Quiet An Eventful NZ

The story starts from April end. I was on a Holiday, and I got a call to check my availability for yet another Business Trip. Exciting New Zealand, I got the goose bumps immediately; for the land of nature and Penguins. I applied for my Visa of the 4th of May, which supposedly should be issued within 4 days. But, the NZ immediately got process got changed on 3rd of May, and thus the delays to my VISA approval was inevitable. Moreover, the new process was not aware to my Travel Agent. Thus it results a rejection in the VISA plea, because of missing TRUE Copy attestation of my documents. So far so good, I reapplied for the Visa on 12th once again, with the hopes of getting it through but the following Friday, I came to know, a rejection once again. This time because of the missing TRUE Copy stamp, the stamp is in bold emphasize a handwritten TRUE Copy doesn’t count to NZ immigration. OK, now what, the Documents were re-submitted with the TRUE COPY stamp. The pressure from the client was high. I need to be in the country ASAP. I was waiting fingers crossed for the VISA, but alas on the 18th I got a call, that one of the documents which had printing on both the sides didn’t have the corresponding TRUE Copy stamp. A big fuss of the stamp, I submitted the documents, though I didn’t want to, that too because the passport was stuck in the consulate. And to take it back will again 4-5 days, so better give a try to cross the hurdle. The last when all the documents were there, then my application itself was found to be incorrect. To the NZ consulate, the purpose of my Visit didn’t fall into Visitor’s Visa category, but to the Work VISA category. Now what, the conflict of should I shouldn’t I was a taking a toll on me, finally I applied for it. This time whoa, I got the VISA issued. Now, next I had to fly to NZ within a day. And my Passport was to be delivered on the Bombay International Airport. Good, it does happen in the fast pace, world of the day. I got the Passport on the Airport and then fly to my dreams.
The flight in Mumbai was late by two hours, my waiting in Mumbai grossed to more than 4. OK, this also happens. The next stop was Hong Kong, and here the transit time is 10 hours. What can one do, within few 100 square meters at an unknown place for 10 hours, slept, woke, slept, woke,…, and I didn’t know what else did I do on the Hong Kong Airport. The next flight to Auckland was quiet good. I had the enough of the sleep, and when I woke in the morning, the extremities of the Pacific visible from the flight window were just unimaginable. I landed, and went through the security check. Now, a different flight to Wellington, after I got my boarding pass done, a good looking Indian called me. Yes called me. She was a first time flier, and thus looking for some Indian companion as she also had to transit to the domestic airport like me. She had to go to Christchurch. The Auckland International, and the domestic Airport are some distance, and when you transit between, you’ll feel like walking in the park. The pain of journey had just gone away, and I was gazing the nature. Every color I saw had definite meaning, grass should be green, sky should be blue, rose should be red, every color was purer and I was seeing for the very first time in my life. The excitement was high. The Flight to Wellington, was relaxed, we were hardly, 20-25 people travelling in Boeing 737, with a majority of the seats unoccupied. This was also unique to my experience. From the nation of 1.2 billion people, I’d never seen a square yard of land, where people are not struggling to stand on.
The Wellington city has everything, the harbor, the trains, the roads, and the airport. And if you want to measure it by dimension, you can walk through from one end to another in a matter of few hours. Rather the village I belonged has bigger boundaries. Despite it being small, with all possible means of commutation, the city is clean as anything. I came out of the Airport, and reached my Hotel. The reception greeted me, and said my Boss left me a message to have dinner with him. I was feeling lucky. But in NZ, in hotels even though it’s a 5-star, you don’t get Internet as complimentary, and even the charges for a day is 30$. Anyways, for the first day I thought of spending 30$. In the evening had very beer, and kind of a warm homely welcome into a city of unknown. I got access to my local office, where I can get access to internet. So the very first problem of internet got solved. But actually it created another problem, to which I’ll come later.
I joined my client, for the Project I came for. But good news, though the client had set a laptop for me, but login for me was not created. A helpdesk ticket had to be raised, which the client though raised. But the timeline for the login creation there is minimum 4 days, so is the case with the issuance of Access Cards. Thus I joined the project for some number of days out of which for 4 days I didn’t have the computer itself. Good, paid for doing nothing. But it’s not so, I plugged in my laptop in their network to start with my work. But with this I can’t access the internet, only the black terminals of putty. So for initial days my routine was to come back from the client office and visit to my local office for some official purpose. The office here though in Wellington is quiet like a startup, being executed but just two individuals. So I remained in office alone after business hours. And one fine day, at around 9.00 pm, after working on some stuff, I stood and went to washroom. We are from India, where to both get in and get out of the office premises you have to have the access card. So chances of forgetting the card are zero, especially if you are all alone in the office. But this happened to me, when I came back I realized I forgot to carry something, my access card with me. My stuff was inside, and I was outside, standing in just a shirt at 4 degree Celsius. At times, you can think of many things, but you can’t hold of anything. Same was here with me; my fears were holding me, fear of cold, fear of the time, and fear of my stuff my lying inside? I got to the hotel, slept in worries, and hurried to the local office to collect my stuff. This was the first problem I created for me. The stuff was important, as office is small with just two, I couldn’t be sure if they were not on leave for next few days. The decision to shift the Hotel was coming to actuation; I roam to a few places for the cheap internet services. Luckily or unluckily, I got a service apartment where the Internet was complementary.
The next few days went in the dreams; I was acclimatizing to the chills of June in Wellington. The Weather may not be good, but I don’t have the complaints about it. It was not as bad to avoid one going out. I was on the nature trip. The ferry visit to the secluded Soms island was something I’ll never miss. It’s marvelously beautiful. The client office was good few Indians do work over here. And one of them developed a good connection with me. He’s from Kerala, living in Wellington since 1988. Very good person, and one fine weekend, he called me to his home for some dinner, and prayers, the Indian community peoples do round-robin based in their respective homes. I was for having the taste of home food away from the homeland. The day came I was excited to go over his place, and didn’t want him to wait for me, if he come by little earlier. The excitement is just my pain, I would say. I’ll try to avoid. Reason, we will come to know. I waited for him in front of my Apartment building. He came and the first thing I noticed was his car had the number plate “ADITYA”, a very unnatural thing to see a name on the car number plate. From so many days of my residence in Wellington, I never seen the police, thus convinced people lives by the law here, by choice not by force. I asked him how come, a number plate without number, he said the car has the number/name “ADITYA”. In NZ, you can buy custom number plates if they are available - so a new amazement to my life. I reached his home, and the gratitude his family showed was just not believable. I felt like his family. In the evening, many people, including some English, gathered together in his hall. All may were the regular member of the community visit, but for the likes of me, they carry the transcripts. I was given the transcript of Sanskrit shloks/prayer, And it was not small, more than 30 pages. I never prayed in India, and I was doing in New Zealand that too in Sanskrit, with a couple of English men and women. Even the children of the age group of 5-7 had memorized all the chants. One more amazement to see Sanskrit and the prayers are being respected so much in this part of the world, whereas it’s loosing it’s footprints in its origin lands. The dinner afterwards was for 30 people, and that too was cooked by a business woman, high up in the corporate ladder all alone, with considerable help from my colleague. In NZ, keeping a servant for the house hold work is out of scope to think. Here the people, do all their stuff by themselves. Youth in India are trying to be outgoing, falsely following the west or developed, but the developed are still attached to their roots, they do their household and they are outgoing. Anyways, after having dinner at my colleagues place, it was around 10:00 pm, I asked for my leave, and he genuinely accepted. He had to drop me back to my apartment. And while travelling back to home, I realized I didn’t have the keys to my apartment. It was nowhere in the car, in of the pockets. Feeling guilty of troubling him, I asked for his excuse, as I thought I lost my keys. At 10:00 pm in the night, where darkness hits at 6:00 pm, i had no place to go, without my keys, except to his home back. We searched everywhere, every corner I moved in their apartment. My face was grin once again, all the key and access cards, there were 4 of them, all were ringed to the same key chain. So I’d lost literally lost every available access points to me in Wellington. Later when lost we called to the apartment receptions in the hopes if anyone around. There were hope, one of reception girls stayed in the same building, was available and thus I was allowed to comeback and the duplicate keys, duplicate were available to unlock my room. It looks good, but I was worried of loosing other keys attached to ring, and thus was fingers crossed to be on the sight, where I might have forgotten my keys at my apartment itself. Whoa, the same happened, the keys were lying there on my study table.
Days passed by some events happened, and one fine day while back from office, I thought of buing some pre-cook food. The instruction said to heat it in a conventional oven for about 15 minutes. The conventional oven is not a microwave oven, please keep in mind. I was relaxed keeping the stuff in the microwave set for 15 minutes, turned on and was roaming around. 15 minutes for oven are too much. It burnt the food. My apartment had the fire sensors make an automatic call out to the Fire Department in case of any fire. As soon as I opened the door of the oven smoke was filled in the apartment and all of a sudden fire alarm started buzzing and a building evacuation emergency was rolled out. I told the reception of my fault, and within 10 minutes, 4 fire trucks were standing in-front of the building. A plenty of Fire Fighters jumped on to the job. They were give the duplicate key to my room. And when they came out in 5 minutes, I was declared the creator of the problem, thus the false alarm. In NZ, the fine for the False alarm is 1000 NZD. The Fire Alarm is supposed to be considered malicious if it’s not from the genuine fire smoke. So if it could have been a fire, because of some heating in the oven, I wouldn’t be fined for anything, considering it an accident. But since Fire wasn’t I was made the victim for 1500$. So an event trip, may be further more to come.

Paradigm Shift

A couple of month back I was in software development, developing and maintaining the system software. C was my third language after English and Hindi. The good part of C or rather a drawback is that it has a very small context. We can define big framework using C, but C in itself is so small to explore. The concept was all mattered till the very date. We always use to have the set of defined input, set of defined output, and certain non-functional requirements of performance of the application. The application used to sit somewhere in the background of the system and does the playback singing for the respective audience of the software. The audience always gave a big applause for the performance of application. So far so good, not a big deal, I was doing well, as my application was.
And then, after feeling boorish of doing the playback singing I thought of facing the audience right from the center stage. So I shifted my paradigm, from a developer of the software application to the user of the software application[s]. Kindly notice the extra s that changed my life to what I don’t know. As till date I rhymed the nursery poem, and now I’m sitting straight into the high school exams. The cluster of applications which make a suite of software platform, doesn’t allow me understand the input and output behaviors. Yesteryears developer is finding hard time in shifting the paradigms from reading man pages to user guides, sdk’s to best practices guide, system calls to query framework.
As said it’s a suite, consisting of many applications developed by many of the likes of me; and all of their own mindsets of the likes and dislikes of the language, platform, OS, behavior. Thus the suite itself doesn’t have a consistent behavior across the board. It’s a framework of many interpreter languages. And two different languages don’t have a correlation. The syntax varies, the call varies, and the execution varies. Above all, sitting next to the person who pays for you and jiggling with the thoughts “what if this doesn’t go the way I think” makes a little more complex to the life. “Will it be the software bug, or is it just because of me still spiraling in the same development curve”. The pressure of not reflective the pressure I feel inside for the unawareness of minor tweak, is sometimes tough to hide. I’ve been suggested to “show confident even if I’m not”. There’s no one accompanying on the center stage, perform or perish, 0 or 1, the only use of binary number system I can think of at the moment. There were severity-1 issues I used to take in previous phase of my professional life, but then they used to be once in a blue moon, and now I’m on the hot plate for about a month.
Enough of complaining, I was looking a change, and I got the change. Then I was solving a problem, and now I can define a problem to be solved. I’ve to cope with the change I’m facing. May be I’ve just initiated my journey in to the Ocean, I hope it to be calm deep inside. And the loads of experience and memories I’ve on my shoulders are just the handful of perks, which I wasn’t aware living in those boundaries. There’s no free lunch, enjoyment does have a cost.

Am I worth the Purpose?

I’m back after a long haul, reason I was busy finding me. And I found none. The purpose of me I couldn’t correlate to anything. All I could see was a man running over the principles postulated by some other man. Now when I come to know the meaning of those principles, I would like to explore in the know-how’s of reasons for those principles. The principles if at all serve any purpose to the mankind. So I am ready for a new voyage in my life of finding if I’m worth the purpose.
I was told and retold of the capabilities and the strength WE do serve for the society. But now I would like to stand out of the WE phrase of my life to look for the capabilities lying within me. I don’t want to shoulder the weight of a weaker partner, nor do I wish to accumulate the credits of the stronger partner. I would like to live at my own, either stand out of the WE, or standup over the WE, but not within WE.
So long I have seen a flat earth, therefore, how could I believe it to be a ball. The only way to contain my nerves over the thought is to see the earth from the top enough to be able to see it complete. No one can picture the shape of the body by being a part of the body, I’ll have to get off of the body to see its importance if any. I hope I’ll cope up with the pressure of the complete numb and curiosity within me to visualize the beautiful sceneries I’ll be witnessing soon.
I’ll be running into a new stream of life, where, I would like to explore the horizons of my creativity and analysis. I would like to make the crafts out of junk. I would like to see if I can complete the crosswords of the requirements from ones life. I would like to witness the compete movie, rather would continue to see a still frame of a scene and make out the movie by itself.
So far so good, I wish to know the reason of my life. If I’m the thread of god’s creation with some purpose on the namespace of this universe or am I just a dangling pointer with some unreasonable execution and will evade away off the planet on a chronological call. I wish to know my USP, and if at all that serves any purpose. I wish to paint a compete picture of the nutty gritty things I do have lying in my backyards.
Hopefully, I will come out worth the Purpose.

My Professional Life

The Way I'm

Many a times in the day I introspect, what am I doing, what am I capable of, should I try for what I’m not at the moment? Do I belong only to the surrounding I’m in? Am I in the boundaries of the destiny and fate? Am I doing anything worth mentioning or is it as regular as anyone can do it if he made to put in my shoes? But then what is in for me? Questions, questions and there are many more questions. The answer if I see makes me spiritual. The ideologies that come are often negative in nature. Confusion cripples over mind. I don’t want to trade-off between this and that, between here and there. Every time I look upon I see I want the perfect 10 out of 10. Loosing anything at the cost of else is just I’ve never made my mind for. We read statistics and probabilities, and then the exercise of picking a red ball from a box of n number of balls colored distinctly that too blind folded. I don’t want to pick a single ball, I want to keep the complete box with me, as my expectancy of holding the red ball is perfect one. But, since the ifs of the game don’t allow me the box, I’m not able to keep any ball with me, and hence lose the game. The selection of one out of n is not my cup of tea. It is not that I’m color blinded that I can’t distinguish between the different colored balls, but since the purpose of picking the ball doesn’t depend upon its color, why do we bother to select only red from a pool of many. A ball is a ball as long it is spherical. So if my job is done irrespective of the choices I made, why am I being asked to make choices. All the things are good enough to be with. Then, why the things at the far end seem so good? The obvious is not good because it’s available next door. If given privileges, we want to make choices, the fear of losing the best make us to think of having the privilege to testify everything.

The privilege of keeping the choices many a times empowers you with the feeling of power to eliminate. But other times, it just demands your time unnecessarily over ridiculous choices. The choices one can make depend upon the number and type of the objects to choose. So what am I left with? A choice to choose the option from the given choice, no matter if there’s any option with which I want to live with. So that means I’m not choosing, but I’m portraying to be doing the job. Means I’m living artificial or is the need of the time. 

I want...

A friend most recently asked me about my demands from the life. Well, a tough ask, but this is the same which I am asking to me for quite long period. I don’t know what I’m worth of. The life for me is bringing opportunities either under standard or over standard to me. I’ve always been inefficient in finding out the right knick between the choices and availability, between the brain and heart, between the desires and passion, between demand and supply. I carry the twins of the Gemini over my shoulders. And both of them are always fighting for their existence. The two every time have quite opposite want from the life. They fight for their rights and the sufferer is here writing out his emotions in the middle of the night.
But then don’t take me as a loser, I’m lucky, the twin nature is just good for me. With it I’ve got at least two views, or the approaches to attack the problems I had been put against to. The past had proved I had always been able to identify the pros and the cons of every situation; the balance was always there with me. The passion of the wants was controlled by the awareness of the cons of the wants. The result was always there with me, even before entering into at the arena of gladiators. I was always been able to peep into the future, may be I’m too fast or the clock ticks at a quite low rate.
With the reflections I put on to the achievements or the losses I incurred during my Silver Jubilee journey of the life, I can find I had lost hardly anything. There was gain and only gain, things were with me, and those which didn’t stop by me were later found to be of no worth. I had been lucky to witness both the dark and bright of the nature. But don’t know why, I just never tried to catch up with the brighter people. Some where in the deep sub conscious, I was jealous of being over shadowed by the bright crowd, hence always kept me happy with the dark species. But who wants to serve in heaven if I’ve the option to rule the hell. I, if follow the pug marks left on the traces of my memory, finds out the desires I had, had been fulfilled every time I dreamt of anything. But the impatient heart had always been let down by the unavailability of the desire at the moment. Every one on the planet has the needs, but I look for fulfilling them ASAP.
For me nothing is big enough to gulp in my head, and there are very few things discovered yet which can keep me engaged for quite a longer period of time. I’m the person of change I’m the person of analytics. For me the objects of the world are the well formulated member of time variant equation. No matter, what goes up or down, the net result of the nature remain constant. I need the reason from everything to everything. And from my view point everyone on the planet is liable to give his/her reasons.
If one wish I can make out for my future is, then it is the CHANGE which I’ll ask for. I’ll go for the continuous CHANGES of the Life’s demands from me. I want my Today should be different from the Yesterday, and my Tomorrow should not be a repeat telecast of the Present or the Past. I’m a quick wit and a fast learner, and if I can learn the lesions of life in one go, why repeat the same class over and over again. I want to be away from the boorish nature of rewriting the same design patterns. I want my life to flow like surfers flow over the waves, should never know if I be able to get of to the shore. I inhibit the characteristics of the travelers and explorers, who want to make their way out to the mundane if thrown out to the deserts of SAHARA, or into the dark jungles.
But the ability to poke in to the Future is just letting me down of living a continuous change. I know my Past, or Present can’t be repeated into Future. But the ability of thinking about the Future, make me capable of thinking my Future into the Present, which results into a predefined Tomorrow. So a SAD story, the only ask from the life, i.e. the CHANGE can’t be granted to me.

Pearl in Dark

Hi I’m cleaning company agent, I do cleaning of the people’s waste wishes, shitty ideas, nonsense designs and corrupt thoughts. I am the maintainer of the predefined rule sets. I patch the holes, and re-patch the holes left even in the patch. I watch the performance of the stream flow for any kind of blocking object coming in between the smooth passage. I should be proud of having the chance to clean the dirt. The proud to have the chance to be the owner of somebody else’s shit. The person with the pressure had done his job in the long past, and now I’m digging out his ashes in the marsh. The more I’m trying to get out of it, the more deep I go into the marsh. I’m afraid if one day I’ll be consumed by the marsh itself.

The shit I’m cleaning has become very tough and stable by now. With so many years it kept in the sunny environment of the desert its moisture content has just dried off. Now it’s been reached to such a solid state that it can’t be molded to any other shape or to change its overall design pattern. It’s been reached to a very solid state. The solidity of the shit is such that it cannot be cut even by the sharpest of the object like diamond. And since the external interface of the shit still is smooth and clean, the water flowing over it cannot even seep into it as there’s no left porosity in the shit. So chances are only zero, to contribute to its attributes. The truth is that the shit I’m on will remain the same; the consumer of it has to take it, the way it is. The crudity of the shit has taken the toll in the past, that for every request of the consumer; there’s always a standard answer – “we are watering the shit, sooner it’ll become loose to change its design we’ll come back to you with a new design”. But then at least the water on the planet is not sufficient enough to make it wet and I don’t see its availability on any other planet except the only aware biological planet.

The issue is not in cleaning the dirt. After all, we are being paid for the job. But my horizon is big, I can take more shit then I’m given to handle. But I don’t want to ask for it, after all its shit, not the gold which is lying down there. Since there have been so much experience in looking the type, design, content, interface and many other fundamental attributes of others waste, why I’m not getting the chance to provide the society, with the shit contributed solely by me? The answer to my question I know, I’m so late to come on the planet, there were thousands before I came into the World, to secrete out their waste products, and by now the number rise to millions. With so much population in our domain of designing and deployment of the shits, virtually every design shit is released out to the gutters of the Software Society. It’s tough to find out a unique design patented by me with so many down their in the market.

So are we reached to stable state of world, wherein no change will be reported in the future, only the look and feel of past will be modified in the future, so that consumers can’t make out the shadow of the past in the future. Or I’m changing or adapting to environmental needs to a greater extent much beyond, what Darwin had thought of. Or the rate of change I’m running is far big enough such that the relativity principles of Einstein if applied to my change rate, the World will be seen stable with no change happening around.

But a chance is always there, if the World is not changing, change the World. There’s a belief of life in other parts of the Universe as well. May be the shit I learned in this World will not be known to the world I’ll be moving to – “A chance to have my own ****”

A key phrase has just hit my – “impatience is the new life”.