Then and Now!

I just finished reading a book  written by a friend, about a protagonist's who starts his career in an IT company and his life and it got me thinking; What was my story at the beginning of my career and after so many years now ?

Hmm..lets see...

Disclaimer - If you are in your final year college or just joined an company - read at your own risk! The blog author is no way liable to be held responsible if you do not take up your campus placement after reading this.

Read on..

Early days of my career	After 9 or so years
Honey moon period	What’s Honeymoon? Probably it just means the few days off after your marriage :P ?
Attending countless training	Giving countless training for others
Instant messenger	No time, Its VOIP baby!
Party after the first salary	Nah, Its EMI time! Probably party when wife is away :P
Friday night boozing session	Friday night eh- what’s that? It’s Friday morning in US honey!
Praying for onsite	Praying that your Junior doesn’t ask for onsite when US is in recession
Waiting for Salary SMS from the evening of the last working day of the month	Waiting for Salary SMS from the morning of the last working day of the month
Long hours at work	Longer hours at work
Listening to onsite calls (mute)	Speaking during onsite calls while rest of the team is on mute!
4-5 PM coffee break	4-5 pm hit the gym, you got the trademark IT tummy!
Waiting for US holidays so you can relax at work and leave early	Waiting for US holidays so can catch up with pending work

ps : The 2 column table, the words in bold/red you see above is a result of my life in the IT world after 9 years, probably i should have prepared a 30 slide presentation? Should i write an user manual?...I have lost my innocence :P

How has your life been - then and now? do comment!

peace out!

Terry Fox Run 2013 - Chennai

See you there on 25th Aug 2013

Click here for more details

Update (after the run) - yes, oh yes, I managed to run 6 kms. Shameful that it took 44 minutes.

Possible excuses below :P:P -

I dint know when it started, cos i couldn't see the start line as it was crowded and i was just walking along
It was a hot day
Was yapping with friends in the first few minutes
Sleepy, as it was pretty early for a Sunday!

:P

Nevertheless, I felt good about myself!

The jinx continues..

I have been wanting my "me" time for quite some time and i got the right opportunity today.

I was home alone after a long time, it was the start of a long weekend, just had very light work today and i reached home early. I even had a great lunch earlier at Hyaat and for the night had planned to listen to some good Music, read a book, eat a pasta and a French Wine to go with.

Awesome, I'm already loving the plan :) and now the implementation.

Set my room to dim lighting

Dusted my Bose speakers and connected it to the music system, put on some random music to start with and first few were some Arabian songs - great start

Ordered White Italiano pasta from Dominos and got it in half hour - wow my lucky night

mmmm smells good too..

next out came the Red Wine which was a gift and today was the day i decided to open it - awesome timing, double check!!

lovely, the night is proceeding as i had planned...

The next was one of my favorite Turkish song - Gul Doktum by Tarkan. Its been more than 7 years when i lasted listened to this song. Things cant get better :)

wait a second, this is praddy!!! how can life be so smooth??!! Where is the Jinx?

#$%$#@^%^&^*#@$#@$!!$%^&*

Holy hell! It had a cork top and that's when i realized i forgot to buy the cork screw to open the wine!!!

I started to panic and luckily KJ who was on watsapp suggested i google a way :P

I typed "how to open wine bottle without corkscrew"...hmmm looks like they were many despos like me too on this earth :D:D.  Found loads of sites and many youtube links

Tried many ways including the ones in http://www.wikihow.com/Open-a-Wine-Bottle-Without-a-Corkscrew but nothing worked and now i have a big hole on the cork and it didn't budge a bit!!!!

Just gave a loud curse and resigned to the fact that the French are against me today :(:(

What a start to a long weekend! Argh!!

So here im eating cold pasta (it got cold in the half hour I was trying to open the damn wine bottle) and reading Harry Potter which was not bad, but still a great flop show in spite of a well planned night!

Peace out! I'm going to bed!

PS: I wrote this post last week!

HP Confession

I have been resisting reading Harry Potter since 1997 when the first part was out. Although to be fair I did read the first 10 pages back then, but somehow felt a novel based on magic and wizardry with weird names like Dumbledore or Voldemort or references like You-Know-Who” and “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” were not my cup of tea. I have never watched any of the HP movies either.

So I stuck with likes of Ken Follet, Robin Cook, Micheal Crichton and more recently Mary Higgins Clark. 

Circa 2013, I realized, Miss K, one of my close friends, we had almost similar tastes in books and English sitcoms.

Yes, like you guessed the irony was, she was a big, huge, greatest and more similar words, a Harry Potter fan. She has read all the 7 books countless + 1 times and it was a bone of contention between us that this was the only set of books in which our opinion and tastes differed when it came to novels.

We even enjoyed Durjoy Dutta, Nikita novels which were mostly College romance based ones. 

After a few  months she prevailed and I agreed to read the Philosopher's stone after I received this mail from her. It looked like her last attempt to make me read it? He he :P

read it with all ur heart... give it a real chance

-K

Jokes apart, I took it up, mainly because I trust K on her taste in novels. To be honest, I struggled with the first 50 pages and it took me like 2 days for that. I would blame it on reading it late in the night after work. She was constantly encouraging and threatening too: P asking me to continue.

Once I got a bit familiar with the terms like Quidditch, bludger, Hogwarts, Parselmouth and after I could remember all the names I came across in the first 100 pages, i really started enjoying the book. Now I just couldn't keep the book down, I couldn't wait to go home every day after work, finish my dinner and continue the book much to the annoyance of my wife dearest who started hating HP now: P

So in the next 10 days, I finished the first 4 installments and then had to stop because I didn’t have a copy of 5-7. Hopefully I get those copies from someone soon, but until then I got to give it to K for making me read it. She said it with love, threats, insult and what not but in the end it was totally worth it.

Thanks K, I owe you big and thanks for not giving up on me :P:P!! and I’m still goanna watch all the movies although you were totally against it. Hehe!

ps : I still haven't confessed to Miss K :D and i guess she doesn't know about this post!

of night shifts..

Have you ever worked in the graveyard shift?

These days i opt for working in the night shift whenever i can. hmm let me what i can do in a night shift..

1. Read my quota of novels which have been piling in my bookshelf
2. Catch up with my friends in other time zones
3. Play all the games i downloaded on my mobile
4. Peacefully continue blogging
5. Listen to songs which otherwise i don't get time to listen
6. Mail friends

and oh yea! work a bit.

what would you do if you work during the nights?

ps - I'm not a slacker, its just that when i need my "me" time, i choose the night shift :)

Chennai in Novels

All Indian fiction novels happen in Delhi, Bombay or any other city in north. Doesn't anyone out in Chennai or a Mysore have a story or maybe it doesn't sound interesting to say anything about these cities?

I wanted to read a story which easily references Pondy Bazaar in the same vein as Sarojini market in Delhi or shopping in Nungambakkam as chic as in Colaba in Mumbai. A drive around Marine drive would be replaced by a bike ride near Marina beach. Oh yea Chennai has got one of the maximum number of bike riders in India, so instead of a BMW or a Audi it would be a Pulsar,  India Gate replaced by our own Anna Samadhi?!

Is Chennai way too traditional which doesn’t have some interesting story of its own? Not sure how traditional is connected to this, but you get the point right?

Interesting in the sense like college fun, booze, virginity, late night parties, discotheque, office politics, business dynasties. 

Oh, that reminds me, what's late night in Chennai? Tucked in your bed by 11? Yes, it's strict out here! We have one of the largest numbers of engineering colleges in India; don’t we have any story based out of them? Does Indian novel sell only when it is based around Mumbai or Delhi?

Let me start researching today to see if there are any stories out there...or let me finish the story I have in my draft for ages!

Season 3

This is my 3rd attempt in writing a blog and I feel a sense of blankness although I have written more than 250 posts in my earlier ‘seasons’ and yes I had to blow my own trumpet here but it’s more of a self-encouragement, yes, i can do it!!

I know, you just saw the usage of ‘seasons’ here. I’m hooked on to the English sitcoms for the last 2 years and probably I was the most effective user of Netflix when I was in NY. Currently, it’s the Suits season 2, on and off with Big Bang Theory, Greek, How I met your mother, 8 simple rules, Guys with kids, threesome and whatever is premiered in comedy central and I got tired of Gray’s anatomy

I’m back to my oldest passion – books. Just finished reading all of Durjoy Dutta’s books and just now completed the Accidental Apprentice by Vikas Swarup. It’s one un-stoppable book if there is such a word. Took hardly a day for this one. I will write more about them later.

Till then adios!