I Am The Reason!

Ten days back, I decided enough is enough. I wanted out. From the lifestyle (shud be workstyle) I was leading. Taking a few pointers from my previous post, I decided to work on getting a bit of my life back.

I got up in the a.m, was in office in the a.m, in fact even left office in the p.m of the same day, and went to bed latest by the early hours of a.m. And yes, it did feel good. In fact it felt so good that my body got so excited by all these that the body temperature shot up to a 100 degrees Fahrenheit (Tf = (9/5)*Tc+32) after 3 days. Not to be outdone, my head, ever the competitive guy, got into the act and started working overtime on the migraine. Maybe my body’ll take time to adjust to such waking hours and timely food. And maybe in such cases the fever comes first, and then the cold catches on. Any docs out there?

I’ve had some time off too. Let’s see. First there were these couple of days when the weblogic server we use to deploy our code in the client system (via VPN) was down. There were also these 2 days when the US team had off for Thanksgiving. And then there was this day when the floor looked habitable as all the Testers had gone for some outing.

Then we had this All Hands Meet (AHM) for the entire AMS account (the Services division of IBM) where hordes of fellow IBMers trooped in the thousands to Palace Grounds for the coffee and samosa. I gave it a miss and had them at home. The slogan for this year’s AHM is “I am the reason”. Don’t ask me for what am I the reason for. IBM believes in giving slogans as cryptic as it’s On Demand ads on TV. Last year’s was “I have my hand on it”. Comments welcomed on what you feel was being implied. I can think of quite a few, none of which would ever make it into the world of advertising. Or, maybe, they will!

For this AHM, there were also a few ‘creative and imaginative’ events/games organized by people bored without work for people bored with work. Sadly, since i fall into neither, I wasn’t a part of them. The list of highly imaginative events went like : Red Day (all were asked to come dressed in Red), Denim Day (asked to come in denims and the winners were 3 guys who had wandered into office wearing the IBM denim shirt we got 3 months back), Ethnic Wear Day (if you cant make out what this Day means, better leave the page), Best decorated cubicle (for which girls drew unrecognizable things on charts, and guys tore up the calendars and stuck them back together all over their places. My cubicle was so clean my mom would have stood up and cheered). Incidentally I wore black on Red Day, military green on Denim Day, went to office at 7pm on Ethnic Day, and kept my cubicle spotless on Best Decorated Cubicle day.

Coming back, there was also this picnic thing organized for my Tower in my application. The Testing team were afraid we would murder them in some secluded place and decided to go separately. The development team, of some 140-150 ppl of 6-7 teams, decided on a day-long picnic at a resort on 27/11. The plan was to start by 7.30am from office and reach Silver Oak Hermitage Pvt Ltd in about an hour and half (believe me, just 1.5 hours of travel means you’ve made good time for 35 kms in Bangalore). The activities/facilities listed were even more appetizing – carrom, chess, TT (bring own balls), shuttle, skating, tennis (bring own racquets and balls), jogging track, swimming (bring own water?), volley ball, and fountains. Not sure what is the funda behind taking everybody there under the word Celebrations and wanting to treat everybody like school children on a field trip. Even after watching an inspired performance by India who managed to hit more than 150, I did wake up at 6am. The only thing that interested me in the picnic was the skating (I skated everyday for 8 years when I was in school). Mulling over things, I decided on tossing a coin : heads – I dont go, and tails – I go back to sleep. It turned up tails and I was so happy I couldn’t fall asleep again immediately.

There was then this AHM for my project account (AT&T’s the client). There are more than 2000 people here in this, and we were all invited to Christ College auditorium on 29/11. Well, bunked this too.

Used the time to catch up on some reading. Also managed some spring cleaning, so that my place now bears some traces that homo sapiens have been in. I also found that I’ve been sleeping on the floor on the newspapers and that I’ve been using my bed to break eggs and charge the laptop.

And yes. I have been managing to spend some time at the place for which I’m paying the rent. In fact, while naming a folder for some recent photos, I used ‘Home’ rather than ‘House’.

And yeah. I’ve just got a couple of awards for the past two releases, and the certificate even says something like “Outstanding Individual Contribution”. Maybe these are famous last words along the lines of “See Mom, No hands” or “There’s enough petrol”. Or maybe, just maybe, I am also the reason.

Book Review: Hawke – Ted Bell

Book Name: Hawke

Author: Ted Bell

Genre: Fiction – Action

Storyline and plot spoiler:

Lord Alexander Hawke, Victoria Sweet, Manso(Araña, the spider), Juanito, Carlos, Ambrose Congreve, Stokely Jones, Fidel Castro, Consuelo de los Reyes.

Hawke is a descendant of the famous English pirate Blackhawke, owns the finest of the world’s goods, makes love to the most beautiful women and also does covert operations for the governments of Britain and USA. He gets a mission to find info about the sale of a highly advanced nuclear submarine being sold by the Russians. The mission takes him to the Caribbean islands where Hawke hears his soul calling out. It was in these same islands that 7 year old Hawke watched from hiding as his famous father and movie star mother were brutally executed by three modern-day pirates aboard their cruiser. Hawke has no memory of what happened, except in his subconscious.

In the present, a cabal of Cubans, headed by three brothers, have deposed of Castro, bought the submarine, and have managed to smuggle a bio-bomb into an US naval base. Their ultimatum is simple – USA must bow or watch helplessly as 40 nuclear missiles are unleashed. In the meantime, they are also holding Hawke’s fiancee, Victoria, hostage. Hawke assembles an arsenal of cool weapons and exotic machinery, calls in a squad of deadly ex-SEAL anti-terrorist pals and saves the world. Along the way he also learns that the three brothers are his parents’ murderers and exorcises his ghosts.

Comment:

Will never win critical acclaim. A read when you’re totally bored. Should appeal to those who like Tom Clancy, Stephen Coontz, or Robert Ludlum. A little sophisticated weaponry and a little political intrigue, with a whiff of British aristocracy thrown in. Something like the Scarlet Pimpernel, but not quite. His parrot, Sniper, perched on his shoulder completes the picture.

Suggestions/requests to Andhra messes

Had a friend of mine write these down in Telugu and handed copies yesterday to the three Andhra messes I frequent.

• Pack some jeera in parcel orders. They cost nothing and would make a meal complete. If you want even more differentiation, throw in a couple of bananas for family meals.
• Along with the pickles and dal powder, keep some potato chips also on the table. Once again, they cost nothing but believe me, there are guys who’ll eat food just because of these.
• Whenever someone’s asking about something, please don’t let talk about checking with your manager. Apart from reminding us of ours’, it makes us wonder what you are doing there if you have no idea on what can and cannot be done.
• Please please please tell the actual time it’ll take for the food to arrive. We’re ok if we’re told it’ll take 15 mins. But after four sets of “2 mins Sir”,w’re not going to be tipping you.
• Clean the tables with clean hands.
• Clean the tables fast, not after the next customer/patron has been seated.
• For God’s sake, have those taps at the wash basin in working order. How much is it going to cost you guys to repair them anyway?
• Keep the water jugs filled. It’s a cardinal sin to keep someone waiting for water, especially when eating.
• Why don’t you guys come up with Unlimited Briyanis along the lines of unlimited meals? Standardisation and all that is fine, but some have larger appetites (especially for briyani) and there’s nothing else practical enough to order once you tell us an extra ‘half-plate’ is not orderable.
• We understand rush hours and peak timings. But please don’t have people crowding behind chairs, jostling and nudging to grab the chair once the uncumbent luncher is done.
• Smile.

Happy Birthday Mummy!

Thanks for showering me with unconditional love, even when I’ve been a rather awful son at times.
Love you ma.

The Road not Mistaken – Update!

Some absolutely great guy out here has just followed everything I’ve said to a T.
Well, almost.
There’s this fwd doing the rounds, with the subject line – “From a Software Engineer’s blog”.
Thanks buddy (whoever it is), for mistaking my post to be good enough to be sent as a forward.
And for the rest, remember you read this here first!
And yes, Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

The Road not Mistaken!

Hmmmmmm. Almost 18 months and I’ve still not been kicked out of my company. Something seriously wrong somewhere somehow? So what have I observed around me in this time? What are the lessons I’ve learnt? What have I taken in these past months from my professional life (apart from the mouse pad i stole on my first day)?

• The entire industry works on Time Division Multiplexing and multitasking.
• Some use Code Division Multiplexing too (Like in dividing the work so that each developer can Google only that part of code.)
• Managers can be as dumb as they are made out to be.
• Beneath the veneer and dazzle of big brand names, high visibility projects and multi-billion dollar clients, your salary will still be lower than Mariana Trench.
• Coding is common sense + w3schools.
• Murphy’s law and Catch-22 situations don’t just exist in comic strips.
• There really are some ‘software guys’ who cannot develop a liking for coffee even after 16 long months. I’m living (barely, though) proof.
• Parkinson’s law is true. But then so is the inverse.
• You will need diplomatic skills and you’d better be born with the ability to bluff.
• If someone comes sits near you, and talks of how hard you’ve been working lately, it means he’s going on vacation and you’ll have to take care of “a little” of his work.
• There will always be an obsequious someone who’ll be favoured above you.
• It’s better to earn the respect of your managers, than to be liked by them.
• Breakfasts? What are they?
• The company is NEVER going to say no for a new project, irrespective of the feasibility or resources available.
• Weekends are those annoying little days when your house owner looks suspiciously at you as you start for office.
• Weekends are those absolutely awesome days when the traffic is lighter on the way to office.
• There is always work. It is the sharing of this work which differentiates between people bored with work and people bored without work.
• Managers really really do believe that it is realistically possible to give birth to a baby in one month if 9 people work on it.
• An ‘aggressive’ manager (like mine) is someone who believes you can have a baby in a week if you can do ‘smart work’. (Someone’s gotta tell him it needs ‘smart work’ to have a baby in the first place.)
• It’s always the quantity of hours you put in, rather than the quality of them, that matters to your colleagues and managers. Productivity can go to hell.
• You put in all those hours and become good at one module, and you’ll be asked to take up more ‘responsibility’ (read as more modules).
• The one who takes pride in his work will be the one who’ll be working the most.
• Any song played belongs to a film each in Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, and Arabic. And two films in Telugu.
• Girls! They get less work. They do less work. They pay less tax. And complain about Women’s Rights. It’s time we started a Men’s Freedom Movement community in Orkut. Cheerio.
• Deadlines. You meet them everywhere all the time.
• There is no such thing as a satisfied employee. Neither is there something called job satisfaction.
• The better looking girls will always be in the next building or in that jerk of a friend’s team or have a bodybuilder boyfriend pick her up everyday. The ones whom you get to interact with will always be either married or will switch jobs within the week.
• The productivity of a team is inversely proportional to it’s proximity with the coffee machine.
• Bug free code is as much a reality as George Bush stringing together 4 sensible words.
• With practice, it really is possible to keep your mouth shut in meetings even when you hear alarm bells clanging and all your senses screaming on how impractical the latest process model sounds.
• The feasibility of a project increases the higher you go up in the management hierarchy.
• You work less, you get more work. You work more, you get more work.
• Never be so effective that the first name that comes to your manager’s mind is you. Else you’ll be the one to get all the complex stuff and critical issues for a deadline that was yesterday.
• The best place to meet your office girlfriend is the staircase ;-). Nobody uses them coz everybody’s busy grumbling about how slow the elevator is.
• Irrespective of how they look or how you feel about an inch of mascara and lipstick, you’d bloody well compliment them.
• The greatest cover up in history is not about Mary Magdalene or Da Vinci or even about Tom Cruise being gay. An over jacket can cover anything from creases to stains in your un-washed, un-pressed shirt/tee.

C’mon, go ahead. Forward this like we do everything else. Let’s see how many days it takes for my manager to get this one. The last one took 4 days. I’d be happy if you could include the source this time.

psst: Please dont include the mousepad thing in the mail. I heard my manager’s still searching for it.

The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow!

Where is the horse gone? Where the rider?
Where the giver of treasure?
Where are the seats at the feast?
Where are the revels in the hall?
Alas the gleaming chalice!
Alas the mailed warrior!
Alas the splendour of the prince!
How that time has passed away,
Has grown dark under the helm of night,
As though it had never been.

~ from The Wanderer poem.

Mirrors of a nostalgic, melancholic, reflective, apathetic, insouciant, ennui, pondering me.

Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk

Book Name: Fight Club

Author: Chuck Palahniuk

Genre: Fiction

Storyline and plot spoiler:

A nameless narrator.

Tyler Durden

Marla Singer

The novel is about a nameless insomniac narrator who goes to support groups so that the emotional strains of such meetings may help him sleep at night. In a support group for testicular cancer, he befriends Robert “Bob” Paulson, a former bodybuilder. All is well until he meets Marla Singer, a woman who also attends support groups for alternative reasons. Marla keeps staring at him, making him realize that she knows he doesn’t belong to these groups and he begins to hate Marla for keeping him from crying, and therefore from sleeping. After a short confrontation, they begin going to separate support groups in order to avoid meeting again.

One day, his condo is destroyed by an explosion, and he goes for help to Tyler Durden, someone he’s met sometime back and who is a “beach artist who works low-paying jobs at night in order to perform deviant behavior on the job.”(from Wiki). In exchange for putting him up at his house, Tyler asks for something in return, in a now-famous line: “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” And thus the narrator becomes a part of a new form of support group – the “fight club”. The group meet every weekend in a sparring match, presided by 8 rules:

1. You do not talk about fight club.

2. You do not talk about fight club.

3. If someone says stop, goes limp, even if he’s just faking it, the fight is over.

4. Only two guys to a fight.

5. One fight at a time.

6. They fight without shirts or shoes.

7. The fights go on as long as they have to.

8. If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight.

Meanwhile, Marla attempts suicide, from which Tyler saves her and the two get into an affair. Now the narrator is barely able to digest that he has to now live with Marla in the same house. Meanwhile, the fight club gains popularity (“because someone has talked about it”), Tyler uses it to spread anti-consumerist ideals and the group starts on arson and sabotage. An inner group, called the “space monkeys” is formed by Tyler, and they start on “Project Mayhem”. The narrator disagrees with “Project Mayhem” when Bob dies in it and opts out, though the project is on.

It is at this point that the narrator realizes that HE is Tyler. Another personality within him formed due to the frustration the narrator had at consumerist corporate America. The bouts of insomnia that the narrator suffered were in fact Tyler surfacing. “Project Mayhem” is a plan to bomb the Parker-Morris skyscraper, and with it, the national museum next to it. During the explosion, Tyler plans to die as a martyr for Project Mayhem, taking the narrator’s life as well. Realizing this, the narrator sets out to stop Tyler by telling everything to Marla (who always knew the narrator as Tyler). The end is taken with the narrator confronting Tyler on the roof of the Parker-Morris building. The narrator, held at gunpoint by Tyler, is forced to watch the destruction of the museum by Project Mayhem. Now Marla comes to the roof to save him and Tyler vanishes, because “Tyler was his hallucination, not hers.”

The expected explosion also does not happen as Tyler had mixed paraffin with the explosives which “never, ever works.” The narrator now makes a conscious decision of his own – to end his life, and shoots himself. He wakes up in an asylum where members of Project Mayhem tell the narrator that they are waiting for their Tyler to come back.

Numbered Account – Christopher Reich

Book Name: Numbered Account
Author: Christopher Reich
Genre: Fiction

Storyline and plot spoiler:

Nicholas Neumann (Nick)
Alex Neumann – Murdered father of Nick
Anna Fontaine – Former fiancee of Nick
Wolfgang Kaiser – Chairman of United Swiss Bank
Sylvia Schon – Director of Personnel and Nick’s love interest
Ali Mevlevi – The Pasha
Sterling Thorne – from US Drug Enforcement
Klaus Konig – Chairman of Adler bank.

A job he shouldn’t have taken… A woman he shouldn’t have loved… An employer he shouldn’t have trusted… A secret he shouldn’t expose…if he wants to live.

Nick Neumann had it all: a Harvard degree, a beautiful fiancée, a star-making Wall Street career. But behind the dazzling veneer of this golden boy is a man haunted by the brutal killing of his father seventeen years before. He comes across his father’s agendas where he learns his father, a banker at United Swiss Bank, was forced to do business with a criminal concern, and for which he was murdered. Nick doesn’t know how. Or why. But he has a plan to find out: move to Zurich. Work for the same bank. Follow in his father’s footsteps. And look for the same secrets… Wolfgang Kaiser, his father’s former colleague and close friend, is the current chairman of United Swiss Bank.

Around the time Nick joins USB, a rival bank – Adler Bank (run by his father’s former colleague – Klaus Konig), has come up with sudden resources which Konig is using to buy up shares of USB. Nick is put into the private clients section – where his immediate 3 predecessors have been either murdered, fired, or had a nervous breakdon. Nick enters into an affair with Sylvia Schon, the beautiful, brilliant vice president who has her own aspirations of making it to the executive board of USB, and who uses Nick to get in cozy with the chairman. One of the most important clients is someone codenamed The Pasha, whose account number appears in a list of suspected accounts provided by the The United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Nick learns The Pasha is Ali Mevlevi, a multi-billionaire drug dealer and a religious fanatic who is gathering an army for a final armageddon with the jews.

In what comes a full circle, Ali Mevlevi’s is the criminal concern with whom his father was forced to do business and who is responsible for his murder. Ali and Kaiser are in it together, and Nick’s father was murdered to also help Kaiser get to the chairmanship of USB. However the double-crosser is double-crossed as Ali is the one who’s funding the Adler bank to take over USB, so that he can control both for unlimited resources. The circle of treachery tightens when Nick learns of Sylvia’s perfidy. Nick has to call up all his faculties from his former life as a decorated US Marine one final time and avenge his father’s murder, or die watching 15000 people go up in smoke.

Here we go again….

Yet another month passes.
– with too few posts.
I look back at October and find only 8 posts (6+2)* for the entire month.
But then when dates are measured by the passing of nights, when a calendar day ends when others wake, when each time I open my eyes I hear children returning from school, when I go to sleep when others at office take their coffee breaks……

Yet another month beckons.
A chance to set the records straight.
A shot at redemption.
A commitment re-sworn.
A promise re-taken.

But as we speak,
The clock ticks.
The seconds pass.
The sun disappears.
The second dusk of this month.

And a Strike!
The first notch, the first wicket, the first nail, the first rays of a new dawn.
The counter ups a tick!
This post!

* (I have 2 unpublished posts on Schumi’s Brazilian farewell and a review of Crichton’s Airframe, typed up somewhere)