Costly Dump

For my future reference so as not to make these mistakes again I list out my three "costly" mistakes that I have made...

1. Fateful Triangle By Naom Chomsky



Naom Chomsky is one of the most celebrated and most-hated American for his outright views on the American unjust and ruthless policies. I have read some of his articles and was mighily impressed by his ideas. The entire middle east episode has been such a blur to me, even now I can't understand who started what and how it all began. This is a mammoth book that traces it origins way back to B.C's and starts to explain how all things have started spiralling out of control. But it was only when I bought the book and read the chapters I realized the abundance of material facts in it that are too hard to grasp. For instance, after reading some thirty pages of a particular chapter everything appears to be new again when I take it up for further reading.

The Stats:
Touched the book : 15 times
Read: 4 times
Flipped : 15 times
Read the backcover: - 15 times

Cost: Rs.600/-

Result: Ain't no regrets. Reason: Mummy paid for it :D

2. Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization


Written by Indian in a language that is so plebian I grabbed it by the spine and shelled the money across the counter. THE Beginning chapter was the end of my enthu that began right from the time I read the preface and initial few pages.

The Stats:
Touched the book : 5 - 10 times
Read: 1-3 times
Flipped : 3-10 times
Read the backcover: 10 times

Result: Lost 590 bucks. Making not-to-executed-notes on mind to read the book.

3. SONY ...drohi....


Walking back to my home from Jash's place I felt the urgent need to buy the ear phones as fast as possible. After knowing the staggering price of Rs.1600/- for the basic ear phone shipped along with IPod I thought I would settle for SONY. Once inside the Sony World, I browsed through the price tags and I saw the other kind i.e. in-hear headphones with price Rs.1600/- while the Apple's would have costed Rs.2600/-. And the basic ones with a nice hook style ear phones look was Rs.1300/-. With advantage of cheapness, and style in comparison to Apple I settled on 1300 one.

Result:
It doesn't fit properly in the ear. Quality of sound is nowhere , i mean NOWHERE near IPod headphones. Day by day...by day...by day... as I keep listening with those ear phones my tendancy to throw them in the bin as grows. It will be only a matter of time before I buy the 2600/- one.
Now I know why Apple products are worth the cost. It's simple : They ROCK and nothing comes closer.

Well that's all I will be upgrading the pics shortly. From the first two I have come to understand not to dabble in something that wouldn't last for long and which is not of my taste. I just can't read books about management stuff... period. With the last one, take friends along dammit, take someone else with you for purchasing electronic goods. God...you will repent it for long time later with the repurcussions.

Ahem!!!!!!!!!!That ends it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gotcha....Gotcha ..Gotcha...

Balraj broke the news unofficially to us through communicator. He overheard the conversation and between Sudha and Srikanth. Pinged through communicator and said
"Dont' come here... "

...A pause...Wierd...Well I thought he was trying to say not to disturb him.

"I have something important to say...just look at the sceen in front of you...you both are selected...".

I immediately let out a cry of joy before Sari shhhhhed me down.. More typing...But my impatience grew , I wanted to know more...

"Which screen mate?? How do you know...thanks..." all simultaneously.
"Arey...yaar the news is unofficial and Sudha ko malum pada tho mere sir katega...."
"So come over here then.."

So that's why the whole secrecy drama.The timing was perfect. Sudha was out. Balraj and Swati had come over to our cubicles and he gave the finer details. He said we both are selected. He also mentioned that for 6 weeks we would be unbilled (my foot, who cares...get me outa here...) From the discussion he overheard he pointed out that migration might have small hiccup in terms of we being held back little for the completion of project. I guess I should have told him ANY other detail he was relaying was just going off the head as one thing occupied our thought, we were selected to a project, we were free...

Srinu ( my fellow roommate...) was surprised why I was making such gung-ho about getting into a project, so must be some of you readers, and made a point saying that's what we are recruited for in the first place. To compltet projects which obviously clients provide. Well my answer to that is simple ...can you imagine what would a drop of water mean to a man dying of thirst??? Put us in his place....we desperately were waiting for a break and when something like this comes from highly unexpected events the joy is tremendous....

We thought may be Sudha would delay the news to us til she finalizes the finer details with Srikanth and let us know how to proceed on Monday. She didn't, she called us only 5 minutes later and told us about the news. A good show was put up by us to act as unknown and I also added authenticity to it by asking as she was going on explaining " Sudha, who is selected ? " ever so innocenlty.

We went back to Sari who was also quite excited about the prospect and congratulated us yet again. Ranjit was quick to message everyone about the news but I , if you know me well by now, preferred to relay the message by mail..Well for one we wanted to wrap the project by completing the left overs that is the reports and some module checking. But somehow couldn't really sit before our machines and start doing it. We were still digesting the news.

We had a long talk again. " I would miss you both a lot..." said sari and we went on pulling each other about who is the imitator and who would be imitated. This was completely surreal, first they wanted only one, now both. I was thinking if I (if selected) would be a bit lonely for a while in the new team, getting to understand the basics and adjusting in the new environment. But with Ranjit as company I would have hell of a time....

Well..only time will tell how this new venture is going to turn us out... Then again it is better to take one at a time.. savoring the journey rather than the destination itself....

What for Fasting for ???

It's been more than a month since I have begun fasting on Thursdays. Ganesh, Sneha, and few of others were doing it for ages , so I thought why not??. Kishore uncle once told long back our stomach is also like one of those countless machines on this planet that works 24 * 7 non-stop and one needs to give it a break occasionally. Added to this was also the fact that we i.e. Srinu and me have long since abandoned any attempt to resume jogging which for..hold your breath...20 continuous weekdays. We ain't doing nothing now to stem the growth of abnormal fat.

At least I play T.T twice a week for 2 hours at stretch to get my relaxation. Well that's the primary reason I started fasting and at 5 in the evening it ends. This week it wreaked havoc in me. Around 4 I was terribly hungry and was dying to eat whatever is available. I wasn't able to control myself. After coming to know from Ganesh that he fasts till 8 that makes me feel even more bad.

It doesn't make any sense. Yesterday after 5 I had 1 plate vada, then around 8 1 Chilli cheese sandwich. Last week I just gobbled up 1 rumali roti with chicken curry at 7. The whole point of regulating the body is wasted? What then I am fasting for?? Let's see if the weeks to come if I can improve. If I can't it's better I give up fasting than having a false pretense...

Elsevier to the rescue...Sad departures...2 of 2

Read 1 of 2 before you regret knowing the climax of the story...

These were the best conditions would be a understatement. It is absolutely incredulous offer. A offer one can't refurse. But I had my own doubts and clarifications. So I asked them if I could get back to them later. "For what??" came the resounding response. Did I make a mistake? I just wanted someone's opinion on how the job is going to be and now that there is a chance of saying 'no' I didn't want myself in something like the kind of job Terence, Kranthi is in where they require no technical skills at all. Their job involved understanding a system and to monitor it. It is something similar to learning how to work with MS Word and help anyone with problems working with it. Man, after working real hard in gaining expertise in .Net with whatever I gained, I didn't want my learning curve to stagnate and put my technical experience on hold. No, I wanted to make sure it was not Excel or ticket monitoring type.

Well they were surprised on me asking them anyway and have agreed to it. That's that I got back to the room and realized that fight would be between only two as Sari on hearing "second shift" had dropped out. Marriage has it's own problems...so sad and glad at least for our (ranjit and me) sake. It stands out 50-50 chance. We filed out of ODC and went to Amit's birthday celebrations.

From the time we came out I knew things weren't going to be the same. No matter who does get into it, there will be a void, some uknown gap. Bhav's departure did alter the things but I guess the thread was cut long back as she drifted in and out to a Motorola training and stuff. With her out most of the times and doing some job for our ME Dashboard her absence really didn't find us wanting. It was always us mostly moving here and there, getting into discussions, petty arguments, and doubts. With 3 left and 1 moving out it is going to hurt...


We were so badly bored and tired with the present dashboad that no day passes by thinking about who is going to save us from this misery. With this there is going to be some change and faster action. I guess there is no point in looking for a resource and I am not sure who would be coming for replacement. I mean say days from even the leftover 2 will disapear we would DEFINITELY need one guy with good technical knowledge both in .Net and SQL for maintainence and further enhancement of the website.


Whatever the case I am glad I was part of this team. Going through so many ups and downs, RM after RM, dashboard after dashboard ( first it was EA, now M&E ...) doing samething over and over again, jaise Swati ne kaha ..."you are used to it na...", making fun of RM, eating at odd timings, staying back to play T.T, sharing the sweet joy of achievement in having completed a tough task, pulling each other ,teasing each other and also there were heated discussions. So many things. M&E dashboard days will have a new twist in the tale.

Somehow I was 100% sure that we weren't going to be seperated , that we were all together going to be put in someother project. A sad twist in the end. It is like losing some part of your body... I know there is no place for emotions but can't help feeling sad about the departure.

Finally we Rocked and I am sure wherever we are and wherever we are going to be the spirit would be the same!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Watch out here for the fabulous three .....

Elsevier to the rescue...Sad departures...I of 2

Chal chale... apne ghar...
Hai mere ham safar...
band darwaja kar...

If you sing along with the song something good is going to happen in whatever you are going to pursue. At least that's what has happened with us in any case. (Oy..by the way it's Sari's belief mind you...) Only day before yesterday we were humming the song when Sari warned we will be outta here just like the way Roop and Ranjan fled after having sung the song. It took two days for the jinx to break and come true..

The happy times, happy days are flooding in. We, the team, received a mail from Srikanth asking us to meet him at ITC-3 for .Net requirement for a project in Elsevier. We reached the place around 3 and we were in for a surprise. We were under the impression it was going to be a small talk about the need of single resource and tell us when the dates of interview are. But it happens it was a spot-evaluation kind of a thing. We all got seated in a discussion room and one by one was called for the 'interview'. Ranjit was the first to go. Sari and me in the meantime started discussing about what could be the possible questions. First thing that any guy would ask would be the life cycle of the page which sadly we were highly unprepared for. The whole thing was much too exciting for the fact that we were completely unaware of there being interview as we thought 3 might be needed and we will be readily picked and placed in the slot.

My mind raced back to engineering days where I used to get all the questions from the person who has just gone in, have a book ready preparing all I can , knowing what all were possible questions that could be asked in regard to my experiment. In the end I always used to fumble up at viva. Only those times when my fellow viva-mates weren't prepared to answer then I used to grab the limelight. I mean somehow I just fidget. I knew I might be producing a encore performance here. But sadly nature came calling by!!!!

By the time I came back Sari's turn was over and I was the one left absolutely clueless and a tad dissappointed with Nature's TIMING. Two guys were seated there, calm, casual. After the pleasentries came the million-dollar-unwanted-question:

Tell me about yourself??

For a while I thought I landed up in a interview cell about to get interviewed for my first job. Tell me about yourself?? I mean I understand there are two kinds of questions one at HR level and one at Tech. But common...they ain't recruiting people from college. Can't they be specific? I told them about almost one year stint at Satyam highlighting the latest working part. Finally they woke up!!!! Circus was out. Then things moved on to about my college, engineering backgroudn etc. There were some basic questions about .Net and SQL which I managed to answer excepting how the page life cycle works. After all this they told me the kind of job I would be in:

• Afternoon shift : 2 to 9
• Cab pickup and drop.
• Night allowance.
• Minimum commitment of a year.

So what happened next?? Read on 2 of 2 find out...

Scars that hurt....

Our project badly needs a deadline. Ranjit's remark that Internal projects have no deadline scared the hell out of me. Man, I can't see myself doing the same piece of crap again and again. I am tired of this project. There are three more main stumbling blocks that are left of which "Gantt Chart" is something that is beyond my scope. I have no hopes at all about how I am going to get it done. The other two, with little more effort maybe , just MAY BE , we may wrap up by the week's end.



Kevin English is supposedly going to have a demo of our website if he has time that is. That has managed to put a little spark in us. I had a real bad episode today. After re-installation of SQL Server 2005 at the server we weren't able to get it working with our website. The whole thing looked perfect. We tried modifying it by using local authentication and it worked perfectly but we weren't able to get it out of the server, on the net that is. SQL Server authentication was just not working and we were managing with Windows authentication. As usual we could see Sudha grumbling about it in a manner that suggests we are one useless bunch of people who can't do anything correctly and in time. She asked us to get it working by next day.


Her Majesty had entered the scene and as is her wont went on excitedly about using Visual Studio Team Suite. It seems a license was ready and installation was left. That forced me to

Call 1: What is the status on the installation ?
Call 2: What are the server details?
Call 3: When is he expected back and the license details?

All the calls routed to one guy : Azeet who was really really busy at every call. It was at the third call he broke loose. He just blasted me over the phone " When I told you guys to uninstall VS, Uninstall SQL you won't do and all of a sudden you are after me to get VSTS installed? Don't disturb me from now onwards. " What did follow , to my surprise and disappointment, was he came on the messenger, raised a ticket for installation and then bid me farewell? Wil this be end of Azeet, the one guy we thought we could rely on as a Tech lead??

I mean anyone in his shoes would have reacted the same way. I was in a real tight situation and as my pappa always says "Life is full of surprises, when you want something forget all the other feelings". I did that. Sudha put me in a real tight spot. The irony of it all was we somehow managed to get back the authentication with SQL in other half an hour after this episode and the neeed of Team Suite just evoperated as it had come leaving me with a bad scar.

Well..started this blog for something else and landed up writing something else altogether...anyways added one more to the otherwise static blog :D

What the hell is wrong with Ramu??

What has happened to RGV? I mean what the heck has happened to RGV?

Can someone please show him his classic movies 'Satya','Company','Sarkar','Naach' again lest he forgets what he truly does best? I mean it looks like he has given up thinking and has run out of ideas. Look at what he is trying to achieve by giving statements like "I am going to do more 'darna' series" after fully knowing the first two are HUGE duds at the box office.

Somehow with his mindless ventures the aura and the respect he commands starts slipping by and if he doesn't realize it sooner it is going to be a disaster. Disaster struck the moment Nisha Kothari entered the scene from the critically brandished "AAG". The sense of realism , a trademark of RGV, was missing. The first half of the movie goes in a frenzy pace capturing almost 3/4th of the original. Second half is so-and-so. Hell...I guess I can't say anymore about the movie. For the proof, try to get me the poster of the movie other than what you see in this post, I spent 15 minutes doing that. That speaks volumes for itself. And if you really care about some clue of how the movie is then go to indiafm.com.

As Ziya Us Salam summarised it perfectly, the director didn't have a clue as to who the target audience are - the "Sholay" loyalists, or the gen-next crowd. He just went nuts trying to compromise both and we landed up having a damp squib. Let this not movie signal the beginning of the end of the illustrious RGV career...

Lesson to be learnt: Some things are never meant to be touced....

Devilish Temptation...Aftermath of Appraisals...

Remember how adam was tempted by the serpent...
Remember how entire 'omkara' started by that casual remark from Saif's fellow teetoller...
Remember how the rift between Madhavan and Shalini started aggrevating because of small misunderstanding from Shalini (Sakhi/Saathiyan..)...
Remember how "Company" started collapsing because of small misunderstanding by Manisha Koirala...


In all these if you notice the consequences were terrible and we had one great story to look forward to. It's a small bug in our brain that HE himself has implanted in us. It happens that sometimes when we are absolutely 100% sure with something and satisfied to say the least, someone comes along and implants a small "thought" which negates our feeling. At first it just passes over our head. Then it starts prick you lightly, gently almost unnoticed. Unkowingly you start putting some more "thought" into it. A few more hours if you seem to be there by the person who originally put it, it starts growing on you and then finally before you know it your feelings are all bungled up. To sum it all up...

First there are rules.

Then there is an exception.

Then the exception becomes the rule.

-Radio , "City of God"

After seeing our ratings I wasn't p****d off that I ain't got a "S" rating. I was happy I wasn't given anything below "A". In fact there wasn't any complaint from the "team" (Missus Ponnan, Ranjit..) as such. But by the end of the day and the day that followed we were alll told again and again it was completely unfair for us being rated "M" and that we deserved an "S". Mind you till then no-one actually suggested we complain about it. It is just that everyone felt we deserved more. I knew this was the usual bantering that happens , hence didn't take much notice on it.

It was the arrival of Bhav that triggered the wrong signals. She was completely ecstasic and also absolutely stunned after coming to know how highly Manu thought of her when his feedback was sought for her appraisal. I mean after going through such rough patch and making quite a "scene" (there was a "scene" by the way...) getting such feedback just spirals you out of the world. The feelings can't be put in words. That's how she was. She was furious to know we got "M" and very strongly suggested that we speak to Sudha and get them reverted. Had she suggested once MAY be it would have been ignored.

But the discussion went on and on for at least another hour about how Prachi got reverted, how the Adarsh got his appraisal up, how hard we slogged on weekends, how we stayed back long aftert nights to accomplish the tasks, how "we" were better than her and surely there must have been a grave mistake in our appraisals , how all the people at Java batch have gotten "S",how ...on and on ..it went...

The damage done...the resolution taken up... not with full conviction though but nontheless after arguing to and fro about how it's not the question of money at hand but the future to look forward to where our appraisal history matters a lot, how we have the right to ask. I gave my nod though but still I am in that "second stage" of the thought tinkering process.

That night I missed the bus at the usual stop and got down at the other end of the NGV complex only to add to the misery. I had full 20 minutes to cover with nothing to distract my mind. IPod wasn't help either as my ears had become sore by then listening to it all day long. So the "thought" started gaining on me. It become much more than a "thought" with my talk to mom and dad. Finally when I told my roommates about it I knew I had to speak with "Sudha" and make her know that she was wrong,,,absolutely wrong,,,how could she,,,damn her.

Tomorrow is going to be very very intersting day..a day where I will know how good I am in sticking on to my own beliefs.,,"I don't care about ratings...as long as I know I have job at hand and my work gives me satisfaction..." only time will tell.....

What did Happen:
Writing this a day later, Haven't spoken with yer yet, haven't given that one last try yet, don't think will matter now...

The Extra Mile...

Proactiveness, delivering that extra bit than required...

That sums up my first ever appraisal history. We have done everything we could to deliver what was required. I always believed and still believe that without that extra mile there can be no progress, no real victory, no real achievement. It just doesn't make sense if that extra step is not taken.

Well it is now I see how difficult that is. In our course of events we are stuck with some problems which plague us for so long that we feel utterly butterly satisfactory and go on to get the job to completion. Our project is in desperate need of AJAX built into it but it has been postponed to no end. Similarily the reporting services threatens to replace all our 2 months odd work that we put in with its ludicrulously simply and extensive services that would give GridView a run for money with it's abilities.

These are just few of things that I remember. Every time Azeet asks " Are you doing anything new? Are you learning anything?" we are left with no answers because we have done nothing and it is always a stark reminder of the fact that what Paresh has left as a base we took off from there. This was my impression till Jash came by and earnestly asked me to tell him explain whatever there is to stored procedures.

I have learnt hell of a lot things before I pursued this from scratch and still there is that nagging feeling that I could have done more, could have done it better. May be that's why it is fully justified when she says what we all three lack is "PROACTIVENESS' and rated us accordingly. For a while I felt let down and cheated that "S" was not accorded and tried to make up mental defenses like we worked for a month continuosly without a break, cancelled my train ticket for a genuine reason, did everything we could on time, never once complained, never once said it can't be done , never once buckled and so on and so forth...

In spite of all that there is the question of "Proactiveness"..THAT IS the defining character...How we do? is left to us. Finally I would like to thank my RM Sudha for showing me what I lacked....

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