Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The "AWFUL" train journey

Yesterday was just another day as usual. Not much of a change. Completed with my usual routine in the office and started to catch my train at 5 05. We have to take the company cab to reach the station.The office is located about 4 Kms from the station. Okie. Enough of geography.

I was waiting for the train at the station when a dozen buses of Infy made a screeching sound of the brakes and stopped near the station. (Oops, I'm sorry. Forgot to leave u an information. Infy is just opposite to my company) We waited for almost 20 mins and as expected the train came 10 mins late and another half a dozen Infy buses unloaded.

"Oh, no. Today its gonna be a difficult to get a seat in the train", I thought.

People were standing on the edge of the platform, peeping through, checking whether the train is on its way. And yeah, there it was. The train slowly emerged to my sight and a swarm of people started to gather near the train as it neared the platform.

The train was fastened with the 'Chennai Super Kings' poster allover. Dhoni, hayden, Murali became warriors with those posters. The driver honked the horn as loud as he can, and the train passed me and the intensity of the sound slowly faded. The train decreased its speed before it could halt and everyone started to take positions , as if they are saving a corner kick from Ryan Giggs. I took a few steps back to see whats happening on all the other compartments. The scenes were the same, except that even the amazons were getting ready to make their move. One difference, they were waiting near the Ladies compartment.

There was a lady waiting near the General compartment, and she stood beside me. "Thank God. Not all people are indecent. And she looks like a Project Manager, should be decent", I thought.

The train came to a stop.

Thats it. !!! I stood there in aghast. These "Software Engineers" were swarming inside the train like the bees from the beehive. The entrance to the train can allow only 2 ppl to get in at a time, and then there were 6-7 ppl trying to get in and get the Window seat.

"Hey, you guys are Software Engineers.", I wanted to shout, but kept my voice low enough tat only my ears could hear those words. People inside the train saw these and made a smile.

Atlast, after a minute of utter disorder, it was time for me to get in the train try to get some seat. I was feeling mentally tired after a lot of thinking about all these that happened just a min before.
"Okie. Get in", I told myself. Took my bag and made an entry to the train. A fella turned towards me and smiled. I couldn't understand the meaning of it. I started my hunt for a seat. There was just one seat at the end of compartment. I started towards the seat and then suddenly I saw a white cloth on the seat. I was about to sit, when the person next to me told "Cant you see the Kerchief. Reserved".. "What the ****??? ",I almost shouted at him. "That person is coming here", he told pointing his index finger towards the other end of the compartment. I turned my head towards his finger direction.

And there came this Miss/Mrs. Decent Project manager.

"Oh.. ", I told him. thou i was telling all the bad words i cud remember in my mind.

The guy started to speak something technical and started to use his software jargons"best practice, client focussed, best practice, bench mark, value add". He was trying to wheedle her, might be for his appraisal.

I started to make my walk back to the entrance(Of course, to stand near the entrance. Where else?). The guy who smiled at me(when I entered the train) smiled again. I could understand the meaning of it now. He was smiling as if he has won $100,000,000 and I lost $100,000,000. I tried to avoid him.

The train journey sucked as usual, the train stopping almost at every signal to let the other trains pass-by. I got a seat in the very next station.

I was about to get down at the Guindy station and I found a similar scene about to happen there too. Yes. The train came to a halt and then the approach of the people were the same. People who boarded the train were mostly vendors, poor.

When I got down, I just could find slightest of the difference between folks who boarded with me from the office and people who boarded at Guindy.

The former were equipped with .NET, Java in their brain and with ID cards around their neck.

I couldn't find any more difference. Can you ? Please leave a comment of the same then

Friday, May 16, 2008

Today was just another day !!!

Its now 3.00 pm and I'm rite now sitting in my cubicle in the office, blogging and waiting for my 4th cup of Tea for the day(Still 2 more to go before i leave). Have been absolutely jobless(in Software jargon 'Bench') for more than 4 months and hoping every minute that soon I will get some work and awaiting the weekend like a kid waiting for its summer hols.

I absolutely have no idea why I'm coming to office(but still come for the sake of the attendance that is been kept track). Still worse is, my office is around 60 kms from my residence. Since Chennai is yet to get the Bullet trains, it takes an hour and a half to reach the office in the electric train(You can calculate the speed). And the only entertainment in the train is iPod(Thanks, Apple :) )

I've met a lot of ppl who have gained a lot of experience in Bench. I hope in years to come, s/w industry will be looking for people who might have a lot of experience in that. Its a proof that you have a lot of patience. Sometimes I even had thot of quitting the job and doing something else. But the organization is ready to pay for the time I'm investing in playing TT, watching movie, chatting in the cafeteria. So why shd I lose that too !! :)

Life has become so predictable for me. Every day I'm certain of the things i'm gonna do and people I'm gonna meet. Keep checking mails, changing the desktop background(recently i've one T Rajendar* pic as my desktop background), add album art to my new albums in iTunes, browse thru the iTunes store, play a couple of games of TT with my peer bench-mates, check whether XP is working fine by overloading it and shout at it when it gets slowed down, showing off what song I'm hearing to thru gTalk to my friends online.. Its all the same thing...

And yup, its now time for TT, and my peer bench-mates are getting geared up for the game already..

Hoping for things to change pretty soon !!!!!!!!!!! :( (Except the TT) :) :)

* - For ppl who dont know who/what T Rajendar is, please google it and find out. Its worth the search. It would be better if u cud do a image search and find out.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Does IPL deserve the hype ?

Its been half way through the IPL and it had had its percentage of Masala content already and people are happy to see a different kind of movie altogether. Cheerleaders doing the Dancing part, Harbhajan taking care of the Action department. Sreesanth with his emotional touch, Vijay Mallya taking care of some good screenplay like sacking the officials, its all happening in IPL.

Like most of the reality shows(which are 'blatantly fake'), IPL also had its share of commercial element. Viewers are caught in a dilemma of whether they are watching a sport or some commercial reality show.

But is the hype and hoopla given to IPL, well deserved ?

I've a instinctive feeling that all these matches are already fixed and what people watch from the stadium or on the worst sport telecasting channel (Set Max) are just a well-rehearsed replay. ICL which had been the first to come up with the tournament of this sort, Mr Modi(Commissioner of IPL) had made a utter remake of the original version. ICL is like Don with Amitabh and IPL is the same 'Don' with SRK with extra glitz and glam quotient. And SRK has done that already cheering for his team !!! IPL clearly have shown that cricket is not just mere sport, where u lose a series and still u can stay happily without much concern,it has become business and some of the teams have started to feel the heat of their owners. Vijay Mallya sacking the CEO and SRK sacking some of its players, so the players are now more answerable and overt.

With the franchisees spending Crores of money for their team, its a jubilation time for BCCI and IPL. The hype and grandness with which IPL kicked off had certainly come down, as they have started to become very much monotonous, and people have started to switch back to their eye-watering mega-serials and reality shows. With IPL jeopardizing the mega serials, one thing is sure.The latter are sure to come back with more emotional content to keep up their TRP :(

And it is not for the quality of cricket that people turn out in huge numbers. It is to witness their stars on the field and film stars off the field. On quality of cricket I would better choose ICL than IPL. And "Cricketainment" is the perfect synonym for IPL.

But still with so much not-so-good about the IPL, it still has brought something that might have never happened. Sachin-Jayasuriya opening the batting, foreign players working with the local lads, some of the local players and not-so-familiar foreign players(Shaun Marsh) coming into the spotlight.

IPL has started to cloy with the audience. But will the IPL juggernaut continue? only time can answer that !! Lets wait

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

BREAKING THE SHELL

In today's world, we get so obsessed with a lot of things which are needless. We are living under a shell, drawing a line and curbing ourselves within that line. I was thinking about all these in my life and then came up with this post on 'BREAKING THE SHELL'.

So how do these shells and lines get formed !! ? If we could find out the source of the problem,its more simpler to unravel. And the answer what I found out was, "Fear of failure".

There have been a lot of instances in my own life(and some in ur life too) where I've had a fear of failing and never even tried to cross the line.

For eg, I've been wanting to start writing a blog for over 5 or 6 months. I had enuf topics to tell you all, I had even opened Blogspot umpteen number of times and typed a line or two , but dint complete them. Its because of "Fear of criticism". I used to think what ppl might comment after reading my blog,will they give good comments, and such irrelevant thots that restricted me frm blogging.

Another one eg. I dint know to ride a bike, I've never even tried to ride once. I was having the fear that I might fall, ppl might laugh at me, I might get hurt etc. but all these thoughts make no sense when you have not faced them all. And yes, I did ride once(tat too very recently) and was pretty good.

"So wat are we supposed to do to Break the Shell?". This is the big question.
"Take up the challenge." Thats it . Have a game of YOU vs YOUR FEAR. And if you lose, choose to have another one :). if you fail in the first time itself,you'll feel like you are never gonna make it and the shell becomes stronger. Never let that happen and make a strong comeback. And if you win once, YOUR FEAR will lose forever. So its just that one win that you are looking for to break the shell.

You just have one life to live.
" Live it!!!! "

Note : I'm still breaking my shells. I'm not a person without any fears. I still have a small fear of what comments i m gonna get :), but yet I've given a try atleast. Thats more important. I like this line from Robin Sharma's 'The Greatness Guide':"Riskless living is the biggest risk" , so take qualified risks and break the shells...

Dont forget to leave a comment :)


My First weblog

Hi all,
I always love to read blogs, but writing one had been tough. I started off writing a blog during my college and stopped it after my very first post. After sometime, I again wanted to continue writing, but my gmail id got hacked and eventually the interest had gone.

So I'm again here starting afresh and hopefully the interest continues for quite sometime !!
[atleast till this gmail id gets hacked :)]