Such a long journey

The greatest plans are made in the spur of the moment (except wars, of course). And so was this.

3 PM, 4th April
Me and Mohnish just realise that our stay in Bangalore may be longer that we had initially expected. I, as usual, started cribbing about lack of transport around Bangalore. I, in other words hate being away from my bike for too long.
I suggested, rather half-heartedly, that we should go get my bike from Pune. Monday being an optional holiday, we could take our own time in doing the 800 kms. The plan sounded ridiculous as none of us had ridden for that long. Plus, we had to make a move tomorrow. From Pune. And we were . Much to my surprise, Mohnish latched on to the concept! We had no idea about the roads or the time it'll take for us to achieve the feat.

We had a one line plan -"get the bike from Pune to Bangalore till Sunday". Booked the tickets for the next day (tickets courtesy the company - it supports weekly travel to the home city :-) ).

11 AM, 5th April
It gave me goosebumps looking down from the plane window thinking we'll be treading the same ground (albeit slower, much much slower) in a couple of hours. Landed at 12 in the noon the next day and planned to move at 2.

We packed my saddlebag, stacked it on my ThunderBird and out for the journey. But first things first - fuel up. Filled the tank to the brim at Wanowrie petrol pump and set about. well, sort of ...

I revved up the bike to begin our trip. The plan was to halt at Kolhapur, 225 km away. We stopped much earlier. 400m. Thats all we could manage when the bike broke down. Remeber the one line plan? Well, it did not include checking if the bike was travel ready. I opened up the battey compartment to check for the fuse (every Enfield owner worth his salt knows how to do minor repairs on his bike). My heart sank when I saw he sight that awaited us. I had forgotten that the battery needed replacement. It was leaking like a faucet.

We called up the garage only to be told we can not get help for atleast an hour. We contacted a local mechanic and waited for him to take a look. And waited some more. The mechanic arrived an hour later, turned the key, pushed the ignition switch and voila! the bike started. I, being scientifically inclined killed the engine and repeated the process again. Thrice. The bike was humming like it sweet honey bee. After the mechanic assured that he'll be on 24 hours assistance in case anything happens again en route, we started the journey again. And this time, it was on.

... end of part 1

Thoughts work. some times.

Hurray to my new job!
After spending a couple of years at the giant virtually adding nothing to my portfolio, I decided to call it quits. My decision stumped my friends and family. My parents couldn't fathom why I was leaving such a 'good' company. My previous employer had a name that some of my extended family had heard of. And that meant a lot for my folks.

But then, hard decisions have to be made. A lot of factors went into making me switch, but there were a few areas where my friends thought I was mistaken.

• I was doing pretty well at the current job
• I was the youngest team lead around
  
• I was the de-facto expert at the product I was responsible for (and could hold my employers at ransom for keeping me happy)
• Was earning pretty ok and my new job wasn't, well, very high paying
• I was recognised and highly rated by my previous employer

What made me switch then? Inertia.
Some people like to take it lying down. I don't. Why disturb the force when all's hunky-dory? I guess I am a nut. I dont like stability. I like the status-quo to be disturbed. Like to challenge myself. I hate stagnation and am always game for a challenge.

I was stagnating in my job. I love to learn, I love to explore. My job would not have given me that opportunity. I couldn't bare to think that my two years of association with the giant had given me no significant new skills. It was killing me that I was made a team lead so soon. I had to curtail my instincts as a developer and think about 'the greater good'. I felt I was not done yet. I needed to learn a lot more and knew that I will require a free hand at doing that.

The status quo had to be broken. I needed to liberate myself from the slew of processes and become something I always wanted to become - a programmer.

I would love to do bits and pieces job when I can. I want to lay the bricks rather than build the temple. There is a lot of time left for me to think bigger. But for now, being a bit selfish and doing what I love will do. Of course, it means giving up on fat bonuses and big chunky salaries but that am willing to do.

It has been a fun few weeks since I joined the new place. It has been fun, a radical change from the morose environ at the old do. I have been busy learning Ruby - a language I had last touched a couple of years ago but couldn't take the 'hobby' to work as it wasn't aligned to business commitments.

Am not exactly sure what am doing in the new company. Don't know if it will work out in the long run. But then, chances are meant to be taken.
Risks are not a part of life if you don't want them to be. Life is guided by vision and vision driven from thoughts.

and thoughts work. some times.

..uh, bring in the thesaurus

Found in the Katraj snake park.

Seriously, molest a snake??

Ignore me, am just a part of the furniture

There are a number of ways of being professionally successful in IT. The most important of which is "taking responsibility" aka "take the blame", "bear the brunt" OR "the buck stops at you". The most obvious way of taking responsibility is owning someone else's fault, good if it is your peers', better if it is your boss's. Don't just own the fault, advertise it to. Make it obvious. This can be done in a subtle way e.g. telling someone in the team that it was a bit of your fault OR with more grandeur e.g. sending a mail to the entire team apologising for something that you have not actually done. The latter is preferred. Before you think am BSing, take a look at the successful people around you. Most, at some point or the other, have step up to the plate and batted for someone else. The trick is to make it so obvious that your manager knows that you are owning it up for someone else. DO NOT OWN UP YOUR OWN MISTAKES. never!

Taking the blame, unfortunately, only works at a level. Do not do it regularly, in which case people think you are a bumbling buffoon. Or till you have someone else you can blame for your own mistakes (this is the case when you become a manager/lead). It is important to note that you should not take the blame if you know someone else can gain from it. This is the situation when you have someone competing for the position you have your eyes set own. Do not own up competition's mistake, the other person will only try to trample upon you. However there is a trick to this too (isn't there always), own your competition's fault if it is so glaring that every one knows who the guilty party is. Your competitor makes a mistake, a big, obvious one everyone knows about it and then you turn up and try to own it up. Try to cover for him. Make it obvious that you are "defending" the poor being. Thats how you show compassion, responsibility and leadership ability.

Have to leave now, gotta own a build break...

Comics for geeks

We geeks often feel left out. We are not exactly introverts but fear making idiots out of ourselves by talking to people. Or we most often don't care :D.
I, for example, can not talk to a girl without discussing the intricacies of the new algorithm I have been dreaming about or discussing the use of alternative fuels in everyday life. Girls also don't seem to take liking to my interests in paleolithic zoology and my scatological humour. Strange, I'd say.

XKCD sometimes mirror what I feel. Here are a couple that I really like :












































This I'd love to solve :D

I am BORED

More than half IT workers sleep on the job

This report says that a lot of IT workers sleep on the job. This might come as a revelation to my friends outside the industry. But this is a well known secret we IT workers have. Yes, we sleep on the job.

Some of my co-workers can put सरकारी बाबु s to shame. A lot of It companies provide dorms for the employees but not my company. No Sir, sleeping in a dormitory is so lame. My kind of sleeping is - hands on the desk, fingers at the keyboard, head slightly tilted towards the screen (the screen saver turned off) and wearing my glasses for that extra effect. Now that is what sleeping on the job is all about.

Sleeping is such a personal activity, why should I declare my boredom by sleeping in the dorms. The fun part is to sleep right in the cubical and not get caught. It brings so much fun of a cat-and-mouse game to a boring job that most of us have.

'nuf said, am off to my 3'o clock sleep, tata.

Eloisa to Abelard

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

-- Alexander Pope

An atheist's view on the Ram Setu controversy - Part 1

Every Ambika, Jairam and Advani is jumping in to offer their own view of the Ram Setu controversy. Why not me?

My close friends know I don't follow any religion. Am not proud or ashamed of admitting that. Thats how I turned out to be. Am not a atheist by choice, but by accident. I've always felt religion was too private to be discussed. Today I decide to come clean.

Here is my story:

I grew up on mixed religious beliefs. Was taught about Christianity in the tuitions and moderate Hinduism at home. My tuition teacher taught us about Jacob and Moses and Lazarus and all the biblical characters of the mid-west. Weekend classes were spent enacting excerpts from the Bible.

That brings me to my tuition teacher. She was, technically, a Hindu. A Brahman at that. But she was a disgruntled Hindu. She found peace in Christianity, Hinduism did not offer her solace in her sufferings, Christianity did. She had turned into a "Believer", she praised the Lord and so were we supposed to do. We greeted Madam (as we called her) with the greeting "Praise the Lord" and were greeted the same in return - every single day; every single day of my childhood. There was no feeling of 'religion' attached to the greeting. It was just like greeting someone with a simple "Good Morning" or "Namaste". I greeted my school teachers with a "Good Morning" and my Grand-mother with a "Namaste". Every person has a greeting associated them. Madam had a "Praise the Lord".

Religion did play a big part in our house hold. But it was never an integral part of our daily lives. It never imposed at home; culture was. We were never expected to pray 4 times a day, not even once a day for that matter. It a private affair, it was a choice. I was an observer at the Poojas - passive at times. Never learnt a single श्लोक or भजन - I wasn't expected to. But I was never vehement in rejection of my Mother's religious beliefs. She had her freedom, I had mine. Don't get me wrong, I loved the पूजा, I loved the rythmic chanting of the shlokas, the incense sticks and the प्रसाद.

For me पूजा and festivals were not a matter of us beliefs but an occasion for social gathering. For feasting, for meeting up with cousins and uncles. Though my Mother was concerned with my apparent apathy with religion, I guess she figured out I was too confused to know how my Karma shapes up.

Though I did not realise it then, I do it now. Not following any religion was not by my conscious effort, it was an accident. I felt Christianity was too fabled to be true and Hinduism was too mysterious for me to fathom. I saw Christianity as an alternative for Hinduism and felt it was like choosing your favorite party to vote for. Or abstaining. I abstained. I didn't know which party was better. Which was the lesser evil; which was "cool"er than the other.

So, there I was growing up confused, not very sure of my religion. I grew up to be neither a fanatic nor a pagan. I turned out to be a mixture of being agnostic with a feeling of apathy. As a child, it started with the question : "Which God exists?", graduated to "Does God exist?" and ended up with "Should God exist? Prove it to me it should."

As of now, am not sure where my faith lies. I don't believe in religion or God or "The One That Decides Everything". Am not even sure am an atheist. What is an atheist anyways? Shouldn't I be an agnostic? Shouldn't I question if God actually exists instead of denying his existence?
I don't know.

But I guess "atheist" best describes me right now.

VERY LAME

I know the title of this post is in CAPS. And that means just one thing - it's an acronym. Acronym for what, you say?

Find out: VERY LAME

The presentation was submitted as a part of "Crazy Concepts" event we had in our company a couple of months ago. Though I did not win, I thought it might be fun to share the idea with you guys.

Cheers!

A Small Slithering Surprise

There I was - attending a boring meeting in the middle of the day. Four of us hounding the round table keying in with fury on our thinkpads, writing another purposeless document.

Suddenly, there was a movement. Something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. It looked like a hairpin near of the chair's wheels. Then I saw again, it was moving. God! the hairpin was moving! I asked Amit to pick up the "hair-pin" on the carpet. He reached out, jumping back on the slight touch of the thing. It was not a hair-pin. It slithered and swayed, tried to burrow its nose (or whatever it was) into the carpet - probably trying to go down under, being the under ground dweller that it was.


There it was - small, tiny little slitherer. Slim, blind and dying. It was stamped on. May be someone had stepped on it, may be the one of the chairs had rolled over it. I don't know how, but it was at the end of its journey.

I carefully picked up the little guy on a a sheet of paper. Looked at it closely, very closely.

It was small. It was dark. It was slimy. It was not a worm for sure - it had scales. Looked like a juvenile worm snake or something to me. It was probably a Caecilian. I could not figure out where the head was. It either had none or had its head lopped off clean.

I took it outside, prodded it with my little finger. It twitched. So did I. I put it down in the grass hoping it will kick back to life. And then, it moved, it tried to burrow into the ground. Really? or was I seeing things. I was happy that the little guy will survive.

I rushed back into the meeting room and got back to work. But I was pre-occupied with the thought of the tiny guy's survival. I excused myself and went to the spot I had left the little fella.

It was still there.

And it wasn't moving. Damn! I poked it again a little, it didnt move. It lay there like it had never moved. The "hair-pin" was now crooked and stiff like its name-sake. I didn't have the heart to leave that guy out there, I moved it around but then decided that the ground is the best place for a ground-dweller to rest. I left it on a naked patch of soil and bid it good bye.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I hoped it was playing a trick on me and would slither again and burrow deep down into the ground. I hoped it will spring back to action and grow up to be a big boy. I hoped it would live. I hope...


Update: It was probably a thread snake. More info : scolecophidians

Transformers

No! not this one.

This is what am talking about. Transformers - the movie. If you were like me - fed on a diet of American and Japanese animation shows as a kid, you'll love this. It has my childhood hero Optimus Prime so the movie could not have gone wrong.

As this is the first movie in the series, it is a bit descriptive at times, so that folks not familiar with the original series can catch up. But even that story telling part - how Megatron destroyed Cybertron and fled to Earth to crash is enjoyable too. Even those who don't give a rat's ass to the original series will enjoy the amazing CGI - the most detailed thing ever attempted.

I must admit, I felt like a 10 year old boy in a toy shop. I sat transfixed in front of the screen. It was like watching Transformers for the first time - over awed with with it all. The transforming into cars and trucks and planes and helicopters. The Autobots and Decepticons outdoing each other with transformations. The matrix, the cube, bumblebee ... Everything came rushing back to me.

Can't wait for the sequels. Can't wait for the Autobots kicking some Decepticons' ass.

Meri gaadi

2007 Royal Enfield Thunderbird

Rattles like a mixer-grinder, feeds on fuel like a Hummer and sounds like a flour mill. Handles like an angel and fits like a throne. Smoothest ride in town.

X-BOY

That's right, the thing you see on top here is X-BOY. Now, X-BOX might be the cool console everyone seems to want, but nothing beats X-BOY in price.
X-BOY comes with the old-school favorites like Road fighter, B-Wings and Baseball. And action games like Tanks and Galaxian.

Don't mistake X-BOY as a cheap chinese imitation of video game console. It is not a video game system at all! It is a revolutionary new VIDED GAME SYSTEM.
Go play!

पांडे जी

पांडे जी is the WWF souvenir I received for my membership. It currently adorns my office desk.
पांडे जी के कुछ snaps.















पांडे जी

















रामा getting पांडे जी some water.

















रामा petting पांडे जी





















लोग पांडे जी को नही, दुनिया छोड़ते हैं.

Updated my home page

My home page.

Who knew I had one? wow.
Something I had written in a past life. Came across it when I was cleaning up my bookmarks.

I know you couldn't care less, but here's something about me.

Spread your wings and soar

From an interesting conversation I had with someone who was as down as me. The lines that you see below are but the reshaped conversation.


When you are falling to the ground,
down without a parachute,
let your wings unfold and fly away,
like you've got nothing to lose.

No one holds you, not time, not fate,
so grow your wings and leave behind what you brought -
the pain, the loss, the tears, the rot
believe that nothing can stop you now, not even you,
for you are as free as a passing thought

your thoughts can not be locked down,
neither you, your flight is not earthbound.
cause the only thing you should know is,
flying is to throw your self down
and miss the ground.



If you hit rock-bottom there is only one way from there, up and in the skies.

Quite a month

It was quite a month - april 2007.

Finally got my name on the innovators list by publishing a disclosure. Well, not as good as a full blown filed patent, but good enough for a start.

An article of mine also finally got published. Was in the bags for more than 3 months. Now it's live! link

The goal is to publish another article and atleast another disclosure and this year would be set the pace for the next year.

भेजा Fry

भेजा Fry

There are lot of times when you go for a movie just to vie away your time. Deciding to watch Bheja Fry was one of those. Rediff review was for this movie, the only reason I wanted to watch it was that I like movies without the obligatory song and dance sequences.

The movie is a riot. One of the better comedies made in Indian cinema for a long long time. No slapstick, no innuendos, no nothing - pure comedic talent. I'd be disappointed if Vinay Pathak does not win an award for his role. His portrayal of an easily excitable singing idiot is perfect. He delivers every line, every scene with the exact timing and honesty as only a few can. This guy along with Ranvir Shorey are a class apart. Lesser comedians (nah, not actors) like Rajpal Yadav and Johnny lever look like Ramlila clowns compared.

The movie is about an upper class music producer (Rajat Kapoor) and an idiot (Vinay Pathak) who he brings along for a dinner game where the guy who brings the most idiotic talent wins.

Rajat Kapoor underplays his character pretty well. Vinay slips into the character very comfortable and is adorable and irritating at the same time.


Must watch. One movie I'll rewatch again (already did). A cult movie waiting to happen.


p.s. I don't give a damn if it is remake of some obscure French movie, I don't get the French anyways.

Nirvastra

निर्वस्त्र

thats what "निशब्द" should be called in the first half. The poor old (young) lady is only geiven one piece of clothing to wear to cover herself. Lecherous old Amitabh bachchan falls for the nymphet.

Summary -
Old man falls for his daughters best friend ("Jia". J for friends. As she acted quite over friendly, I'll call her J) who comes to his place to spend the holidays. Poor thing forgets to bring her clothes and senses. She bathes with a hose pipe in the middle of the lawn. With a hose pipe. now, I've seen dogs bathing with a hose pipe, even some bovine creatures. Not women, not women with little clothing on.

Our old man is a photographer (would you believe it?), snaps some photographs of the lady bathing. Blah blah blah. Predictably, they fall in love. Family finds out. Amitabh freaks out. J walks out. So does the audience, even before J does.