

2008-11-04T11:52:00.000+05:30

So no blogs in sometime. Thought i'd write about something. But i can't think of anything in particular.
Here are some updates in general :

Planned a trek in December to Dalhousie
Started using Twitter actively
Enjoyed a trip to Goa in Diwali
Improved my car driving skills
Product Release Done...so jobless
Improved Pool playing skills (have a pool table at work)
F1 season over ! Nothing else worth seeing on TV except Friends and Seinfeld re-runs
Haven't watched a movie for more than a month except re-runs of No Entry, Malamaal Weekly, Bhagan Bhag, Guru on TV
Saw a bunch flats...planning to buy one
Listened to every Tom,Dick and Harry's opinion about Economic Crisis, recession, stock market crash, real estate bubble bursting etc

Yeah thats all i can think of for now!

Children Of Heaven

2008-10-07T18:07:00.000+05:30

Children Of Heaven is an Iranian Movie directed by Majid Majidi . It is about a brother who has lost his little sister's school shoes. The movie makes us realize who innocent kids really are.
All the actors have acted very naturally giving the movie the "real life" effect. Story is kept short and simple. The direction is very good.

The only focus of the movie is children and their innocence. Truly worth a watch.

As Mr Hemanth would say, "Do Yourself a Favor and see this movie!!"

Internet Has Standards !

2008-09-25T11:41:00.000+05:30

Yes this is true.
Next time you write a blog, article or anything that can be published over the Internet.

Remember this: Internet Has Standards

Else

Successful Experiment

2008-09-22T20:08:00.003+05:30

Whenever you come back from an outing say a trek or just a picnic, your mood will instantly turned of after seeing those dirty shoes. Sometimes it could be your sparkling white sports shoes that had to go under.
We suffered this emotion during our recent outing. Fear not,my dear friends i have a good solution to all such problems.

Just put those dirty shoes into the washing machine!
Yes you heard me right! Washing Machine !!

We had heard/read about washing the shoes in this machine. After being hesistant initially, we decided to take this chance.

The machine soaked, washed, rinsed and spinned the shoes. In the end, my shoes came out sparkling white!! OK not sparkling but pretty decent to repeat this experiment.

The washing machine also remained cleaned.

So go ahead and give your shoes the special treatment it deserves

This is the right time to change your job!

2008-09-16T08:45:00.000+05:30

For all those in two minds about changing their jobs, this is the right time ! Don't think twice go for it .

Why is now a good time ? The U.S markets are not recovering. With recent bad news coming from both Lehmann Brothers and Merrill lynch, things are probably set to get worse. Although, not all sectors are affected yet. The fall in the US markets could very well trigger a chain reaction across all sectors and markets. In the coming 4-6 months things might just go from bad to worse. Companies will limit their spending . Hiring will freeze. Bargaining for a good pay packet will be tough.
Even if people are get a chance to switch jobs, the salary rise will not be as high as the usual (30-50 %) .

So, make up your mind now!

Have a great Day!

Out sick again?

2008-09-03T15:59:00.001+05:30

I have been out with malaria supposedly couple of weeks back and now had a relapse (with higher temperature).
I was strictly adviced against working by a lot of people.
There were only 2 things i could do i.e reading and watching some movies.

Reading:
I read some really good books like

1. The Economic Naturalist: Follow this link

2. India in Slow Motion by Mark Tully : The author travels across the length and breadth of India and tells inspiring stories of people who are fighting corruption and bureacracy while adding bit of humor and history to it.

3.The Motorcycle Diaries by 'Che' Guevera: It is a memoir of the great revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevera, long before his became Che. He takes a journey across South America along with this friend, which opens his mind and moulds him into the charismatic leader

4. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch : A truly inspirational "last lecture" give by CMU Professor Randy Pausch who has 10 tumors in his liver and only 3 months to live

5. Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Still reading) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb :
Just started reading this one. It talks about ( as the topic states) how sometimes we just get "lucky" and how there is a lot of randomness in nature especially in the stock markets.

I also saw these movies:

1. The Godfather: Adapted from the classic novel by Mario Puzo (titled with the same name) . A must watch classic movie.

2. Schindler's List : A classic movie from Speilberg's stable. It tells the true story of Oskar Schindler who helps rescues thousands of Jews from the
holocaust.

3. The Machinist: A psychological thriller starring Christian Bale

4. WALL E : Another awesome animation movie from PIXAR

5. Street Kings: Keenu Reaves starrer about a corrupt cop who tries to correct things when his parter get killed. A regular cop movie one guy fighting against corruption. Watch L.A Confidential Instead.

I am ready to get back to work after a really long break.

Stress...!

2008-09-03T15:17:00.001+05:30

My dad was talking to me about the amount of stress we and the future generations were going to face. More Traffic (due to the Nano!), more pollution, more idiots talking on mobile phones while driving etc etc.

I thought for a few seconds and responded, "Stress is an emotion of the human psyche just like happiness, sad, frustration etc"
Humans have always experienced stress. Just that the reasons of stress vary.
Today the reasons are different from the ones yesterday. But you can't say that its more or less. People (especially from the older generation) tend to think that older times were better times, less stressful times. This retrospective utopian thinking is surely misplaced.

In the 60s and 70s, communication was really poor. One wasn't sure of the next time he would get to listen to his son or daughter's voice who were probably in the U.S . People graduating from college weren't sure getting jobs.

If we go even further back in time, prehistoric era where humans lived in caves and hunted for food; there was no certainity of when the next meal would come?
whether it would come at all? There were other things to worry about like wild animals, shelter, clothing etc

So circumstances change over time, and so do things that can add stress to your life and also things that reduce stress.

Let me reiterate the fact that stress is a human emotion just like sadness, anger and frustration. This is a good thing, as it can be brought under control.

So Learn to reduce stress in life by controlling rather than complain about it!

61 reasons why India is special !

2008-08-19T13:31:00.001+05:30

On the occasion of the 61st Independence Day, i ponder on what makes India so special, so different from rest of the world . I have accumulated 61 different reasons. Check it out.

Disclaimer: I know, every country is unique in its own way.

The Dark Knight ... latest Batman Offering

2008-08-09T10:46:00.001+05:30

Couple of weeks released, the sequel to the movie Batman Begins. The producers created a lot of hype around the movie, drawing more than the usual crowd for the movie.
Within the first weekend, it broke the record for highest earning over a weekend beating Spiderman 3. On IMDB it has shot up to Number 1 beating greats like The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, Schiedlers' List.

What makes the movie so special ?

1. Hats off to Christopher Nolan (Director) creating one of the most twisted villain of all times. The Joker, enacted by Heath Ledger is literally twisted and a true pyscho who challenging Our Dark Knight to raise his bar each time.

2. The movie finds a balance between, character development with power dialogues and the power-packed action sequences. This surely helps cater to a very wide audience.

3. One of the most important, things i felt that makes the movie great is the minimal use graphics/animations. Yes, most of the action sequences are done in the old-style with real stuntmen.

4. Most importantly, strong screenplay.

5. Also the all-star ensemble, esp Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman (both great veterans actors) that add a touch of humor and very valuable advice to our Caped Crusader.

Bottom Line: I am ready to see it again! ;)

The Economic Naturalist !

2008-08-09T10:31:00.001+05:30

Currently I am reading The Economic Naturalist by Robert H Frank . This book teaches some of the most basic economic principles in a very unique narrative way. The author claims that any learning from a narrative ( type of story telling with real life examples) is very effective. This is very truly the case.
He shows how economics works in everyday life with examples in the form of questions and answers.

Here are some of the questions:

Why do female models earn so much more than male models?
Why might retailers deliberately hammer dents into their own appliances?
Why do the keypad buttons of drive-up cash machines have Braille dots?
Why are child safety seats required in cars but not in airplanes?
Why is there a light in your refrigerator but not in your freezer?

Each of this has an economic angle to it.

I am sure after reading this, you'll surely head to pick up the book.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

2008-07-27T08:54:00.002+05:30

Just today, i saw this amazing speech by Randy Pausch, a former Professor At Carnegie Mellon University.
It was his "Last Lecture".

His shares three things

Achieving your Childhood dreams
Helping others achieve their childhood dreams
Lessons Learnt

Here is the entire video. I find it truly inspirational.
Its an hour long video though but please do take out time and watch it, you surely won't regret it.

After that, you can play it in vlc or kaffeine.
or watch here on youtube directly.

Randy Pausch, an Inspirator for millions

Icebreaker Speech

2008-07-27T08:33:00.001+05:30

In IBM Pune, I am part of the local Toastmasters' Club known as the IBM Thinkmasters.

The first speech that you give here is known as the Ice Breaker. Typically you would take about yourself.
I did just that and i am going to share is here.

Good Afternoon Everyone!
This is my ice breaker speech.
I will talk about myself.
But I won't be talking about Academics and things like that.
I will talk about a bit of my hobbies, experiences and the lessons
that i have learnt.

My Hobbies
----------
I love travelling a lot.
My favourate state is Himachal Pradesh.
In the last 5 years, i have visited Himachal 4 times.
I like going unknown not-very-popular destinations rather than the regular tourist places.
I love travelling by train. As i kid, i was always fascinated by the train and i still enjoy travelling
by train. Along with travelling another thing i enjoy is trekking. Recently I completed 10-day trek again in Himachal.
Besides that, the biggest two passions i have reading books and watching movies.
I typically read a lot of non-fiction books, and the categories range from History, Economics, Philosopy
to Travellogues.
In movies, no specific genre...any good movie is fine.

My Experiences and Lessons learnt
-----------------------------------
1. During my school years, i had fallen into bad company. I was distracted from studies, good friends
and a lot of positive things.The end result was that i got really bad marks in SSC i.e 10th.
I found it tough to get into a good college. Luckily I did get into a good college.
My parents did support me a lot. I realized my mistakes then and worked to correct them.
I studied hard and got good marks in my 12th. That helped me get into a good engg college.
The lesson i learnt from this is that
"we will make mistakes in our life; we will fall down but life
always gives us chance to get up and rectify these mistakes
and we should take those chances and make full use of them"
In the movie "The Shawshank Redemption", there is very dialogue
"Salvation lies within". This is very apt.

2. In 2004-05, I had just finished my 2nd yr of engg and i had gone with a local pune group for a himalayan trek.
On the last day of the trek, (the day we have trekked the most). We were completely exhausted.
I, along with another friend on the trek got lost in the jungle.
We were lost and spent the entire night in the jungle.
I was just an amateur trekker back then, just learning and this friend was an expert.
We had to cross a lot of dangerous terrain which wouldn't have even in our wildest
dreams. Even though I was not a greater trekker or very fit trekker, i never thought of quitting
no matter how tough or dangerous the terrain was. We are lucky to have lived to tell the tale.
I learnt firstly "Don't get lost" and "secondly, When there is a will, there is a way"

3. Now, I will talk about the most important part of my life.
I am really lucky that I got to marry the love of my life.
There were a lot of issues which we knew of before hand, that
would surely prevent our being together. There were times
when our closest friends would say that it not going to happen
and that we should stop seeing each other etc.
But obviously, we couldn't live apart and things fell into place
and everything got resolved.Again My parents supported me here as always.
I learnt that "When want something from the bottom of your heart
the entire universe will conspire to make it happen and surely does!"

These are some of the most important lessons that i have learnt in my life.
I thought sharing these experiences and the lessons learnt would help others.

I hope i have broken the ice !

Kung Fu Panda

2008-07-18T11:49:00.001+05:30

Po's dad has a very successful restaurant business. He has a "special ingredient" soup which is very popular.
He tells Po that ingredient has been passed down generation after generation.

"The secret ingredient to the secret ingredient soup, Po is nothing", He tells Po . Po says "Nothing ?!"
Po's dad says, " You have to believe that your soup is special, then it becomes special"

This is what makes this movie teaches.

Po is a big fat panda who dreams of kung-fu and dreams of being an awesome kung-fu master.
His dreams turn to reality when is chosen by mistake to guard a secret scroll against a ferocious snow leopard who is the greatest warrior.
Po's master albeit hesistant to teach Po kung-fu initially is forced to realize that "Believing is everything" and as Po's master's master puts it "There are no mistakes"

The animation and story telling is very good as expected from dreamworks. Jack Black does an amazing job as voice of Po.

When Po meets the snow leopard in the final showdown, the leopard say "I can beat you easily, you are just a big fat panda". Po responds "I am not a big fat panda, I am the big fat panda !!! "

Now thats confidence from someone who believes in himself !

Broadband Internet in India

2008-07-08T21:20:00.001+05:30

The current state of affairs of Broadband Internet in India is as follows:

The Good

Airtel Broadband (Bangalore) : The best so far (as per my experience). The uptime/performance is good, so is the customer service is good. The problems are handled very well. Incase of an outage, you get an intimation well in advance. Down side is that its not available in all areas
YOU Telecom(Pune): They are not as great as Airtel but their services are decent. Problems are resolved within 24hours.One pain point is their billing system. Postpaid isn't truly postpayed and they keep nagging you to pay the bill. Another is they rate limit data downloaded via p2p networks.

The Bad

BSNL (Bangalore): When it works, nothing like it. The question is how often does it work and how long does it take to get it fixed. Customer service is pathetic. They don't care about customers. You have run around to get things working.

The Ugly

BSNL(Pune): People here just don't care. It took them more than 2 weeks to find out the reason why the Internet connection is not working after numerous phone calls. Not that its fixed. There is no concept of customer service! No one cares about you. Incase of a complaint you are redirected to another person and then to another. I already 5 numbers stored.
Hathway(Pune): The management is bad. Its been 2 years since i have disconnected their service; i still have the rented modem and still keep getting bills. Again when it worked, it worked like a charm but unfortunately it never worked for me. The concept of customer service didn't exist.

This leaves out Satyam and Tata Indicom. I have heard/read really bad reviews for both of them. Recently Reliance entered this space. I don't have any reviews about them yet.
The state of affairs of broadband in India is really pathetic. Only few players provide good service. But again they can't provide connectivity to all parts of the city.

Average Cost of Eating Out!

2008-06-28T22:51:00.001+05:30

Average Cost of Eating out over the years, indicating the treats I gave and got:

First Year of Engg : 100 bucks for 2
Second Year of Engg : still 100 bucks for 2
Third Year of Engg: 200 bucks for 2
Final Year of Engg: 250-300 bucks for 2

And now?
easily above 400 bucks ......
What does this indicate ? :)

Interesting Incidents during the Sar Pass Trek - Part 3

2008-06-15T09:12:00.004+05:30

This blog completes the trilogy of the interesting incidents that occured during the Sar Pass Trek. Some one got inspired to go for such a trek after reading the first Part. Leena told me to warn him that such things don't happen to everyone just a few lucky ones like Me .

Incident 6: Correlating 3 incidents

Here i just correlate 3 events and the conclusion is highly speculative and may not even be true.
This happened at Guna Paani camp. During the night,in our tent we talking general stuff. (Incident 1) One guy (Mr P) mentioned that during his visit to Hyderabad, he visited a pub where there was some semi-nude dancers. Although he couldn't stick around for the whole show as his wife was waiting for him at him; He felt he was deprived an oppurtunity of a lifetime. Moving to the next morning. All in our tent didn't sleep well because of the uneven ground. (Incident 2) I was surprised when Mr P said that, He had a very sound sleep. I thought "Lucky you!". Before we move out of any camp, all the tents have to cleant. (Incident 3) I and Hemanth usually cleant our tents. We went inside and were dusting all the blankets, when i noticed that the blanket i was dusting has a round wet spot around 6cm in diameter. It was coincidently Mr P's blanket.

Just correlate the 3 incidents mentioned above. Get a hint? Hemanth and other folks who told this story got the hint.

Incident 7: Atop a bus

One of things in Himachal not to be missed is sitting on top a bus. Yes! not inside but on the top. We experienced it twice during the trek and once after the trek. After finishing our trek and moving out of the Kasol YHAI camp, we were waiting at a bus stop to catch a bus to Manali. A private bus stopped and we were to climb on top of that bus. The conductor stopped us; it was against the rules to do. So we kept our luggage on top and sat inside the bus. After crossing Bhuntar, the bus broke down.

We all got off. Luckily another bus of the same company came along. Well there wasn't any space inside. So we all went top of the bus. Yayee! Dream fulfilled.

We enjoyed the journey though cautiously circumvented all the wires and trees in the way.
Krishna said he didn't know what to expect next. We surely didn't. It started raining. We were ok with the drizzle, but then it came down hard. We got down at the stop; leaving our bagts on top of the bus. The bus was already overfull. Before we could get in, the bus started moving. We were now left at the bus stop without our bags.

We waited patiently and helplessly for the next bus. We desperately climbed on it and hoped our bags were safe.
We thought at Kullu, we would change buses as that was long stop. When we reached Kullu, we realized the bus that had our luggage had already left for Manali and this bus was only until Kullu. Things were getting worse or more exciting i can't say.

We then boarded the bus Manali. On reaching
Manali, we realized none of us knew what was the number of that bus that had our luggage. We spanned out all corners of the Manali bus stop. We eventually found our luggage, although we had a hard time explaining the conductor as to how we and our luggage travelled on different buses.

Incident 8: Solang Valley

Manali, one of most sought after tourist places in India is crap. So are places around it eg. Rohtang Pass , Hidimba Temple and worst of all Solang valley. We were told by some one in the trek, that Solang valley was a very good/beautiful place. I, having visited Manali the 4th time (in the last past 5 years) already knew that Solang Valley would be as good (or bad) as Manali. But I was ready to proved wrong. So when these folks were making plans to go to Solang Valley, i didn't play spoilsport and followed the plan.

We rented a taxi (for 600 bucks) and reached Solang Valley. Now the question what is Solang Valley?
Is it a beautiful valley with amazing vistas?
The answer No!, its just a flat ground with a few hills around it. The flat ground has a lot of stalls put of akin to melas or fun fairs we visited as kids. This had some adventure sports though.
Like you can do gliding for less than 2 mins but for more than 600 bucks. Or Stand inside a big ball and roll inside it for another 700 bucks.
We had already spent 600 bucks for the cab, and had had all the adventure we can think already!
Evidently, these guys were all pissed and ready to track down that camper who adviced us this place and beat him up.

Paragliding

Rolling in a ball

Krishna was thinking of ways of claiming back the 700 bucks. There was a stall put up where if you knock out all the glasses from the table with a ball, you get 500 bucks. You pay 20 bucks for 3 tries. Fair enough?
Krishna was ready to take the chance of losing 20 bucks. Sri decided to take a shot.
Did he have a good aim ? Did he have the necessary skill ? Could he have made it to any IPL team even the Royal Challengers?
Well, the answer is No!! He missed all his tries, by almost a kilometer. But could he have still made it to the Royal Challengers team ? With their current form, can't really say!

That was the last incident that happened. After that we all parted ways, Krishna and Sri went to Shimla for some more adventures. I and Hemanth returned to Delhi and then to Pune and Bangalore respectively.
It was truly an amazing trip i had done in recent times especially with all the incidents that we witnessed/experienced.

Interesting Incidents during the Sar Pass Trek - Part 2

2008-06-15T09:04:00.001+05:30

Incident 4: Fart Master.

It was around 5am in the morning at the Kasol Base camp. I was half asleep. I heard a really loud noise almost like those really loud lakshmi bombs that go off during Diwali. My eyes were wide open. It was a fart. Not only did Hemanth,Sri and Krishna confirmed that, they also told me that when i was out the tent to attend nature's call, another bomb went out. Only after a couple of days did we find who the culprit was ( I'll refer to him as Mr.F) ; as he always tried to better his record. There were other bombs let of by his buddies (as though competiting) that went out in our tent but albeit of lower intensities. We were trapped.
Now, during our trek through Sar Pass, there was a very steep climb where it was adviced that only one person climb that stretch at a time. Hemanth And Krishna had already crossed. I was next and Sri followed. Sri stayed back and waited until I crossed . Now Mr F comes overtakes Sri and is trying to climb. Sri told him to wait until i complete. But this guy was in a mighty hurry. He started climbing. The scene looks like this, Sri is standing and Mr F has started climbing just above him. Now Mr F fires out a bomb (loud enough to cause an avalanche ) right in Sri's face. When Sri finally reached on top. His face was worth looking at, but we weren't looking we were laughing our heart out.

Later we found Mr F and his buddies wolfing down a lot of groundnuts. We dreaded the night ahead.

Incident 5: A fight.

Which are the verbal fights you like the most? I really enjoy the ones where the participants don't understand each others' language. On the trek, I witnessed a fight between a female who was continuously yelling in Kannada and a guy apparently arguing back in Hindi.
How did the fight start?
There was an old rickety bridge which only one caould cross at a time. Each one took turns. This Delhite overtook the female from Haasan, Karnataka albeit cutting lanes. The lady freaked out and started yelling . This guy surprised as ever was quiet initially as lane/line cutting in Delhi as very normal. Even after a lot of the folks tried to quell her anger, she still kept yelling unecessarily. Eventually this guy also lost his cool and started yelling back. This female's husband also joined in and knew only Kannada. It took a while to resolve the whole issue.
I can understand folks arguing when they understand each other's language. But its really amusing when they don't and just vent out their anger.
In Rheotic, Hemanth asked, "Have they come all the way up (8000ft) to have a fight? Don't we do it everyday in the cities?"

Incident 6: First Slide/Torn Pants
We had heard from other folks from previous camps, "Don't miss the kilometer long slides around Sar Pass". So here we were at the first natural snow slide. We were explained how to sit and go . There wasn't any support . If do something wrong you're screwed. How could I not goof up here? You sit; lie back; keep your legs in the air and slide down. Your elbows are your rear brakes and Feet the front brake. We all know what happens if you apply the front brake instead of the rear brakes. As if i didn't know that already, i did exactly that.

Initially during the silde, i was going down on the support of my back. Then applied the front brakes for some reason. I had a blackout for a second. When I opened my eyes again, i was sliding down on my stomach!!
When i reached down, i had snow all over and inside me (including underwear); folks were laughing their heart out. Krishna exclaimed, " This was the most entertaining slide, we have seen. Why do such things happen to you?"

Now, while trekking in snow you aren't always sure in which parts have snow melted and in which parts are they intact. So normally the guide tests the snow and makes the path, you just follow. Near our lunch point, i was walking around generally on untested snow. I kept my foot on one patch, and my leg went way down. I heard a particular sound which you don't want to. The result :

Yes, my jeans were torn at a very strategic position. Luckily i had another set of pants ( which were worn out). I didn't have a choice. The following day, what i dreaded came true. These pants also tore. Yeah and at the same place. I was lucky that Hemanth lent his jeans and they fitted. He kept verifying though that his pants weren't going to be a victim too. Krishna again exclaim "None of the other campers had any torn pants, You had two! Why do such things happen to you ?"

Wait, there are another set of incidents. Stay tune for Part 3!

Who Scratched My Car ?

2008-06-13T09:46:00.001+05:30

How many people owning New and Shiny cars have sleepless nights about their car getting scratched ?
Your car can be scratched by miscreants, by children or by your novice neighbor learning to park his car; purposefully or even unknowingly. I pretty sure, all folks parking their cars in shared parking areas would agree.

My dad was always vary of buying a new car for this reason. So we had 2 second-hand cars and eventually now he bought new one, which inspects very meticulously everyday in the morning and will solemnly reports "There is another scratch!" or " The neighbors are useless!"

Why do i suddenly bring up this topic?

Today morning after returning from the gym, Leena noticed some scratches on her car! She went berserk cursing the children who normally play around during the day. I smiled and laughed a bit. That just things made things worse.
I then realized that, Scratches on the most beloved possession can make anyone's mood bad especially when you can do nothing about it.

My advice to all folks owning/playing to own cars (new or old) is GET OVER IT and Learn to Live with it . This is surely, most definitely going to happen; especially if you are living in India. There is no escape and moreover there is nothing you can do with it. Hence, stop sulking/cribbing/getting angry.
And Have a Nice Day :D .

So I bought a New Cell...

2008-06-13T09:23:00.002+05:30

Finally my cell gave way. It fell sick after the trek and now is lying on its death bed. After procrastinating a lot, i ventured to buy a new one! Whenever you go for advice on buying a cell or go to sites like univercell.in etc, the first thing they'll ask is requirements!
What do i require??
I was confused anyways!
I wanted wi-fi ( when people why?, i had no explanation) and ability to sync with my Lotus Notes Calendar. This mostly means a high end phone more than 12k. I was in no position to blow so much money. Nor did i want a simple phone with a monochrome display . I knew my budget was around 5k. So I walked around visiting couple of shops with lousy salesman ( viz The Mobile Store and Subhiksha), who treat customers(wanting cheap mobiles) like dirt. But i was determined to get one. I went in another shop in aundh namele Baba Mobile. As i said told them my budget, they enthusiastically showed 4-5 models in that range. The sales folks were good and courteous.

My eyes fell upon the Samsung J150. It looked really sleek. It has the regular stuff; 1.3M camera, Mp3 player, Bluetooth, FM reciever, MicroSD card slot etc. I fell in love with its looks. I bought it right away for 4.8k . The GUI layout is very very user friendly and intuitive. The quality of the GSM transciever is very good, so is the quality of audio output.
I am very happy with this purchase. Hope i make this one survive some treks ;).

Interesting Incidents during the Sar Pass Trek - Part 1

2008-06-08T19:47:00.001+05:30

I am not going to write a blog about how the Sar Pass trek was in general, instead i am going to write about the interesting incidents that happened during the trek.

Incident 1: Learn to wear your belt correctly

This happened to me on the very first day at the base camp itself. Hemanth has a pic of it. I hope he uploads it quickly.
We were moving out of our tent for a session on first-aid. When i came out of the tent, i realized that i had forgotten to wear my belt. So i got it out and started wearing it. This happened while standing out the tent. After buckling the belt; i started to move. Then i realized, i couldn't; something was holding me back. All the folks around me started laughing and clicking snaps. Only then i realized that not only did the belt go through all my pant hooks, it also went through one of the ropes of the tent. The rope that keeps the tent standing. Hence i couldn't move and gave people a hearty laugh.

Incident 2: Life gives you chances to say "No", use them!

After Incident 1, we moved to the central camp for a session on First Aid. The lady doctor called on volunteers (who she guided) for showing how to attend to sprains, setting up an oxygen cylinder etc. For the last demo, she scanned around the tent, and her eyes feel on me. She called me forth for a demo on CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation). In layman's language Mouth-to-Mouth . I thought she would just make me lie down, talk in general about it and let me off. How wrong was I ! . First i was told to take off my T-shirt. Then the guy acting as a aid was told to take off my belt!. Folks started laughing and i started getting a bad feeling about it. I prayed to God, "Please not the pants! not the pants!" . Luckily the pants stayed on. She explained certains things and then came the mouth-to-mouth . Yes, the lady doc gave me a mouth-to-mouth. Lucky for me she placed a handkerchief on my mouth before she proceeded. Unluckily, i could hear flashes go off. So photos were clicked, and were then used to blackmail me.
Later folks, asked me what was going through my mind during the incident. I replied I was praying to God "Please save me!!"

Note: Lady Doctor wasn't hot.

Incident 3: In search of a special kind of grass

This happened at our first camp, Gunapaani. Hemanth and I climbed up a small hill nearby. We were later joined by another person from our trekking group. He was married, had 2 kids and seemed in his late 30s. He started searching for something in the grass. He mentioned that in Uttaranchal, there is a special type of grass which cost 10 grand per kilo. Hemanth guessed it to be some sort of dope. He said no dope. It was good for sex. We were amused. He then told us the story of the discovery of the grass. Farmers found that their old and useless male horses had suddenly become "very active". The farmers were surprised and kept a watch on them. Then the farmers found this special grass . I was in two minds to ask, how did they find out that it worked for humans also ; before which we were out of that place.

There are more incidents that happened. I'll talk about them in the follow up of this article. Stay Tuned!

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Tareef, A Mughalai Place in Aundh

2008-06-07T17:29:00.001+05:30

Today, Leena was in a mood to have some Mughalai style biryani, so we visited Tareef, a Mughalai restaurant in Aundh itself.
It is located near the Ozone Mall. There is big red colored board put up. Hard to miss.
The decor of the place has an ethic feel; from the wall-hangings to the cutlery.
The menu has a nice variety of dishes. We ordered the Akbari Macchli and Murg Biryani Dilliki.
Both the dishes were really sumptuous and tasty. The fish was fresh and the Biryani was well cooked. Both of us really enjoyed our meal. The waiter was also courteous enough to ask us about the food. We finished it off with a Malai Phirni which was decent enough.
The rates are a bit on the costlier side, though i would most certainly recommend this place for Tandoor and Biryani fans.

Another blogging client

2008-06-06T15:13:00.001+05:30

Testing another blogging client... This one is scribefire
It looks better than BloGTK or gnome-blog..

2008-06-06T14:54:00.000+05:30

This is my blog post using a blogging client BloGTK .... testing

Things that truly refresh !

2008-04-21T21:37:00.003+05:30

What are things that can really refresh me ??

Drive to work. Early Morning.Open/Empty Roads. 20kms of pure refreshment
Fresh Coffee
A Hard Workout
Spending some quality time with Leena
Travelling By Bus ( Discovered of late) Pune-Nashik journey through Asiad Buses Surprising??? I am surprised myself :)
Eating some really great food !
Mindless babble with friends
Watching classic movies like Shawshank Redemption, Casablanca etc
This may sound stupid. It surely does. Watching these two videos

If you Come Today by RajKumar

And Love me or Hate me again By Rajkumar

Monday ( 14th April 2008) was a Great Day

2008-04-21T20:55:00.004+05:30

Exactly a week ago. This seemed to be quite auspicious. A lot of good news came.
Leena got a good posting Covelix. She will be joining as a Market Research Analyst. This is something she is really excited about and really looking forward. This was the first news of the day.

A few hours later, Ankita gave some good news. Her US trip is finally officially approved. She is surely very excited about it. Its really great. She will be mostly in Beaverton . I am sure she will have a great time.

Post lunch, my long lost ( and found again) Pal Sudeep pinged me. He is all excited about his job at MINT, A finanicial Newspaper based in New Delhi.
It was really turning out to be great day with great day. To make it even better, I got the news that ISL folks are shifting from Ozone to Hinjewadi. This reduces my travelling to half. Although most of the folks aren't happy, I am joyous !

To top it all up. You Telecom provided me with Broadband Internet at home. They were quite quick in their service. Now I can take all my late calls from home.

This was one of those days, that had a lot of good news! We wish for many more such days !! Hurray!

Always Breathe deeply !!!

2008-03-28T20:24:00.007+05:30

Life is a circle. Whatever goes around comes back.
There is no use of anger in this life or any other.
Anger only spoils things.
Always be peaceful. Be in peace with yourself and others.
Always sort things out peacefully.
Keep your mind cool and calm.

Always Breathe Deeply !!

Whenever you feel angry, take a deep breath and realize it is not going to solve any problems.
Forget your past. Forget the bitter things.
Always look ahead. Always look towards the future.

Always Breathe Deeply !!

The past is behind us. Forget it. But remember the leasons learnt and move ahead.
People may do foolish things and so may you.
Forgive yourself first and then others.
People may hurt you and so may have you.

Forgive yourself first and then others.
Look at yourself first and then others.

But Remember, Always Breathe Deeply !!

Don't regret things that have always happened.
Everything happens for a reason.
You will find the reason for every foolish thing you do.
That reason is always good.

Everything happens for the good.
If you think otherwise, its just your perpective.

Life is a party, enjoy it till it lasts.
And It won't last forever.

But Always Breathe Deeply !!

Getting Tata Indicom V-data card in ubuntu linux

2008-03-11T20:27:00.003+05:30

To start using the tata indicom v-data card in ubuntu, follow these steps

1.Run this command
$sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x12d1 product=0x1001

2. Edit the /etc/wvdial.conf and add the following lines

$cat /etc/wvdial.conf

[Modem 0]
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 115200
Dial Command = ATDT
FlowControl = Hardware (CRTSCTS)
Init1 = ATZ
[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = Analog Modem
Phone = #777
ISDN = 0
Password = internet
New PPPD = yes
Username = internet
Stupid Mode = 1
Inherits = Modem 0

3. Run
$sudo wvdial

You will see your primary and secondary DNS getting set.
Now you are set.

Note: The data card is of Huawei make.

Also for the TATA Plug2Surf USB modem to work;
Insert you modem in and do a
$dmesg

You will see some messages with /dev/ttyACM1.
Just replace /dev/ttyUSB0 with this in the above mentioned files.

Thanks to varun for showing me this method

Ubuntu on Compaq Presario F500

2008-01-29T19:35:00.000+05:30

Installing Ubuntu Gutsy on Presario F500

Recently Leena got a new laptop [ Presario F500] . At its base, there is a 64-bit AMD Turion Processor and 1 GB RAM. To add to this there is a Wide Screen [15.4''] and Altec Lansing Speakers. But this is not good enough for Windows Vista [packed by default] to run.

Ubuntu Installs normally except certains glitches.

1. LiveCD causes the system to hang.

Once you see the splash screen of Ubuntu's main menu press F6
You will get the kernel command line, append vga=792 or vga=791 to that line and press Enter or b
Now X server should start and you will see the Ubuntu Desktop

The reason for this hack is probably because it has a widescreen display.

2. Machine during boot up.

Post Installation, your machine will hang because of the above mentioned problem.
In grub edit the kernel command line and the params mentioned above.
This may not be enough for your system to bootup. It wasn't surely enough for me.
I had to remove the params quiet and splash also.
Make these changes permanent once the system boots up by editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst .

NOTE: Removing quiet and splash, although necessary will not show any splash screen while the OS is booting. You will directly see to the login window.

3. Getting Wireless/Compiz working.

Unfortunately Wireless doesn't work out of the box.
You will need the Broadcom wireless binary driver.
Goto Menu System-> Administrator -> Restricted Driver Manager .
It will say Broadcom driver not in use. Select the checkbox associated with it .
It will ask for a link from which to download firmware . You will get it here .
Once the state changes to in use. You are successful.
Similarly to get Compiz working, select the NVidia Driver which is not is use.
It will download the driver and again once the state changes to in use. You are successful.
This will need a system reboot.

4. Nonfree Flash doesn't work in Firefox.

The non-free Adobe flash player embedded in Firefox will surely not work although package manager will say its installed, as there is no 64bit version yet.
Use gnash [ open source/free flash player] . It works just fine.
People seem to crib about java plugin for Firefox not working on 64bit boxes, but it worked fine for me.

References:
1. Tom On Identity
2. Ubuntu's wireless Docs

Start Ups and Free/Open Source Technology

2007-12-14T15:28:00.000+05:30

I am starting my first tech blog [hoping more will follow] . The topic i choose is Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) not only because its what i work on but it is something that can cause a revolution if isn't already.

What revolution am i talking about ?
The same revolution that enables Computers become personal [PC] and available to all, or the Interne t which allows access to whole load of data stored anywhere around the world. All this is a cliché but nonetheless true.
Such is the potential of FOSS. In my opinions, Start-ups and/or SME (Small/Medium Enterprises) are the ones which can/will exploit FOSS in many ways.

One of the biggest hurdles start-ups can face is investing a lot of money in buying licensed copies of Propretiary Closed Source Non-free Softwares like Windows/Office or some SQL database like Oracle.This may or maynot directly even help product development.
It is easily possible to use open-source alternatives which are freely available and can give equal if not greater quality of software.
This is very important. People may think free/open software may mean less-than-standard software. That is not at all the case.
Fedora/Ubuntu Linux Distributions have matured over the years and have become very stable. OpenOffice can provide great office productivity. MySQL is very good competitor to any SQL solution available.
These are just few examples. There are many such solutions available.

Another Issue is Development Tools . IDE's like Visual Studio again cost a lot.Linux comes with a default compiler for C/C++.
Development Tools for technologies involving langauges like Python, Perl, PHP, AJAX etc are freely available on Linux. Hence building applications using these technologies as simple as it is in Windows.Also programmers for above mentioned can easily migrate from Windows to Linux.
As Initial investment comes down, lot of businesses/ideas can actually see the light.

The latest buzzword in the industry these days is Web2.0 . A lot of start-ups rushing to provide their services. And Obviously Open Source solutions are present here as well .Linux, Apache, MySQL, Ruby on Rails, Python, Django, PHP, and AJAX. You just have to name it.
Start ups like YouTube (now owned by Google), Facebook, Mugshot (a venture by Red Hat), Twitter, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Digg, LinkedIn, Dopplr, Tabblo, Pownce are all major users of Open Source Technology.

Another area that is largely benefitting is embedded devices. Linux is easily portable to the ARM architecture[which is predominantly used for embeddedded devices]. There can be cheaper handheld devices as the cost of Operating System will be negligible. Openmoko is one such example. Also Google introduced the Open-Source Android Platform which will foster development of hundreds of applications.
Unlike Symbian or Microsoft based mobile phones, Linux-based Mobile phones can allow 3rd party applications to run flawlessly.OpenMoko supports the GTK+ Platform which means any GNOME based application can run on it.
Althought business opportunities here maybe restricted; Once 3G networks become a norm, it can surely foster a growth of services for mobile-devices.
Startups in this market can surely leverage FOSS for their advantage

Setting up the internal infrastructure for a startup like setting up IMAP,DHCP,DNS servers, providing home-users access to the network usings VPNs, Securing the network etc is an area costing a lot of dollars. Open Source solutions can bring down not only the initial cost but also the maintenance cost.
What about Desktops/Laptops for developers and other staff ?
One Licensed Version of Windows Vista costs around Rs 10,000/-and assume there are 20 Desktops. You don't need a math genius to figure out where those precious dollars are going.

Last word.

I am surely not criticizing or against propretiary software or the amount of money they charge. Its another business model ,so is FOSS. The point here incase not clear is start-ups can "start" up easily with availability of high quality software at low costs .

References:

Article from technetra.com
Article from wired.com
OpenMoko
Android

India After Gandhi .

2007-12-13T08:22:00.000+05:30

At first i was sceptical of picking up this book, as i wasn't sure of the author.
I had seen Ramachandra Guha mostly of NDTV Big Fight; nothing beyond that.

A bit sceptical at first ; I picked the book anyways.
One of the first things i noticed is that the author had done extensive research; he knows what he is talking about.

So What is this book about anyways ?
As the title mentions its About India after Independence, after Gandhi.
As Guha has rightly pointed out, in schools history ends with our independence.
It may extend uptil Liberation of Hyderabad and Goa, but nothing beyond that.
Also the history i have read during school were prejudiced towards the Indian Government.
Well in the end who publishes those books.
Coming back to the main point, History for us in true sense begins after Independence.
1950s-60s were infact one of the most tumultuous periods of Free India and what most of the pages of the book talk about.
There were many issues Kashmir Independence, Naga problem, Reorganization of states based on Languages, Demands for New states,The wars against Pakistan and China,Famines/ Rise of Naxalites, Refugees inflow from Bangladesh[ formerly East Pakistan] etc etc.
We are taken through all these times and gives views of what Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Other Eminent leaders thought and did. There is also views/opinions expressed by foreign media/reporters.
This really is very insightful into understanding how the nation has shaped up after some many years and also understanding views of other countries.
One of the points i personally really appreciate about Guha is that he never tries to provide his judgement/views because as he says, which is rightly so that he wasn't there then and neither is he an expert in state-affairs.
Also, standing out is the author's unbiased attitude. This is true, especially when it comes to the Kashmir Issue.
In the books/articles that i have read ,there is always a bias ;either criticizing the Indian Government or praising it.
There is never a part in the book, where there is either repetition or of being monotonous.
Towards the end, there is nice small chapter dedicated to Indian Entertainment which is obviously Movies and Sports, how that also influences our culture.

I would surely recommend this book to everyone who has prejudices regarding India and our past leaders.

How often do you let other people's emotions change your mood?

2007-10-23T10:40:00.000+05:30

Here follows a really good forward I got in my mail in recent times:

How often do you let other people's emotions change your mood?

Do you let a bad driver, rude waiter, curt boss, or an insensitive employee ruin your day? Unless you're the Terminator, for an instant you're probably set back on your heels. However, the mark of a successful person is how quickly one can get back their focus on what's important.

Sixteen years ago I learned this lesson. I learned it in the back of a New York City taxi cab. Here's what happened.

I hopped in a taxi, and we took off for Grand Central Station. We were driving in the right lane when, all of a sudden, a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car's back end by just inches!

The driver of the other car, the guy who almost caused a big accident, whipped his head around and he started yelling bad words at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was friendly. So, I said, "Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!"

And this is when my taxi driver told me what I now call, "The Law of the Garbage Truck."

"Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.

When someone wants to dump on you, don't take it personally. You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. You'll be happy you did."

So this was it: The "Law of the Garbage Truck." I started thinking, how often do I let Garbage Trucks run right over me? And how often do I take their garbage and spread it to other people: at work, at home, on the streets? It was that day I said, "I'm not going to do it anymore."

I began to see garbage trucks. Like in the movie "The Sixth Sense," the little boy said, "I see Dead People."

Well, now "I see Garbage Trucks." I see the load they're carrying. I see them coming to drop it off. And like my Taxi Driver, I don't make it a personal thing; I just smile, wave, wish them well, and I move on.

One of my favorite football players of all time, Walter Payton, did this every day on the football field. He would jump up as quickly as he hit the ground after being tackled. He never dwelled on a hit. Payton was ready to make the next play his best. Good leaders know they have to be ready for their next meeting.

Good parents know that they have to welcome their children home from school with hugs and kisses.
Leaders and parents know that they have to be fully present, and at their best for the people they care about.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let Garbage Trucks take over their day.

What about you? What would happen in your life, starting today, if you let more garbage trucks pass you by?

Here's my bet. You'll be happier.

Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so. Love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don't. Believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, TAKE IT!
If it changes your life, LET IT!
Nobody said it would be easy...
They just promised it would be worth it!

Love, Actually !

2007-04-29T19:44:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I finished seeing the movie:Love, Actually!!

It started and ended with scenes from Heathrow Airport . The scenes are of people reuniting ,hugging and kissing.Husbands and wives;girlfriends and boyfriends; parents and children.

The background commentary is says:
"On 9/11 when the planes crashed into the WTC. The messages sent from the planes werent of hatred and animosity but of love !"

Love has different forms like puppy love,crushes,infatuations,true love etc
It can be between friends,lovers ,parents, children,grandparents, grandchildren etc

What the form of love be; love is unconditional !

If we see , love, actually is all around us !

The Pursuit of Happiness

2007-04-29T18:16:00.000+05:30

In the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence,Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

How did he know that happiness is something that you cannot have? You will always pursue it.

For some having a lot of money is happiness.So he will pursue it. For some maybe being highly successful is happiness .So he will pursue it. For
others being with their loved ones.
But the thing about happiness is that , you will always keep pursuing it.
Why do we always pursue it ? Why can't we always be happy ?

Unless we dont succeed , we are not happy.
When we struggle to achieve something, why cant we struggle happily ?
When we fail miserably, why we are pathetically sad ?
Why cant we fail happily ?

The reason is because we associate happiness or being happy with some achievement or object of desire.
We cannot just be happy,naturally !

Happiness is like love.

Do we say that , 'only if you do this , I will love you !' to our loved ones ?

Well I believe happiness is the same. Unconditional !
Love is always there , in your highs and your lows ; in your success and failure; in your gains and your losses.
Same is true for happiness .
We should feel happy irrespective of the situation we are in.
Being happy and positive will also help us , to think clear and come up with a solution which otherwise may not be possible.

I always feel happy even if it is a normal day with nothing great happening.
When you are happy , you are positive; you create a lot of positive energy around you.
Your interactions with others will be much more enthusiastic making them also happy.
You will say , thats a cliche now.
Well , Yes it is cliche but a true one !!! I speak from personal experience not from some self-help book.

Try it sometime !

Lets not pursue happiness , lets always be happy !

Bombay trilogy !!

2007-04-02T11:24:00.000+05:30

I have finished reading Suketu Bhatt's Maximum City. In some sense the trilogy is complete. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra and now Maximum City. Its all about one thing and one thing only Bombay or Mumbai.

All authors give us a glimpse of this Country within a City . A nation state where despite all its problems people from every corner of India come in search of fulfilling their dreams.

Shantaram is the author's story. He is escaped convict from Australia . Here we learn about Slums , people living in it, their dreams and aspirations. We understand how foreign national people here survive forever. We learn all the illegal business conducted by the mafia.

Sacred Games is a fictional story about a Mumbai cop and a underworld mafia don. We see Mumbai through the eyes of these and more characters. We get the glimpse of the underworld , wars among various companies. How the cops are all integrated into this. How each cop works for either of these companies.

Maximum City is a first person, non fiction story where the author meets all sorts of people . People involved in killing muslims in the riots, people who are shooters for the mafia, gangsters, bar girls, bollywood people,politicians, business men et al.

I have learnt that there are two cities Mumbai for the Maharashtraians , for Shiv Sena and Bombay(Bambayie) for the cosmopolitan,the “other state” people doing business; how these two worlds clash and it can get bloody at times. But when it comes to Business , it doesnot matter whether you are in Mumbai or Bombay, whether you are a Hindu , Muslim , Sikh or Christian. Its just business as usual.

I learn that , there is nothing right or wrong. We all live in the grey area . Thats what Bombay teaches .

Bangalore !!

2007-04-02T11:21:00.000+05:30

BANGALORE

Its almost three weeks now , that I am in Bangalore now. Its obvious that a lot of people will ask me how do I feel ? How is Bangalore? . So here goes......

Bangalore ,by and large is like Pune's elder brother . Its bigger in terms of pollution ,population , traffic and sizes of malls compared to Pune. Rickshawallas equally loot you here. Two things worth contrasting here are the roads and the traffic sense . Almost all the roads here are in good condition if not the best . The traffic sense among the people is much more better. Its much more civilized than Pune. Very rarely will you find a Schumacher here driving at the speed of light cutting across traffic as opposed to Pune where every second one is a Schumacher.Traffic in the evening is bad as expected. Also there are many one ways and no U turns allowed here , that one wrong in the evening and you are stuck forever.
One of the most peculiar things about Bangalore is the names of restaurants . All of them end with a Sagar. Shrindhi Sagar , Shanti Sagar , Shree Sagar. Every area has its own “New Shanti Sagar” . I am not sure whether its a franchisee or not. Also , here one will find a juice centre in every corner of the street. Most of juice centres have only two names Shree Ganesh or only Ganesh Juice Center. Whatever be the name , the food and drinks that you get are delicious and cheap.
So for people with a large appetitie and a light pocket , hoarding with these names are a sight for sore eyes. As it is with every big city , you will find KFCs,Pizza Huts, in every area.
Bangalore being the home town of Cafe Coffee Day. Almost Every major road will have at least two. No room for a Barista here.
Bangalore has shortage of multiplexes. Only three to cater to this Mammoth population. Although the ticket rates are high (150 and above), the movie viewing experience is great. The seats have head support and lot of leg space. The screens are big. You feel “paisa vasool” especially after going to E-Square in Pune.
Pubs/Discs here dont have cover charges. Yes you read right no cover charges and the ambience is awesome. We had been to “Legions Of Rock” an amazing pub in Koramangala . It has three floors. All with really screen , constantly churning out videos of rock concerts complemented with an equally mind blowing audio system. The food was also good.
Here again you bound to find a lot of “Mall Rats” . Mall Rats are people like you and me who have nothing better to do on weekend and neither have the money to blow , so we just roam around in the Air Conditioned Malls enjoying the AC, enjoying the crowd. This species consist of people like software profs, BPO employees , college students etc. A Saturday evening in Forum Mall will be like 9am at Dadar station. Same is the story about of Brigade Road or Commercial street.

Language can be barrier at times. Many lower class people dont understand Hindi/English . But keywords are sufficient. Learning Kannada is one uphill task.
“Bangalore is a happening City !” , one friend in Pune told me once. I saw the papers and said “Yeah!” . Lots of bandhs , torching of buses etc over issues like Cauvery River dispute Karnatak has with Tamil Nadu and Belgaum issue with Maharashtra.

I am bound to miss Pune. I miss the mountains being so close to my house. I miss “pohe” which you get only in Maharashtra. I will miss the potholes too......happily.

So now I hum the song “ Here I am , This is me ,theres nowhere else on Earth I rather be !”

BURN BURN BURN !

2007-03-28T18:49:00.000+05:30

Well This is the first blog , I am writing out of my new laptop the Lenovo ThinkPad T60p which I got from IBM.
Its a “Intel Core Duo”, indicating two processors ( for the uninitiated) working at 2.16 Ghz with 2 giges of RAM . Its comes packed with a ATI graphics card (256 MB mem) , Bluetooth enabled , Wi-fi support , Infrared port and Dual Layer DVD Burner.
To top it up , there’s a 100GB SATA Hard Disk Drive.

All have to people reading this is BURN BURN BURN !

Review: ThinkPad T60p

BANGALORE HEADBANGS TO IRON MAIDEN .

2007-03-28T18:46:00.000+05:30

“Scream for me Bangalore !! Scream for me Bangalore “, the voice echoed across Palace Grounds on Saturday 17th March. 25000 + responded. This was the power of Bruce Dickinson. This was the power of Iron Maiden.

Fans here were waiting for such a thing to happen. It was a short concert (90 min) but something we will remember for a lifetime. Bruce’s energy , the amazing backdrops and ofcourse Iron Maiden.

The show started with an amateur band , winners of Campus Rock Idol which failed to impress the crowd. Parikrama came on next . They had a completely original set. They churned out some amazing numbers . Here the crowd was introduced to Imran , violinist. The jugalbandi of Imran with Parikrama got a lot of applause from the crowd.

Next on Stage was Lauren Harris (Steve Harris’s daughter supposedly) . Her band had two male guitarists and one female drummer. She is supposedly , upcoming act or band to watchout out for.

She thoroughly failed to impress. Her vocals were totally out of sync with the rest of the band. The guitarists were top notch , but Only One thing I can say about her is that even Britney Spears is better.

By the time this band finished , we could here only one anthem “Maiden, Maiden”.

In about half an hours time Iron Maiden were on the stage. They started with a couple of numbers from their brand new album ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ . This started setting the mood . They churned out a mix of classics and new ones like ‘The Number of the Beast’ , ‘Run to the Hills’ , ‘Trooper’ ,’Iron Maiden’ along with which the crowd was headbanging. With numbers like ‘Fear of the Dark’,’Hallowed be thy Name’ , we felt we were truly in the presence of the Metal Gods.

The backdrops changed depending on the album , which was truly amazing visual experience. Then there was Eddy! The props used were also great. We had a big tank appearing out of nowhere and Eddy popping out of it ,seeing through a binocular. Another Avatar of Eddy appeared as a Policeman .

So Overall , the crowd was treated to some amazing out of this world experience which none of would forget in our lifetimes. Iron Maiden did promise to come back in less than 17 months.

Till then there will only one voice in our heads,...... ”Scream for me Bangalore”

Official Report: From THE HINDU

Shantaram

2007-02-23T14:23:00.000+05:30

Long back I read a book Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts . It follows the life of a convict escaped from Australia living in the slums of Mumbai. Living there he sets up a free clinic. He also joins to Mumbai mafia , gets involved into smuggling , drugs etc. He also forges passports. He works in Movies . He helps agents get find actors. He also joins the Mujahudeens in Afghanistan .
He has a mentor Khader Bhai . The conversations between the two is food for thought . The philosophy behind this story is great. The descriptions of characters and pace of this semi autobiography is really good. It gives peek into Mumbai, life in the slums and mafia there.

All in all , the characters described and their stories are surreal. Worth a read to find out different ways of life people lead.

Butter Chicken in Ludhiana

2007-02-22T18:15:00.000+05:30

I just finished reading Butter Chicken in Ludhiana by Pankaj Mishra.
The author narrates his journey throughout small towns in India , from North to the South. It really gives a picture of how things in small town India has changed over the years.It also gives an idea of how attitude of people has changed . He travels from states of Bihar , UP to Rajashtan . He moves to the South close to Bangalore . Along this long journey he narrates some really good stories related cultural clashes, generation gaps and politics.
A must read for anyone interested to know about India

Bond with the Best !

2007-01-30T16:47:00.000+05:30

A lot of things have happened in the past couple of months.

I finished my Engineering and now am working at Nevis Networks , Pune .
I recently got engaged to the love of my life , Leena which my family think was forced on to them as I am too young (just 22 you see) . The smiling faces in the album will surely not reflect this sentiment.

I now realize that , not being close to Parents has a lot of downsides. Firstly , they will never really know whether to trust their children in whatever decisions they make.
There is fear and doubt in their hearts when we take radical decisions on whether it will be right or wrong.For them this fear is rightly justified . The other side has another story altogether.
The kids think that , 'why can't the parents trust their decisions ? What are they scared of ?'

And What follows is an perfect recipe for disaster . Every one is right in their own position.
The problem is not even that . It is but obvious that everyone is going to have a view where he/she expects the other to be more compromising unless of course you are a saint.
The problem lies in the fact none of the sides are even bothered to understand what the other side is trying put forth. Especially when all have big Egos and big expectations .

So coming back to the main idea. Parents and Children all should realize that , living in an Indian Society , all their destinies are bound by the parent-child relation .
Strengthening it of utmost importance. A lot of us misunderstand this concept of strengthening this bond. Just by giving into all the wishes of any one be it a child giving into his parent wishes or vice versa will not strengthen it.
The key to strengthening a relationship is communication ( a lot of it) , understanding what the other is saying and showing confidence.

Eg . I wanted to go to Leh for a vacation with a group of friends. Instant reaction from my parents was no !!!. Without consideration or regard the answer NO !!. Why ?? Obviously I had to bully my way through ( as I always have done) . Every action has a reaction with equal if not more magnitude. Especially I am bound to be pissed , when my parents give examples of how this guy is not going or that guy listens . When the approach itself starts out to be negative , the results are bound to be negative .Then I am blamed to have used techniques of emotional blackmailing and all.This is a typical example of many that has severed our bond.

Fear and Doubt is going to be there in everyone's mind . But by showing obsessive-compulsive behavior , Are We getting anywhere?

Children should work more positively towards reducing this fear and doubt . While Parents should be willing to see other side and not be stubborn.

Communication is the key!!
Also the communication that takes place should be devoid of contempt , spite or ego . This is the most important thing .

The Parents should realize that in Today's World , Kids are more independent ( moneywise and otherwise) than ever and may never come back if they overly strict. Also by giving into their wishes all the time will only make them egocentric .

The Children should realize that , when they are going to be stuck in a soup the Parents surely are going to be there to bail them out.

We cannot have a World where all Ideas match , especially across generations (its more tough , believe me!!) .Thats Leads to Generation Gaps .
But we can surely bridge these Gaps by acting more understandingly and giving our egos a little break :) !!

Anti Reservation, Rang De Basanti, and Gandhi*, The Tipping Point, and the whole hoopla………

2006-05-21T08:25:00.000+05:30

How come all these words go into a single sentence? Well let’s see.

Many News Channels are drawing parallel the scenes of the Anti Reservation (live and Media) which we see daily and from the block buster movie Rang De Basanti. We read it everywhere that Rang De Basanti has motivated the students. What influence movies have on kids these days (and we were thinking not to ban smoking in cinema, ;)).

My point is that, it is not RDB that created this mass hysteria all of a sudden, like Mahatma Gandhi did once.

All that Gandhi and RDB did is, become a catalyst. These protests are not against Reservation. They are against the Indian Government, their State government and even the local governance (Be it any political party) or any democratic organization. The so called democratic organizations do nothing or very little for the countries development and sometimes things which will hamper our growth.

Slowly it’s a builds up. How much will we tolerate this non-governance? How long will we keep quite?

Ultimately until when will the average middle class, who is concerned more about his family tolerate the nonsensical attitude of the government. ?

There has to be a limit, a Tipping Point (A good book by Malcom Gladwell, read it). Beyond this tipping point things are totally different as opposed to what was before it. Before the Tipping Point we tolerated to Government, did not bother about anything (or at least so it seemed). Once the Tipping Point is reached, we change completely .We come out on the streets, start protesting.

The Tipping Point was the tyrannical British Rule in 1920.

The Increase in the Reservation Quota was that Tipping Point in 2006.

That’s why the protests started in Delhi first and much later in Chennai. Obviously people are more dissatisfied in the Capital.

Now obviously when the Tipping Point was reached, we need to given direction. We are not like some of the parties, where we pickup stones, bricks etc and start breaking anything and everything in our way.

This is where RDB or Gandhi came into the picture and fix the jigsaw puzzle. They gave us the direction. They have given us the right path, where we can vent our dissatisfaction and the agitation within us. Both showed us the ill consequences of violence.

What is the path?

Peaceful protests!! .

This is quite Anti of what we expect. But come on we are students, regular people coming from regular families. What can we do? We are not some kind of superheroes.

So spreading the message, motivating people to get involved, organizing peaceful protests makes us none other than superheroes.

We needed another Gandhi for the Gen Next. What better medium than the cinema to give us one. We all know that Average Indian’s G K about Hindi Cinemas is more than about the country. Hats off to those guys who came up with RDB and also to the guy with the original idea, none other than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

RDB and Gandhi have brought out this heroism in us, which we never knew existed. And these heroic acts are going to make India a great Nation some day.

entrepreneurial India

2006-03-30T11:29:00.000+05:30

Entrepreneurship in India

Indian Stock Markets are rising. IT and ITES (BPOs d’oh) are bringing money into India. Foreign Institutes are investing heavily. Is it a sign that our economy is on the rise? Is it a sign that we are going to catch China one day?

Firstly, the main question to ask is, whether India is self employed or not?
We have our Nation’s youth working BPOs which provide services to citizens of foreign nationals. We change our names from sameer to Sam, worse we even change our accent, so that those dumb witted Americans can understand we are saying. Not only do we work at odd hours but also have suffered racial abuse more often than not.
People say fine, if the money is good we should be able to tolerate all such nonsense.
Moving on to the IT industry. Very few Companies actually are setting up research labs in India. Most of the companies again are just expanding into India to hire cheap labour (read: so called software professionals).
Labour sounds so demeaning doesn’t it??
Well, we are not quite the architects. We just do, what we are told!!
The design part is done by the Main Office in US; we are just required as masons who follow the plan.
Most of the people, I have met quite frankly don’t even care. They are just happy to work in those “posh” offices and carry a payload back home(which is at least twice /thrice more than what they would have earned , had they continued pursuing their actual career read: mechanical, civil etc).

Obviously, being slaves cannot be that bad can it?? It took 150 years, a half naked guy and a dozen of revolutionaries to awaken people and realize the need of freedom.
Now we have lost that “awakening”. We only see it in movies. Watching movies like “Rang de Basanti” is not an awakening!!!

Enough of lecturing one will say. What is the worse that can happen?
We already have seen it. Any guesses?
What was the main agenda when Dubya visited India? Nuclear Deal right.
We want nuclear sanctions to be removed. Who the fuck is US, to decide whether we can generate nuclear power or not? Tomorrow, if we don’t cooperate with the US on anything, instantly the US Congress may ban all BPOs. Then what will we do?
Once the BPOs go, so does the “posh” offices, so does those “swanky” cars and then we will see which direction the economy goes.

The need of the hour is to empower ourselves. We need to go from being the slaves to being the master.
We need to create an entrepreneurial India. India claim to fame is that, we produce world class software developers. We don’t need these guys to go and work in the back offices of Microsoft to prove that. What we need is to make these guys entrepreneurs.
Look at countries like China, South Korea and Taiwan. They are leaders in the semiconductor industry. In the magazine I read, it stated the “if you throw a brick and it hits somebody in S.Korea that person is bound to be manager of his own firm”. People there say, government did not support them; they were self motivated and competition among themselves made them rise.
E.g. look at Hyundai, it started only 10 years back and now has a market worldwide. Other examples are Samsung, LG etc.
Even Tatas and Ambanis don’t have a global market. The work done by Mittal and Narayan Murthi is very commendable. Where are we lacking .We are smart, hard working and have all that it takes. We need to wake up before India becomes a puppet to US. Although the government is asleep, and it may never wake. It is time to take to India’s destiny into our hands.
Look at the marvadis , they are so good at doing business, may be even better than MBA guys . They should stop their kirana stores and start thinking big . I am sure they will succeed.
IIT have already started something known as “incubators”. Here IITians are provided support (finance, technical as well as infrastructure) within the IIT campus itself . Once the company starts taking shape, they move out of IIT and pay IIT back. I loved the concept a lot.
According to a report, in the next 20 years India is the country that is going to have the maximum population within the range of 20-40 years. We should take advantage of the situation.

The future is bright for India ………entrepreneurial India

WISE and not so WISE

2005-07-17T22:42:00.000+05:30

I just finished reading WISE and other WISE by Sudha Murthy . It is just a bunch of simple stories written by the aforementioned during her travel through various parts of India .

Some of the stories tell us that people are the lower end of the society have a right attitude towards life than people who are the upper end !!
Why is this so ? But it is very true . I know people who have come from the worst situations , struggled a lot and have achieved great things than people whose condition was not all that bad and suprisingly still the same .
What do some people have that others lack?
The most important thing which i would say is positive approach towards life !!
Dont get me wrong u have to be a realist , but with a positive attitude .
I , myself was a victim of this negativism until i was shone the light !
Being positive not only helps u but the others who work for . It brings a whole new energy in you .
Once you taste success , u will never want to quit (atleast in my case) . We keep on trying more and more to maintain what we have and to achieve more .
Once , we start trying ofcourse we will make mistakes .
As I see it , there are two phases to mistakes in life :
1> Realising that we ought to change
2> Then actually changing .

Some people like never realise or never want to realise that they are wrong why ?
Egotistical attidude ofcourse !!
It really kills !
Even after realising that we are doing something wrong , people find it difficult to change !
Ofcourse it is a one day's job !
It takes time , a lot of time ! It is a struggle and there is lot of pain but at the end believe me it is worth it !
What i have learnt is that the ONLY THING PERMANENT IN LIFE IS CHANGE ! If we dont change explicitly we are changing implicitly .
The former is under control , while the latter is the devil .

People always say life is unfair . Ofcourse it is unfair , it is in our hands to make it fair !!
And only we can make it fair !
There is no blame .

Life itself teaches a us lot of lessons from which we can learn . This learning is based on experience which no self help book , no study book etc which teach .

Last but not the least one of the most important leasons in life :- Believe in yourself .

Ayodhya .......?

2005-07-12T21:40:00.000+05:30

Well , another Bomb blast in India . This time it occurs at the place where the whole nation (BJP , Advani , RSS etc) is fighting to build temple Of the Great Lord Ram.

BJP blames the Cong . Cong blames the Mulayam Singh Govt and it goes on . What they forget to appreciate is that the CRPF(hope i am right) actually managed to avert the attack .

A great round of applausble !! They suceeded in kiling all the terrorists .

Where is their momemt of glory ! snatched by the constant bickering between BJP , Cong etc.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was right when he said that BJP was playing cheap politics.
The politicians go on to hog the limelight .
All the BJP leaders want to go the Ayodhya . Why do they want to do that ,now ??
Are they going to help in the investigation ? NO ,by far .
They just disrupt the investigation process . How ?? When they arrive , special security has to be given to them . The Human Resource wasted in providing security , were actually solving the case !!!!

A point to note : Kudos to the people of Ayodhya for acting very calmly and not causing any sort of chaos .

Then BJP goes on to call a nationwide strike . Has the BJP ever realised( when in power or not)
how much loss the Nation suffers just due to one day's strike ?
Even just shutting down Mumbai for half a day will cause the nation to lose something in crores .

What does going strike do ?
Not only does it weaken the economy but it also weakens the strength in the people giving terrorist outfits more encouragement .
Take the London Blasts for example. The people were shakened but nobody went on strike .
The next day all of them went to work with more strength and devotion , showcasing that they are not weak , not beaten but more encouraged .

Shouldn' t the BJP take a leaf of their book !!
We should work with twice the zeal , twice the motivation and twice the determination.

The Whole IT-India Fiasco

2005-07-01T00:15:00.000+05:30

We , all hear about the India is going to be a leader in IT and Stuff . Its economy is going to shine and things like .!!! Lets get some things straight !!
India is leading in BPO or ITES ( IT enabled services) . Here US /UK companies are outsourcing their businesses .
Considering from Comp/IT/Software Engineers what does this mean ???
Nothing , They mostly need people in testing and related areas .
Its like while building a structure , they are the architects and u r the masons .
We max get to give color of our choice to the room...or select type of windows .
Mostly test the strength and structure of the building.

Well Not much of R&D , involved is it now ???

When it comes to using our brains , scope is limited !!!!

But there are still some companies that r into R&D but very less.....

So related people should open their eyes ..... US needs labors and we r providing them.

When it comes to Economy , yes India is fourth after US , China And Japan in GDP
India is shining but not everywhere !!!

Our gap between cities and villages are growing . We have a lot of potential but are not harnessing it .
If the village-city , rich -poor gap starts reducing and awareness starts growing only then is there a way for India to rise on its own and not because somebody needs Cheap Labor .

Firstly education system needs a major change .
Private Engg colleges charge 30,000 to 40000/- Rps p.a Who can afford that ? Not That the quality is very good !!!!

How can an average Indian Afford so much fees ??
We need a socialistic approach towards education not Capitalistic !!
Nowadays Educational Institutes are just behind earning money and thats it !!
We have wrong attitudes at wrong places !!
Let me tell u that reservations is not an answer ..it just worsens the problem .
How do will solve the problem ?
Colleges say Govt Subsidy/ Funds are insufficient . Govt says
That they r now focusing on primary education in villages . "Babudom" rules and all the money goes into their pockets .
They use this money to pay for their childrens' education who r going to these same colleges by giving donations !!!

What a viscious circle it is, isnt it ?
How do Break the circle ???
I believe we the new generation have the potential .
Remember "Swades" . If all such engineers could help building a dam ( solve some problem voluntarily ) , we could achieve something . It may not be to a very great extent but eventually it could lead to something great .