Flash back 2011

What went well?

1. Experienced my first flight journey in 2011. I loved the take off part of it. The landing was scary!
2. Had a chance to see the mighty Bay of Bengal, Konark Sun Temple and Puri Jagannath Temple. Thanks to my friend Debasis and his family.
3. Dirtied my hands a bit by engaging into some hard core coding for 8-10 straight weeks. It was fun. Though frustrating at times. I was happy to get back into groove!!
4. The cult of Rocky totally took me off my feat. Why did it take me so long to watch this series is still a mystery? But I totally love every bit of it. Sylvester Rocks!!
5. The experience and learning on the professional front has been remarkable. Had a chance to play roles which have given me enough confidence to take it further.
6. Made new friends. Also, caught up with college buddies and had a blast with them towards the fag end of this year.
7. I am done with the 1yr in MS program. Just the project that’s pending now.
8. The ups and downs of this year have only strengthened my faith in GOD.

What didn’t go well?

1. Someone whom I knew for more than 5yrs finally parted ways with me. The way it happened hurt me the most. Just want to wish that friend all the best in future.
2. Lot of things that happened around me showed me how times can change so much. What looks perfect in one moment can be all gone in the very next.
3. I have been a little occupied with my work, due to which I was not able to devote time to my friends. I have learnt this lesson the hard way. When every one walks out, it’s your friends who are there for you. So never give them a chance to walk away.
4. Never take people for granted.
5. Been more vocal and express love. You never know when it’s too late. I think I should have done this more often.

This song pretty much summarizes what I wanna sing for myself now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEzTdBJUHO8

Here’s wishing you all a merry Christmas and a splendid year ahead.. God bless.

Flashback 2010

The last day of the year or should I say the decade is almost coming to an end. This year has been significantly good for me. An year that has be full of ups and downs. A quick recap of things.

What went well…

1. This year I got a chance to work on a project that helped me explore new horizons into design and implementation more than ever before. I worked on a critical module that gave me immense satisfaction. Undoubtedly that’s the best piece of code I have ever written in my life. Thanks to my team back @ MindTree who entrusted me with the responsibility. What an opportunity!!
2. Contributed close to 8 articles on Java Lobby and have made sure I religiously follow all their articles. It has been an amazing source of information for me. Thanks to the folks @ Java lobby. You guys are amazing.
3. Started a collaborative initiative to collate all the useful links related to java, along with a few like minded folks. Ever since we started this, it has really helped us in collating all the interesting stuff together. Hope this shall serve a good repository for future reference.
4. Embarked my journey in MS CSE @ Manipal university. The decision was very much influenced by Sree. Vaibhav and I enrolled to this course and have managed to sail through it successfully till date. Other folks that gave us a good company are Karthik, Neeraj and Hemanth. Thanks folks for keeping me motivated to pursue this amidst all the chaos that reigned in 2010.
5. Attended lots of interviews only to find each time something was not matching. Finally moved into a good firm. Happy with my decisions. No regrets at all on this front.
6. Made 2 unconventional choices when buying my most coveted gadgets this year. I bought a Samsung R528 laptop and Kodak Z980 point n shoot camera. Both of them have been stunningly good so far. Just made me realize I must take more risks…

What got screwed up…

1. Lots of interviews. One of them was a dream company. Nevertheless I will give it a shot sometime in the future.
2. Lost my Micromax Music edition phone. It was my 3rd phone. God!! Why are all those odd numbered phones I buy, destined to get doomed. Did I tell you what happened with my 1st phone? Well, let’s just say.. It’s a longggg story.. Some other time.
3. Lots of cracks and communication gaps in certain relationships. Apparently, I figured out that communication skill is not exactly what I think it is. Needs lots of improvement here. But I still love my buddies.
4. The numbers of movies I saw this year was dramatically lower than the ones I saw, let’s say in 2009. Thanks to my MS classes on Sunday!!

All in all I still feel 2010 was an amazingly good year for me. It just shows me that things are going to get better and better. Hard work always pays off. And above all, God is there by my side all the time.

This pic summarizes how this year has been for me:

Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year. May the force be with you. God bless!!

Dedicated to all my dear friends who have been there when I needed them the most

F.R.I.E.N.D.S TV show title track lyric.

So no one told you life was going to be this way.
Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, you’re love life’s DOA.
It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear,
Well, it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.

But, I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour.
I’ll be there for you, like I’ve been there before.
I’ll be there for you, cause you’re there for me too.

You’re still in bed at ten, the work began at eight.
You’ve burned your breakfast, so far, things are going great.
Your mother warned you there’d be days like these,
But she didn’t tell you when the world has brought you down to your knees.

That, I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour.
I’ll be there for you, like I’ve been there before.
I’ll be there for you, cause you’re there for me too.

No one could ever know me, no one could ever see me.
Seems like you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be me.
Someone to face the day with, make it through all the rest with,
Someone I’ll always laugh with, even at my worst, I’m best with you.

It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear,
Well, it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.

But, I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour.
I’ll be there for you, like I’ve been there before.
I’ll be the

What do you want?

How often do you ask this question to others? It doesn’t take much of an effort to throw this question at others when someone annoys you or keeps pestering you to do something. You just throw this ultimate question, “What do you want?” I am no exception to this either.

Just think for a moment. Instead of asking this question to others, ask this question to yourself. Give it a shot. You’ll know how clueless you are! Isn’t that a little surprising?

Most of the time we think we know exactly what we want. But trust me, it’s not what we want. It is just what we think others will admire us, if we have it. The  ego in us can blind us at times. It can play havoc if it exceeds healthy levels.

So if we don’t know what we really want, how come we end up being so happy at times with some of our decisions? This certainly reminds me of a quote from Alice in wonderland, when Alice is on cross roads.

“Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?” asked Alice.

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get,” said the Cat.

“I really don’t care where” replied Alice.

“Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Well, you know what most of the time, we just don’t know what we want and just  ’discover’ that what we just got was what we wanted. It doesn’t matter what you get when you don’t know what you were supposed to get!!

At other times, we curse people around us for making our life miserable, and even blame our fate. We think how ‘unlucky’ we are since we don’t get what we want. What make things worse is, we tend to look at others and think their life is so ‘perfect’. Everyone else around you seems to have the best life you could ever imagine. It’s just you who is leading a miserable life.

Why does this happen to us? Why are we not happy about things as often (and as much) as we should be?

The answer to this, I think lies within each one of us. The key to unlock unlimited happiness lies inside us. We just don’t realize it. We tend to spend a lot of time trying to unlock that happiness with other’s keys. How stupid is that.. Isn’t it?

I read a quote this morning, that I felt summarizes why we are grossly unhappy with things around us. The quote reads along the lines, “A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.”

It came as a wake up call to me since I almost felt connected with what the author of this quote told. How true. Is it not? I strongly believe that we ‘attract’ things we think about most of the time. Everything you find around yourself is what you have attracted.

Do take your time and write down a list of things you want. It might sound a really petty exercise. But I firmly believe that if you can’t write down what you want, you still don’t have the faintest of an idea of what you want.

A new journey

I was looking out for a good wallpaper and when I came across this pic. It not only impressed me by it’s simplicity but I was able to connect to it instantly.

Looking forward to an exciting new journey of my life. Enjoy this pic.

On an exciting new journey

Photo Courtesy: http://7te.org/wallpaper/1271290935_3546_1680_1050/one-path-wallpaper

P.S. Wish you all happy Ganesha Chaturthi.  Look forward to posting updates shortly.

They remind me of…

It has been a long time since I posted on this blog. Life was on 5th gear and I just seemed to be too lost in things that seemed to keep me so pre-occupied that I literally ate, dreamed and talked about those things. This must have probably been one of the longest break I have taken from blogging. No qualms, I finally managed to pull time off jot down something that just kept popping in my mind all the time.

Yes! I wanted to pen down my thoughts on how each song (almost all) reminds me of some phase of  my life. I just thought I will write them down as they come to my mind. They are not necessarily in the chronological order:

1. Lucky Ali songs – All those wonderful songs of Lucky Ali like sunoh, tere mere saath jo hota hain, yeh mumbai nagariya, etc remind me of my days back in the home town, where I first listened to them on Sandeep’s computer (I think pentium p2 or something). We used to play games on his computer like chess, wolfenstein, prince of persia, quake3 etc. I still remember how I once crashed his OS and I thought I had damaged his computer!
2. Mitwa (KANK) – This reminds me of my initial days of blogging when I has just started blogging and used to follow a lot of bloggers from ISB. I just loved the way they wrote. I still follow a couple of them. But this song touches the soul and I just don’t seem to get over it.
3. Back street boys – The songs from Backstreet boys reminds me of the time I was in the first year of pre-university. I wasn’t having a computer then. I used to listen to his song on a tape recorder, which my brother used to get from his friends. I used to play the tape over and over. At times it has helped me wake up to 4 am in the morning and finish some assignments. I still remember those physics problems I solved listening to those songs. I even wrote the lyric of the songs, “Show me the meaning…”, “I want it that way..”, “Quit playing games”, etc in a dairy.
4. Masakali (Delhi 6) - This song reminds me of the time I moved to a new rented place in BTM last year. This was feb 2009. I remember listening to this one song all over the place, in the cab, office, hotels,etc. This reminds me of a lot of good times I spent at BTM. I also remember reading The White Tiger during my commute to the office that would give me a good 45 minutes.
5. Khuda Jaane (It plays in the backdrop as I write this) – This song reminds me of those night outs I had a MindTree. Sometime during july 2008. I was working on on my first project and I remembered having one of my leads asking to me code a whole new module at 3 am in the morning. This song played in repeat mode all that night. Just can’t associate this song with any other stuff.
6. Recorded books of Richard Feynman – This reminds me again of the days I traveled from BTM in the cab. I used to listen to the audio books of Richard P Feynman like, “Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman”, “Perfectly reasoanable deviations from the beaten track”, “What do you care what other people think”, etc. They were simply superb to listen to. That was the first time in my life I realized how great it feels to listen to audio books. It’s like someone narrating you to whole book to you. Try it. It is simply amazing.
7. Kya Mujhe pyaar hain - This song reminds of my final semester when I was doing my final year project. Srinidhi used to play this song always. I have vivid memories of we editing the final year project synopsis @ srinidhi’s place and we used to play this song in the back drop and along with one more kannada song (it was srinidhi’s favorite) from one of upendra’s film. Can’t quite recall which one. Those were great times.
8. Mauja hi mauja (Jab we met) - This song reminds me of the time I had just joined MindTree in Oct, 2007. I used to hear this song literally at every other place I went. A group also performed to this song and it was an amazing performance.
9. Hey ram (Jagjit singh) - This song is one of the most serene and divine compositions I have heard till date. It is so good to listen to. I mean try this out. Just play this song first thing in the morning in your audio system and just see how good it feels. I remember listening to this song every single day at a relative’s place. They used to play this for 1 hour and I used to just listen there listening to it. Gives me a lot of peace of mind.. Amazing song.

I have just wrote a few of them I can recall. There are countless such vivid memories associated with each song I listen to. Each one brings back fond memories of the past.

P.S. If you too have some memories associated with some songs, feel free to share it.

What difference does it make?

Last week a colleague of mine shared with me a wonderful story about how small acts in our life can make huge difference to other lives. I really liked the story and wanted to share with you all.

One evening an old man was taking a walk by the sea-shore when he found at a distance, a boy throwing some things back to the sea. The old man kept watching this boy repeat this activity over and over again. As he approached the boy, he saw that the boy was throwing back star fishes as and when they were brought to the shore. There were a lot of star fishes that were brought to the shore by the waves and the boy was able to throw back only a handful of them. There were still a lot of them lying on the shore. The old man couldn’t resist his curiosity. He asked the boy, “By throwing a few star fishes back to sea, what difference is going to make? The others are going to die anyway.”

Now the answer this boy gave was really noteworthy. After listening to what the old man had to say, the boy, as earlier picked up another star fish and threw it back to the sea and said, “It made a difference to that fish!”  The old man was left speechless.

I think that a lot times we feel our efforts are really not making any difference at all. They just seem to be a waste of time and nothing else. It may appear to others that we are making no difference at all. But it may not be true. So if you truly believe in what you are doing, just continue doing it, not what others think of it; because you never know what difference it may be making in the life of others.

P.S. Just remembered a quote that summarizes it all.  ”You may be some to the world, but to someone you may be the world”. Trust your instincts and listen to your inner voice, it never lets you down.

Catch 22 situation at workplace

I am sure you might have heard of this idiom, at least the former half of it. Apply the same to the work place and you get plenty of scenarios where you might find yourself in a catch 22 situation.

Now what’s the catch 22 situation I am talking about here? Recently I had a chat with a friend of mine and he told me how had encountered a catch22 at his work place. The situation was something like this. He has stayed with a project for a long time (2+yrs) and played the role of a developer. He has roughly 2.5 yrs of experience. Now this friend of mine wanted a change and has naturally asked for a release from the project. He was assured of a release sometime back and it was definitely due for a long time. Finally he had a chance to discuss this with his manager. To his great surprise the manager had some different plans for him. Actually they seemed more like an offer to retain him in the project and not purely with an intent to give him a higher responsibility and role. How did he figure this out? Well it appeared as though the manager “all of a sudden” and “out of the blue” figured out it was time for this guy to shoulder higher responsibility. All of a sudden it came to the centre stage that my friend needed to ”make it to the next level”.

The manager actually wanted to offer him a lead role. Now can you believe that? Who in the right state of mind would offer a guy with 2.5 years of experience and with no design experience to lead some team? But let’s just say that it’s ok to accept the offer. Let’s assume that my friend (like most people do) actually accepted the deal since it meant promotion at an unreasonably less time and if things went well, it meant more money!!!

Do you see a problem here? No, I am not talking about the problem at my friend’s end. I am talking of the kind of trend a manager can start in an organization. Just imagine if your organization is full of such managers. What would be the state of affairs? We would all be having people quickly climbing the corporate ladders no doubt, but certainly screw things up, well a little early!! I feel that this is kind of dangerous trend. Why would you want to force someone to take up a role just for the heck of retaining him, when you know very well that he/she is not ready for it yet. When such offers are made, it doesn’t happen  that the person who is offered that role actually declines it. If he/she is not prudent enough to judge his/her own capabilities, he/she may not only land himself/herself in trouble but also make the lives of people around him/her miserable, to say the least.

Now what’s so catchy here? Does the above incident mean that one should never show the “courage” to tread a path less travelled? Who decides what’s the right time in life to do things? How do you know if you are ready for something in life?

I look at it this way. It is never bad to try new things in life as long as you are able to do it, more by power and less by force. I repeat “More by Power and Less by Force”. It applies to anything you do in life. Ask yourself if what you are doing in life is out of power or force and you’ll know whether or not you are ready to do something in life. Trust your instincts. It never let’s you down. It is this ability to judge oneself that can either make it or break it for you.

Think about it.

Do you have an overriding goal in your life?

Have you found an overriding goal in your life? A goal that is loftier than self. Something that will give completeness to your life. If not go figure it out… I am searching for one too….

Expectation setting and leading by example…

I have always had this strong feeling in me that if I am to see any change in the environment around me, it must begin with me. I have made frivolous attempts in the past to go against this philosophy and have only been proved wrong. I have pondered over this philosophy and wondered why it works so well.. The following incident only made the philosophy more concrete than ever before…

A couple of days back while I was having lunch with a few colleagues of mine, the same issue came up. Some incident had taken place the week before which had left a bad impression on one my colleagues. He was totally pissed off with the people in the project and had almost given up on them. We asked him to explain what had happened. He told us that he had put his heart and soul in to the project and worked hard for its success. He also happens to be one of those team members who had been with that project for a long time (more than 1.5 years). Naturally he felt the incident hurt him very much. So what had really happened?

A couple of weeks back there was a production release scheduled and he was not, in any way the primary owner of the release. There was another team that was supposed to own this release. But it so happened that most of the team members from that team had been released and they did not plan for it suitably. So there was a resource crunch!! Now our friend, who was already over loaded with too many tasks couldn’t volunteer to help these guys out. To add to it, the team was facing a lot of environment issues for a couple of days, which came in its way to test the application successfully. This only added to the concern of the team’s manager, who was really getting worried about the successful release to production. My friend said, “It was 6:45 pm when I received an email from the manager stating that I need to come forward and shoulder the responsibility to make sure a smooth release”. What bothered him was this Nth minute expectation setting, despite they knowing that he is already over loaded. My friend felt it was unreasonable and simply left for the day. To add to it, it was a friday evening and he had some commitments. Once he left for the day, the manager has escalated the issue to the higher management stating that it is “irresponsible” behavior and its “unprofessional” on his part to have washed his hands off the task.

If that was all my friend would probably have not bothered. But what they did really pissed him off. They asked him to come back that evening and finish some task which was not even in his bucket. And the worst part being, the complaining session was still on even after his returning to office as per their request.

Now that brings up these questions in my mind:

1.  What would you do if you were in my friend’s place?
2. Is the manager right in escalating this issue, even after knowing that it was a last-minute task assignment?

I feel such incidents really tell us about how wrong expectation setting can really put off some team members who have put in their heart and soul in to the project and still get to hear such feedbacks about their work. I feel its down right unprofessional and not acceptable.

Before we point fingers at others, we must be double sure to say that we are right. It’s easy to blame others for the lack of planning from your end. Don’t you think so? If you expect people to be professional and blah blah blah, you got to lead by example.