Nailed bY the TaiL...

Today I had a meeting with one of my managers. It really surprised me, to what extents they would go, what cheap and dirty tricks they would pull out to get people to do what they want and keep their mouths shut.

The short version of the story is that we are 5 people (was 6.. spoo left) who have been brought to hyderabad on company's expense. Now when the expenses are being paid by the company, they expect something in return, therein lying whole logic of actually shelling out about 1.5 lakhs per person for a total of 6 months. All this money would have to be made back and more by making clients pay up good money for us. But this is were the glitch happened, in the fact that they actually failed to get any one of us satisfactorily billed for the enough amount of time so as to justify the company taking so much expenses on itself for our benefit. The time has almost come upon us when we are to be returned to our rightful masters, that is to the imperial lord of the office in Bangalore, without much to show for paying us so much dough. Heads have to roll. Heads have GOT to roll.

Now at this point it would have been nice, even amusing to see the managers take the fall for their mistakes or lack of foresight or pure lack of managerial skill which brought about this immense investment/return anomaly. But since two of us(which sadly didnt include me) flatly refused to stay back in hyderabad when asked directly, he resolved to the underhand method of a completely unexpected and intense battery of one's senses with pretty obvious(to me) psychological tricks. Thankfully he picked my teammate for the first round and I was more free to observe the tactics that were being adopted, and saw to my relief that this guy, how ever experienced he was in this, was leaving far too many openings to be classified as a completely unsurmountable obstacle on the steep road of career progress. But my colleague fell for it, and was dutifully mashed up into a pulp state somewhere in the vicinity of a mango milkshake. And when he turned to me, I was prepared mentally that I would reply reply professionally to what ever he asked and appear to be as competent as possible and not give him much of a leeway for him to do his bagdering my self esteem.

I could see that even though the meeting was held under the pretensions of being a discussion he was expecting more of a one sided monologue. But how could any self respecting professional who thinks he is any (or a lot) good in what ever he does keep his mouth shut when their skills were being blatantly played down. Underappreciation was not even in the same league as this. So what ever point he made, I made it a point too to somehow make him lose his flow by either agreeing with him at the wrong point or not agreeing with him at all when ever possible. Finally when the meeting was over, neither me nor my colleague could recollect what had been actually discussed even though it has lasted for a good 30-40 minutes. Anyway since this was not a proper HR manager (was a techie manager) he was also definitely not able to achieve his final objective. Actually if we are lucky enough we could both wring the situation a little more and collect the money that leaks out it, in the form of another extension to our relocation and personally I could do with a stub for the future in the form of a BizTalk resume entry.

Though staying in hyderabad without finding a real nice chick would certainly not be worth it... even with the money.
Somethings never change.. where ever a person might be .. or how much ever time has passed ;)

Hyderabad: FrAmeD!

Well, I concede that my life in hyderabad has given me very little to blog about indeed, and I was forced to make some underhand moves and steal tags from Silverine and copy out mails to my manager. It did give me an incredible oppurtunity to go out and savour the city of pearls with Spoo's friends and meet some cute chicks in the process. Well finally I have gotten around to bringing my hard disk concealed in my pocket and plugging in the device hoping that the IT management group would not have any facility to come to know of a storage device attached to the system. Well here goes the photo story...


Even though it messes up the sequence of things completely, I wanted to put up my favorite shot at first. This snap was taken during the Golconda trip. Let me assure you it was the best sight in hyderabad.


Two shots of the Qutb-Shahi tombs near the Golconda fort, from where we started out our journey that day. The first one was taken by me with PG's cam and the second with my w700i camera phone. You can make out the difference, which makes me really want to buy a real cam.

One of those beautiful corners in the Qutb-Shahi tombs. There were many similar shots in and around the place, and since I was severly prohibited from putting the pics of any of the chicks, I have to stick to beauty of the archetectural kind in my blogs.


This is the shot while climbing up the golconda fort common way, which was used by the commoners to climb up to see the king.



Narrow passages through which visitors had to pass through, where they were checked by the guards.



Another shot of the top, from the kings path, where the kind was brought down on 'Dholi' by african slaves, wherein the slaves were selected that the heights would match up to the incline of the steps.


This beautiful wall is supposed to have been adorned with beautiful and precious stones. One can only imagine now.

A view from the top

View of the Golconda Fort at night.

Now that the Golconda pics are over, I thought I'd add a couple of snaps of the fun I had this weekend with some new friends that I made at Steps, where I have joined up for Salsa classes. Most of the people in the pics are expert dancers,who are good enough to participate in dance competitions and win them too..

The sardarji and the dude in the white t-shirt were the most noisy people I have ever met in my life. They made the trip the enjoyable experience that it was.

The cricket team which won the match, which according to the very strict umpire, was won by cheating, to which I completely agree because I was in the losing team.

A shot of the sky from my guest house, which is my phone wall paper now.

How can I not put up a picture of the charminar even though I could not take a good picture of it with my phone cam.....
It was a severe disappointment...

Mala Engane Marikkaam?

The mad rush for the appraisals are gathering force and it has forced me to start thinking about my very own 'Mala Marikkal' (mountain moving) mail to my ex manager in the vague hope of 'gore and glory' in the form of a forwarded mail to the senior managers of my business unit. Well Anitha and Debasish had done it, and that has forced even poor Uzzal who is stuck in a bullshit project to look at the bright side of the mere copy paste work he is stuck with and write his own 'a** kissing' mail to the manager, which I gladly helped him edit into more of a corporate form.

Now, let me try my hand at it here .. and like my previous post i'll await valuable reviews from helpful arse kissing experts from blogosphere.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sir,

I am now working on a new release of a web application, for Energy and Utilities Vertical, for an US client(*name purged). The full project is immense and is handled by Infosys and Wipro. The rest of the team is working on the 1.6 release of the application, and I was brought in to help with 2-3 features of an added functionality. The main resource who is 3 and a half years experienced is stuck with her earlier tasks due to the complexity of the N-tier architecture of the application, and hence I am now in charge of all 9 features of my project. I have been able to complete the complete detailed design spec in two weeks, understanding the system and its architecture.

All this has been greatly facilitated by the design and architecture training and tips given to me during the DA Training by you and S (purged for my protection). It also helped me in easily picking up latest technologies like Web Client Software Factory within days, which without the understanding of the basics that you had imparted, would have never been possible for a non-IT rookie like me. It also helped me in easily designing the architecture for the POC for boeing, which was similar to designing the dummy projects given by you.

Thank you sir, for taking a initiative from your side in training us rookies and elevating our career prospects greatly inside the organisation. I also would like to acknowledge all the great help from S to us.

Thanks and Regards,
(Your truly Moi..)

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Whoaaaa.. that took some effort...
so people out there, with a knack at ass kissing, feel free to contribute additions/modifications/masalafications to my little endevour of self promotion...

Cheers.. PEACE OUT..
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Note, Attatchment: Anitha's and Debasish's mail for those who are interested..

Hi sir,
How are you? How is DA?

I am into (*) project. It is a project in TMTS vertical. My client is (*).

This a new project starting right from the scratch. Designing was also involved. My tech lead asked me to create use case diagrams.

The tool used was Argo uml. I was able to do it all because of the training given by you and S.

The project is a fixed price project we don’t even have 1 min to spare. Even Saturday and Sunday we are working. Within 40 days our project should be over, that is the plan. Everyday the time we go is at 9:30 or 10 pm.

Today I had the task of doing a module. I had to implement the whole thing ie, BL, DAL and UI. He asked me to complete that then show to the team how to do it. He also told the team to follow the method I followed in handling the layered architecture.

I could do this easily because of the Dummy project and the trainings given by both of you.

Sincerely speaking I wouldn’t have done all these things if you wouldn’t have given me this training.

I sincerely thank both of you for giving such excellent trainings and grooming me up.

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Sir,
Good evening. How are you?

Yesterday I was having Microsoft Interview (3 Hrs of Interview) to work in Microsoft IDC HYD. I got selected in that.

Monday onwards I will be working in Microsoft IDC on (*) (They are going to ship (*)) as a resource from Wipro.

I do not know my exact work but I have to work from Monday.

Today I attended 2 hrs of KT session in MS.

Today I am getting release from the (*) project.

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Appraisal

Appraisal times are here, and I am inviting all creative minds out there to put all your creativity together and write me a good self appraisal ;).

Also would be appreciated, completely shameless, self promoting letters to my old manager Subbaih Anandan, telling him how big a job I am doing here, and that I would love to go back to Bangalore and work with him in the DA Team.

So do not lose this wonderful oppurtunity and rush in with your entries in my comments !!!

Cheers... :)

The ei8ht tag..

So again I've swallowed the pride that is left in me after all those shameless acts of Blogosphere thefts, and yet again I steal a tag from Silverine, just because I cannot find anything in my hyderabad life worth blogging about, as of yet.

The tag is pretty simple, and it just involves writing 8 random things about yourself and tagging 8 people.

So here goes...

Even though its time that I left this habit, I still listen to heavy rock music and it still surprises me with the extent to which it helps me handle my moods.

I AM getting old, along with my bike, as my hands start shaking after a real fast ride through city traffic.

I love watching the same movies over and over again untill I know the dialogues by heart.

The only thing that I have ever stuck to in my life till now is gym, which I have never really dropped in the last 5-6 years, though people would still be surprised to hear that I work out pretty regularly.

Recently I have grown interested in dancing, and try my best to move my stiff body, any chance I get to, may it be a new year party, or my birthday bash at a chennai disco...

Even though it may come as a shock to many people who do not know me much, I do not drink or smoke.

I am not very creative, but I try my best to make what ever creative endeavour I undertake to come out good...

And even though a lot of people reading will find it funny, I have joined up for Salsa classes here in Hyderabad.. ;)

So cheers to any one who read this, and any 8 people who hopefully read this blog is welcome to take up this tag.

p.s: I really hope atleast 8 people come to read this...

Swatchamaya Video

Life Rewinded Forward

Continuing with the flow of events from the previous blog, the pretty lady that I was trying ever so desperately to impress did finally waltz into my life, along with 3 other equally adorable beings of the fairer sex into my life this weekend. The twist in the tale that made it happen was Spoo's birthday, for which all her cute female buddies decided to give her a visit here in Hyderabad. Her male buddies also joined in with the girls for the trip but they were also cool dudes, hence in all the weekend was a blast.

I have been in Hyderabad for quite sometime (more than 2 months) and we, even though a big enough group to actually go out and see places, have never ventured out much into the city and enjoy the delights it has to offer. The only claim that we can lay to the exploring we have done in Hyderabad seems to be the weekend we visited Prasad's Mall and the Hussein Sagar lake. Hyderabad unlike Bangalore had many places of historical and general tourist value including Golconda fort, Qutb-Shahi tombs, Birla temple, Snow world, Ramoji filmcity and of course the trademark Charminar. This in an ancient city with history of over a few centuries, hence if one were to look closely through the gap between those modern ugly buildings, one would find mosques, buildings and other structures which are obviously from an era long forgotten.

So our journey started with me and Spoo going to greet our new friends and take them to the guest house that we had searched out for them. Meeting them was amusing since I was so painstakingly trying to engage one of them through mail correspondence and been teasing another so badly that she wanted to shoot me at sight. Thankfully the first meeting went completely smoothly with us all being late for our first tourist outing; the Qutb-Shahi Tombs.

Now, these old king dudes were amazing fellows. They built tombs for themselves while they were alive so that they can die peacefully (or forcefully) and be buried in style. Hence we were able to see beautiful tombs constructed in intricate detail with a sense of innate beauty. I being desperate to capture all this Mogul architecture, cunningly stole a digital camera from one of my newly made cute girl buddies. The poor thing did not even know what hit her and she did not even lay eyes on that canon S410 for the whole day. So I started taking photos of each and every brick that I found interesting, and it being a Mogul architectural treasure had a lot of interesting 'bricks' which in turn resulted in quite a number of snaps being taken. Actually, there were more than quite a lot of interesting and moderately interesting things (other than the girls) which qualified for a snap in my books, but I showed a relative amount of self control in limiting myself to shots that had more than a good chance of being appreciated by owner of the camera. The sun was up and Hyderabad sun was unforgiving.

From the tombs we found our way onto the nearby Golconda fort. Now this a place I can relate to from the many number of novels I have read which told tales of fortress towns which could never be penetrated, even after months of siege by very determined foes. The outer walls were 7 km in diameter and let me tell you, it was an impregnable setting with its own hidden water supply and granaries which could easily outlast a siege. We scrambled up the gravelly steps up the hill while a guide explained the history of each part of the fort. The light and sound show in the night was amazing, even though it could not stop Debasish and Anitha from sleeping through the whole show. From there we went to Eat-Street which was an exclusive food court on the banks of the Hussein Sagar.

Next day everyone was promptly late by 45 minutes making the whole tourist bus wait for us to take us to Ramoji Film City. The bus ride was enjoyable enough, and after about an hour we landed at the gates of Ramoji. The place was no where as interesting as Golconda fort or the Qutb-Shahi Tombs, and the heat of the sun caught up with everyone in the group throughout the day. In the afternoon we went for a trip around the campus on a guided bus tour, and the guide chap got us all laughing with his very witty comments about the sets of the film city. One set would have 4 separate facades for 4 different situations; where else can you get married on one side(church) , go to honeymoon from the next (airport), deliver a baby on the next (hospital) and get a divorce from the last side (court). Another good one was houses one each for hero, heroine, villain and comedian on each side of a set building. The day ended off with a long walk through tank bund on the bank of the Hussien Sagar lake.

The last day was to be slow and no rush, when compared to the previous two days. We went to Birla Temple where the hot sun had made the stone steps so hot that everyone was performing tap dancing on their barefoots. From there we made a mad rush to snow world only to find out that the next show would be on only in 1 hour. This was a pleasant place to spend ones time if you have 5-6 people out with us in the city. We spent most of our time throwing snow balls at each other and catching everyone offgaurd in the face with well aimed shots. The show turned even cooler with snow fall and a dance floor where we danced our hearts out.

The last (but the least) place we visited was the Charminar which did not impress me as much as other ancient monuments of India have. But it was open to the public and we spent a few minutes on top of it looking out into the crowded streets of the old city and looking into the Mecca masjid where the recent bomb blasts had taken place.

The day came to an end for us on a deep note, with me and Spoo dropping off her best buddies and my new made buddies at the railway station. It surprised me that even though I had met them only 3 days back, I felt I were dropping of people that I had known for ever and had missed for long. I relished the moment when I felt a lump forming in my throat and drifted back to the times when I were with my various gangs back in home in Trivandrum.

It made me realise how I missed each gang's company, even though each was so different from the other.....
Thanks to Spoo and her sweet friends.... Hope they did not find me an intrusion in their group.

Book'd For Life

Well, recently a very pretty friend of my friend's, whom I've been trying desperately to impress, asked me to list my favorite books stating reasons to it to go along with it. It was infact a wee bit of maneuvering on my part which brought her to this question, and I do suspect that this fair dame understood the mild drift I was trying to impose on the direction of our mail correspondences.

Anyway, since I'm back into 'Competency Area' (the bench, for the uninitiated) and my Hyderabad life has degenerated into a sleep-throughout-your-weekend story, I've decided to write about my favorite books and why them ..

First a bit of background...

So my reading started, not too early, not too late at around the time when I was in 7th standard. Mum was such a sweetheart till then, reading me books and getting me all those comics and Famous Five/ Secret Seven series. But in 7th I got to read my first book, which was a thriller/adventure of sorts named Shaitan. From then it was kind of slow untill I reached the stage where I got my hands on the regular Sidney Sheldon range when I was in 8th or 9th. The period was bliss for me, with mom bringing home 2 books every two weeks from the heaven for readers, Elloor lending library. So that period was pretty monotonous with me finishing almost the whole line of Sheldons within the year, and going on to pile up titles from all the major best seller authors. It was a bit slower during my 11th and 12th, with maybe a book in two months or even lesser. And my reading spree was finally cut off with a villian of all books; War and Peace, which officially ended my golden days of reading.

Now to back to the subject. Some of my favorite books as of now are:

1) Godfather: For justice, we must go to Don Corleone. And my chest fills up with pride and other emotions so strong that it cannot be penned down onto words. Each re-read brings up more emotions. This is the book I have gotta read atleast once a year, and each time I read it I feel good about being a man and generally about being myself. And don't begin to ask silly questions like why, cos Godfather is simply the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather answers all of life's questions. What to pack for a trip? "Leave the gun, take the cannolis." :D

2) Fountainhead: Who does'nt like Fountainhead?
Well it was a rhetorical question and you need not answer it if you don't like Fountainhead, because I am aware that there are hoards of people who tend to think that it is just boring and it never ends. But to me it is like philosophy for dummies or Beginner's guide to philosophy. Who would'nt identify with the lead characters? I've heard almost everyone who has read the book to have claimed that Howard Roark was nothing but an replica of their own selves.

3) One Hundred Years Of Solitude: This is a very personal choice of mine and I do not expect many people to side with me on this one. I've been reading it over and over and again, and still cannot explain what is the thing in the book that draws me back again and again to it. This is the book that leaves me feeling like I'm lying in air somehow being bouyed up from beneath. And do not mistake this as floating in the clouds kind of feeling, because it's just the opposite. I just feel so disturbed to the core about the whole deal. Maybe it is because of the time span of the work, or maybe because of the sudden changes in pattern from a completely serious line with a sudden short intrusion of fantasy as if it were a mere everyday event.

4) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: True that the idea for this book (radio show at first) came to Douglas Adams while he was drunk and reading "Hitch hiker's guide to Europe" and looking at the sky, but thank heavens that he was drunk, because I do not think that he could have pulled something this crazy off if he were anywhere near sober. This was something that came heavily recommended by everyone I knew, and correctly placed after Terry Pratchetts putting me in the receptive mood for modern humour. I have not read the fourth installation of the inaccurately termed Hitchhiker's Trilogy of five books.
There is an art, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

5) Wilbur Smith: Again one of my favorite books, even though I cannot say that I've gained something deep or worthwhile while reading his works. Its pure adrenaline rather than anything else and even though most of his works have the same general theme it ends up being a blast to read. His books are long and they have good language and more than enough excitement to keep you hooked on for the 700-1000 pages that they usually stretch on to.

6) Terry Pratchett: Shrutz had always been telling me about how she loved Terry Pratchett and how she thought he was the greatest author on earth. Of course this gave me more ammunition to avoid the guy for at least a year. Finally, with nothing else to read I stumbled upon Captain Carrot and the Disc World. This, I would consider as one of the best things that happened to my reading, because I found that, humour writing was one of the wonders of the world. I went on to read quite a few of them, though not the whole series, not to mention an inevitable move towards hitchhiker's series.

Well, I have decided to stop here, even though there are lot more books that I have quite liked. But these were the first that came to my mind and feel strongly about.

Now Reading (rereading) : The Source - James Michener

Dropped Ones

Being from Trivandrum, heat is nothing new to me. But let me tell you, the heat in Hyderabad is another story. It would have been much more comfortable if we (Me and Spoorthy, my teammate), were to get up early and go to office by 8:30. Then we could have beat the rush hour traffic, which is even though better than Bangalore, is still pretty horrible, which when compounded with the searing heat of midmorning sun makes one hell of a hot furnace. Today, I had to go to office, and being Saturday I made the mistake of thinking that I would be better off going around 11 and coming back after lunch. Now, this turned out to be a very bad decision and I spent half the day waiting in the sun at traffic intersections and blocks, trying to blow out the flames bursting out of me due to spontaneous human combustion.

That's half the story. The reason why I was forced to leave my cozy little room and still cozier little bed was that me and Spoo made a very inconsequential little mistakes that we usually tend to make quite often, which in turn happens to wipe out what ever consequential work that we (including many unsuspecting teammates) had done over last few weeks. Anyway I went there and found out that there is infact no way to recover a dropped table from a database unless you had backed it up before. So now I've got to go back on Monday and hope there is a way to undo the damage what I've done or face the consequences.. :D

Hyderabad Blues

Leaving Bangalore was not easy. It had been my home for 6 months, and my life had gripped it in its familiarity and comfort. The Electronics City Office was heaven as everyone working there will swear by. A luscious campus, the greenery, the chicks, the lawns, the amphitheatre, the 7 cafeterias, the centre of Wipro and 18000 employees in one campus. Nothing could beat that. My team, fellow CETians, everything was going to be left behind...even though it was only for 6 months, the prospect of leaving it brought a deep sadness in my heart. What I was leaving behind was...

The beautiful Electronics City campus....

The amphi, my cubicle for 4 months...


My lifeline, the basketball court and gym..


The bench in EC...


My team mates, Anitha missing ...

Reaching Hyderabad was almost movie like, with a snazzy telugu number playing on the radio, which just matched perfectly with the scenes just flicking by me out of the cab window, and I could almost feel the camera zoom in and out of the delights of the city, a well edited music video. The first impression I got of the city were very favorable and warm and in striking comparison to the first impressions I had got of Bangalore. As far as I could make out the city was as big as Bangalore in terms of area, but no where as crowded, dusty or noisy. The holiday roads were almost devoid of any other traffic and we easily made the trip to our guest house in under half an hour, which was pretty good time considering the fact that the guest house (and the wipro office) were about 25 kms from where we had started.

Enroute, the Hussain Sagar tank.

Now, the city might have been very beautiful, with a beautiful lake, but the same could not be said for the region in which our guest house was located in. It was pretty far away from normal civilisation to an extent that we would have to later travel on a total of 4 autos and 2 buses to go get a toothbrush and get back. The only building near us were th Microsoft development center and the Infosys center.

Microsoft Development Center

The way the Microsoft people work...

Another look at, Sleeping at work

Infosys , Hyderabad

Beautiful like everywhere, Infy

The guest house met all our expectations with almost 3 star facilities. But the very next day Me and Spoorthy were transferred to another office which was in Secunderabad, 25 kms away from our guesthouse. But now that is an interesting experience with my bike here in hyderabad, and the roads being like an imitation of a motoGP race track 6-lane with curves, gradients and all combinations in between.

Our Guest house room

What we have done so far in Hyderabad are...

Climb the corporate ladder...

Get stamped with a phoenix...

And go for a team outing....

Cyderabad

Its been a while since I've been in hyderabad and I still havent blogged about it..
The late night work..
Dinner with colleagues
Some small talk..
And without knowing it, it is already 1 am.
To sleep to grudgingly drag myself off the bed, into the shower, getting ready for another day..

Will blog in detail maybe this weekend...

Uprooted

Six months in a city can breed a feeling of belonging in you. And that is somewhat how I feel about Bangalore City now. But it seems life is taking me to new places, and Hyderabad seems like the next candidate in the list of 'Been there, Lived there' city list. Even though all the formalities have not been completed and the details all seem to be pretty vague, the team has already started preparations to leave to Hyderabad. What is going to come, we all have to wait and see.

We are waiting with our fingers crossed for the relocation letter.

P.s: good thing about relocation - lots of money in reimbursements, free food/accomodation and maximum duration of 6 months.

Height of globalisation

Recently a very pretty friend of mine, who was just back from a spin around the world, got me absolutely astounded by the ease with which she used three languages in such a small line -"Tumhara Kanaku is Different".

Takes the meaning of hinglish and manglish to the next level, don't you think ?

Bloody ****ing Mosquitoes

Suddenly I felt like I was being smothered from all sides by an invisible force, being compressed from all sides, finding it hard to breathe...

With a mixture of relief and nostalgia, along with a little trepidation added to boot, I found myself stepping out of an air conditioned coach into the searing heat of Trivandrum. I was finally where I belong, completely. Home. I headed straight home, thinking I could crash in my old room into the fluffy mattress and pillow and catch up on the sleep that I had missed. And...






This is how I found my bed....
Then I thought, hey leave the bed, its too hot anyway, lets curl up on the floor and sleep on the cold floor. And...

That was how I found my regular spot on my bedroom floor. And I had to be satisfied in the little spot between the drum kit and the two unit boxes on the sides.


Well, maybe that was ok. Let my bro take up my room and convert it into a rock band practise room. No harm done. I can curl up between those cubes, hug my pillow and hug my good old free landline and happily go to sleep.

It is at this point that I really got screwed, as when I got back from dinner with parents, I found the whole house and area in darkness. Now I have heard people say Chennai is hot and I cant comment on that. But let me borrow a saying from Silverine : Trivandrum (Kerala) heat aint sissy heat like Chennai heat. Well let me tell you, the night was bloody hot and ****ing humid. And those huge blood thirsty mosquitoes (I think my house had some mutated ones) almost ate off half my hand most of my back. That got me pretty sore about the whole deal of coming back home and finding Philipose recovering from plastic surgery and blocking Jonathan as bystander at the hospital.

Anyway the major tragedy was that being Attukal pongala we missed out our customary Shangumugham trip. And we were forced to just get drenched in the rain at kowdiar. But the story it seems is not all intended to end sadly. The very next day, that is today, we got ready for our customary long ride and we chose varkala this time. Turned out a good decision and even though we have all become old(along with our bikes) and have started riding slow and careful, the ride itself was soothing and entertaining (with Sankar the ride is never dull), and we headed straight to my aunt's place there in Varkala. After giving my Granny a visit, we turned our sights to Kappil, dug up from my nostalgic images of my final year project ( I had missed taking enough photos last time). And again after some interesting and funny riding we got there.


We missed out an opportunity to get into the water there and went to Varkala beach, but by then everyone had lost their interest in getting into the water amid the crowds. But it did give us some good photos. :D

End to End

Joining for my job in the company has had many positives as of late, and that has positively succeeded in overshadowing those dark days of sitting on the bench for more than a month. The overshadowing process included of some pretty rigorous training on various programming and design concepts. Now, maybe my manager(a really jolly chap), has got me brainwashed, yet I feel justified in inferring that design is something that usually is never taught to rookies such as ourselves (somewhat true in our industry, as a general rule). Yet, as say a twist of fate has had it, we have been put into the path of some serious and severe design and architecture know-how.

The company has had, as of late has a sudden enlightenment, that a really alarming proportion of the projects being undertaken by the company are under serious fire during their closing stages, identified during certification by our team and more specifically our manager(whose green light is needed for many a project to actually hit the market or the client or whatever/whoever it is supposed to hit) and that they were no where near a standard as to be called good or atleast passable code/application for the client from a non-functional point of view(say like performance, maintainability, coding standards etc). So after some brainstorming (probably meaning some heated words being exchanged) our management decided on an experiment wherein some rookies (namely us) will be trained on the finer aspects of software design and coding. These rookies were going to be a 'Vazhikaatti' to the senior architects and 7-10 year experienced Technical Leads who were, apparently not following the best practices and standards. Now don't get me wrong, but I think the senior members of our team (the whole team numbering all of 3 excluding us rookies, of which 2 we have met) are both nice guys. But somehow or the other the rest of the senior delivery managers or tech leads/project managers do not share our positive evaluation of our senior team members. Infact they just seem to think that they are complete *%&%&#!@!'s . Well, one cannot actually blame them, because after listening to some conference calls between a delivery manager and our second-in-command about our first-in -ommand while our first-in-command was infact in a very room, we could even begin to understand their consternation when they suddenly found themselves owner to red lights on all the 6-7 criteria for which they were being evaluated (non-functional aspects) and got 96 concern comments for problems with the code).

After listening to our trainer take us through the end to end of .NET and some very pheripheral concepts of UML and OOAD, all interspersed with frantic delivery managers practically begging to them over the phone for approval, we were nearing the end of our designed training. Now don't think that I am trying to blow my (our) own horn but I generally found that the 3 mallus in the 9 member team better coped up with the training. And when the manager found us a cosy practice assignment, I was not surprised to be assigned the task of dummy project manager(obviously me or Jose would have got it :D). I found to my dismay that trying to get people who have absolutely no intention of working to do what they absolutely have no idea about doing in the way which they absolutely could not imagine is much more difficult than it might seem to the casual outside observer. So you can imagine my struggle to make the Work Breakdown Structure(WBS) of the project, planning what all we were going to do for the next 12 odd days and what exactly each person was to achieve that particular day. Ofcourse the manager acting like a typical client, changing his requirements everyday and changing his specifications everyday added spice to the roles we were playing and basically everyone started getting mildly annoyed. My annoyance might have been a triffle above the general level because I had to suffer the additional annoyance of having my team members teasing me by calling me the project manager and asking me what they were supposed to do each day and each hour. We surprised the manager the third day with about 50 questions I painstakingly made that morning, we were finally able to pin down the whole intricate details of the project. This impressed our manager who usually was satified with his routine observation that team was not performing up to his expectation(but it was obvious that we were not actually faring badly). In the meantime I was making funny and silly mistakes like sending over mails forgetting to attach the required documents and the PM sending me mails in Malayalam saying what he was supposed to review.

Now half way through the project, and after some more minor "impressing" sessions he has sent mails to senior managers and head of various departments very very openly advertising our groups presence and in the process blatantly overstating our capabilities and knowledge. This has inturn lead us being assigned another "Bench" group to kind of mentor and bring upto our level. Our very own manager was all "Thallu Thallu" to the other group's manager, and we have sworn to follow in his footsteps trying to sweep the other group off their feet with our effieciency and ofcourse much better intellectual capacity :P.

P.S: And finally on a more postive note the author wishes to notify all the curious males that their concern regarding the new twist in the tale is indeed justified. The new group does include 3 quite pretty girls among the total 6 and the future is indeed bright.... The future is indeed promising.. ;)

Assorted of sorts

This blog has been lifted shamelessly yet again from silverine's.
This poor blogger has finally run out of topics to blog about (not really tho.. ;)) and has confined himself to an occasional original blog but is usually content with stealing tags from random pages from across blogosphere.

This particular one is an mixture of sorts...

Three things that scare me

1. Heights
2. The sight of Karnataka traffic police standing on the roads picking up Kerala vehicles
3. Failure

Three people who make me laugh

1. Terry Pratchett
2. Salim Kumar
3. Jagadish (in 'In Harihar Nagar')

Three things I love

1. Women
2. Good Music
3. Working out

Three things I hate

1. Badly edited or directed movies
2. People going behind my back and turning them against me.
3. Pulsar 150 or worse Unicorn guys trying to irritate me into a race.

Three things I don't understand

1. How girls I like in office keep getting transferred.
2. Why some people in college really hated me.
3. How girls can be so possessive sometimes.

Three things on my desk

Since I don't have my own desk or even ODC as of now lets try our hand with the hypothetical.
1. My worn out and hated by many jacket.
2. My optimised by my standards PC.
3. Stacks of waste paper.

Three things I am doing right now

1. Working on the end to end cycle of a mock project we have been given and stuck on the design phase.
2. Searching for cute girls in orkut.
3. Trying to download Blood Diamond and finding that we don't have enough space in either Hari's PC or my laptop.

Three things I want to do before I die

1. Make atleast a couple of million dollars.
2. Live in a couple or more eastern or northern European country for more than years.
3. Make more than a few acquaintances from among various races of women in the world ;)

Three things I can do

1. Wheelie and stoppie with my bike
2. Play basketball in the evening and then workout for an hour and then play again ( ah my schedule!!)
3. Make any girl go to Chennai by developing an interest in her and talking to her or atleast planning to do so in the near future.

Three things you should listen to

1. Jonathan's songs
2. K S Chithra's voice
3. Your heart

Three things you should never listen to

1. Hindi movie songs
2. Girls
3. Guys getting senti after getting drunk

Three things I'd like to learn

1. Salsa
2. Flying a fighter jet
3. One foreign language

Three favourite books

1. Godfather
2. Hitch hiker's Guide to Galaxy
3. Fountainhead

Three favourite food

1. Chicken kalimirch from Khana Khazana
2. Oranges
3. Chicken Shawai from De Paris in Palayam

Three beverages I drink regularly

1. Juice from cake corner in office
2. Mirinda
3. Tea

Three TV shows/books I watched/read when I was kid

1. Boy meets world
2. Phantom
3. Knight Hawk

Anyone who is interested can take up this tag......:D

i wAnna be ZaPhod!!

You know, continuous inactivity finally gets to you someday. You feel it is just eroding you away ever so slowly, without your knowledge, from within. I have been wasting away my days, doing nothing but read forwarded mails and ofcourse forwarding them to others who too are on the bench and contributing towards the erosion of their cores from within too. Today morning I got up and put on the TV and guess what greets me. My very own world of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy in its movie version. Even though sam rockwell would not be able to slip into the shoes of beeblebrox perfectly I did like his style playing the crazy president of the universe thing. Well anyway, back to the point, that has put me in a very good mood for the day. Sadly though, I do not find any avenue to put my good mood into good use. Like everyday the continuing absense of chocolate in the EC2 pantries has become a road block in the happy spending of my swimming in the resource pool day.

But the shining star on the horizon is my trip back home to good old trivandrum this weekend. Even though i'll be getting very little time to spend there, the long gap before going home has filled me with anticipation to the maxxx..

hmm.. I'll have to finish my current book (old man and the sea) soon....

HIV/AIDS::Explained/Unexplained?

After undergoing training for one week, I am back in the pool, swimming about happily. By the pool, ofcourse I mean the resource pool. But bench has its positives. I get time to read forwards and go about orkutting, drinking badam milk (because the idiots have stopped chocolate) and reading blogs. This is when I came across this very interesting and informative blog. I have no means of validating or indepth research into the topic but it did give me a completely new view about the HIV/AIDS situation (or the non-existence of it).

http://www.haftamag.com/content/view/207/43/

Read through it and reach your own conclusions about whether HIV and AIDS are related and know what you are spending your money on when you donate towards HIV/AIDS research.

Knowledge is power. Go get the power.

Self Tagged

Ok. Since I have been searching for a proper topic to blog about and none seems to be forthcoming I'll take up silverine's tag. Here goes nothing.

1. Yourself: I could do what I do always and copy paste my orkut profile (mostly because I dont want to start thinking about what to write about myself again). Anyway I would say I am usually friendly, helpful and usually logical in my approach to most things. Ofcourse..I go crazy for any pretty gal I see. :D

2. Your galfriend/spouse: None

3. Your hair: Usually kind of crew cut... reminds me I need a hair cut soon.. Maybe some gel and a new spike hair style..

4. Your mother: My role model. Everytime I look at her I see what living life the best way is all about. Success, family and overall happiness... the balance is so fragile.. but she manages.
5. Your father: Me and my father were never that close, but nowadays since he is stranded in Cochin he tends to call once in a while. I definitely have to call him each time I need to get something important done because he is the man with strings everywhere... may it be getting tickets for india-pak match to getting off without paying a 1000 Rs fine for over speeding.

6. Your favorite item: If it were my pocession I would have gone for my bike. But since it hardly qualifies as an item I would have to go for my Sony Ericsson W700i. Somehow this is the first phone I fell in love with.

7. Your dream last night: Hehe.. thats not for a public blog :P

8. Your favorite drink: Mirinda

9. Your dream car: Aston Martin Vanquish

10. The room you are in: A conference room

11. Your ex: No proper Exs... but do have some ex crushes....thats about it

12. Your fear: Failure

13. What do you want to be in 10 years? : Well travelled

14. Who you hung out with last night(Sunday) ? I was down with fever... was hanging on tight to my pillow and jacket and socks and every other piece of clothing trying my best to stay warm... how I missed the hot and humid Trivandrum and my home!!!

15. What you're not? Emotional. Even though it is not a good trait. This is what I am.

16. Muffins: Nooooo...

17. One of your wish list items: Ducati Monster Dark

18. Time: Is on my sideeeeeee

19. The last thing you did: Went upstairs to have chocolate and suddenly remembered the damn company has stopped having chocolate powder in the pantry.

20. What are you wearing? Formals for a change. Gals dig it aye???

21. Your favorite weather: Bangalore weather

22. Your favorite book: Godfather

23. The last thing you ate: Chicken Biryani

24. Your life: Is at a very decisive stage with each week turning out to be the points which decide where I will be ending up in some years.

25. Your mood: Relaxed or maybe even mildly frustrated with the inactivity

26. Your best friend: Jonathan Bruce...

27. What are you thinking about right now? About Anitha Valakuzhy and how I can get to know her better... :))

28. Your car: Nah... not yet... still holding on tight to my Pulsar 180 Dtsi (non alloy one!!!!)

29. What are you doing at the moment? Duh... what do you think?? (anyway on bench :((.. )

30. Your summer: Go to some falls, get into the water and have fun.

31. Your relationship status: Single

32. What is on your TV? One thing that wipro can work on is ... you guessed it .. a TV..

33. What is the weather like? Crisp and Cool

34. When is the last time you laughed? arghhhh... dont remember..

Forever, the word

She was there beside him when he wept,
wept for his loss, unbearable, killing him from within.
Her calm words sooting his anguish, his pain.
He looked at her now, closely for the first time,
asking himself when he had found her in his life,
confused, he realised the truth, so obvious.
She had been there throughout.
But he never realised it, too immersed in his life,
the life that was crashing all around him,
and she was there, right next to him,
offering to be the pillar to a life, a new life
the life he would now be forced to build up from the ground.
Pillars they became supporting against each other,
balanced and stable, holding out against the storm.
Days passed, weeks passed,
hours became days, days became months, years,
yet she stayed with him, supporting him, loving him.
Now she found herself standing on a cliff,
facing the winds, facing the spray of the waters,
her hands holding his firmly, for warmth, outside and within.
He was looking down, distraught, fed up with the world.
The wind whirled around them, playing with them,
the droplets of water they carried causing goosebumps on their skin.
They looked at each other and they knew,
how futile it was to live, with the hurt, with the pain.
His eyes searched her and understood,
he silently pleaded with her eyes, trying to tell her it was all going to be fine,
that he will be with her always,
forever was the word, but they never needed to say it,
say it out loud, because the wind in their ears whispered to them,
and they took nature's word for it.
The time had come and her hand tightened around his.
Slowly as though caught in time they let themselves fall,
fall to be united, brought together for eternity.
Forever is the word, but they never said it out loud.