Dream Destination for 'Belly' Lovers

My curiosity for aviation reached a higher level when on my recent first trip to US, I was luckily on board a British Airways Boeing 747-400 Jumbo Jet.

Photo Courtesy -  www.airplane-pictures.net/

At first glance from the gate where I was about to board, I thought it was just another aircraft and seemed bigger just because I was so close. Once inside, looking at the stairs to the upper deck, I realized what seemed big was actually THE ROYALLY MIGHTY one. Having seated, I had to turn my neck a whole 120 degrees to get a complete view of the humongous wing span.

The Jumbo Jet is one of the fastest commercial carrier and is known for its long haul and large passenger carrying capacity.

Ok, now coming to the actual topic of this post... well, a video is worth 100 thousand words, and I will let this St. Maarten Caribbean Airport's video tell you where I want to head sometime in my life to have a dekko of the 'bellies'.

It could be either the bellies in the air, or the ones on the shore that could make the trip a real exciting one!
:-)

There are issues to fix...

How can I sleep when there are issues to fix,
User mistakes and code issues, they come in a mix.

Not sure if these issues should ever end,
Coz it's never perfect till all of them are mend.

For now it looks like done,
As I am left with just one.

Tomorrow might not be as busy,
But then life should not be too easy.

What I have done, seems to be the best thing,
The proof of which will be only in the pudding!

How can I sleep when there are issues to fix...

There is so much to slog...

There is so much to slog,
No time to even update this blog.

Time seems to be flying each day,
And I keep moving ahead, come what may.

Friends and colleagues advice me to rest,
And probably spend some quality time in my nest.

They do care for my well being,
But I know this slog is just for the time being.

With almost 16 hours a day spent at work last week,
This slog is not for the meek.

This slog should result in a release soon,
Else I run the risk of being termed a prune! :)

There is so much to slog...

Spouse code-review :)

Heard of code reviews in the form of peer review, manager review, architect review, but I recently leveraged and probably innovated a better form of it.

I was at home, trying to resolve a critical issue at midnight. It did need some algorithmic changes and, with my tired mind, I knew I would blow up at least a couple of scenarios.
So, faced with this situation, I just looped in my ever cooperative wifey (she does follow this blog, so you know I have to use nice words :P).

Sitting down with her, she understood the scenario in a jiffy. And then we went through the loops covering almost all possible scenarios and voila, I had indeed missed a more than a couple of scenarios.
With no existing unit-tests sadly in place for this code, the review certainly helped. We spent about 40 minutes on this, and we had put together an flawless piece of code.

Thanks wifey, you were the technical savior that night!

Must I say now, code review begins at home?

To groom or not to?

I was at this interview drive on Saturday for almost 5 odd hours. Candidates kept coming in, and it was kinda fun (or may be I just tried to enjoy myself!) talking to and having discussions with seemingly potential candidates.

By the end of the day, rather by mid-day I actually started feeling sad for the IT population that I have been grilling for the last few years. In fact, one of the candidates from one of the most popular IT state of southern India, had come in with a 3+ years of experience to show on paper, but was one really ungroomed chap. With an unshaven face, donning a pair of sandals, and nothing much (in fact nothing at all!) to show off technically, he seemed like a person straight out of exile :-)

I felt kinda sad for such population, coming from a small hamlet, and getting a sneak into the IT industry they probably never underwent any grooming sessions or even cared for such a thing.
At least a couple of times, I thought about sharing my email address with him so as to help him groom a little, of course only if he showed any willingness to, and even help him with some technical skills. This could have helped him cracked future interviews, and I'd have gained myself some karmic points too :-)

Not sure if my professional obligations allow me to share contact details with a rejected candidate, if it does, I would love to get into this path to voluntarily help groom people.
Am sure it'd give immense satisfaction to help groom people from where they are, to a point where they could stride on their own...

Geeky ergonomics

Got this via email from a chum.

He believes, that this would be apt for me to buy and use. I guess if this is manufactured, it would appear in one of those late night tele-shopping programs. And probably, I'd offer to endorse it too :)

Upgraded my Nokia...

... after a long stint of time, and lot of criticisms from wifey on my old Nokia classic phone, I finally 'upgraded' a few weeks back. The reason for upgrade was not criticisms from wifey or close friends, but because the Nokia was conked to such an extent that every time I tried opening a message in the inbox, it used to re-boot.
It was a nice phone, and worked for me quite well especially with the Opera Mini I'd installed on it for browsing FB and occasionally checking GMail at work.

The 'upgrade' is a much better one with a few features more than on the Nokia. It is the best that could come at that price and can beat some big players hands down in the segment.

Here is what I have now! :)

Travelogue - Bhuleshwar near Pune

It was quite some time, we had been on an outing over a weekend. Most of the time, weekends are kept aside, just like almost every working couple does, to run errands, stock up groceries, browsing and occasionally  watching an odd movie from the pile of downloaded movies.














Browsing for places to visit around pune for the 139th time, I had very less hope that I would get an unexplored place to visit, till I came across a place 'Bhuleshwar' - It's an old temple on top of a hill about 8Kms off Yavat on Pune-Solapur highway.



















The place also has a mention on this page of Wikipedia. It is about 60 Kms from Pune and a decent place to capture some nice pictures of mother nature, be in a serene surroundings, away from the noise and rush of the city. More importantly, not being too far, it can be done in half a day leaving time for the activities I mentioned earlier.


Post the trip, someone told me it's even nicer during the monsoon when a wide variety of birds can be seen... Probably, we would visit the place yet again.






Hope you like the pictures :)

New wine in old bottle

Pun intended on that of course...

And that is what I call, when you get a new lease of life at an old place. I cannot be more specific here for professional reasons, but it has something to do with my recent post.

Wishing myself lot of luck as I turn onto some new wine in an older bottle...

'Healthily Unwealthy'

Had some good sizzlers yesterday for dinner along with some good friends and poor jokes as 'side-dishes'.
Though the Sizzlers that we ordered were good for health, rather relatively better than other options while eating out, the check that came by wasn't correspondingly good for wealth.

Just made me wonder if there is a term like 'Healthily Unwealthy' or may be 'Unwealthily healthy' which means something is good for your health, but not so good for your wealth.

If something bad for your health is unhealthy, why can't something bad for your wealth be coined as 'unwealthy'? :-)

Don't fear the code, fear the licensing terms!

I was trying to modify some open source Javascript library today, when I realized that even if I modify and make it work as per my needs, that is only half the job well-done.

The product which uses the library might not be still shippable because of the library's licensing terms. And eventually, all the smart work done to modify the library would be just SHIFT-DELETED down a small recycle bin  :(

Just something to beware of when one takes up ambitious things like library modification.

On the lines of a popular bollywood dialogue, I'd say - "Code se darr nahi lagta sir, License se lagta hai..." :)

Toilet water put to good use by Google!

Yes, that's true, they use it for cooling the heat generated by their data centers.
Came across this interesting piece of information as I was browsing through some of my routine reads.

Of course, the objective might be to save money, but still that deed must be doing quite some good to save the natural resource.

May be I will not use regular water for my car's battery and wash-wipe system anymore, instead will ask the service guys to pour some toilet water... !!

Source: Arstechnica

Why make a remake?

Watched the new(?) Agneepath over the last weekend, and found it just annoying and nowhere close to the original one. Hrithik seemed nowhere close to how BigB had enacted in the original one, the story line was just the same without any twist to keep me engrossed or entertained.
In fact, I would say the original version had a much superior screenplay especially during the climax when BigB walks through fire as bombs are hurled in his path, and that too during a time when technology was not as much a part of Bollywood as it is today.

The character of Mithun ('Krishnan Iyer M.A, NarialPaaniwala') who added a nice tinge of humor to the original movie is badly missed, and to me this remake just seemed to be an futile attempt at cashing in on 2 things - 1) Hrithik's fan following and 2) The fact that a lot of the current movie going lot hasn't watched the original classic.

Yes, I know am too late to write this, now that the movie has already moved out of most cinema houses, but then am not a movie buff to watch remakes on the first day/week/month of the release!

I know, but still I don't know!

It has happened more than a couple of times with me, and it continues to!
Every now and then, when I think am getting into some kinda messy situation, someone just like a messiah comes and gives me a piece of advice, which seems just logical and right to do at the moment.

A fast friend just gave that to me today and voila`, it worked!
I am no more thinking about what I was thinking... and I realize that there are somethings you have to just take in your stride and move on. Unimportant things which bother you, if thought about too much, can just lead to negativity and frustration, just ignore them!

Simple fundas of life - some of which I know, but still I don't seem to know :)

My dear friend, you are wonderful, thanks for giving me that talk - you have done it, once again!

When tables turn around - from being an interviewer to an interviewee

Have been taking technical interviews for quite some time now in my career. It started at the company where I spent a major chunk of my career so far, in between some excellently talented folks.
It was fun, and also a learning experience to visit engineering college campus placements, interacting with the placement heads there, getting some respect (after all we were there to recruit their folks :-) ), eating some good lunches and of course getting to evaluate to-be graduates.

And it has been almost the same experience while interviewing experienced candidates. The discussions are probably more interesting and mature (than fresh grads), and makes me learn a thing or two each time too :-)

So here am I, have been taking interviews for at least the last 5 years, and easily interviewed at least a 100 candidates if I make a rough estimate.

Given all that, the other day when I had to appear for an interview myself with a client, incidentally for whom I carry out interviews too, it seemed a difficult mountain to climb when I was first told about it. I was confident as well as a bit nervous, I was sure and yet a bit unsure...
What probably caused me more stress was the apprehensiveness about the possibility of flunking it and losing all my confidence of even interviewing future candidates for the same client :-)

Thankfully, it turned out good and I am through :-)

Still, a lesson learnt - No matter how good you are at questioning and evaluating, it's all together a different mental ball game when being questioned, grilled and evaluated.

It's that day of the leap year...

It's that day of the leap year,
Birthday on which do the school kids fear,

No idea why we have such a calendar,
So what if it was a year that is regular,

It's that day of the leap year,
Which you can keep aside for an extra beer,

An extra day it adds for you to earn your salary,
So does it add a day to everyone's diary,

It's that day of the leap year,
Between 2 seasons, it is neither foggy nor clear!

JogSessed

Realized that I have gotten so much attached and used to the jog-walk interval training each day After-A-Days-Work, that I find myself upset if I happen to miss it any day. Not just that, at times I even avoid catching up with friends or defer shopping for groceries just because I might happen to give the routine a miss on that evening.

This is quite a transformation from the situation about 2 months ago, when I just couldn't push myself out of the house to get moving. The secret to it has been just the courage and will power to get started, and once out of the comfort zone, it's now only about being with the flow each day...
Not just that, I know that once I take a break from this schedule, it'd be really difficult and painful to start all over again!

Ok now am a regular blogger, regular jogger, regular coder (it's my job!)... lets see what's next...

Not Sure...

Not sure what to write today,
Or may be am not in a mood to say,

In either case it has been peaceful of late,
As each passing day takes away a date,

Not sure how far in life I can run,
But I need to promise myself that I will have fun,

Fun with what I choose to do,
At the end I will just have myself to prove,

Not sure when would I attain that one dream,
But am sure it is not just a whim!

Never stand begging...

"Never stand begging for what you have the POWER to EARN!"

Came across this lovely quote today. Indeed very inspirational and apt at this moment for me...!

Often, these 1 liners help you get the required thrust to take the joystick of life back in your hands instead of waiting on 'auto' mode for things to happen to you.

Reminds me of a discussion I had with a chum sometime back when he quoted someone  - "Either make things happen, OR they will happen to YOU!"

Why don't you 'Sony Mix'?

Being a person who is quite often late to bed, I am in a constant habit of keeping the idiot box ON for company and just to avoid the 'deafening silence' of the night.
Have been getting 'Sony Mix' for company since the channel started a few months back. It used to play good Bollywood numbers right from the retros to the 90's to the recent ones.

However, of late I have noticed that they keep playing the same sequence of songs one after other each night. The extent of it has been so much that, I can now guess the next song to be played at least a few times despite having a bad memory :-)
Not sure if it's so difficult for them to play different set of numbers each day. Probably, they could even mix it up well in a random order each time, so that people like yours truly don't get too confident about their poor memory! :-)

Hearing something repeatedly is the best form of memorizing eh?

Complimentary Motivation!

I was at a wedding ceremony of one of my first cousins a couple of days back.
It's always a great feeling to meet close family members at a single place on such occasions. Otherwise, we are so busy with our lives that we hardly get to visit each one of them separately.

Coming to the point, the 2nd best part of the wedding was me getting some compliments for getting leaner :-) Yes, the jogging trails I have been leaving behind after a day's work each day for the last month or so has begun to give results.
And what could be a better proof, motivation and encouragement to continue doing it, than getting compliments from people in such social gatherings :-)

That apart, I have started feeling more energetic, more fresh, less stressed and of course started feeling leaner after I got back to this routine. Certainly, the self coined mantra and realization of 'Body vs Mind' has worked for me...

Sir, would you mind having your house demolished to make way for a maidan?

Came across this interview of a prominent politician in Maharashtra, who is known for his linguistic political agenda since the last couple of years.
In the interview, he was talking about the lack of facilities for tax-payers wherein they don't have any playground (maidan) to have an evening walk or recreate. He was quick to blame the local authorities for not leaving any space for playgrounds.

I have one question for him.
Sir, do you mind having your own house demolished to make way for a playground in Mumbai? That would not only help a select few to actually breathe some nice air when they get time out of their busy lives, but would also serve as a nice 'playground' for couples to sit and get cozy after dusk.

Howzzat Mr.Hypocrite?

The loud Indian Mixer grinder

Technology is everywhere right from DVD players to Cars to Pens. However, there is one thing that technology doesn't seem to have touched yet - the humble mixer grinder in our homes.

Every time I hear a mixer-grinder spinning its blades, I wonder why hasn't technology reached the blades and the underlying gears of this appliance. I can recollect the noise a mixer-grinder generates right since the time I could start hearing :)

When cars can lower their NVH (Noise-Vibration-Harshness) levels from what they were 2 decades ago, why can't these mixers which don't even generate 5% of that output be made less noisier?

Snobs amongst us!

I was at the Pune-Mumbai expressway petrol station @ Talegaon a few hours back.
Noticed that people did not even have courtesy to thank the guy who bends over 4 times per car, and probably a 1000 times per day, to fill air in the tires. If not the 2 words of kindness, they did not even bother to roll down the windows of the car to give a thanking smile.

Why do some people carry so much of attitude when they deal with such folks who are so very hard working and inherent part of the society? And the same folks get down on their knees when they come to the corporate world and deal with their seniors... such a shame!

If WE are not COURTEOUS towards such people, how would they get to learn mannerisms?

The dream to drive a Volvo bus :-)

I was always fascinated by luxury buses plying on intercity trips in my childhood. Most of them had neatly done paint jobs on them, fancy tail-lights, apart from BIG external rear view mirrors to keep track of the extra large body length.

More recently, with the introduction of Volvo and Mercedes buses my love and fascination for these buses has further deepened :-) And it has been so much that, during my regular Pune-Mumbai trips earlier by Shivneri, I used to prefer the seat just behind the driver to get a direct view of the road, the control stalks around the driver and the of course the way they easily maneuver these mammoth machines.
I remember having spoken to a few of those neatly dressed drivers of private Volvo buses on a couple of occasions, just in hope that I would be offered a test drive some day :-)

The dream still remains to be fulfilled... certainly one of the TO-DO items in my life!

Are fridays accident prone?

Couple of incidents on consecutive Fridays...

A couple of weeks back, as I was driving along my regular route to work, my new pair of shoes slipped from the brake-pedal and before I could recover from it, I had banged the car in front. Knowing my fault, I parked my car aside, apologized to the driver of the car in front, who had gotten down too to assess the damage. Thankfully, it was a bumper-to-bumper bang and did not cause much damage. The gentleman was reasonable too, and after hearing my part of the story about shoe slip, did not make a big fuss out of it.

The very next Friday, again I was driving along my regular route, an old gentleman in his 70's probably poked out his car from the roadside parking lot to brush the rear door of my car. This time, I played the gentleman :-), got down from my car looked at the wrinkled face of the man, opened the folded rear-view mirrors of his car and requested him to use it further on...

The first incident continues to give me goose-bumps if I think about how worse the situation could have been, had I knocked down any pedestrian due to the slip or worst still, had I not been able to stop in time to avoid a bigger vehicle coming my way at a busy junction.

These incidents just make me wonder if Fridays are really accident prone. The reason being almost everyone who works for a 5-days-a-week job, is really excited on a Friday :-)
Need to check if there have been any studies made on this...

In any case, the next Friday was pretty much incident free, else I would have published a study myself :-)

The green tea hype!

It started a few weeks back with a couple of guys sipping the hyped 'green tea' in office instead of the regular dose of caffeine. And slowly, the fad spread to more than a dozen people.
Getting curious (as always :-)), I asked a couple of guys what's the thing about it, and what's so special about it.
The answers ranged from vague ones like 'Good for health' to technically-sounding ones like 'Gets rid of toxins'.

It is common knowledge, (in fact very common) thanks to Google, that walking or any other physical exercises are equally or in fact more detoxifying, de-stressing, rejuvenating than the daily cup of green tea.
When there are cheaper and more effective alternatives available, not sure why people turn to things which claim to do things easily and fail at it so badly.

Sure green tea companies, sauna belt manufacturing units, 'morning walker' etc will continue to make hay till we don't give up on these easier and costlier, yet ineffective alternatives.

So next time, instead of sipping on the green tea, just get up and get moving!

Xenon Switch ON, Brains Switch OFF!

These are the same lamps that blind you see each day at least a few times when on the road. These are the same morons who have brains to buy high ended sedans and SUVs but the same brains are switched OFF when they put on these lamps.

That's a very sad state, the headlamps even when on low-beam totally blind the oncoming driver for a few seconds.

Not sure, why some people need cops to start a drive to discipline them. Are we so hell bent on breaking rules? Even after getting quality education and claiming to be in cities like Oxford of the east, do we need to be taught how to be civilized on the road?

What's the "once in a lifetime" offer from Volkswagen?

This new Volkswagen commercial caught my attention recently, and I got very curious about WTH is the "Once in a lifetime" offer.

I kept wondering whether it's a big discount, or a B-O-G-O-F (Buy One Get One Free) offer, or if it's a limited edition model made by Volkswagen and the possibilities of my imagination were endless ;-)

Apparently, the punch line "once in a lifetime offer" does its job perfectly of attracting prospective customers to the showroom. As for yours truly, he was nowhere planning to buy one nor willing to spend time to visit the showroom just to find WTH was the offer.


Eventually, I watched the commercial once again (thanks to Youtube), did some Googling and got the answer.
If you see and understand the commercial, you'd realize that the Persian gentleman loves his car so much that he cannot bear any dirt, dust or dropping on his car. The gentleman eventually passes away, and comes back by 'travelling a lifetime' to take care of the car in the form of his grandson.
And voila - the "once in a lifetime offer" now makes some sense... you own it once in a lifetime but keep coming back to it time and again.

Personally, I liked the campaign because it does its job very well without hiring any of the expensive brand ambassadors. Don't believe me? Ask someone who is planning to buy a hatchback, and chances of him/her having called up Volkswagen are very high.

Take a bow Volkswagen for that punch line!

At least some blessing in disguise...

It was one of the worst mornings Pune had ever faced for quite some time. A bus driver, either out of some mental illness or wanting to vent out some frustration, went on a rampage playing a juggernaut behind the wheels, mowing down almost everyone and everything that came in his way.
The causalities being 9 precious lives lost, dozens seriously injured and not to forget the traffic chaos around the city areas where the incident happened, resulting in scores of people losing precious time of their which is a national loss.

Thankfully though, the driver was a local. One can just cannot imagine how the issue would have snowballed if the driver was from some other part of the country. Almost everyone knows of at least one political party which is hypocritically against non-locals progressing in this part of the country no matter their merit.
The non-local cab and bus drivers around Pune and Mumbai must be really thanking their stars that this incident was due to anyone amongst them. There could have been more rampages and possible riots too, to follow.

Sadly, a lot of individuals amongst us support the party and its agenda. I know I run the risk of triggering a controversy or probably losing some friends(?) but then if they can hold a strong opinion FOR that party, it is fair for me as well to hold a STRONG opinion AGAINST it!

Oh dear Pigeon!

Oh dear Pigeon,
we don't doubt your sense of vision,

If you can pardon my terrace,
we would just have a cleaner surface,

I can give you water in summer,
And can occasionally satiate your hunger,

Please understand our pain,
next time on, shit in some drain!




Pigeons are frequent visitors to our terrace. Earlier they used to pick on the basil leaves, and now that we have moved the basil plant to a different place, they still frequent in search of I don't know what!
Their level of alertness can put the security guards to shame, and they fly away even at our slightest movement from this side of the glass doors.

Engineering habits die hard!

Been a little less than a decade since I graduated as a Bachelor of Engineering (actually, I feel old when I make that statement :-)). 
Coming to the point, some habits which got cultivated during those days out of either tight schedule or lackadaisical attitude during the beginning of semesters still have themselves clinged to me. 


There are at least a couple of them which I can relate to...
Firstly, procrastinating things right till the time either it's too late or till it's right there on the edge of the cliff. I still do not submit my reimbursement proofs or don't pay my utility bills till it's the last day or even a day later :P. 
Probably, it goes well with the habit of having to submit assignments on the last day during semesters. I remember we were so occupied during the whole semester with either assignments or fun, that the only time to study was during the 15-21 days before the semester actually commenced.


Secondly, the habit of staying awake late nights - No engineer true to his salt would say he/she hasn't stayed up late nights during the 4 years :-) 
Having just killed time with friends or having professors kill us over assignments and submissions during the whole semester, there was no other option but to burn the midnight oil.
I can still never ever get up early, and would hate it really if someone makes me get up before the sun is at 30 degrees to the horizon! On the other hand, I can stay awake the whole night and beat someone hands down at that :-) (wow, what a proud feeling!) :P


And then of course there are a host of other good habits that engineering has helped inculcate too, will keep them for another post.


Cheers to the habits and folks with whom I spent some of the best years of my life!

Some folks are so very naturally talented...

Happened to participate in a skit at our company's quarterly meet. Each team takes up the responsibility to present the meet every quarter in their own humorous way, and this time it was ours.
I have never been much into performing arts and kind. Acting somehow never comes to me naturally, though each one of us happens to 'act' in some way or other each day :)


And then there were a couple of naturally talented guys in our team, who could act up as SRK, Sanjay Dutt and Rajnikanth so very gracefully. As for yours truly, he acted as Amitabh Bacchan or should I say made an sloppy attempt at acting and delivering dialogues like the legend.


But anyway, it was fun, and I strongly believe such events at workplace just helps you de-stress and unwind from the routine, get to know people around better, hones creativity and yes helps you know how bad you are at performing arts :=)

Family Geography! (right, not History)

As I was thinking about the locations where my immediate family members are currently at, something stuck my thoughts...
Currently, am in Pune and considering that as the reference point,
1) My parents are in Mumbai - North of  Pune.
2) My better half is in Bankok - East of Pune.
3) My elder brother and his family are in the US - West of Pune.


Interesting isn't it, how life at times places us away from our family members at geographically dispersed locations :)

H-O-P-E

I  HOPE the weekend doesn't end so soon,
I  HOPE the Sun doesn't take over the Moon,

I  HOPE I achieve my dream some day,
I  HOPE to do it, come what may,

I  HOPE I keep writing this,
I  HOPE this blog doesn't end up as "Ignorance is bliss" :-)

Ok, on a serious note...
I am not at all a movie buff, but on some very strong recommendations over and over again, saw this movie -'The Shawshank Redemption' a few weeks back. It shows a man's determination, courage, mental acumen and most importantly HOPE to get himself out of a sentence he's serving because of circumstantial evidences going against him.

I would say this is a MUST WATCH movie for anyone and everyone. Apart from being truly entertaining in its script, it throws around some very good dialogues, has some very good actors (Morgan Freeman being my favorite in the movie) and also carries a message.

Do watch it when you get a chance, sure the movie would keep you clinged right till the end.

I HOPE you really do watch the movie, and this space again :-)

"Til Gul ghya goad-goad bola..."

One festival, yet many names and celebrated on the 14th day of the first month of the English calendar.

Add caption

Here's wishing all my readers a Happy Sakrant !!

Til-Gul ghya goad goad bola...

(Please help yourself with as many as you would like :=))

Who would teach them anyway?

Ever paused for a moment to think who would actually teach mannerisms to the blue-collared folks around?  We went to school, finished graduation,even attended courses for developing soft skills and grooming sessions, but what about these 'under privileged' ones?


My personal opinion is that since these folks are at the lower end of the social strata, they look up to the ones above them to learn mannerisms, civic sense, kindness and politeness among a lot of other things. Hence, I strongly believe that we should be gentle and treat these people with respect and politeness.
It's so very often that we see so called 'white-collared' folks talk to such people in a rude tone, ignore them and even abuse them. This is not only true with such 'elite' adults but even their kids, which is just awful for educated kids of educated parents!


If this continues, how would that section of the society which includes janitors, security guards, drivers, toll collection agents and so on that we see in our everyday life ever improve in a developing country like ours? Would it be fair for us to expect them to improve their behavior when we are ourselves tainted?


So, the next time we talk to such folks let us make sure we are gentle and polite enough. As they say, 2 words of kindness wouldn't surely do any harm to anyone. That is the least amount of social responsibility we can  ever carry out.

Tapping creativity by panning

While I was on the streets of Bangkok a few days back, I really wanted to take some different kinda snaps instead of the regular freezed ones.


Going back to the hotel room, I quickly Googled for the 'Panning' technique to capture subjects which are in motion and give the image a feel of the subject's movement.


The picture besides was taken using the panning technique in which you should be on lower shutter speeds, focus on the subject and then move your camera in the direction of the subject just as you hit the capture button. 
This way, your subject (the person and the bike in my picture) is in focus whereas the background gives a feel of the movement that your subject is making.


Am sure there could be many more creative ideas once you get a hang of this technique.

A developer's life is NOT just about CODING

A developer's life is not just about writing good code and communicating well with stakeholders. It's also about knowing other tasks which are not really meant or defined for a developer if you read the 'Job description' documented by the company.


These could be anything from configuring Oracle installations, mounting file-systems on a Unix box, writing small pieces of code to automate mundane tasks, fixing something that is wrong with Continuous Integration servers and the list goes on. 
I also know a few developers around who would simply shun from such kind of jobs because they think it's not a part of their role as defined by the company. 


However, if one thinks about it wisely, the advantages of running such odd jobs once in a while are manifold. I will list below the advantages I see out of them...

1. They hone your R&D skills on a platform which you have probably never seen earlier.
2. You are allowed to make mistakes just because you are learning and everyone knows that you are trying your hand at an otherwise specialized job.
3. You get to talk stuff at stand-ups which could be totally new to others, and hence impressive of you :)
4. In the process of searching for solutions, you learn better use of Google keywords.
5. Once you regularly showcase your skills in these odd directions (after having proved your developer acumen of course), people look forward to you as a techie and logical guy, and not just yet another developer around the corner.
6. You get to work with really low level basics and lingos which you might have never heard or used after your graduation.

Hope this makes sense to my developer audience.

Mom, why do they switch off aircraft cabin lights during take off and landing?

I was on a flight last week, and as it goes with my inquisitive nature about anything on wheels, I kept wondering about a lot of things around me like how does the movement of wings affect the flight, why do flight attendants request passengers to pull up the window shutters, why are the cabin lights switched off during take off and landing.


Once home, I googled it up and found the answers.


As for the cabin lights being switched off, from some amount of reading around it's apparent that those are done because emergency situations are more likely to occur during landing and take off.
In case the worst happens, they want our eyes to be already adjusted to the darkness around us (on a night flight) instead of passengers trying to pave their way through pitch darkness that surrounds ones eyes if there is a sudden transition of the intensity of light.


Found it to be one of the noble precautions that the aviation industry takes to give us safer yet comfortable in-flight experience...


I will try to write about answers to my other inquisitive thoughts about an aircraft in some other post.

After a days work...

... No, I would not blabber about anything. This is just a post tell you guys (and also Google search engine :-) ), that I have renamed the blog to something which is more relevant.
I could not do much justice to the older name ('growwithjava'), because AfterADaysWork, I just could not find the courage and enthusiasm to again go back to write or talk about java or any technology, which I anyway TRY to DO the whole day.

This new name gives me mental flexibility to write about anything and everything after a days work minus the embarrassment of having to write under a different 'mask' :-)

Hope I continue to enjoy writing this for the small number of adhoc visitors I have each day... and hope they enjoy reading as well... Cheers!

Stable and stylish tuk-tuks!

I was in Bangkok (thanks to wifey and her company :-) ), and was fascinated by these small public carriers on the road. They are colorful, play loud rock music, are decorated right from the hood to the silencer to the wheels, have cool looking drivers, they sport silencers whose sound are a treat to a "thump" lover's ears.

More importantly, apart from their visual appeal, what I liked about them is that they seem to be lot more stable given their larger wheelbase and lower height than the desi auto-rickshaws. Sure, they seem to have put some good thought into the stability of these 3-wheeled 'rockets' on Bangkok roads.

Here are a few pictures, hope you enjoy them...

Telecommuting - Boon or bane?

The place where I am currently employed has overshot its capacity, and they plan to shift a few teams to another location which is inconvenient for most of the folks.
I wonder why management doesn't think of telecommuting as an option for us. The advantages are manifold ranging from increased employee satisfaction to better employee retention to monetary savings for the company.

The one about savings could be a big one am sure, considering the cost involved in setting up IT infrastructure, the cubicles, sundry facilities and so on. Yet, there are no visible talks of allowing folks to work from home. Of course everyone understands that being in a developing country that we are, there could be issues with logistics like frequent power failure, poor internet connectivity etc. but the onus of getting this in place can lie with the employee, failing which he/she can be made to lose this privilege.

Given the boon surrounding this arrangement, I really dunno why companies especially in India are hesitant to let people work from home. Just like we start new processes like Scrum, automating test cases, setting up CI servers and what not in software development, why can't we just kick-start and try this one as well on a pilot project?

Everyone likes to be clicked, even non living objects

After a 15-20 minutes of photo session with a lot of angles, intensity of flash, composition of the clips, finally zeroed down on one good click.
(f/7.1, 1/180, 200)