Confessions

A lot many days have past, I didn’t write anything, and I am a newbie in this blog world, so its not easy for me to continue the topic of my older blogs, neither I find it easy to find topics to write on. So today I’ll write about the confession or the weakness I do have.

First, I am very particular about territories. I don’t want anyone coming into my personal space, without my permission. At the same time, I contradict myself by trying to find the hidden treasures in others space.

Second, I live the life in the extremes, a Boolean one, either yes/no. But, to many questions yes/no is not applicable.

Third, my irritation quotient is very low. Therefore, to me everything I know is very genuine and everybody should be aware of it, and if the person next to me ask me any such question, the very first impression I take for the person is, what a fool he is.

Fourth, I take the things very personal, so if one’s action had given me a jolly life in the past, but now the person has done a very small mistake, I don’t remember what he has done for me in the past, and everything immediately gets wiped off with the present.

Fifth, I make a personal relation in my professional circle as well, which makes me to respect a person’s seniority even if I know he is wrong at any point. This causes some kind communication hesitation at my part.

Sixth, I am not comfortable with the 50% of the youth population, i.e. to the young ladies. I always keep a soft corner for them, may be I always look for a chance.

 

Journey being WaitListed

Today’s the corporate era – everybody on their toes. Gone are the days when our Pops’ used to plan their holiday’s well in advance. But now the work pressure has put us in such a bad situation as in we never know, if we would be going on holiday which we planned some two months back. The result, the person who boasts of so much of plan executions and teach other’s of the benefits of planning in his professional circle can never plan his own life.

 

Until the last days of Diwali, I never knew if I would be able to make to reach my parents on this Diwali. The results I couldn’t book well in advance my journey tickets. With the population rising at the exponential rate in this country, there’s a long list of wait listed candidates in every queue. Same happened to me I was given waiting list status of #206. Though not enthusiastic, I was still hopeful of my ticket to be confirmed by the journey date. The journey date has also even come up, still W/L 146, but its not the end of the hope, there are still the chances of getting it confirmed by the time chart will be prepared. I packed my bag, keep the luggage as small as possible, dressed up, tied my shoe laces, and headed up for the railway station. I reached to the platform well in advance of at least an hour, so I got enough of time, to explore through the prepared reservation chart, and to see where I am going to land. Alas, I am still W/L 11. What left I had to wait train, board it with the wait listed status, and see if I can accommodate myself in some coach. The thought of comfort factor is gone by now. The only thing that came across, as soon as I enter the train, I look for the TTE and settle down to a decent deal.

 

When I entered the coach, I saw every compartment’s bathroom lobby is occupied by a least 2-3 people. So the hopes were just about to collapse. I forgot for the seat, now, my target was to look for some space in the bathroom lobby itself, but in India, you’ll find people every where. I wonder why the hell, the cricketers in the post match presentation ceremony always thanks to the crowd in India, as this the only thing we in development moving forward in the world. Means, the bathroom lobby in every coach was also full house. The only space that is left is that creates when we shut the doors. So I put my sack down there, and sat on the same. The time was around 2200 Hrs, the privileged people with the births were going under the covers, while me just looking for the minutes that have been passed, the hours those have still to spend etc. Nothing was going good. Meanwhile, train halts to station Valsaad, not a popular one, but yes the bad luck was still with me, the passengers boarding the train had their seats in my coach and to the worst part they were about to enter from the door I was sitting by. My only place was also gone, I got up, opened the doors, and welcomed the unwanted guests. The train started once again, and I was waiting on platforms so that I could be the last one to board the train so that I once again can, occupy my seats (the door side).

 

The time had crossed the midnight limits, all the privileged passengers were in their best of the sleeps while the less privileged one like me, were looking them sleeping. By then, I was able to count each of 206 bones of my body, every muscle around them was aching. The more I would be concentrating on the body parts the more pains would be there. So I was looking to do something else, thank god, at least we are in communications era, and thus carry the cells everywhere we go. The good point is that is even if we don’t have the network, we still can have the leisure to play cell-phone games. With so much prologue, I must say that I picked out my outdated nokia 1100, and started the snake application. And believe me it worked I didn’t realize how the time went by, and when I realized it was around 2 in the morning. My body was shattering, eyes were closing by themselves. I got up walked from one coach to other to other and to look if any of them had sufficient space to accommodate me. I got one place in the passers-by, forgot where I would be landing in, I made the sack as the pillow, and lied down there only, and don’t know when I got into my dreamy world.

 

I was 6:00 am, Lonavala station hawkers were shouting for their chickies, and chai. Some passengers were yawning, some were packing their stuffs back. To a little while, I didn’t know what to do, but later I got up picked a nearby seat corner, and started looking the dawn, the sun rising outside the train which I had not seen in the near past. The train shunting and in an hour I reached to my destination station – Pune. I got off the train and walked off the station, leaving behind all the pains and misery I encountered. 

All's well that end's well

Sev - 1 @ Late Evening

“5:30 p.m. time to do pack-up guys”, I said to Krishna. Then I started zooming around if I can get a look at some scenic feature in my office. This cost me a couple of minutes and I didn’t find anything. So I picked the leather cricket ball kept on my desk which nobody knows to whom it belongs to, and start spinning the ball around. Meanwhile, I saw Shahrukh came to the krishna’s desk, and chatting around. “Guys, it’s a Sev-1 against 007”, Krishna spoke loudly. Should we call the Mukhia jee back from his home? To which I said no “Let’s see first then if its pressures’ then we will call anybody”.

Few moments later I got a call from Prabhu, mentioning the severity level of the issue. I said OK let’s have the webex, and he scheduled it for about 6:00 pm.

Krishna and I booked a few conference rooms, occupied one of them, well before 6:00 pm. We booted the machine and boom, the power connection to monitor has gone. So I decided to take on the call from my desk only. To which Krishna said, why not do the netmeeting from within the Prabhu’s desk. I neglected it for few times, but seeing the persistent request from Krishna, I said ok let’s do with Prabhu only.

Prabhu, started the meeting, called the Bye-Bye communications, and introduced the us to them. I took the handset from Prabhu, and put the mode to speaker. I greeted the person on call but no response, there must be something wrong with the speaker of the phone so put the phone to head set mode once again. The whole idea of Krishna immediately gone went by. He was waiting there, to have the call on speaker and listen what is going to happen but then ….. we can’t help in certain situaltions.

XYZ shared his desktop, I was seeing it, one of 007 was executing, I asked him to spawn one but without any of knowledge into it. He did so, later I saw none of the two 007’s, the one which was already executing and the other which I made him to spawn his any issues. They were just fine. I got my point, I told XYZ, let them run for about 4-5 hrs in the system call trace mode and then send us the log, if the problem happens. If not then apply some intelligence to the 007, and see if it misbehaves. The moment I conveyed this thought, Krishna put a smile on his face. He got my point of making the XYZ collecting the trace for about 10-12 hours will make the issue reach to early morning clock hours, and that was making sure, we would be reaching home sweetly in time.

I don’t know whether XYZ, sensed it or not. But he immediately said “there are n number of systems with this behavior, we can log in any of those systems”. I thought, damn the night has to go like this way only. We logged to one of those, saw the issue happening. Again XYZ made a statement, that they had no problems since two years with any of the 007. To which I suddenly said ok, now no worries, if 007 had been good enough for years, I can’t create issues for himself in last 20 odd days. So chilled/pilled I asked XYZ to trace a running 007. He did so well, after this execution I asked him to send us the trace logs, and took some of our relaxing time.

I knew the next of information sharing between me and XYZ will be at least ½ hour later. I utilized the time, in a proper way. I had some free snacks in our café, and then sent off some of my colleagues.

I then, called Prabhu, to know the status, and also wrote him a hell lot of steps to be performed by the XYZ, with a thought that this may take a couple of hours. For first few minutes I wasted jiggling around, playing with a few commands, played PAM-PAM both 32/64 bit version on AIX. I enquired, if we can pull the issue to morning, to which Prabhu told that XYZ is a kind of batman, who can attend the meeting in the midnight as well. I said ok.
I was not in a plan to write down this phrase if I had not to kill my time in my office. But right now I got the call from Prabhu, saying the Batman for a change today is sleeping in the night. Which is good for me, I am signing for the day.

0700 hrs to 0200 hrs

Hi Shukla, Good Morning; Deepak called me early in the morning. I tried opening my eyes, but my conscience was saying – “Don’t try, you can’t”. I told Deepak, “Please you are a good friend of mine, a short nap please”. This is how the day started for me.
I looked at my cell, just 0700 hrs, what am I going to do waking so early. I stood from the bed, stretched a bit, and went out for the newspaper. But once a while when you wake so early you come to know newspaper vendors also doesn’t remain time efficient, even they deliver the bed tea newspaper, with the mid-day newspaper. Now what? I put on my shoes, and made a determination to start jogging daily, today onwards. I came out of my flat, and in a flash, observed that elevator is waiting there on my floor only. They say “beginners luck”(picked from Summer 2007). I immediately entered into the elevator and pushed the parking button. Soon reached the parking floor, I opened the lift channels came out of it. My society’s security guard, who also use to wash my bike came and said “Namastey Sir, today so early, is everything alright?”. I blushed as if waking late is a kind of achievement I had made these days. I looked around, feeling the clarity of the sky, looked up for the Sun, so that I might come to know where’s east. I noticed that traffic is rushing, god knows what they were doing at so early hours? I made a thought, let’s not run too rigorous today, and took some rounds of society’s park, and then put myself on one of the benches there. The very next moment I dialed to my mom and made her happy, that I had started waking early and will do exercise daily. Observing the response from my mom, I made the call to my bro, and sis as well making them aware too of today’s achievement of waking so early. 0730 hrs, I started moving to my flat. When I reached I didn’t find newspaper, I immediately made my mind to stop the paper if it does come so late. I surfed through star-news to zee-news to ibn7 to etc. everywhere the same story of vote for confidence for Manmohan Singh. How long could I persist with the same flashy “Breaking News” footer. At last, moved to MTV and V, but the videos there were running were the same, which these channels were telecasting for quite a long time. I, bored of the TV, felt that I didn’t have enough of sleep. Thank god the paper has come, I took the paper sat on the mattress in the living room and was reading top stories. Soon I realized position I was holding was not comfortable. So I moved to my bedroom, sat on the bed shuffling through the paper. The fan was on, I was feeling a cool shiver so took the blanket on me and I don’t know when I was again went to my finish my half done task of sleep.
0930 hrs it was, I opened my eyes, thanked to god, I got my full sleep. I was roaming here and there, Ravikant spoke to me, “hey aren’t you going office today?”. To that I responded “yes I will” and continued my work – actually what defines work, nobody knows. 0945 hrs, I realized I thought time to get set go. But bad – I have to shave. Believe me it is the most boring job to lather your face and then shave it off.
I finally got ready for the office. The only time of the day, I feel I am not lazy is when accelerate my bike while way to office. At 1045 hrs, I finally reached to office, which starts at 0930 hrs. After pressing the laptop power button, I exchanged the greetings with E, Negar Khan, Patil, Krishna and Mr. Chetan B. Asked them to come for tea – I don’t drink tea for tea but for TP. By the time we were back it was 1115 hrs.
I checked my emails, basically “Case Assigned to you” – flashy two new cases on Lalit and both on OpenVMS. Since I couldn’t do a much to close these cases, I went to cubicle “I-C” for our so called “Drive to Five” commitments. 1145 hrs, and still not started with my day. I came back to my desk, opened Remedy and started on cases. I tried to follow the execution flow in the code and mapped with issue details, by 1245 hrs I was done with the issue updates – not sure, if this would resolve customer’s issue, but no other options. At this time I GAed my chat friend but sad no response.
At 1300 hrs we got up for lunch. Since we have two cafes in our office, it had always been a point of debate where should we have today’s lunch. The only thing I don’t understand till is, if both of them are offering shit, and you have to choose one of them, why should it really matter to have which shit. The only suggestion to HR is if you can’t control the quality of any don’t confuse the employees to choose from two options. We finished our lunch, and went out for a walk, the only different with other days was that today we were missing the company of Wills Classic Mild, as we didn’t have the threshold of how long we were going to sit besides the sphinx of the pyramid.
At around 1400 hrs, I was at my workplace. I surfed through web, which would help in the current technical project ahead. Krishna and Chetan were setting the build and installation environment for the environment. Chetan looked for me for some execution steps. During the course we dwelled into what and how should be done for the release. A lots of ifs and buts, design specifications boggled through our mind – the only thing we are good at(the endless discussions on any topic). And in the end, we concluded that we need to ask why so much was taken for this project if we already have a parallel product doing well in the market. In between our discussions Krishna came and called for tea, for which I told him, we might have a meeting in a short while, so let’s not go for tea now. I was waiting for the call, so thought of to do a talk with my chat friend, usual stuffs – bzzy/smileys/wassup….In between Krishna came up again and asked for tea. It was 1530 hrs, and me, Krishna and Chetan sitting in the Swad – the tea house and looking for Baadal and Dharkan – the usual tea boys name in the country. We took the tea involved us in the gossip.
When you have gmail/orkut/google available at your workplace you check your private emails so often as if someone is sitting on google server just to write mails to you or scrap you. Sometimes if you don’t get scraps you peek into other’s profile and check what is hot in there. The case with the search engine is you type anything it is there in its database, but after one or two clicks if you are not two keen on any of the specific topic, you will be lost to into space-time continuum. The same I did today during evening hours of the day. 1730 hrs, when I didn’t find enough of the space on the WWW to keep me involved, I asked Negar and E for the tea. E today was in “Kuchi kuchi rakma mode” said a few senti dialogues to me, which no one can understand as his Hindi is so good J - “once for andheri raat, he sai – jis raat ko chhand nahin nikalta”. After tea we came back, I thought 1800 hrs it is, before the roads could get packed jam, I should sign off for the day, so a day in the office finally ended.
I reached home, put on the Zee Cinema, there movie Baadal was starting, by the I would get to know the stars, I was once again in my dreams. In the “Gau Bela” jatti woke me up, I immediately told lets finish off with last job of the day – Dinner. We went to DCB and came back at a decent time. After a lot of gossip, i thought of playing with my laptop, I booted it and to some reason thought of blogging one more thought. Its 0134 hrs and I’m done with my stuff. Will I be jogging in the morning?