Late night trysts..

Being back from the US I would have expected to have some moolah atleast to keep my nerves steady, even if it were not enough to go out partying every weekend or so. But not too surprisingly what ever money I saved from the US has gone down the drain on my car which is giving me a string of unending problems, or again on the welcome back partying and new year partying. But have got to admit it though; the new year party was a party to remember. It was certainly the wildest party I have been too. Shiva was a newbie party boy and he sure was not at all disappointed with this tryst with the clubbing crowd. Unlimited drinks (considering that couples and stags had to shell out 6k, it was not a bargain) and an eager crowd along with seasoned party goers. Even I am getting quite good at enjoying myself at parties, getting drunk and holding a few drinks down. And ofcourse I love the lasers.

I have never been a big drinker, and have started seriously drinking only recently in the last few months of partying. Here too I tend to stick to vodka based drinks or a long Island Ice Tea, trusting it to kick in fast and leave me fast enough to drive back afterwards. Vodka with redbull is perfect for me since it gets me drunk enough, without making me sleepy and giving a hell lot of energy to freak out for two hours straight and more if it weren't for the Hyderabad 12 midnight curfew. And I have found perfect partners for drinking and dancing too. I just wish A would be a little more free to come out dancing that would make two awesome dance partners.... lets see
Sutra in Atlanta.. fun place... different crowds different days. This particular day was for ABCDs. Explains why I had to get drunk alone (1 beer, 2 l-Iced teas, 2-vodka red bulls, 1 vodka brandy) and had to be practically carried out by the bouncers.

Salsa Havana, where I saw some pro Salsa dancing.

Take Hold Ballroom Academy.. some of the best Salsa I have seen yet. A guy there turned so fast that I heard the swishing sound. And I met a very cute girl too.. Danced with her a lot. :D

Tongue and Groove.. Wednesday Salsa night.. With Lourdes and Dee.



Now thats another wild party. 10 d the place to be!!!.. and look who joined in at the end!!!!

Firangi pani.. Now thats where I saw Hip Hop in India

The rest places were nothing great.. and we did not get great group pictures... shame..! I had really loved the chicks in the new year party!!!

Fly High

Its been two years in the making and finally the day is here. I am quite tensed up. The flight to Atlanta is at 0400 tomorrow. I have to check in a couple of hour earlier meaning I have to leave home tonight.

Hopefully the travel will give ample oppurtunity for blogging.

1000 Turn adventure

The thousand pillar temple turned out to be thousand u-turn temple, with us around in circles trying to find the way to the supposed kakatiya marvel. Finally after going back and forth on the same road a few times, we managed to get the right directions and turned into the lane leading to this architectural wonder. Wonder it might have been, if we actually saw a thousand pillars. Actually a few pillars would have been impressive, but we could identify only a couple from among all the scaffolding erected to restore the place. The whole structure was probably 20m X 20m, which was a massive let down after temples like Suchindra and Madurai Meenakshi. We ended up taking pictures of a few stray puppies and pondering over their lineage, imagining up german ancestors for them.

The 1000 pillar temple

The German Lineage

We decided to hit Ramappa temple next. This time around I had gotten a better hang of the place and all the poring over the google maps came to our aid. We found the Mulug highway with resonable east, which led to the Ramappa temple and started out on the well maintained road with all the gaiety we could muster. Munching on a packet of chips we drove about 50 kms through moderately interesting terrain, passing a few toddy workers, lots of fields and lots of cattle on the roads. By this time, a bullock cart minus the bullocks was spotted by my travel partner and she promptly expressed her interest in filling in for the absent animal. I obliged and we took a few pictures of the 'feeling in the bullocks shoes' (or heels or whatever) scene, and even joined in towards the end to get a taste of all the shoe feeling that was going around. Rumbling and murmuring from the nearby bushes from the not so amused owner of the cart send us back to the car and we again got back on the road.

A little while later we encountered a few bulls (docile ones if anyone's wondering) feeding lavishly on the side of the road. Again my ever enthusiastic travel partner wanted to be a part of the country 'naatinpuram' landscape and we ended up taking a few pics with them eyeing each other suspiciously. The bull thankfully did not act upon its suspicions and the story ended happily with us getting back to munching on our chips and the bull back to its hay and all the by standers laughing their asses off looking at the little white devil with the scared face posing with the bull as if for a facebook best friends display picture. Next stop was at a similar spot, when we felt the need to get in touch with nature on seeing the picteresque paddy fields glowing in the sun. So again a photosession ensued and we drew quizzical glances from passerbys which we neutralized by clicking away at them. That seemed to appease them all. Everybody wants to be a model.


The joyride was sadly cut short when I stupidly drove into a diversion and ended up scraping the bottom of my car. This led us back to Warangal, with a moaning car, leaking some unknown fluid, for rest of the uneventful ride back to Warangal, partly because I was worried about the car, and partly because of some random remarks from miss smarty pants. All the worrying turned out to be for nothing as the car was fixed for a hundred bucks at a maruti service center which was luckily open and we ended up hitting another temple and driving back home to Hyderabad in really high spirits..

The next trip ought to be much more fun since RTR is coming back soon and Naved has already booked tickets for the 19th..

Hiatus

A year back if somebody had told me that I would prefer taking out the car instead of my bike, I never have agreed to it. Yet two months into having a car here (after bringing my car over from Kerala), here I am driving around everyday, to office, to classes, meeting friends in my Esteem (Di).

Its one of the worst engines to have been brought out in the last few years, I am sure (Heard its a Fiat engine producing 56 bhp). But leaving the engine out of it, the car is perfect for me. Especially since I did not pay for it! Its comfy, and it gives awsome mileage and come to think of its not much more to pay for the comfort than my bike. Might come to 10-20 bucks more a day, which my roomie Jayan swears is lesser than what he pays going by share autos here in hyderabad.

Once it starts moving above 20 kmph there nothing to complain about. It touches 140-150 if given enough time, and is resonably light with its power steering and shock absorbers. Not that I am an expert on cars and I have barely driven a few models of cars. I certainly know it is horrid to drive bumper to bumper. Quite impossible with the AC on, and in Hyderabad, the heat forces me to confront the impossible quite often, especially when out on the road with teammates at noon, off to lunch or a team member's wedding.

But now late nights in the office have become convienient and much more safer. The other day, giving in to nostalgia I came to office on my bike and that very day made me stay in office till 11 30 at night (that too after a whole day in training, then an hour of aerobics and then an hour in the gym), and I do not know how I made it back home at night through the dust, the glaring headlights, and worst the idiot pedestrians of Hyderabad. The bike is certainly looking at an early retirement.with maybe a few honorable rides just to get groceries.

Well I hope this blog will be an icebreaker after the long hiatus. I have been trying to get back to blogging, but with little success. I have not been doing much worth blogging about. Watched a few movies. Downloaded a few movies at home. Reread a few books. Thats about it..!!! (Dark Knight.. need to rewatch it.. Kung Fu panda.. cute.. Casablanca. worth the watch..Guards Guards.. pure Terry Pratchett.. Solitude.. reread nth time).

The dance classes have been going well, and I have started teaching the absolute beginners Salsa basics. The group has become stronger and shows promise of being a great gang to hang out with and go for some trip soon. Madurai is under discussion.

Now that I am planning to go home for onam, I am looking forward to taking a few snaps, and a little work with Photoshop. Kichu has inspired me. I mean, I think he even surprised himself with his knack with the camera and photoshop..! Same for Sujay. I would never have guessed that he had such an artistic streak hidden in him while we were growing up together in Trivandrum.


Hoping the trip back home will provide something interesting to blog about.

Stop, re-evaluate, continue...

When I was scrambling about to write the previous blog a couple of days back, I was facing a severe lack of subjects to blog about. Maybe the problem was that I was so used to having those umpteen number of colorful friends resulting in a fairly high number of humorous incidents. But the last blog brought out a comment from 'yama dootan' which has resulted in a bulb going off on top of my head.

"TINGGGG!!!" (or something of the that sort. You get the picture).

The gist of what he asked was whether I was happy after all this. Something to the line of me being unhappy after all this and maybe he being happier after having a ton of cash in the bank.

Now I am not sure whether the question was a serious one, or a understandably misguided opinion after reading what I did write. It is in fact understandable if someone would have assumed that I am not quite happy with what I have right now. I usually tend to tone down the matter and try to twist it to sound maybe a little more humorous than it actually is.

Now, what I wanted to point out was, never did I actually mean that I do not lead a happy life right now. In fact people who know me or knew me from back in Trivandrum would agree strongly that I am one of the strongest candidate for living one's dreams after coming out of their college lives (in a purely social context, because I am still getting paid peanuts). While most of the people I know are bored with work and do not have much of weekend life outside their extensively enjoyable day of washing clothes, cooking and watching TV, I can indeed lay claim to a little over dramatic line of 'Oh, such a hectic weekend. Wish I had more time to do everything I had to do'. On a lighter note, I have indeed felt the need to find a companion to spend my Saturday mornings with, but I would say that the following continuous marathon weekend involved would justify the 3-4 hours of cleaning/washing/the aforementioned extensively enjoyable work I too engage in (though I try to put it off all the time and wish I never had to do).

Pause. Re-evaluation of the current stand.

Savings: 0

Well, I do know a hell lot of people who have indeed become technical lakhpathis in their own right in the last two years. I am deviating from my normal unconfrontational approach to my blog (I do not think of writing about girls and related admiration of their species as politically incorrect, especially at the ripe age of 23, which according to me too young to become too mature. You can bloody afford to be a little bloody light when you are young. The fact that I am continuing this blog after a meeting involving a heated argument with on site has absolutely nothing to do with the abrupt change in intensity/quality of words being used). Personally I do not agree with the philosophy of living like saints and saving up money in your bank accounts at this age. Well if you were a young Warren Buffet it would be different, which is anyway irrelevant since he probably made his million before this, and he definitely did not make his millions sitting in front of a computer screen and wasting away weekends only cooking and cleaning.

The only point I see for making money in my opinion are:

• actual raw requirement of raw cash to buy the materialistic stuff that you need
• the raw pleasure of knowing that you are good at making money (maybe a little Warren Buffet'ish)
• some sort of predicament you find yourself in, infected by yourself (as in spending in the range of 20k a week in pubs on credit, which actually is a spin off of the first clause) or filmy style family need of pengalude kalyanam, or very understandable supporting retired parents.
  

Other than this, I feel the life that many of my friends/colleagues lead; working their asses of for something completely intangible and spiritually un-fullfilling, coming back home to a messy house being shared with similar minded individuals doing the same thing, lounging around at home in their lungis and still dreaming of a Dil Chahta Hai lifestyle; is completely pointless. True that a few of the are amassing wealth at an unnerving rate. But sometimes I feel many are forgetting the big picture. We might still be burdened with the same sense of urgency to settle down and dredge through life and save money which lingers from the gulf going, stone carrying malayali from the 1970s. In the last generation, almost all the chettans were having the time of their lives, going to the kayal varambu at night, stealing cocunuts (climbing involved), and drinking at such picteresque localities on a weekly to daily basis, or even stealing batteries from random cars/bikes and selling them to buy juice. All of them turned out fine in life by 30. Contrastingly 23 year old young men now are mellowed down enough to be sitting at the same point, only moving their fingers an inch to the left, right or down, and worrying about their managers shouting at them for not doing something which will (might, when come to think of it) accomplish something you certainly cannot see. I mean, I can understand if your manager shouted at you for forgetting to put in the fourth column before starting on building the roof. But what is it to me if I forget to put in a stored procedure into the production database (existence of which I now seriously doubt. I mean, I haven't seen it till now. Is it just an excuse to make up write all this bullshit) which is causing random error to popup at some Call center people sitting in Riverdale.

So when they spend their lives without point, dropping out of IT to go back to studies, or back to their core fields, or even a flashback to the 80s kind secure Govt jobs, I certainly feel I have something special. Does it really matter that I am not making my millions at 23/24, and am instead having quite contended life, spending all the money on myself (especially vainly spending money on looking good and feeling good without a morsel of remorse). Come to think of it my philosophy throughout life was always taking as little effort as possible and achieving as much as possible, having as much fun as possible en route to all that bullshit.

Another problem with making all this money, living on Kanji and payar, is that you never learn to spend money well, enough to have fun, but safe enough not to leave you out on the streets. Yet another problem; many of them do not know why they are making the money that they are in fact making. Is it to build hospitals? At least that would have given a sense of purpose to an otherwise pointless life. All this leads to another stage that I would detest to have to be in. Waiting to get married, just because you are bored, just waiting to be 25 so that society will at least accept that you are getting married. You are settled, you have a ton of money in the bank, and now you can just write away your life and freedom to get married just so that you do not have to spend your saturdays alone at home. Was'nt there a ton of promise ahead of you?

It does seem a far cry in my life. I personally have too many things left to do. When am I buying a bullet and going for ride to Tripura (I might have to take up a map to actually find where in northeast India it is. I hope its the eastern most point. See, I am trying to make a point here and I would prefer it to be as strong as possible)? When am I going to live in Finland for a year and a half? When am I going back-packing with a mamoth lens SLR canon through the dusty streets of old Madagascar?

Well some people would indeed find all these quite reasonable questions, relevance of which is quite high, maybe not specifically in those places and camera models, but they would get the picture. But many other people would not. Even if they think that they want to do many of these things, I feel they never will. And there will always be few other who never dream of these things or anything for that matter. And doing all these things take time and money (Of which I have very little, but that you'll already know if you reach this part of the blog, remember the saving 0 part). So my claim that I am not going to get hitched before 30 might not actually be as far fetched as it might seem at first look. Take a look at the IT guys who are getting married at 26. Did they ever learn horse riding ? Did they ever fire a high powered long bored magnum? Probably not.

I keep forgetting what the point to all this random babbling was. I just hated being politically correct all the time. I got off my ass and did something and I do not regret it. I see many people who will benefit from doing the same, but will not get around to doing it. All I want to say to those people is, get off your bloody asses and get going on the road to finding your dreams.

Out. P.E.A.C.E. (damn.. there I go being politically correct again. Go fuck yourselves!)

Last wind of change..

As the years pass by (technically 2 years qualifies me to start using years as a reference of time to measure my life), we see various changes in us. Many of my last few blogs have somehow or the other dealt with these very changes. Anyway, since I have not been blogging for quite a while, I'll convert a mail into a blog. Well does it matter if its a lame one as long as the blog actually keeps going forward ?

There was a time when we used to skip a trip to the beach just because each one could not put in 5 bucks, and we could never in a million years comprehend how a single guy could possibly spend 20k a month. Right now I am at a point in my life where I could imagine how I could easily spend a lot more. Hell.. I had even made plans of investing and made detailed plans on what my imaginary portfolio was going to look like. Right now, forget savings, I am scrambling to keep my head afloat after my regular expenses. The only thing that seems to be a solution to my current situation is the next hike coming up, by which time I'll be wondering how in hell I made through this one year with so little money each month.

My circle of friends, may it be my biker friends, or my college friends, were never extravagant. Though there were exceptions to this rule in the form of Joji and Dasappan, the general rule was to eat from home as much as possible, walk as much as possible, take the bus as much as possible and put in as little money as possible for petrol when going for long rides and hope somebody else will pick up the tab for cigarettes, liquor and miscellaneous expenses and try to put up a face trying to show that you have put in your fare share of the ride. Gifts for friends were kept at the bare minimum, with people putting in an average of 25-30 bucks apiece, contributing to a grand total of 200-300 bucks. That bunny looks good.. but too costly.. lets get this shitty ass wind chime.

Then came the move to Bangalore where I started out living with 8 other roomies in a 2 BHK, happily paying 1.5k rent every month, even vetoing a bill to shift to a better place paying 500 bucks more. We all started frequenting Marathahalli and Brand factories skipping up a level from 100 buck Tees to the 250 buck ones and half price Branded Jeans to the envy of mates back home.

Now after 2 years, I find an irrestible urge to pick up any 38 sized shirts, whatever the prize( and what ever the bloody color). It never does matter, whether I have any money or not. The motto is, I can always make it up next month. My wardrobe, though not a designer haven yet, still sports all the popular international brands.

The 25-30 bucks gifts went upto 2-3 k gifts, as soon as Shinu's and Naomi's influence started creeping in. And it is not a bad thing at all. Who said being materialistic is bad. What the hell do we make all the money for ? Debasish, Anitha and Spoo did their part too. Birthday gifts ballooned up from 200-300 buck affairs to 4k affairs. Wedding gifts have stopped being cheap 6 piece dinner sets and have elevated themselves into the proper TV ad levels, with nakshatra.. Ash rai dancing around in all the flames ....and resulting in a diamond pendant/ring/...whatever.

Even though I never actually started drinking per se, I've begun to feel its a waste of time going to a pub and wasting all this money without having one of my Long Island Ice Teas just to blur the laser beams a little when I try to scare away all the people with the mix of Salsa and Hiphop I get to practice for the odd 8 hrs or so of dancing at the studio these days.

Music. Even that has changed. Rock to hip hop and now onto house, which I can't get enough of these days, especially while working... People must think I am mad looking intenty into the computer screen, typing my ass off and bobbing my head to a trance beat.

....... Enough of this.....

Well, I hope I can break off from all this 'change' blogs and actually start blogging about my real life.. Maybe I'll stay a loser a little more time aye!!

The river runs through it

I've just got back from my lunch and its 12:02 AM.

So you get a good picture of how my life is playing out here at work.
The trance album I picked from Davinder is blaring out of the headphone lying on the desk. The various tea/coffee mugs of the day adorn my desk. My onsite manager is talking to some dumb american client over the VoIP put on perpetual speaker. He makes me put on the VoIP throughout the night to coax me to work a little more through the straight 15-17 hrs I do work right now.

Surprisingly I have found out that I am a workaholic, atleast in a minimalistic way. Pleasant. Just to put it to the test: I had come to office yesterday around mid morning and left office today morning (or yesterday morning.. as its already crossed midnight). Nobody from college would have guessed in those days that it would turn out this way, with people like me and Mad working our asses off, while the hard workers from college would be the ones who would find it difficult to find their place in this world, and still be searching meaning in life.

Life is pretty routine these days. Waking up late, coming to office, all three meals in office, going back in the middle of the night to a lonely house. Weekends are routine too: Classes and Naomi. I am glad for the break from the weekday monotony. I cannot say that its what I dreamt of, but I would say it is what is keeping me going on, and what makes my life somewhat different from the numerous others' I hear about. Mag is coping with work and preps. Divz is also becoming a workaholic. Neema is screaming her head off every chance she gets. Jonathan is still after that gal.. Everyone feels a little lost at this point, I feel..

Though it has not happened fully yet, but life is getting diluted, slowly. I can just see the bright colours of life just being washed away in the steady currents. Not just for me, but for everyone around me, everyone from school, from college...

As the months flow by and slowly start amalgamating to years, the friends we knew have started dispersing into the wind. It has still not yet kicked in, but it has started, and is very clear, and is there for anyone to see. Maybe the last generation never had to experience this feeling of dilution, and that too, so fast (what has it been .. one and half years?) . Atleast most people would have been back home in kerala where the maximum distance you can be away from a friend is dubai, which is just the 15th state in kerala, after the far away kasargod, right?

Friends have started getting married, and the ones who have not started are complaining about the same thing. Two years is too less to have lived free... how can I get married to that geek (pointing to a pazham cherukkan in a pic)?... how can I marry someone I do not know... what do I do with my life now..?

I can only imagine what it is going to be in a couple of years when the hangover of college and school has finally left us.. left us to be alone with ourselves... and our new lives....

Each one of us is trying our bests, I am sure, to find our place in this world, and carve a niche in it for ourselves....

Cheers to life..

will iTcrack.. or Will i? !!

I've been working on the same, small, apparently simple issue for the past 50 or so hours over 4 days. When is it going to crack?

Debugging through the mess of postbacks, usercontrols, literals...
I might just get lost in it..

Maybe that is just what I need right now..

Technicality

"How do we come out of silent mode in my phone?"

Well, this question asked to me by my Technical manager will throw enough light into the technical aptitude of the people running my project.

No wonder the client is more than ready to kick us out as soon as possible..

Kuttalam: Yea you heard me!!

Kuttalam Waterfall, Old Kuttalam (Courtalam)

Beautiful landscape

Meter gauge railtrack over a colonial arch bridge

Sankar, Sankar Nair, 000

Road to the heavens

WilD domestic peacock..or hen or whatever ;)

Yippee, camp fire..

The background and the colors just did it!!

Scarecrows

Moi..

The gang, Jonathan behind the cam

Bleeding BackwArds

Trivandrum has been my hometown for quite some time now and even though I was not born here, I do have a strong sense of belonging attached to this place. Each time I come here I feel that something very special inside my chest. The pride one feels about his own hometown.

But as a few hours pass by and I move through the roads, I am invariably disappointed. Nothing has changed. I can even see the same tea stalls and the same pot holes playing mentor to the upcoming young pot holes. None of the roads have improved (Mom enlightened me that Kerala did not have a decent minister for roads in quite a while), and I hear people cursing Japan Kudivella Pathadhi which I do not have any idea about, and no one knows much about it anyway to enlighten me.

The number of vehicles on the road has increased drastically over the last one year, with the roads teeming with the big fellas of the road like the Scorpio, Innova and Civic cluttering up the already breathless roads. The half done flyovers sport all new political banners and shabby writings. Vishnu enlightens me that these will stay untouched for a minimum of two years, before someone analyses the design and finds that the design is not at all sufficient and we'll have to start from scratch. So the contractors hired to restart the project can get more money smashing up the crores that already went into building those piers and eke out more money to build to even more rubbish designs (Gamon flyover in Hyderabad, even though crashed due to bad staging, really impressed me with the pace at which the lagging behind project progressed , with the pre-cast blocks assembled very fast).

Mom again enlightened me that the Peroorkada-Kudappanakunnu road was completely unusable until the public went on a protest and made the ground shake with their demands to repair the road ( they have done a quarter lane width tarring of the supposedly 2 lane road).

And I keep listening to the anti-entrepreneurship government dissuading foreign/domestic investment, may it be Reliance/Infosys/Patni/Vizhinjam etc (check out pending land requests at technopark here). I also read about the general disdain that Malayali investors have towards hiring malayali help in their ventures outside the state because of the lack of cooperation from kerala government/trade union tedtape (silverine's blog).

I also read a few very interesting articles on Kerala politics and development projects related to tvm at Vinod's blog.

But it got me thinking on what the underlying problem is. I am sincerely fed up of all the non kerala resident mallus pointing out the mistakes of all malayalis. Philipose was very very insistent of point out the lack of insight and incapability of mallus, which as far as I'm concerned, would fail to explain the success of mallus all over the country. Maybe the answer is like what some others say; mallus working for mallus inside kerala is bad, and as soon as they step out of the state they start making money. Here too, the out of state businessmen are reluctant to hire mallus in fear of the backfiring from mallu workers union backlash.

The cause of the problem has to be complicated and would probably be part reason of the success of our race, what ever it might be. It could be communism in the last generation or it could be a collection of too many small reasons to enumerate clearly. What ever the reasons for the growth/holding back now, it is definitely time for us to break free, change our views and look at everything with a new perspective.

Today talking to my friends here, especially Sankar gave me an insight into how mallus hold on to cliches that held good a good generation back, but have been blindly adopted in a generation when everything deserves a fresh approach. I do not have the vocabulary to try for a clear discussion on the modern/traditional mindset debate, hence am stopping this post here..

Will add on more later ..

BIS certified work

Well, its not like I have been working my ass off for the last few weeks in office (smothered by the work load and the works) but still compared to these last few days I had been working quite a lot earlier. That is to say that quality of work that I do makes up for the quantity or rather the lack thereof for the period under consideration.

Thinking of going home, and that too for 10 days is enough to keep me from even starting on any of those pending things. And to top all that the weekend was awsome with a P200 ride through the city, all the salsa acrobatics with Anuhya, a birthday party at Soni's place, a fun filled coffee outing with Anuhya/Cho/Pritvi (or Prit as his american friends call him he says) and to give it that sense of completion, Beowolf on Imax 3D with a cute little monkey. Well I would say I am pretty justified in feeling completely off from the, working hard, frame of mind.

Well lets hope my onsite/offshore managers do not fly off the handle when they do find out about my quantity/quality of work...!!

Admirers UniTed !!

All of us need a respite from our hectic schedules, to unwind, to relax and think about something else other than work which occupies every inch of disk space in our heads. Even though there are some people who never unwind, most people do something which would help them unwind (consciously or unconsciously).

Now most people in my office revert to the healthiest of such recreations: Admiring the beauty of nature (pachha malayalatthil paranjaal, vaayinottam). So during lunch hour our daily escape from an environment thick with code, scripts, deadlines and appraisal cycles begins at about 1...

It usually involves a tingly sensation in my body (the vibration of my mobile phone ringing in my pocket, Shinu calling). So after I do a "Right Click> Refresh" in my head a couple of times, my mind is clear of the cluttered thoughts of all the problem tickets, artifacts and other issues with which I would have been wrestling with till then. I make my way out of the ODC trying to irritate all my team mates on the way out with what ever jest available. That might involve a smile or a mocking face at the new chick in the team (and she IS hot, if you are wondering, as I know you are), asking how many problems a new team member created that day or just enlightening someone on how their module is the uravidam of all bugs in the system.

Shinu, would usually be waiting at ground floor, with hands in pocket scrutinizing everything around him. As soon as he spots me walking down the stairs, there would be a reaction on his face to what ever I am wearing, which is usually a look of horror thanks to my god given gift for fashion (I do wear a black party shirt with wide shiny green stripes, which glows like bright green laser beams in the light, to office).

The paradooshanam (finding fault) starts soon after, and we shift to top gear soon after. Now, when Shinu starts it is something on a different level. I mean I was always the forerunner everywhere I went in this direction till now, but he is definitely a bonafide, certified master Vaayinokki (admirer, for the poor uninitiated non-mallus). Comments flow from his mouth as smoothly as the fountain in front of infosys campus here(both are equally examples of a work of art). I found that malayalam is an excellent language to express a myriad of situations and feelings to a such a degree of precision which cannot be nearly matched by english. This continues throughout our small walk to the cafeteria, and through our wait in the queue to get the food coupons.

Absolutely every girl in the office campus worth a look at has a nick name which fits her to such a degree that we would never need worry about forgetting their nicks or getting confused about them. There is Seema, who comes along with Muscle'an and Kuthira. This is the gang, on whom the whole campus of atleast 5k employees concentrate. The guys wont take their eyes off Seema and the gals cant get enough of the almost 6 foot Muscle'an. Then there are our favorites Princy Jacob and Annamma Varghese. Now first time we saw Princy we were 110% sure that she was a mallu. Hence one day I went confidently and asked her whether she was a mallu, to which she replied with a dazzled look on her face that she definitely was'nt. Anyway the saga continued with us mutually waiting for them everyday and escorting each other across the corridors(with our eyes ofcourse). Annamma was just the side kick whom no one noticed, untill we decided that we would drop looking at Princy and concentrate on Annamma since "Princykku ippo marana jaada. Nee aaradi thilothamayo" (Princy was acting too pricey). Now Annamma was definitely taken aback by this. She underwent a sudden makeover from a butch boyish type with a soda kannadi to a contact lens sporting, feminine churidar wearing lady who just could not hide a smile each time she sees either one of us.

Then comes Shinu's personal choice, Maanpeda. "Maanpedayude Kannukul. Aaha. Pennungal aayal ingane venam. A kaanukalil maanpedaye pole aa pedi kandille!" Sure enough from the very next day we started sighting Maanpeda only with dudes, and sitting on the phone for hours. So Maanpeda was suddenly dropped as the personification of feminine timidity.

There are many other notables among our regulars. Face-off, for turning her head suddenly when caught looking at us; Model, which is self explanatory, Kingini, Thakkudu, Nettholi, Shakkeela, Shinu's Vedala Romancham, my Vedala Romancham (most names are self explanatory, and don't ask me the meaning of vedala) etc..

Now, if I have given an impression that we are the only one monopolizing this industry, you are gravely mistaken. During the one hour between 1 and 2 in the afternoon, hoards of Vaayinokkis (from either sides of the gender barrier) line the verandahs on either side of the corridor to the cafeteria engaging in code review of all the people walking across. So we join them and sit on the verandah, along with some leading women professionals in this field on the other side.

All in all, lunch hour is only for admiration of nature's beauty and not even one thought of coding or work enters ours minds.

Now this, my blogosphere friends, is our Happy hour!!!

Purple leaks...

People might think that a sudden increase in expendable income, from a meagre 1.2k allowance for food and petrol, to something 10-15 times more would mean that I would be able to save money or spend money and be a party animal. But somehow this theory never quite came true, and after more than a year of being on the payroll (sounds so godfatherish), I am left with almost the same bank balance that I had started out with.

In retrospective, I never bought anything which was mind bogglingly costly, or never have I had to send money home. I did buy one teeny weenie 6 megapixel canon digi cam, which set me back by say a month's pay, but hey, a guy like me definitely needs to capture those moments and frame them for ever on film and all that stuff... I would not count this as an overtly undue expense.

But one thing I must say has been quite heavy on my pocket, and that sadly has been my purple machine. I have shelled out about 15k on it in the last one year to just keep it running (ok..not really running.. more of in reasonably good shape), including a paint job on the tank which was destroyed by the transfer to hyderabad, a change of electricals twice and a change of shocks to the new nitrox gas ones.

The last payout was the worst. I had taken my bike for a minor repair, i.e the headlights were not working properly. They kept the bike for 2 days and finally, fixed it and gave it me. I took out the bike for about 30 meters when I noticed that the indicators were not working, so I took the bike back to them, and as soon as I got off the bike, the whole bike started smoking. And it definitely was not Ashton Kutcher kind of weak and thin smoke. I really mean smoking, in thick plumes, like in the Arnold movies, after the Arnold has left the whole island burning kind of smoke.

So I was left with no options, but to leave it at their mercy to fix it (which was really bad since from past experience I knew they caused more trouble than they fixed) and give it by the next day, which later turned out to be a holiday for them. Three days later they were still giving explanations of inspite all their manouvering with all the required new spare parts they still were not able to get it back running.

To cut a long story short, I had to shell out close to 1k on the new wiring, battery recharge, wiring check up .. and to top it off a water service from their side (ofcourse not complimentary).
And the worst part is, now the rpm does not drop as fast as it should and this creates complete havok to my riding, since it makes a hell of a lot of noise because of the cut silencer.. :(

I could have easily bought another second hand RX100 for the amount I spent on it last year. And to think Philly's RX135 5-speed was sold for only 15k .....
Maybe my next bike is meant to be a Ducati..

Persuation

When I went into the conference room, I knew that I would not come out unbattered. One has to expect atleast a fair level of badgering from any good meaning manager, in any sort of status meeting. Ofcourse we were never going to stick to our plans, or complete our work within our estimated time, which would have been practically cut in half through mild or severe persuation of the managerial kind.

So this week had been more than normal stressful. So what.

Its only that a few issues and a couple mega code changes were requested in a very mild manner to be analysed, documented, completed and tested within 3 days. It would have been a piece of cake for the people who came up with the plan because, these issue were open only for the last 8 months, with the same number of people working on them, with the same work load on them. And well it is little consequence how many issues were solved by my predecessors in the past few months.

Managerial skills are pretty difficult to come by. But it definitely is overflowing in my project. It definitely has convinced me to give my very best, in being a model of non-production for the next few months, as I enjoy looking into the future at my absolutely bright chances of making to absolutely nowhere on the chain.

Life is beautiful. Keep smiling. The world is ofcourse mine.

pointleSS

I am at a point where I dont know what I want, but am so damn bloody sure that I want something...

Wonder when I'll figure it out..

Burdened Soul...

Today the immensity of the task that has fallen upon me finally has begun to sink in. As I waved goodbye to V, along with the whole team in the hot searing Hyderbad SEZ sun, the feeling of doom for having lost my mentor in this project, and a friend finally hit me. Lots of lost feelings came flooding back. Leaving college, waving goodbye to those accacia forests, leaving home waving to my friends and Mag, leaving Bangalore, waving goodbye to my first grown-up experience and Meenu, waving goodbye to Spoorthy, the only thing keeping me sane in Hyderabad, deciding to stay in Hyderabad, inturn equivalent to waving goodbye to Meenu again... Waving to Mag and Malu in chennai was the same, bringing back all those old feelings to the fore.

Seeing his excitement to go back home was good, even though I envied his pure joy at the thought of going back to his home town and family. I never had that feeling about Trivandrum, maybe partly because my life there fragmented and drifted away in the wind, never to be a part of the whole that was my past, or maybe partly because I will always be searching for things which are new and exciting and I certainly am nowhere near ready to settle down.

When I had first stepped into this project, I could see only experienced guys, who did not look like they were going to gel with me and I had a feeling of doom about the whole thing. But anyway it was supposed to be for only a month. V had seemed to be the person in control, and Y had seemed to be a person who was to be reconed with on what ever track that he was on. As time progressed it was clear that V was the only person in the project who knew what was going on or knew anything about what ever track he was on. Everyone else was completely clueless about what was going on. But then things happened and I have commited myself to the project and will now be a part of it for atleast the next one year.

My situation is that I am one of the youngest members of the project, but I have been given a whole module to handle from offshore, which I would say is a big risk they are taking, considering the large number of avenues available to me to screw up and end up costing the company millions. Vishwa was tried and tested in this track and even though he too was surprisingly young, he definitely was not just 4-5 months experienced like me. He was handling it perfectly, maintaining the trust of the managers and the client. Now I am supposed to step into those shoes and I know that it is definitely not going to be an easy task.

Another absolutely inherant problem with the project is that the management is one of the worst available with a steady string of screwed up projects under its belt. This is just the 4th project they screwed up in their eyes. And they have their list of valid reasons blaming others on why it failed ready, so they are not worried. But this fact impacts me heavily since, it means the client is so pissed off with our company that they are definitely pulling out of any future projects and is even contemplating on terminating our current project soon. That would mean the development project that I was eying for the future has almost certainly gone down the drain (even though not confirmed yet). That means it has opened up a flood of people taking release from the project and running for their lives. V has obtained release and has left, so has G who was holding the whole project together from onsite almost single handedly. I have replaced Y so he is also out. R and S are in the process of giving KT to other preparing to be released soon.

That just leaves me and Y.

I had decided that I am going to work my ass off and get to a position to demand this and and be in command. If no one comes into the project that could come true pretty soon, since there is no one else in the project up for it because the others are as inexperienced as me or simply do not have it in them. Well who says we have to take the stairs or the escalator, when a high speed elevator is available. I just hope the power stays on the whole time, and I am not boxed in for ever....

Release yourself

I have not slept yesterday night. Well even though many of us in the IT Field are used to that, yesterday night is taking it toll of me. The day was hectic enough with me riding around town with roshan, covering atleast a total of 100 -120 kms. Coupled with the hectic hip-hop routine and absolute lack of sleep due to the project release I am feeling absolutely like crap in the morning now. I had to come to office at about 12 at night .. fix the issue.. go back.. be called back at 3.. go back after 4 .. not sleep.. come back at 7 am.. and feel all shitty..

God let the replications run so that portal can be up and I can do my final changes and go to sleep.. Please this is inhumane..!!! Torture..!!!!

Somebody help meeeee.... :(

Live to Ride(in peace), Ride to live(in peace)

Well, for the last one year I have not been enjoy riding my bike in the two metro/semi metro cities that I have been living in...

Why?

I dont have Insurance , Road Tax, NOC or a license..

Insurance: I paid on time, they wanna see the bike in tvm.. while it is roaming about in Karnataka and AP and its in no mood to go back. Its in love with the pretty Scooty Peps here..

Road Tax: All these idiots have only life time taxes, for the one year or less we'll be here.. and that will set us back by about 5k, as opposed to 100 bucks or so for each encounter of the third kind with the cops.

NOC: Tedious process, which I never intended to undergo. My bike is basically a mallu at heart. I cant imagine my bike being a canadian (kannadiga) or telegana..

License: I do have a license. Not just on me. I managed to forget to get it back from a constable, when I was caught by police near charminar about 3 months back. I realized that I had lost it about a month back. Now a duplicate is in the works back in mallu land, and since nothing works there even with some bribes.. I am still waiting..

Summary
If I manage to lose my RC book, I can be 100% illegal. Yippeee..

Remedy.
Since I have been victimized by a company initiated transfer to Hyderabad from Bangalore, I will recieve those small perks associated with transfers of the forced kind. In short, I can pay my road tax and get it reimbursed. So what I need to do is get an NOC and then somehow manage to pay the road tax here. Easier said than done, as NOC would require me cum all the documents present back in mallu land. Now that does not seem that probable, hence I need to courier the papers and optimally myself there and get the work done. Then I can pay the tax here. And if and only if I manage to pull off that feat would I be able to get someone else to renew my insurance from here from last year even though I have actually paid for this year too.

Red Tape. And not the shoe kind..

Cyderabranded..

Now that I've had a weekend to think over the options that are in front of me, I've made up my mind to stay in Hyderabad for the next assignment as well. This would come as an anticlimax to the hot blooded mail I had sent to my practice head urgin him to send me back to Bangalore.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to feel that going back to my known and already explored life in Bangalore might not be what I really want. I am sure that I would have been completely happy with my friends there, but again, I would be with the same set of people and would not experience anything new.

Hyderabad on the other hand might turn out to be better off for me, in terms of oppurtunity to meet more new people, with lots of new girls in my salsa batch and ofcourse orkut like ever. Professionally, even though I'd be stuck in a support project I'll be replacing a 10 year experienced guy and there are extensive oppurtunities to touch varied technologies like Biztalk for orchestration and Informatica for replication. So it might very well turn out good for me, especially since a large number of team members are either onsite, or have had enough onsite experience. And so the bait of onsite really did help me make up my mind even though there is a more than 50% chance that they might not send me at all..

Anyway, I've taken a decision, and a bold one from my point of view to go into the unknown in Hyderabad..

So many things to do....