Jab we met - Exceeds expectation

I have never been a fan of Kareena Kapoor. I thought she was overly dramatic (K3G). She was on top of my worst actresses list. Shahid Kapoor, I never took him as a serious actor. Jab We Met definitely changed all of these. Before sunrise, Serendipity, Sleepless in Seatle kind of movie.

Positive aspects of the movie
1. Punjabi mixed hindi is so sweet to hear. Surprisingly both were able to pull the stint. Not that I am any expert (I can barely follow Punjabi), I was able to appreciate the dialogues.
2. This movie can easily be their best performances in their respective careers.
3. Songs are a definite plus. Wonder why they are not played on cable that often. I have to definitely download some of them to my phone.
4. Shahid dances really well. Kareena can barely live up to it. Especially the closing song sequence.
5. Good comedy.. good dialogue delivery by both.
6. Good screenplay for a not so original story line.

If you have to choose between Om shanti om and Jab We Met, you can definitely pick the second and you would leave the hall without regret.

Foss.in and some general observations

After much deliberation, I decided to attend foss.in this time. The reason for this deliberation is not the content, but inability to take so many days off. The venue turned out to be pretty close to my office, and there was company to shuttle between office and the venue for certain talks.

Some pluses and minuses, registration was too slow (at some point in the queue, I wondered, whether, I would be playing with my grandchildren, by the time the registration completes). I had just one lunch in the event (excluding tomorrow). But food tasted (much)+ better than what was dished out last time. And the queues were much faster.

Coming to the main event..

Few days back, I had an argument with a friend. His point was, for some reason, Americans are better off making presentations, compared to their European/Far east counter parts (definitely not talking about the quality of content). I had vehemently opposed the view and argued they were baseless.
But now, I think I see his point of view. I think the ability to mix (quality) humour with the content is what sails them through... Whatever..

Rusty Russell, I enjoyed his talk the most. I dint imagine the person who wrote netfilter / iptables to sport such a good humour. His talk made the whole event worthwhile. Going back tomorrow to his talk on talloc.

Wish I could attend au.conf..

Ubuntu Ubuntu Ubuntu

I know I am mixing a totally non - technical blog (atleast i intended to keep this non technical), but cant help it...

Few days back I was a hard core Fedora distribution fan. I was not ready to look at any other distribution and took pride in writing spec files for rpm. ( I am not disowning it, I still don't mind working on a fedora/redhat distribution). But for the past few days I am head over heals with Ubuntu. Here is the story..

My first laptop __ever__(Dell Inspiron 6400), bought out my hard earned money. The Dell package is little heavy. I lug the package home at around 8.30PM. Unpacked the laptop, booted into Vista(preinstalled crap..), installed ubuntu in 15 to 20 minutes. It was love at first sight. I wanted to readjust my disk partitions and so reinstalled it couple of times until it was satisfactory. Logged into gnome.. and guess what, it listed all the wireless networks in my area.. I was just taken aback.. This just exceeded my expectations.. And then speakers.. they worked too.. And then package installation .. got around package distribution commands after a few tries(now have to write a package of mine so I understand things better- Ofcourse Debian style).
So what makes it better
1. Good collection of packages
2. Packages working out of the box(So damn neat)


4 months still with Ubuntu and going strong
Installations: Laptop, Office Desktop(Much to the irritation of my manager ;))

Chang Indian Idol fame..

Courtesy

I never used to watch any soap and I really fear tuning Sony or Star Plus during prime time. Living in hostel I have little choice. So I was just digging certain articles in the TV room, when the girls in the room where going ga ga over a guy. A ching(Chinese origin) with eyes hardly visible. I couldn't understand the craze and actually dared to question the hungama..

Well now I am sitting and writing this article after watching a repeat telecast(I have an arrangement, hostel mate would call me when Chang sings). Well yesterday, his performance was AWESOME... "hosh udha dhi" "stole my breadth away".. I was in the same state as the hostess and the Alisha..

This is one of his previous shows on youtube. Leave the first few seconds.

A dentist by profession.. Handsome and fit enough to be a model.. He sang Dil kya kare out of the world performance (The ending ouch...in the hostess words.. "Water" catching our breadth).. left us captivated for ever..

Narasingapuram street aka Ritchie street

I needed to get a wireless router at the earliest. I knew very few reliable shops in Bangalore and so I decided to come down to Chennai to get one. I usually give the specs of the electronic items, I need to my bro, who would then wade through this __ritchie street__ and get them for me(sometimes a better configuration or price). But this time, my bro was little preoccupied(still not forgiven for the same ;)) and denied the services he rendered. But life is miserable without wireless and I can't get through one more week without one. So the onus of going to this street and getting the router on my own, fell on me.

My mother was apprehensive about me going alone to this street and she decided to come along. We parked our car, on Mount road(trust me finding parking space was difficult - as difficult as pondi bazzar). We parked bang outside Khadi. After enquiring, how to go to this street in a small beedi stall, we took a left.

Picture: courtesy : http://www.chennaibest.com/discoverchennai/citylifestyle/bazaarbuzz/ritchie.asp

We reached around 12.30 and the place was buzzing with activity. Man, we stepped into a small road that was filled with all kinds of gadgets(clock, movie CD, DVDs, CD pouches). Each shop had zillion DVD players on display. My mom, reminiscent of the days of VCR and VCD, apparently I cried for an entire evening for a VCD player which costed about 16000 back then.

Every shop either played Jhoom bhara bhar jhoom or the inevitable Sivaji in very good quality speakers. The ground was littered with movies DVD (X-Men, Blood diamond...). To add to this chaos, pamphlets advertising range of processors, where strewn all over the place.

We were strictly given orders to look for a place called Supreme Computers Private limited. I was really comforted by the fact that my mother accompanied me, because there where not many women around. After little struggle, we actually found this place. A small dilapidated building with an old board, I was not really optimistic. Anywayz went in to just see a total reversal of opinion of this place. It was a small place (15 * 15 room)filled with people. Mostly college students, eager to assemble a computer, had a long list of items that need to be purchased with serious budgetary constraints. The array of items on display was damn impressive. Wireless routers, bluetooth keyboard, sony viao laptops.. I was drooling all over the place.

Dizzied by the items in display, I was considering a lot more items to buy than I intended to. My mother, guessing from the excitement in my eyes, quipped lets buy the router that we came for and leave the place. Left my mom to sit on the couch and moved in the general direction of the counter. I told my specification to a cute looking northie with broken tamil a Linksys router WRT54G. He said I would have to wait for 5 minutes and I was more than willing to do the same. I was standing near the counter watching people take orders at the counter. It was interesting, as the college students asking these people whether this device would fit on this motherboard, or whether there are any other company gadget that would fit this budget. The guys behind the counter where also impressive pulling quotes/specification from air. They would have easily made sale of 75000 bucks in a matter of half an hour. Boy their business model is strong and they have managed to establish their brand value among college students.

My router arrived as promised in 5 minutes. I would not mind standing at the counter, watch people buy gadgets for another hour(this is no way related to the northie guy). Guessing that I was amateur, he asked me whether I would pay by cash or card and I promptly replied card and he went on to explain there will be 2% charges on card. Then it dawned on me, why people pay tens of thousands in cash. I had little choices and I payed by card. (Lesson learnt: take cash when you go to such places). Finally left the place after enquiring about the price of Transcend USB 150GB disk.

Boy I would happily work in this place. You get to play with latest gadgets and help students build their configuration and the end get paid for it... Can life get any better.

Returned home with the loot and exhilarating experience and kulfi at the Bombay sweet house. My day was made.

Bhai.. machan.. Two strong words..

I notice in the last few posts, I have been doing nothing, but, crib. This post hopefully reverses that.

I find that men folk bond very easily. Last week, a colleague and I where assigned a task, where in, we have to interact with this person X and get the job done. So I decided to be smart and walked up to him and tried to discuss it with him. All through the conversation, he was very uncomfortable and mostly negative. I discussed the situation with my colleague and he offered to see what he can do. I wanted to see how he handles the situation and hence was overhearing their conversation across the bay ;) (so much for decency.. don't blame me, I just happened to be around). The way he started the conversation changed the whole scenario.. "Kya bhai.. kuch problem hai kya". Words like bhai (Bro in Hindi), machan(brother-in-law, I guess, in Tamil) are very strong words. Its a male thing that I would never understand I guess. Two strangers, relate to each other immediately by simple words like these. They start acting like long last friends. Unfortunately, no such words are available for use with the other gender.

Socializing becoming an issue..

Off-late, I find socializing fast becoming an issue. I find that I cannot relate to most of the conversation that happens around me. Many of these discussions put me under a scanner, that I would want to disappear from that face of the earth. Have dinner with bunch of people, with whom you have nothing in common, to discuss, act like you are concentrating on your plate or come with a stupid conversation.

Whoever invented 'work from home' concept should be crowned(though this not an option in my current employment). You don't have to get up, get dressed appropriately, board/drive any mode of transport(biggest pain), then wish meaningless 'Good morning' to loads of people. What a waste of precious time and energy in this era, where there unlimited broadband connection available at residences. If at all communication is required, there is always mails, messengers, conference calls, and lastly go to office only to attend meetings.

But I hail from a `service industry` and I should not even think about such luxuries. Hopefully things change or I change things..

Managers...

Managers these days, need to sit by the side of team leaders and developers, code along with them(I mean do vi of a file, edit, compile..), to completely understand the state of the project and define the direction of its take off. Managers should not confine themselves to just defect matrix collection or calculation of number of hours spent on the project. Managers need to think beyond excel sheets(nicknamed excel sheet managers ;) ) and just expertise in M$ tools would not get them anywhere.

Most managers would consider themselves successful, if they are able to retain the good programmers on their team. Most of these programmers have poor communication skills(either they are challenged or just not interested to speak). To first identify them, the manager has to work along with them. A person may resolve 'n' bugs but might still not be the best person on the team. But a person would have resolved a single bug over several weeks but that does not make him a bad coder. I did rather solve a serious memory issue over several weeks than correct several spelling mistakes in printf statements..

When things drag and the developer is not able to zero in on the problem, fear creeps in. Problem with most outsourced project is the customer is billed by the hour. So the customer has to be answered on the time spent. The developer fears the worst and that is not going to help him in any way. Sometimes for reasons like these, product companies is better than service industry, you just have to answer your company and not multiple companies.

Most of all, the manager has to be well informed and should encourage his team members to work on new tools or explain interesting stuff. When stuck, he should be able to suggest work around/ solutions and not just yap around. When the team member solves a problem this way, the project manager understands the problem well and hence he is able to keep track of the state of the project better.

If you are working for a project manager with all these traits and the job pays well, consider yourself extremely lucky.

Note: The above entry is purely observations made over the past three years and does not refer to anyone in particular. These conclusions are drawn by observing and interacting with several people. Hence the author cannot be nailed on the same ;)

Go Carting atlast.....

Every team outing would begin with long discussion on the location and the logistics to reach the place. Not everyone would concur on the location(mostly a restaurant) and the number of people is always more than what can be accommodated in the transport available. Once we reach the place, we eat in same set of groups and head home.

But yesterday was totally a different scenario. When someone suggested Go Karting and then food at a place called Beijing Bites(or Bytes ;)) no one disagreed. We squeezed ourselves into the vehicles available and reached the place(oops i forgot the name). Initially I was wondering whether I should jump in and drive or be a mute spectator. In a spur of the moment, I got tickets and I have no regrets in doing that.

We went over the rules, Dos and Donts. We had to sign a paper stating the drive can be dangerous, in spite of all the precautions taken and the owners are not responsible in the event of any mishap. All these only spiced up the event.

We drove in groups of 4 and I headed to drive in the first round. The helper was little apprehensive in handing over his prized possession to me. He went over to say, how I should not press the brakes and the accelerator simultaneously, couple of times. He went down to the extent that he offered to send one of the helpers along. That was all I could take and was ready to retort. Seeing the expression in my face he backed off, saying oh so you now how to drive huh?? But I was stuck not knowing how to start the engine? The helper started the engine and I was all set.

Each of us had 4-5 laps to complete. First few laps, I was driving really slow at say 20KM/hr then went up to 40KM/hr without a single crash into the tyres. Gawd that was great feeling. Initially I dint raise the accelerator fearing the vehicle would topple. It took sometime to realize, despite the size of the vehicle, it was sturdy and wouldn't topple at the speeds that I was driving.

Once on the diaz, we started cheering other groups. Some drove really clumsy and others did a good job. They drove at 60KM/hr and still had control. They started racing and crashing into the tyres or into each other which was awesome. When people suggested second round, I was tempted but I really doubted whether I would have the control. I feared I would go overboard and start driving really crazy. So another round happened and at the end of it, my throat was soar.

We finally left to this place called Beijing bytes. I have never been to a full fledged Chinese restaurant. This was a good place to start. Not knowing what to order, I gave the menu card to someone who had a good taste. I always ordered hakka noodles but something called dragon noodles was even better. After having a sumptuous dinner, caught the bus to Chennai, off on a vacation for three days.

Can the day be any better??

Refreshing evening...

An entry after a long time... Last evening was really refreshing. This all started with me having to collect Form-16. I also wanted to visit this friend of mine who had been in the hospital after a really freaky accident. Few friends decided to surprise her by appearing at her foot step without any warning. So much for surprises, none of us knew exactly where her house is. So we had to call her for directions and she tried to act surprised.

We where supposed to entertain her, we ended up entertaining ourselves. We reached her place at around 6 and all that we did was talk talk talk..

I luv the way all guyz fall for the same girl in HR or a fresher..
I luv the way u rank up stupid reasons to interact with her..
I luv the way u guyz rag each other.. when one such interactions materializes..
I luv the way u guyz, rag me(be it driving skills or bajji)

I luv the way u guyz are extremely protective.. of us..
I luv the way u guyz are alway so deegent.. and yet manage to crack vulgar enjoyable jokes..
I luv the way u guyz genuinely try to help..

I am proud to be associated with u..
Thank u for the great time..