Boriyat...

"Boriyat ho rahi hai, kaise hataun isko", a friend asked today morning. At the office, I was also in the same mood, and didn't know how to answer. Actually I was looking for an answer to the same question for quite some time now.

To add to the problems, the world wasn't going to end on December 21st!!! I then replied stupidly to that message, and went out for a coffee. And on the roads, I could see so many vehicles lined up, honking furiously. And then I noticed a traffic display board flashing in red "Today is Monday, No Horn Day".

I then realized everyone else on the roads must be bored, else why would they be honking so loudly. May be the sound waves might be helping them to clear away the vehicles ahead of them, but it was clearly not working.

Had I been a superman, I would probably have left my full-time job, and helped the people on the roads by clearing away the traffic. Or at the very least, kicked the honky vehicles far away into the space.

But, sadly, I am not.

Damt it. Google Chrome is crashing whenever I try to open Facebook.

Anyway, coming back to "Boriyat", I have seen people being very innovative to attack their boriyat on the raods.

1. A girl, I saw, was combing and doing her make up while stuck on traffic.
2. A guy, who was having his breakfast inside his car.
3. Another guy, who forgot to wear his shoes at home, trying to find the right pair of socks from his 10 odd socks stockpile.
4. A few mothers, getting their kids ready inside the car.
5. And so many people, talking over the phones even after the light had turned green.

Isn't that awesome? Everyone, finds a way to get busy, in something or the other. As for me, I have got a bike. I can't really do all these things while stuck in the traffic. So, how do the bikers pass their time on the roads? 

1. Traffic jams are a great time to clean our helmets and glasses.
2. Playing games on your mobile is also a great hit among the bikers.
3. Trying to balance the bike without any support.
4. Getting to know more about cars and their logos.
5. Trying to predict when the light would turn green

How boring it is for a biker on the road stuck in traffic!!! Sometimes, I have had this thought about when they would make flying bikes, and how it would be convenient. Or I have thought about when there would be a traffic system which would ask me to leave my  home every morning, so that I would reach office without hitting any red lights. And if it would work or not. 

Friends... Forever

What's a Friendship without fights? What's a Friendship without arguments? What's a Friendship without compromises?

Friends are supposed to understand what you don't say. Friends are supposed to advise when you are off the track. Friends are supposed to keep quite when you are mad. Friends are supposed to be there for you, all the time, no matter how busy they are.

But things change with time. You might not be in contact with your best pal from your childhood. You might have forgotten the name of your best friend in school. And the best friend from college, well, you might just call him up a few times in a year, perhaps on his birthday, or the new year.

Nobody has a single best friend. At-least, I don't have one. They kept changing, all the time, from the childhood days, to school, then college, and now at workplace. The concept of a "Best Friend" is a little flawed for me, at-least I feel so. I believe that, at a given moment, a person can have a pool of good friends, and it becomes almost impossible for one, to chose the best among them.

It might sound as if, today, on the occasion of "Friendship Day", I am trying to make all my friends happy. Well, in a way, Yes. I thank all of them who have considered me as a "Friend", but, also, those who have considered me as their "Best Friend" at some point of time.

I think I can list down a few friends who have been in my pool of good friends.

1. My Sisters (Mausumi, Sushmita): Well, obviously, they have to be among them. Had the best of times when we were children at home.
2. Hara Prasad Sahoo: He was one of the first who I met in Stewart School, and we were perhaps best friends till Class 4
3. Santrupta Mishra: We quickly became best friends in Class 4 and stayed Best Friends till 10th.
4. Shyam Bedback: In college, most of the times, we were seen with each other. Does that mean we were best friends? Perhaps.
5. Samiran Rautray, Ritesh Parida, Ashutosh Bag, Sidharth Gourav Nayak, Kapidhwaja Pratap Narayan Singh (Hope I spelled is correctly): Bet friends in the first year of engineering. Ragging was so fun in the first year. The whole year, we all sort of stayed together all the time.
6. Rishabh Kalra, Saurabh Shukla, Vivek Bhagbole: In addition to the first year friends, the pool kept getting bigger and bigger, and by the time it was my last year in engineering, the boundaries "Circles" of good friends started melting away.
7. Kunal Kishore Malviya, Vijay Kumar, Vivek Dwivedi, Rwitam Mitra, Sagar Mohane, Vinay Suri, Vishal Jain: All of them started to break the boundaries.
8. Nitin Chhabra, Gaurav Paul, Shakul Jugran, Sandesh Kothare, Rahul Jain: Well, those were the close group of friends with whom I spent most of my time in the initial days in Bangalore.
9. A few more which don't really fall into that chronological order: Amit Chahar, Vidushi Goyal, Rwitam Mitra, Debasis Biswal, Rajesh Jena, Santhosh Joshua, Padmaja Dash, Shantanu Singh, Vandana Toshniwal

And the list goes on and on and on.  I just can't really put every friends' names down here. Actually, it's a little unfair on my part, if I have left out anyone. But, I could, very clearly see the pattern emerging. The pool of good friends becomes bigger and bigger with your age. And, thus, the concept of having a "Best Friend" is diluted once you are exposed to such a large number of good friends. Sometimes, you can't make up your mind and pick a better friend among a two. At times, you will have to make a few compromises. It has frequently happened to me, that 2 from those friends would call you up and ask you to catch up for a movie. And now, you have to make a choice. When you make a choice, it's definitely hard for you, and it is perhaps hurts the other guy who you ignored. I also, feel the same, when such things happen to me. But then, everything is forgiven and forgotten soon, and then, the next weekend, you get to go with the other friend. And everyone seems to be happy now.

Ah!!! Ok, fine, Let's end this day here. By the way, A very Happy Friendship Day to all my friends, and I hope that I am always there in your "Circles" as a good friend. Don't ever think that I have stopped being a Friend of yours. Even if I don't call you often, even if I don't wish you on your birthdays, even if I have forgotten your last names. I still think about you all when I rest my mind. I still have dreamed about a few. It's just that Life has taken a toll on me, and that I have many many more friends to talk to, and keep my circle growing.

Thanks all, again, for being a FRIEND. Happy Friendship Day.

By the way: Did you notice? That list contains only 3 girl friends, apart from my sisters. I want to make as many girl friends as the boy friends I have. So, anyone interested on growing their pool of friends, please contact me.

Random post at midnight

Image courtesy: Wikimedia

I was talking to a friend today. He said, "People update their blogs only when they are sad and gloomy. When they are happy, why the heck would they want to sit in-front of their computers typing out their thoughts? Rather they would hang out with friends, have a beer, watch a movie and enjoy their nice time."


Well, I do agree.


I recently started a chain mail and added everyone on my contact list (at-least those I remembered). This time around, the response was pathetic. The last time we did a similar thing, Google had blocked my gmail account for a day stating that the limit of the number of mails that could be sent in a day was crossed. They said that I had sent more than 500 emails for that particular day.  

Dumb!!!!! 

This time, the chain hasn't even been able to collate even 15 links. That's understandable I guess. People have settled now. Some married, some too busy with work and some have perhaps forgotten their old friends. I am not complaining though. That day, I was a little low on work, so didn't know what to do. I was bored of Facebook and Twitter and then I remembered all my friends. :D

Finally, Vacations!!!

I wish it were college days again, where after every 6 months, we were allowed to go on vacations for a whole month. I wish it were college days again, where I could bunk some days. I have been pretty busy with office work, all this time. I am tired now. And finally the holidays have come. I will not be going to office from today till next year, a 18 day-long vacation.

A few days away from work, not even a month, and everything will be back to normal. Its been a very very long time that I have blogged about anything. Well, yet another year has gone by, and it didn't really seem like a year. For this New Year, I will be at home, away from office. But, the very beginning of the next year would be very very hectic.

I am 27 years old now. That means, that I have only around 50 more years to go(best estimate). All these 27 years had been fun. Well, it was a mixed bag actually, but most of it was fun and enjoyable.

I won this time Kunal, by a big big margin. :) Ok, you might be churning out better quality content, but that doesn't matter. :D

Right now, I have 3 laptops in-front of me. One is switched-off, one is sleeping, and the other is getting ready to be packed up and fly with me. YAY!!! Holidays.......


Wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Properous New Year.
(Just in case I don't find time to post while I am enjoying at the beach)

Kudos Times of India

A few years back, I liked the online version of The Times of India and it was perhaps the only place where I read the newspaper for sometime. As an effort towards saving paper, I had also stopped getting the paper Newspapers. I liked the site, and it was almost updated instantly whenever there was a new story for which you would have to wait for the next day's newspaper.

But, now, the Times Of India site sucks. I have written 2 mails to the editor, regarding my concerns, but nothing has happened yet, and probably nothing will change. These guys still want to sell news on the paper, whereas I thought that they would one day, try and reduce the amount of paper that they use up everyday.

Somethings that I don't like:

1. Ads everywhere: It takes almost a minute for the front page to open, and display some content.
2. The front page of the online version is just sexed up. It looks attractive, thats all, but it doesn't show quality content.
3. They have completely changed the meaning of Headlines. Any new news is a headline for them, and it appears right at the top.
4. When I open the website, I would expect to see the articles that would probably be seen on the paper newspaper. But, the online version, I guess, doesn't have a competent editor. Some guy who maintains the website, seems to be a self-proclaimed editor for the website, who actually doesn't know what should go where.
5. Videos. Aaahhh....I don't like the videos. Most of them are related to things which I would never like to see. And moreover, the videos start with 30 sec ads, yes each one of them.

I was pissed off when this article managed to get into the headlines of The Times of India, today morning.

Woman delivers a 'tweet' child

It might be interesting for some, and I congratulate the mother and the child, but this is definitely not an article for the Headlines of a so-called well known, a leading national newspaper.

I now wonder, if this kind of content that fetches them more money. Is this a well-researched method to generate readership for newspapers/magazines, in general? Do people actually enjoy reading such stories? I reckon, YES. So, then, it's not the newspapers to be blamed. I guess, the "golden" days were better, where every morning, we would eagerly wait for the morning newspaper and then fight over it with other family members, each trying to snatch away their favorite page of the newspaper, and then enjoy the morning tea. Now, It's all about money.

A piece of work

When my MAC crashed!!! 6 times in 10 minutes. Had nothing else to do. Aaargh!! Monday mornings are hell. Last night I hardly slept for 3 hours.

MAC frightens me again

I was in the middle of some important work,  and was also completing the last edits to my blog when this screen freezed my huge monitor. It asked me to restart my system. And all the attempts of saving my work before hitting the power button failed. Frustrated, I went for the power button, with no hopes of getting my work back. But to my surprise, after the restart, everything was saved for me. :)

Thanks Mr. Jobs, but I thought it would be a good idea to let the user know why exactly the computer wants to shut down.  Weird though, I never found out why did it want to restart.

Update: This has been happening very frequently of late. I noticed that whenever my phone (HTC Hero) is kept connected to my Mac, it either refuses to start or I get this "Restart" screen. Seems the rivalry between Apple and Google have just taken it to new levels. Bad for me :( . 

The apple site says this : http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh2238.html

Working on Ubuntu

After my Mac crashed at office, I lost hope. Damn, isn't there a single OS which will never crash!!!! I know, I know, they are machines. Morever OSes are just lines of code and even the best programmers commit mistakes. But, I cannot live with those if my systems keep crashing like this. My data is precious and I would do anything to keep it safe.

Well, I got Linux (Ubuntu) installed on my laptop. Getting all the necessary softwares for Ubuntu is a bit of work, and would require you to look here and there. Now, after around 2 weeks of working on it, I have almost set up everything required. A blogger client called (Blogilo) was the last one and I am writing this blog from that software.

It feels nice to work on this. Shifting from Windows to a Mac and then to a Linux has been painful at times, but hey, ain't I flexible? Just to add another OS to the list, I know DOS also. :)

Blogilo is nice by the way. 

@Update : The post couldn't be updated by Blogilo. It crashed. So, I am on the web now. Damn OSses.

Screens of Death

Everybody knows what the "Screen of Death" is on a Windows machine. To be specific, it's called the "Blue Screen of Death". And we have learnt to live with it. I see it quite frequently on my laptop and I don't freak out any more.

I was pretty happy that I got a Mac for work at my office. I had heard that it's stable, it never crashed and stuff like that, and I had started believing that as well, until the day one of my colleague got the "Screen of Death" on his Mac. Well, the color was different and there wasn't even any text. Nothing was written. Here comes the "Pink Screen of Death" for Mac.

Well, whenever my Windows laptop crashed, I never cared to read what was written. Without any delay, I used to re-start my machine, and it would be back in action. On the pink screen, there wasn't anything written, so we decided that we would wait for some time. 10 minutes of waiting and nothing happened. So, finally, we decided to hit the power button, and within seconds it was fine.

I wonder whats the color for Linux machines, guessing that it should be black. :)

Minto fresh - jalaye dimaag ki batti

It works. I would advise you all to try this. Yesterday I saw the worst traffic of Bangalore. I stood for about an hour at a single place. I think vehicles should be stripped off their horns/buzzers. Atleast it will help them to be a more patient lot.

There was a guy, Shakul, who was with me yesterday. The only thing he didn't do yesterday, which I wished he had done was to go and beat up everyone.

Location : Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

Friday again - Brain Drained Already!!!

Till lunch, I had not realized that it was Friday already. Wow, this week flew away really fast. By the way, I was on leave yesterday. Had a bad stomach upset.  As much as I enjoy Fridays, I hate Mondays even more. The concept of weekdays should change now. It's been there since the invention of Calendar, I guess. All the laws in the world keep changing, why can't this change?

So here is what I propose. The new Calendar system should be called "Corporate Calendar". Here are some of the features that I would like to see.

1. 6 days in a week (Delete Monday)

2. 61 weeks in an year

3. Remove the concept of the Leap year, to make the life of coders a bit more easy

4. Have a 365 days a year, simple.

5. Keep 12 months (else think of more names for the months)

6. First 5 months have 31 days and the next 7 have 30 days

So, how does this work? Since, we have removed the Monday, a lot of people will love this calendar, and would be more willing to adopt this.

6 days in a week. Chuck the concept of Weekdays and Weekends. What we will have is Workdays and Playdays. Tuesday, Thurday and Saturday will be workdays, while the rest should be playdays. That's the main reason why the number of days in a week should be reduced to 6.

Children of the world will find it easier to remember this calendar, after they learn it once. 31 days for the first 5 months, and the rest are 30 days. No leap year (Good news for coders as well). One less day (Monday) to remember. Friday is a Playday, Enjoy without getting bored in office and writing meaningless blogs.

On second thoughts, there shouldn't be any damn calendar here. Why is everything organized in this world? Don't we know that the world, rather the whole universe was created out of random events? Who the hell had the idea to make everything so planned? I love chaos and hate routine stuff.

Hate that calendar and the alarms on my phone. :@

Tea, Coffee and an Apple

It's Thursday. Friday is good friday, so a day off for us tomorrow. Planning to leave office early, and get a good long sleep. After yesterday's showers, Bangalore is still hot. In office, it's been a long day. Coffee, tea and an Apple have kept me busy. The coming days are gonnna be too hectic for me. That's not noce. :-(

Please rain come today,

Johnny is sick and doesn't wanna play,

Location : Kasturba Rd, Shivaji Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

Interviews on the other side

At work, these days, taking interviews are a part of my daily activities. On an average I take 3 interviews a day. And that is hectic and boring. To top it, the technology I am into, there aren't many female professionals out there. What a boring job !!

My first question:

Tell me about yourself. Crap, if someone asks that question in an interview, I will break his head.

My last line:

I am done with your interview. I will send my feedback to the HR and he will get back to you. I always used to get similar responses.

At first I thought it would be fun, but now I think it is the most boring job, well, a female candidate might just help now and then. :-)

I have rejected over 2 dozens of resumes till now. Bye , I have another one lined up right now.

Graduated !!! *After College*

4 years of engineering was fun. Each and every day was as enjoyable  as the first or the last day of college and hostel. But now, things have changed, for good and bad. Hostel life, I guess, was a great experience for me. When I look back, through the hazy memories, I can still clearly re-collect some moments which can never be forgotten. These incidents will one day become stories for our children which we would narrate again and again. Those four years were like a vacation for me, of course, I got a B.Tech Degree. :)

1. At college, ANYTIME is PLAYTIME. There was no fixed playtimes for us. Be it a weekday, exam day or a weekend, in a minutes notice we could make two teams for any game. Cricket, Football, Volleyball, Carrom, Chess, Age of Empires, Counter strike, Water Games, Discussions, Debates, and a lot more. We played it all.

* But now in the corporate world, we only get weekends. :(

2. Dinner, Lunch and Breakfast were just words for us. There was no fixed time for all these. We stretched and skewed the timings so much that these words lost their meaning. We just ate, anytime we liked, and anything we got.

* Out here, we have fixed timings for everything, even for a smoke and tea.

3. Drinking and smoking made people happy and gay. If you didn’t have a hangover next day, you weren’t drunk. Throwing up and to be drunk again was a sign of strength. It was admired.

* You puke once in your office party, and your organization bans alcohol in office parties forever. After the smoking ban, people have to walk out of the campus/building to get some air. :(

4. Six weeks of attendance. That means, in the whole year, you work for 12 weeks. There was a relaxation of 2 weeks as well, if you could think of a nice excuse. The rest of the time, you could be sleeping, watching movies, playing Far Cry, or just gossiping, you had so much time to waste.

* 35 holidays a year!!! That’s ridiculous, when the hell shall I find time to chill out? Office life doesn’t give you time to breathe, let alone a chance to get drunk.

5. Worn out jeans, torn Tees, and Bathroom chappals took us everywhere. Party, lectures, Exams and Interviews. Washing clothes was something which had the least priority for us.

* Formals, Shoes, Ties and a Laptop in all seasons have to be carried 5 days a week. And the weekend’s most important agenda is “Washing clothes”. I hate it.

I can go on writing about things, how they were and how they have changed. Well, I am not complaining about the present. I just want to say, “Wow, how great were those 4 years of hostel”. Now after college, I have responsibilities, towards everything. I have grown up finally. “I have GRADUATED”.

Kunal, you can't beat my phone

Hahaha, let's see how will you beat this. Now I can blog any time I like. This time I will definitely win the competition. Its a bit difficult to type out a blog from a phone but I will do it.

My bike's not well and it could be days before it gets on the road, so till then I would be blogging a lot. A sentence or two each hour. Ahahahaa.

Best of luck.

Location : Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

Video test

A small video from my office.

Location : Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

First pic from HTC Hero

Got an Android phone at work. Posted from Blogaway.

Location : Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

Time killing

It's Friday. And I am in party mood. But the sad thing is, there's no party!!!!

I will be very busy this weekend, that's for sure. Have to roam around a lot, have to brave the sun. Next Tuesday is a holiday for us. That's a relief.

Time doesn't fly, it crawls when you want it to fly. I have 3 gmail accounts, which I need to check very frequently. Even that doesn't help me kill my time at office. By the way, from next week, it seems that I will be given lots and lots of work. But before that, I am chilling, and trying to kill the 8 hours at office.

I don't know what will happen when that transition comes. From complete idle to loads of stuff, I think I might not be able to handle all this. In a way, I am sure. Let's see.

I get at-least 50 mails a day, to which I have to reply (un-official). Now, it's boring. But have to do it. I try to keep my nails in shape by biting them off.

I don't like IPL and so I am not very excited about it. :)

Crippled without Internet

Aahhh, No internet connection in office. It's been like this for almost 30 minutes. Everyone is going mad. Everything has stopped. No one's working. :)

There were days when even a pathetically slow computer system brought joy and excitement to people's houses. It was a grand celebration. And before turning it on, the age old custom of breaking a coconut and putting a tilak was never forgotten. I remember, when I turned my PC for the first time at home, everyone was standing right behind me. I was in 10th standard then. Well, a dangerous time though. My parents thought that it would help me in studies. Computer Science was introduced in our curriculum in 8th standard. But they were in for a bigger surprise.

The very next day, a friend of mine, who had never come to my house before, dropped in with 2 game CDs. And he kept on visiting my house very frequently. I am not complaining, I enjoyed it too. We used to sit in-front of the computer for hours, door locked from inside. Our parents had the impression that we were studying hard. This went on for quite some time. And finally we were caught. I don't remember what happened next. But, for the first 2 years, my PC was only used for gaming. It was a 233MHz machine, with 32MB RAM and 40GB hard disk. After 2 years also, we didn't have an internet connection. And we never got bored.

Now I have a laptop with 1.6GHz processor, 1.5GB RAM and a 120GB hard disk. But now, I use it for one more thing. To get connected to the internet. Now I cannot imagine how would I keep myself busy if there was no internet. But I also miss some of my other hobbies. I don't play tabla anymore. Nor do I do any sketches or paintings. The time spend in-front of the TV has also reduced drastically. I don't work out. I eat fast so that I can get back to my laptop as soon as possible. I don't talk on the phone for hours together, well, not as much as I used to. I don't play outdoor games.

Internet has crippled me!!!!! But I love it.

Laptop Worries

Recently, my laptop has been pathetically slow. And it's responsiveness is deteriorating day by day. It has developed a load of issues.  With a 1.5GB RAM, it's still not as fast as I would like it to be. I wonder if it has lived it's life. It's been more than 3 years and sometimes it seems to be dead.

So, today, I sat down to do some maintenance. I don't understand whats with Microsoft. To speed up my laptop, I uninstalled Internet Explorer. The moment I restarted it, it prompted me to re-install IE 8. What the heck. I don't want that anyway.

After a few tweaks here and there, I was able pace it up a bit. But with the stuff I want to do with my laptop, I wonder how long will this one last. But my laptop has always been faithful and reliable. Though it has crashed a few times and I had to re-install the OS and everything, but hey, it's Windows, and it crashes. :) Sometimes, I have kept it running for days together and it didn't give up. But now it is showing signs of aging. :(