Events I Njoyed The Most In Last 2 Months

Sometimes life can get even more exciting when you do things whats really not expected of you . Looking back at the last two months I really enjoyed the below events ;–)

1)Had dinner with my watchman

My work keeps me in office till 3 -4 am in the morning and one guy whom ive troubled the most is my watchman , as he has 2 open the society gate for me each time i come back.

The other day i invited him for dinner and had an amazing conversation with him.He told me an amazing story of how once in his native village they had a leopard menace and how they made the traps 2 catch the man eater.

2)Travelled 75 Kms in a day

Its fun 2 have work which keeps u visiting new places and on one of those days I had to travel 75 kms in the whole day on my bike in the scorching sun ;–).Had never felt so tired riding a bike and just came home and jumped into icecold water in my bathtub

3)Met school friends

One of my school friends got married and it was great to meet all my school mates and teachers after really long time :–) at his wedding.

4)Dinner With Dad

Me and dad are foodies and go out every sat 2 try new adventurous stuff at various eating joints in pune. That day we ordered a crab for dinner and it looked like a watermelon when it came but the edible part in it was the size of a walnut .

5) Haideri family get together

After ages we had a complete family gettogether and was great fun partying and having dinner with my fellow family members .

Happy Fools day

Its really been a long time since ive blogged .

Lifes been way to busy, have to devote almost 15- 16 hours in a day to my work.

Today i finish one year after starting my company. Looking back i still recollect those moments when i started. The fear of being alone, the thoughts of traveling on unknown paths , resigning from a so called stable job and trying to do something perceived as totally unstable , That sinking feeling of been lonely and constantly doubted, I just remember everything way to clearly.

But amongst all that one thing that just made me go on and continues to make me go on is “faith” . Ive never felt so satisfied in doing something , as much as i have felt in the last one year.

Its been a great  experience, Ive even made loads of mistakes , but most importantly Ive learnt from them and continue learning from them. Today , each day i am living my dream , and no doubt when u start following them , you somehow feel amazed about how  life gets interesting and opportunities come up and loads of things start falling into place.

There is indeed nothing more exciting ,thrilling and challenging  than trying to start a venture from 0 and make it grow up the ladder towards infinity.

Mumbai Terror – Tears, Anger & Determination

It was indeed shocking to see what happens generally in places like Israel happen to Mumbai. The sight of seeing the Taj burning which is not just an hotel but the city’s and countries national pride was the worst feeling that you could get as an Indian.

I think after this incident we definitely need to analyze our entire political system and our approach towards it .Our national security advisor is god damn 75 years old , does he have any clue about the kind of technology and planning and arms that we need to put in place to combat this nuisance ? .The police officers have arms those of the times of world war 1 , what other countries have in their museums our cops have that for their defense.

Today morning it was ridiculous to read a headline like “We Salute to the martyrs….Vote for the BJP to have a safer tomorrow” . Are they so bloody intelligent that they have all the perfect plans and so far they have been denied the opportunity to execute them?.

For a government spokesperson to come out with crap statements that such kind of small incidents happen in big cities shows us the kind of attitude they possess. Its an attitude as if to say that a few deaths don’t really matter in a country of billions.

When a company collapses its the CEO who takes responsibility , whether hes responsible for it or not. We need some bloody accountability in our political system too.

After these attacks we have to ensure we don’t loose our secular beliefs,We have to ensure we don’t associate religion with it, and most importantly we have to ensure that we don’t live our life’s ahead in fear of these jokers. Their task is to spread terror and by being scared of them , we will only play the cards in their hands.

We all need to start increasing our contributions to society and become extremely powerful individuals. Its time to lead from the front and take our country forward , its time to apply a 20 -20 criteria to politics too.

This is a time when a billion of us need to stand up together , get united , and fight back.

Peoplesoft days at cognizant …. a lookback ;-)

Last year around this time i was part of the ESA product team in cogni. I was working in the timesheet module and remembered today the most screwing incident that happened in timesheet and thought of writing it here

In IT time is money and all the clients are billed with respect to the amount of time entered by employees in a timesheet. The sheet is approved by the manager for project hours and by HR for vacation hours before submitting to the client for final billing.

Some how that day there was a major bug (email me if you wanna know what it was ) in the system.All timesheets were getting automatically approved .

To fix the bug we had to delete all the entered timesheet and then automate the resubmission process. My task was to take care of automation of resubmission process and i remember my routine was something like this.

Thurday 12:30 pm : Total panic in meeting room , people in hyperactive state (obv coz timesheets getting auto approved).

Thursday 1:40 pm : I am told i have to write the auto submission process (the way i want to) and in as much time as i want , but it should be ready by 6:30 pm (common dialog in IT industry)

Thursday 6:45 pm : I am done with writing the patch, and then they review my code and say i need 2 rewrite it to make it run more efficiently  (they ( cant take names  here ) say it was taking too much time to run))

Thursday 7:30 pm : Morale down , totally irritated coz nobody gave proper instructions before starting the work and they expect me to redo. I start the redo process from scratch.

Thursday 11:20 pm : dinner of  1 sandwich and glass of juice and back to work

Friday 1:20 am : totally exhausted but loads of work remaining.

Friday 4:30 am : I need some help from DBA who are in US when i call them , they say its time for them 2 leave office as its their end of day (onsite people aren’t supposed to work overtime )

Friday 5:30 am : I leave for home , on the way 5 dogs chase me , thankfully my bikes faster than them

Friday 9:00 am : back in office , resume the work

Friday 6:00 pm : codes reviewed and passed. After the big shots made me do all the changes , there was again hardly any change / improvement in the performance. (but u cant ever say no to bigshot egos ).

Friday 7:30 pm : the code is run, will continue running till morning

Saturday 12:45 am : go out with a dedicated colleague who;s giving me moral support and we have dinner of eggs bread and juice.

Saturday 5:00 am : Codes still running, me and my colleague playing cricket with managers two stress balls (they always need 2 (one is not enuf ))

Saturday 7:30 am : I leave office, my task is accomplished.

Monday 11:30 am : I have to give a detailed explanation why i am late in office, at 10:45 am and not by 10:00 am.

Lesson learned: “In the corporate there arent any friends. People will use you to the maximum and will be with you till the time they need something from you. “

…. screw or get screwed .

15 August 2008…. I can feel my freedom too ;-)

Today is the countries 61st and i think, mine first .

First in the sense , that now i can do what i want to. Each day i feel that thrill and spark in the morning about my work, about my life, about everything i do. Ive never felt so much of freedom as much as i can feel now.

It does comes at a price, you have to make loads of sacrifices, you have to fight with your near and dear ones to prove your point, you have to travel on roads which are less traveled, you have to screw each challenge  before it screw’s you .

But in the end, no price is too high for living free .

Drawing conclusions based on numbers.

How fair is it to judge a man by his numbers ?

I was very fortunate , that the first job i did after my engineering  was that of a lecturer. And what was more fortunate, was i was teaching in a so called B Grade engineering college of pune.

When i came on the first day and met the staff members , in the department i was teaching, the general impression i got was that  since this is an ordinary college, the quality of the students, is below ordinary. They are all good for nothing, so its fine if you don’t put any efforts behind them. Give your lectures, take your salary and have fun.

But i only draw conclusions based on what i see and feel. And so , thankfully i never believed anything of what i was told.  I was amazed when i interacted with the students. Yes agreed, they all had very poor numbers (marks). Almost all of them had backlogs, but is it fair to conclude  that , it makes all of them bad engineers ?. Definitely not.

I must admit, most of them were immensely talented, some of them were exceptionally talented, and they had everything in them to succeed, in the industry. Yes, most of them were very lazy and i realized, that they can achieve things , once you give them that little push and motivation. Off course me being almost as old as them, i connected really well with them, and they could also correlate with me better.

So it wasn’t the students who made the college ordinary, it was the below ordinary attitude of the teachers.

The conclusion is , aptitude is not what you get on your mark sheet , or in a maths test where every question has 4 options. Its about solving real life problems, facing real life challenges, and ability to create opportunities.

To black label any engineer just coz he/she has poor numbers on his/her mark sheet is not only foolish, it shows a heavy lack of teaching aptitude on behalf of the teacher.

The power of intention

When you want to do something no matter how daunting or impossible it may sound, having the right intention of doing it is very important. All things start with doubt, but its the right intention towards achieving your goal that starts depleting the doubt and keeps you going forward.

I love this passage by explorer W.H Murray, who wrote the following during one of the first Himalayan expeditions:

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) , there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in ones favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance, which no man could have dream t would have come his way  “

I am a rebel ;-)

To do what you like doing,

To change things which seem impossible,

To stand apart from the crowd

and look at the world in your own style,

U have 2 be a REBEL

Thinking Different….

Its really strange, the way people behave with you when you say, you want to do things differently.

When i told people around me  that i want to start my own company and i am quitting my job, i got some of the most amazing replies.

People start behaving with  you as if you are about to commit a crime.

They ask me again and again , what if i fail ? or ain’t i scared of failing ?

I say whats so difficult about failing ?,  if i do  its simple, I will stand up and start again.

I ask all these people What the hell is wrong in following yr dreams ? and living life in your own style ?.

They don’t have the courage to do it themselves, and they will always try 2 push you behind.

Some of those will say even they want to do it, they even talk abt denting the universe, but when you ask them when, they just aren’t bloody sure.

If you cant do it now, you cant ever do it.

I think we all have got caught in this stupid humanly cycle of going to school,then college , then degree , then more degrees, then job , then marriage, and then , and then you just live in that routine like a moron  and expect to repeat it with your family.

Whats even worse, is at each stage of the cycle, you are just comparing yourself with others, based on the numbers. Its just a crazy rat race.

I am not a rat nor i am interested in any race. I want to enjoy things at my own pace

I am the king of my life, and i will only do what i want to.

And for my so called well wishers, atleast i have the guts to follow what i believe in. No matter what you do, you will never be able to kill the will in me to be me.