SEE IT THE WAY U WANT TO

Voting System in India

2009-06-08T03:44:00.000-07:00

In today's world, everyone has got something or the other to crib about. Rather than accepting the fault, its a human tendency to put the blame on others and prove one self ignorance and demand sympathy.

One of the most common issues every human faces, is the problem with society and its system. Every citizen of a country wishes his society to be better than what it currently is and blames it on the politicians who govern the authority. In recent times, the authority has started to blame the citizens for not casting their vote and giving power to the right authority. I know no leader is perfect and tends to see self benefit before doing something for the society. That's human tendency, can't really do much about it. But the hope is just that we don't expect a 100% perfectionist and a one who does at least to some extent for the society. I accept, democracy is "FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, OF THE PEOPLE", and hence it's your responsibility to cast your vote or at least mark a 40C, if in case you are not happy with any of the candidate.

I am 24, and have never got an opportunity to cast my vote for my country. I started to find out, what it takes to cast your vote, in the country in which you were born ? I realized 2 things as follows

Voter Id Card
Name in the voter list.

My basic understanding was, if I have a voter Id , then obviously my name is supposed to be in voter list, else how would any one get his Voter Id Card. But unfortunately that's not the case in india. There is a very high probability , that although you have voter id card, you don't get to cast your vote in the locality in which you live, because your name is not there in the voter list of that locality. Fine , I understand, I moved from one locality to another recently for my job, then is that my fault ? Bottom line is I am an Indian, and I must be allowed to vote as long as I have proof to prove that I am citizen of the country. Why do you restrict a citizen to vote only in the locality where he was present at the time of issuing Voter Id card ?

Suppose if, I adjust for that and decide to take pains to travel to my older locality to cast my vote. After reaching to the older locality poll booth, I realize that my name was removed from that locality's voter list as well. WTF. I don't exist either of the place. Don't I get counted as the citizen of our nation ? How my name got removed from the voter list ? The local counsellor, comes on a survey and collects names of the residents few months before election to get a list of eligible voters. But that i believe should only be updating the list for new entrants and not delete someone from the list, if a person is not at home during the day of survey. The govt employees who come on survey , do come only durnig working days 9 to 5 , which is working time for every one as well. Do they expect always a house wife or aged parents to be at home to give attendence on behalf of working people who are out of home ? Then what is the case with Bachelors , who move from city to city for the sake of Job ? Do they loose thier voting rights ?

The whole world is talking about globalization and people are vibrantly moving across the globe and one corner of the world's job is bieng done at the other corner. Hence there is a huge chunks floating population. So do the crores of floating population loose their voting rights ?

Next is the voter card. Getting this again is a pain in the ass. Although people say Jagoo rey have made things simple, yet, it demands you to stay in a place for over 6 months, only then, you can vote in that place. Even If I got voter Id card and during the last 6 months if I am place at some other location, Don't I have a role to elect Priminister of India ? In today's world where even all your bank transactions are online, Crores of rupees are handled safe and secure through online, why can't the voting to be made online. By this even Indians abroad can cast thier vote.

There is no point in blaming the public for such a low turnout percentage in voting. The process and procedures are made so very cumberson.If the process are made easy and comfortable, then obviously, the percentage of voting also would be high and then you would get a stable government as well. In today's busy world if any individual has to take so much pains , why would anybody do that ? Government gives one day holiday on the voting day . If a individual has his name in voter list in some other state, is it practically viable for him/her to travel from state to state to cast his vote, also when the 2 states(where he belongs and where he stays) needn' t have election on the same day.

Many at times, the system is deliberately made screwed up intentionally by political influence. Although election commision is held responsible for the election, when people are included in the voter list, its only the local councellor who is responsible, who goes on a survey and add/removes people from voter list in a locality. Often, the councellor belongs to a political party and if he/she realizes that the people in that locality are aligned to the opposition, deliberately 1000's of voters are ommitted from the voter list. Which is purely planned and intentional.

Intra Space Visiting Card, Envelope and Letter Head Design

2009-06-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

Visiting Card

Letter Head

Envelope

If any one interested in developing designs for similar needs, Please feel free to contact

vinod.jayachandran@verblogic.com

j.vinod@yahoo.co.in

Mobile : +91 9962002339

Activities (Material and Spiritual) & Milk Preparations (SB 4:30:19)

2009-06-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

Material activities for sense gratification are the cause of material bondage, whereas the very same activities for the satisfaction of Krsna are the cause of liberation. How the same activity can be the cause of bondage and liberation can be explained as follows. One may get indigestion due to eating too many milk preparations‑‑condensed milk, sweet rice, and so on. But even though there is indigestion or diarrhea, another milk preparation‑‑yogurt mixed with black pepper and salt‑‑will immediately cure these maladies. In other words, one milk preparation can cause indigestion and diarrhea, and anoher milk preparation can cure them.

Bug in Java POI

2009-05-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

Recently, I got to work with lots of excel sheets. I had to automate all my work with a program. I decided to implement using the popular JAVA API POI. Downloaded its JAR and started to read and write excel sheet with ease using thier various APIs.

One day, I got stuck into a crazy problem, I noticed that , when I was writing a excel sheet,the columns in few rows where shifted one column towards left. Effectively it was Column header and Column content mismatch. It has a great impact. I wondered why ? I got started to debug it. I tried to print address and contents of every cell, yet I couldn't trace out, how it was getting shifted. After few examples, I could trace it out , if in case, there was any empty column in a row, the columns to the right of the empty column, got shifted to left by one cell. I was wondering why it was happening so and even tried to trace out, if only my code had any flaw as generally that is the case.

I restricted my test to just a single row, where I faced such problem with just one column empty in between. I was tracing through the cells of a row, through row.iterator and realized that address of the empty cell wasn't bieng read at all. And only the column bieng read where written as well. So quite obviously empty cells weren't read by Java POI API and so skipped during write also. This is a big time Flaw and bug in POI. You will never come across a empty cell through Java POI Read. Ideally i expect atleast a null pointer exception or some similar cell type to handle the same.

Fix: I had to take the count of number of columns and access each cell in a row through column number [row.getCell((short)columnNumber)].

Anyone who knows a better fix or has a difference in opinion , please do drop in your comments as it would help me learn POI better .

Intraspace Logo Design

2009-05-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

The following below are sample Logos developed by my company verblogic for a Interior Design and Vaasthu Consultant "IntraSpace"

Vinod Jayachandran
mob: +91 9962002339

email : j.vinod@yahoo.co.in
vinodjayachandran@gmail.com

Web Design

2009-05-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

Here are few sample web designs for Jyothi Variety Store. For more samples visits Architectural Designs

Hey Pals, If anyone of you on look out for any Web Design, Website Development, Visiting Card Design, Interior Design, Print Media or anything under the sky for Architectural designs, Please contact

Vinod Jayachandran
mob: +91 9962002339

email : j.vinod@yahoo.co.in
vinodjayachandran@gmail.com

Transfer/Withdrawal of PF

2009-04-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

2008 was indeed a year , not many can forget. The year of recession forced me to shift to 4 companies in 8 months. As it ever used to be, I find any transaction related to Govt of India as a pain in the ass. One such issue which I came across was with my Provident Fund, which is managed by Govt of India. I still wonder , why there is a separate PF account for each employer and why can't they maintain it unique as PAN. Anyways we can't go about changing the corrupted Govt of India, but at least I would like share some useful piece of information , which would help lot many like me to ease through their struggle with tedious process.

When one changes his/her employer, you have 2 options for your PF.

a) Withdraw the amount
You need to fill 2 forms. Form 10c and Form 19 and submit the hard copies to your previous employer.You will get an acknowledgment from your previous employer and can expect the amount to be credited to your account in 3-4 months. You can withdraw your PF amount only after 60 days from the last day of your service. If an employee is leaving India then he/she can withdraw the PF amount before the statutory period of 60 days provided that he/she submits the photocopy of the passport as well as Photo copy of the VISA.

b) Transfer to new PF account of the new employer.
Fill in Form 13 and submit it to your current employer.

A Mother’s Letter To Her Dear Children

2009-03-13T23:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Ones,

The truth is best as it is. No one can alter it, neither can anyone improve it. Have faith in the truth and live it. Now you will ask, what is this mysterious truth? To know that you are infinite is truth. To find that you must always begin with yourself.
The one who has no ‘i’ and ‘me’ and ‘mine’ does not grieve for the unattainable. Never take delight in quarrelsome disputes or engage in controversies to show superiority of intellect or talent. Remain calm and composed with no hostile feelings in your heart towards anyone. Never abandon the disposition of charity for all beings...
No one can become a true ascetic by a shaven head alone. An undisciplined person who utters lies, is full of desire and greed, lives a life of falsehood. Silence does not make a sage. Like Buddha, follow the middle path, keep perfect balance. Let your actions speak louder than words.
Ignorance causes the ruin of the world. Envy and selfishness break human ties and hatred is the most violent of all fevers. Never deceive or despise another. Never lash out with anger or resentment, or wish to harm another. Be free. Be free from pride, vanity and ego. Have faith and wisdom and you will be respected everywhere, in every land. Teachers can only teach, but you and you alone will have to make an effort towards self-transformation.

Overcome all unruly cravings. Be moderate. Health is the highest gain; don’t ruin it for the sake of vanity by starving yourself to be thin and taking dangerous drugs to achieve it. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna: “A harmony in eating and resting, in sleeping and wakefulness, in whatever the action, brings freedom from all pain.” A harmonious mind finds a place of rest in the spirit within, where all restless desires disappear in the vast ocean of joy and truth, where the mind becomes steady and fully content and the greatest upheavals can no longer disturb it. Contentment is the greatest wealth.
Victory breeds hatred; the defeated live in pain. Happily, the peaceful live with the wisdom of giving up both victory and defeat. Buddha said it is not life, wealth and power that enslave men, but clinging and craving for more and more. The one who is not bound to wealth or power, who uses it rightly, will be a blessing to others. Always inspect your thoughts before you act, for as we sow, so shall we reap. Seek the welfare of others and bring back those who have gone astray and enlighten them who live in the night of error. Whatever may be the cause of your suffering, never wound another, be gentle, show kindness. Benevolence towards all beings is the very heart of true religion. Cherish in your heart boundless love and compassion to all that lives...
All creation arose from the desire of the cosmic mind to create. Desire, therefore, is the fuel behind the manifested universe. Everything we perceive from the simple to the very complex arose from desire. However, that is very different from ego-based desire, which is only motivated by selfish fulfilment. Ego-based desire is the root cause of all suffering.
Therefore, constant feeding of desires is not the key to happiness, but renunciation and discrimination provide the answer. That simply means giving up the lesser for the greater, and, the uncertain for the certain. Meditate in solitude and try to perceive the fleeting nature of the world. Gradually discrimination will awaken to remind us to be effortless in our quest and to finally dwell in a state of unchanging oneness...
Ma

Excerpted from My Guru In Disguise by Priya Mookerjee.

Think Positive To Be Pain-free And Happy

2009-03-11T22:50:00.000-07:00

Most people expect fruits of an action in terms of expectations before initiating any action or performing duties. If we follow the dictum that we have performed our duties earnestly and the outcome is not in our hands, then the pain will not be experienced because at that time the mind would be in a state of wantlessness.
Each one of us has wants. We expect to satisfy these wants in order to experience happiness in our daily lives. One want creates a number of wants. When these wants remain unfulfilled or partly fulfilled, they create unhappiness and the more we think about it, the more miserable we feel. This way, we only inflict pain on ourselves. Could this way of life be sustainable in the present context where people are surrounded with different kinds of stress-creating situations?
How does one find happiness in the midst of so much greed, anxiety and dissatisfaction? Real happiness does not come by creating wants; it can only come through slowly reducing or even eliminating them.
Pain and happiness are two sides of the same coin. If you are capable of feeling pain, definitely there is the possibility of feeling happiness. But true progress is made only when you learn to rise above both pain and pleasure, happiness and sadness. The remedy lies in keeping yourself away from the state of pain and pleasure.

You can avoid or keep away from both pain and pleasure only when you willingly lose your so-called individuality to embrace universality. This is only possible if people do not have desires and their motive of taking up activities is to reach a state of wantlessness. This does not, however, mean that running a business or working to earn money is a bad thing or is totally unnecessary. What is limiting — what prevents you from seeking higher realms — is the persistent desire in you to acquire more and more that in turn even more wants. It’s a never-ending spiral.
Constant recollection of negative events could also be avoided to achieve a pain-free state. In the sea, there are disturbances only on the surface; deep inside, there is tranquillity. This approach to life — of remaining calm despite turbulence outside — could help us overcome suffering.
The moment a want arises, an attempt is also made to satisfy it. Fulfilling a want gives satisfaction and pleasure because not doing so is unacceptable. In this process we are constantly engaged in endlessly creating wants and fulfilling them. Conversely, satisfying a want means yielding to it, becoming enslaved by it.
But this cycle does not create enduring happiness because this is an unending process. The best way of getting sustainable state of satisfaction is not to yield to a want but to eliminate a want instead of obeying its dictations. Hence, instead of satisfying a want which is a continuous process, it is always better to overcome it.
The best way is to replace all your myriad wants with just one worthy desire — the desire or want to find the Supreme Truth. In pursuit of this all-encompassing desire, everything else drops off. With practice and devotion, the seeker reaches a stage when all that matters is making the goal of self-realisation attainable. Once the Truth dawns on the seeker, finally, the state of wantlessness is achieved and there is no more pain. No more suffering. Only a state of perfect happiness or bliss.

Ever wondered what is about:config ?

2009-03-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how to change default search engine of your browser ?

Iam a die hard fan firefox and google. As I simple love google, so do I with chrome too, inspite of many pit falls in it. See certain amazing features of chrome, such as speed dial, frequently visited websites , search from address bar etc, It attracted me more to chrome than firefox. But one of the most annoying part was, chrome used to hang quite often for me. I used to wonder, how firefox, could compromise on such special amazing features.

Although all these computer stuffs interests me as I am a computer science engineer, I am not a geek in it and often my laziness over rules me , which prevents me to explore new things. But fortunately always to my rescue, I have a computer nerd with me for the past 3 yrs.

This friend of mine is a lover of google too, but only difference between me and him is, he knows to use google better. He explored and let me know various Add ons in Firefox, which has just the same and equal functionality of that of chrome. I was amazed to have all those features in my all time favourite Firefox.

The other day, I installed Yahoo messenger and that crazy thing installed yahoo tool bar and changed various other settings in my browser and the most annoying part was, it made my default search engine as yahoo. So when ever , i used to type any search expression in my address bar, it started doing yahoo search. Atleast in search, i can't compromise google. It was very annoying and I literally felt handicapped. It reduced my productivity too to a real gr8 extent. I took all the pains to change the default search engine, explored all the menu options of the browser , but couldn't succeed. Then I had no other option , than to reach out to my computer nerd for help. In no time, he gave me a perfect solution, which solved lot other problems of mine and gave me a sense of relief.

I would like share with you all , the perfect solution which my friend gave me, which not only helps you to change the default search engine of your browser, instead lot other features of your browser.

1) On your address bar type about:config.
2) It will take you to a warning message. Accept it and proceed ahead to change the advanced settings of your browser.
3) On Top, you can find a Text Field named "Filter". Type Keyword.URL. You can see the value of this attribute in the right most column.
4) Double click on it to update the value. Initially it was yahoo for me and you can update it to http://www.google.com/search?q= for google.

This one is just one single example. Similarly one can play around with so many other attributes of browser to change the setting of browser through about:config.

I was impressed and it motivated me to share it with the Internet world too, for people who don't know. I whole heartedly dedicate this blog, to my friend. For those who know me , would quite obviously know my friend too, who has been sharing my room for the past 3 yrs. Hats of Jeril Nadar :) For those who don't know him, can have a look at this smart ass as below

what an ideal goa trip is like (4 days)

2009-01-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

Day 1 : reach in morning, relax, take up rooms in calangute, afternoon/evening – calangute,baga,anjuna,vagator beaches. Sunset at anjuna/vagator.

Day 2 : (days 2-3 can be utilized in the goa darshan tours).

If not going for goa darshan, you can book a taxi for the two days.

Places to see these two days :-

Day I : Fort Aguada, Old goa churches, Panjim (Miramar, Dona Paula)…in this order

Day II : South Goa beaches (Colva, Benaulim, Varca, Palolem)

Day 3 : temples, Mayem lake, Panjim (shopping at 18th June road, Santa Monica River Cruise)

Day 4 : Chances are that you missed some of the places above, or would like to spend more time on one of the beaches so enjoy!

Leave in the evening.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To get there :

You can go by luxury bus/Volvo (NEETA or Paulo, Neeta better, booking : dest center(only neeta) or swargate)

Train : Goa Express (not sure this is daily train or not, timings are convenient but it runs full)

Where to get off :

by bus, get off at MAPUSA (this is the first stop inside goa) and proceed to CALANGUTE by auto or city bus.

Calangute is 5-6 kms from where the bus will drop you.

Where to stay :

At this time of the year(April, May) all hotels are empty and you can bargain to even 50% of the price they quote. So any hotel of your choice you will surely get without any problem.

Best Place to stay : Govt. tourist hostel, Calangute. Near beach, ac/tv, neat and clean, no hassles, 550-650 per day.

What to do :

Beaches : Calangute, Baga, Vagator, Anjuna. All these beaches are within 1-2 kms from each other and worth seeing. Water sports at calangute and baga, flea market (worth a visit) at anjuna, and rock formations at vagator (lots of movie scenes have been shot here), are all a must see.

Temples : shantadurga, mahalaxmi, and few more( I don’t remember the names). These temples are bit far from calangute, its not fun (at least not for me), but they are different from maharshtrian temples, you can go there.

Panjim : By far the cleanest city I have been in. Miramar beach, bit crowded but the café coffee day just opposite the beach is a great place to chill out. 18th June road, great place for shopping for clothes, cashew nuts, and the best and cheapest wines. Dona Paula , good place very beautiful, must see once. Santa monica River cruise. Good fun.

South goa beaches : Colva, Benaulim, Varca, Palolem, known for their serenity. Greate place for a quiet, quality day of fun with your family. (take your food packed with you if you are a veggie, you will not find good veggie food near these beaches.

Other places : Old Goa churches, goa trip is not complete without seeing these. Fort Aguada, dil chata hai shooting spot, very beautiful. Mayem lake.

How to get about : Taxi, indica : 900-1000/- per day, Sumo/Qualis: 1100-1200/- per day. Goa tourism runs tourism buses, Goa Darshan-2 days full goa tour covers all above spots in 2 days flat. Hectic, not fun but if you don’t want to miss any place it’s a good idea.

Is one's happiness @ the cost of other's sorrow ?

2009-01-25T21:08:00.001-08:00

Recently I have been hearing a phrase,

"It difficult to please all on earth for what ever you do"

Although, we try to be good in what ever do and not to hurt anyone, but hardly i believe anyone would be fulfilling it. Often, we lead a life for others. We do many things just to please or at least not to hurt others surrounding you or closely associated to you. We do many things in life for the sake of our parents, brothers, sisters, wife , colleagues , managers at work place and so on. In many of these circumstances, we do certain things, just to fulfill their request, to please them or just not to hurt them. In the due course, we end up doing those, which doesn't really may be fulfilling our concise. Although we our self are not pleased doing it, yet we do or even expect certain things to be done just for the sake of the relationship. Effectively we notice , it all boils down to just the weighing scale used by any Vegetable Vendor, where when one side of it goes higher , then the other side of it is bound to come down. Since then the thought pondered my mind "one's happiness @ the cost of others sorrow"

Rite from a child's birth, it always applies the rule of snatch it from harry and give it to Tom. It all begins with the rat race for admission to school. Every where there is a demand supply issue. Every one wants admission into a cherished school, which 1001 rules to get admitted. Isn't it true that with the admission of every single student, another student or even 100's is/are deprived of it. With every single student's sense of joy and achievement , it adds to the disappointment and sorrow of other ? Knowingly or unknowingly we hurt or add up to disappointment/sorrow of others. In what way then these actions are justified ?

Same process, it gets projected to Graduation, Post Graduation, Job Opportunities & appraisals.

Why man develops such feelings ? Is it just because he is not able to accept the realities of demand and supply, or Jealously over rules his character. In this way of life, where is the end to it after all ? As Charles Darwin said, Survival of the Fittest is true, but as far as I feel that is not the true purpose of life. With time we realize, for what all we have been doing throughout life to achieve great heights, in the end nothing gives the happiness for life, that you ever dreamed off.

Man has adjudged the true meaning of happiness in this materialistic life. Happiness is not present in something receiving for ever, true happiness in life resides in giving to someone in need. Try sacrifices, I bet that gives more satisfaction and happiness in life rather than jealousy in the long run. In the fight for hunger of accomplishments , man misses out many fundamental things in life.

It's never the case , that you don't end up in achieving something, that you desire at some point of time and you are ever deprived of it. Life is not just that, its lot more it and lot more to come on the way. Every second in future has more potential imbibed in it than every moment in the past you are repenting for.

How To Fully Enjoy What You Acquire

2009-01-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

Human desires manifest as two powerful motivations in life: acquisition and enjoyment. You want to acquire whatever you desire from the world. And after acquiring you long to enjoy what you have acquired. For instance, you build a house and enjoy living in it. You prepare a tennis court and enjoy playing the game.
Propelled by these two motivations — of acquisition and enjoyment — every human being craves to acquire and enjoy more and more in the world. But no one has found true happiness in mere acquisition or enjoyment. Yet the chase never ends. People are ultimately exhausted with their futile efforts and become frustrated and unhappy.
The mind has a tendency to acquire, yet it cannot qualify or quantify what it wants. Even in the present, when the mind acquires the object of its desire it forthwith pitches up something else. This thirst for acquisition continues. The wealthiest man in the world wants more wealth. The most powerful seeks more power. The most beautiful more beauty. All this despite knowing that on most accounts, the process of acquiring and enjoying these things only bring in their wake agitation and loss of peace of mind.

The thirst can never be quenched by sheer acquisition of whatever the mind demands. Neither can the problem be solved by suppressing the desire for acquisition. However, there is no taboo to acquisition. You are advised only to control, to regulate the mind’s indiscriminate craving for acquisition.
The second motivation is the desire to enjoy what has been acquired. Here again, there is no objection to enjoyment. You are not to refrain from enjoying what the world offers you but to restrain, control your indulgence in them. You enjoy objects or beings only when you exercise voluntary regulation and moderation. Otherwise what you acquire loses its charm. You cannot enjoy it anymore. Unrestricted indulgence kills enjoyment.
In truth there is no joy content in the objects and beings of the world. But an average person cannot be convinced of this. He equates enjoyment with the pleasure he gets eating ice cream or chocolate. How can he be convinced that this is not what joy is about? The truth remains that none can find enjoyment in the external world.
The following example can perhaps help you examine the veracity of the statement. You sit outside in your garden on a full moon night. You ‘enjoy’ the beautiful moonlight. Just think. Does the moon actually produce light? Does it have light in it per se? No, not at all. Yet some believe that the light comes from the moon. Educated as you are, you know that there is no light in the moon. It only reflects the light of the sun. Whatever arguments you put forth, the ignoramuses can never accept that there is no light in the moon. They see the light coming from the moon. They experience it. They enjoy it. So it becomes impossible for them to conceive that the moon has no light in it.
Similarly, many lack the wisdom to accept the truth that there is no joy content in the world. Their argument is similar. They can perceive the joy in sense-objects. And argue that they gain enjoyment out of them. Hence they can never accept there is no joy in the external world. You may likewise hold on to your views but just ponder over the moonlight example.

Abstract from ‘The Speaking Tree Times of India'.

Optimism is the key

2009-01-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. We live in increasingly negative times, fuelled by the disintegration of social bonds and the dissolution of religious faith. A little bit of optimism can help us combat gloom and give us the courage and the energy to shed adversity. Can you muster hope in the midst of despair? Yes, you can. Here’s how...
When you are faced with a tough situation, remember that it is temporary, and like everything else, this too will pass. Try to dispute thoughts that a present adversity is hopeless or permanent. Describe the causes of your pessimism on a sheet of paper; next to each cause, document the evidence that it is real and not imagined. For each real cause, write down at least one solution to counteract it. Challenge the imagined causes with alternative explanations and contradictory evidence.
Share your concerns with the people you love. Talk problems through with them. Let them help you.

Reject unnecessary negative assumptions. An example of the same is that rather than believing that the world is falling apart, tell yourself, ‘We would benefit from a moral renewal.’
When you feel that you are losing calm, talk yourself out of despair. Say, ‘I’m going to overcome this bad feeling. Optimism is pouring in through every pore of my skin.’
You must know that two common causes of pessimism are fear and hate. The greatest danger of these emotions is that they shut off your mind. Determine whether either is at the root of your discouragement and if you discover one of these emotions, exorcise it.
Distract yourself from depressing thoughts. Think positive. If you catch yourself complaining, quickly immerse yourself in an activity that will take your mind off the troubling subject. Keep bleak news in perspective.

Are Indian Systems Inefficient or Corrupted ?

2009-01-06T00:45:00.000-08:00

Today India is renowned as one of the fastest growing economy along with China. When the trumpet is blown in media, only the rosy aspects are expressed. Many internal intricacies and flaws are never expressed.

Today as majority might know, Majority of employment and economic issues of our nation are served, by today's IT industry. Amongst the thousands even I am a middle class man persuading my career as a software engineer. Started my career in June 06, after couple of months accumulated salary and dad's contribution , I bought my favorite bike(passion of many youth) in September 06. To start off , everything was normal and willingly or unwillingly, In 2008 , I had to shift 3 companies. With 3 companies, I actually had to relocate from/to 3 different states here in India. With my first job, I didn't know many major problems associated with job shifts, especially the problems related to policies of Govt of India.

First things first, I wanted to be legally correct, in what ever I do, which made me face many issues in today's world. Here I discuss 2 such issues, which not only me, I am sure thousands would have faced similar problem as mine, but I take initiative to express it to this internet world and bring it to limelight.

1) We claim that "India has Unity among Diversity", But why isn't not even 2 states, stay united here. At First place, I can understand different administration for different states, but why different laws ? You buy a vehicle, you travel in that vehicle and if you cross the border and travel from one state to another, you need to Entry Border fee. But Why ? I am the citizen of this nation, why am I am being distinguished based on state wise. I don't have the freedom to travel across border of states within the country ? I need pay a fee for that . It is more analogous to getting Visa to travel to a foreign nation. The Bigger of all, When I buy a vehicle , I need to pay Road Tax for the state from which I buy. I am not against paying. I totally understand, as no Government runs with Tax. But then , If I relocate from one state to another for the sake of Job , I need to pay Road tax again at the destination state. In the past 6 months , I have relocated to 3 different states and I need to pay 8% of the cost of my vehicle as road tax every time for each time, which itself amounts to almost one fourth of the cost of the vehicle. Am I an alien or refugee to the state ? After all I am in my own native country.

2) With every employer, we generally have PF(Provident Fund) account where a portion of our monthly salary goes to PF. I totally support it as its for a holy cause and it helps us at a latter stage in life. But why can't they maintain a common centralized account as PAN(Permanent Account Number) ? So each time, your employer gets changed, a new PF account is created. Quite obvious question that arises to every one's mind is , so what happens to the money I invested in the previous account ? The new employer, can't maintain the old PF account , and the solution has 2 options
a) Either withdraw the amount
b) Transfer the amount from previous account to new account.

Either of the above procedures takes easily 6-12 months to get your own hard earned money. And legally if you want to opt for option (a) , you should be either leaving the nation or retiring from employment. Here in India, Even if you want to be legally correct the system doesn't allow you to be so. Say for example I was with Employer A , moved to Employer B. My PF is yet to transferred from A-->B , and I work with B for couple of months, and before I could transfer my PF, I move to Company C. At company C , I ask for transfer of my PF from both the previous companies, they say transfer from only one company we can accept. So what do I do now, the system compels me to lie and close one PF account illegally.

Apart from all these, I don't understand certain very basic things in this modern world where everything is electronic/digital.
a) Why is the stupid system of maintaining different PF account for different employer. Can't they maintain it as one common account for entire term of life ?
b) We proudly say , India is emerging as leader in IT industry , but then why does it take these Govt officials nearly an year to return my hard earned money ? Do these govt officials still do manual calculations with Pen & Paper ? Do they create any delay in deducting money from individual's account for Tax. PF etc ? When it comes to deducting, they do it on time, but when it comes to returning it takes months , at times even years.

3) The same above holds true even for Tax returns that are filed. Any excess tax paid,takes months/years to come back ?

4) For filling Tax, one needs Form 16. Similarly , If I am shifting between companies, I need to run behind all the previous employers to get form 16. After all, what is there in that Form 16, Its just the Income/Tax paid details during various months. Don't they have it in PAN already ? Y is the individual made to run after every employer ? If the PAN can't provide them all these details , why is it maintained after all ?

I some how feel all these to be a totally manipulated and mishandled system. Man has become so busy these days that he hardly even finds time to remember or maintain all these details and complications. Effectively he looses track and the money as well. And with Indian system , If you don't follow up , you never get anything done easily. Y is the system designed so ? Is it inefficient management or deliberately made it so complex, so that you can make money by charging at every stop point & giving easily escape route for corruption.

Learn to say "NO" when you aren't comfortable

2009-01-01T22:32:00.000-08:00

1 Jan 2009, Life thought me something new and interesting, with budding of the new year. Rite from our childhood, we have always been taught and instructed by this society, parents, teachers and all surrounding you , to be very polite, gentle, humble, friendly and helping to others. Not sure how many people follow these, but still preaching always persists . I too agree with it majority of the times, but not always.

Most important of all, people advise us to speak the truth, but many people although speak truth majority of the times, certain circumstances makes them speak other wise, just to scrap through certain situations and maintain thier self respect and image.

Often many obligations/commitments comes unexpectedly , which before even thinking , our lips say a "YES" and soon after we repent for saying so. It would have been hardly fraction of a second to say a yes , but later we would be repenting and thinking for hours to gather as how to over come the situation. In fact in many situations, life becomes miserable in the process. And the funny part is , even after experiencing once, we keep repeating it again and again in life.

In reality, if we happen to analyze our own psycology, Why are we bringing such miseries to our own life ? This reason is very simple, as i have said before, its just to "maintain thier self respect, image and not to hurt feelings of others " we say a YES to all and end in making either of the parties uncomfortable. So eventually we end up in hurting both self and others as well.

In life its always mandetory that "Work only if you like to , else don't" .Doing anything for namesake never serves any purpose at any point of time.

Howmuch ever , you would like to be nice to people and keep up the relations, Its very mandetory to "Learn to say a 'NO' where you aren't comfortable". Bieng frank in relations especially is always the best thing to do although it might appear as a shock/surprise in the early stages at times. In fact one should be glad , if anyone is expressing thier opinion frank rather than covering it from you. At the same time, every one should also have the open minded ness to accept things , if expressed frankly.

Send E-mail from Java Code

2008-12-18T00:52:00.000-08:00

The sample code demonstrates , how to send E-mail from you Java Code.

import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.internet.*;
import javax.activation.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.Properties;
public class MailClient
{

public void sendMail(String mailServer, String from, String to,
String subject, String messageBody,
String[] attachments) throws
MessagingException, AddressException
{
// Setup mail server
Properties props = System.getProperties();
props.put("mail.smtp.host", mailServer);

// Get a mail session
Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, null);

// Define a new mail message
Message message = new MimeMessage(session);
message.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from));
message.addRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress(to));
message.setSubject(subject);

// Create a message part to represent the body text
BodyPart messageBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();
messageBodyPart.setText(messageBody);

//use a MimeMultipart as we need to handle the file attachments
Multipart multipart = new MimeMultipart();

//add the message body to the mime message
multipart.addBodyPart(messageBodyPart);

// add any file attachments to the message
addAtachments(attachments, multipart);

// Put all message parts in the message
message.setContent(multipart);

// Send the message
Transport.send(message);

}

protected void addAtachments(String[] attachments, Multipart multipart)
throws MessagingException, AddressException
{
for(int i = 0; i<= attachments.length -1; i++)
{
String filename = attachments[i];
MimeBodyPart attachmentBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();

//use a JAF FileDataSource as it does MIME type detection
DataSource source = new FileDataSource(filename);
attachmentBodyPart.setDataHandler(new DataHandler(source));

//assume that the filename you want to send is the same as the
//actual file name - could alter this to remove the file path
attachmentBodyPart.setFileName(filename);

//add the attachment
multipart.addBodyPart(attachmentBodyPart);
}
}

public static void main(String[] args)
{
try
{
MailClient client = new MailClient();
String server="pop3.mydomain.com";
String from="myname@mydomain.com";
String to = "someuser@somewhere.com";
String subject="Test";
String message="Testing";
String[] filenames =
{"c:\somefile.txt"};

client.sendMail(server,from,to,subject,message,filenames);
}
catch(Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace(System.out);
}

}
}

Parsing XML File Using Java

2008-12-15T02:18:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends,

This is my half century / golden jubilee Post. I really gave in a lot of thought about what to write for my 50th Post. I always would have preferred it to be my personal experience post, but in the recent past, my views/experiences have taken a shift towards more of technical stuff. So I have decided to make it as technical post as it would help 1000's of developers as me as I always wondered how miserable my professional life would have been if the various forums not been there to solve my doubts. So even i decided to contribute to the same internet society which helped me a lot

Here I explain you a simple basic way to parse any sample XML file and read value of any particular node , using our all time favorite java.

Java Function to parse XML File which takes file name as i/p para meter and the parameters given within double quotes are the node names.

private boolean readXML(String xmlFile) {
try {
SAXBuilder builder = new SAXBuilder(false);
Document doc = builder.build(new File(xmlFile));
Element crmconfig = doc.getRootElement();

if (crmconfig.getName() == "crmconfig") {
//salesforce info
Element info = crmconfig.getChild("login-sf");
unSF = info.getAttributeValue("name").toString();
pwSF=info.getAttributeValue("pass").toString();
server=info.getAttributeValue("server").toString();
//jdbc connections
info = crmconfig.getChild("jdbc");
serverName=info.getAttributeValue("dbserver").toString();
portNumber=info.getAttributeValue("dbport").toString();
sid=info.getAttributeValue("dbservice").toString();
username=info.getAttributeValue("username").toString();
password=info.getAttributeValue("password").toString();

//mail details
info = crmconfig.getChild("info");
infoSet = info.getAttribute("activate").getBooleanValue();
if (infoSet) {
infoEmail = info.getAttributeValue("toemail").toString();
smtpInfo = info.getAttributeValue("smtp").toString();
smtpPortInfo = info.getAttributeValue("smtpport")
.toString();
fInfoEmail = info.getAttributeValue("fromemail").toString();
}
}
}
catch (JDOMException e) {
System.out.println(e);
return false;
}
catch (Exception e) {
System.out.println(e);
return false;
}
return true;
}

If any one has any doubt/clarifications in the above code to parse XML using java, you can mail me your doubts to vinodjayachandran@gmail.com

Those were the worst days of my life...(14-Nov-2008 to 27-Nov-2008)

2008-11-27T08:57:00.000-08:00

To many the Title of my blog would resemble the popular line of Bryan Adam's Summer of 69 "Those were the best days of my life", but unlike the "best", here its the "worst".

14th November, It's popularly called as children's day in india, which is birthday of Nehru. That festive occasion day , turned out to be the black friday in my life. To start with , it was just any normal day at office and i was doing my work, and it was at around 4, when all employees of the office were called out for a meeting by our director, and He started it this way.."Guys I have a bomb to diffuse it to you all, Our bangalore office is shutting down and all employees will have to opt out. Like a thunder came this big blow to all of us. We were amazed, shocked and just holding tears in our eye lids. It was just 5 month since I joined Zapak , was in my probation period and I realized the office itself is doomed and closing. My goodness, hunting for another job is definitely not as easy joke, with every country under recession and every company firing employees in thousands. It was simply the worst thing to happen at the worst time.

We were told, that 21st would be our last day and although initially 2 months salary package was allotted as sevearence package , later the company reduced it to just one month. Every one were irritated and tensed to the core, not knowing what next in life.

To few people's consolation, a news came around that certain people will be moved to Reliance's another sister concern at mumbai office with the same pay scale. Although not very exciting, yet at least some back up plan , was assuring us rather than getting into panic mode. Within couple of days, we realized only 4 people will be absorbed and i was not one among them. I didn't know whom to say and what to do next.

I had just told my elder brother and dad. My brother , assured me not to get tensed and he tried referring me to all his known contacts , all i didn't have any hopes as generally Big MNCs, take long time to respond , once you upload into their portal.

Days passed by , but there were literally no calls from any company, the phone was just not ringing at all, which added to tension as days passed by.Fortunately one my brother's friend responded back saying there is opening in his company , yet i expected it would take to process. To my surprise within couple of hours, I got a call from the HR. 21st November was last day at zapak and I had scheduled the interview on monday direct face to face. After my last day at zapak , I booked my tickets to back home and started preparing java. I literally started to code and see the o/p of each program.

It was kind of do or die situation for me, as this was the only interview , i had in place and nothing else was getting scheduled actually. So I had to clear this interview at any cost. I prepared what ever I could.

24th November Monday was the Interview.I reached the place well in advance and I was doing my prayers.Finally the interview started at 10:45, I was the only one being interviewed and fortunately not much crowd was there to make me feel more tensed. The interview started with introduce your self, my experience, my previous project experiences, puzzles and finally I was given a laptop and asked to code a java program on the spot and show them o/p and present it as I would present to a client. I struggled for some time to get the logic rite and get correct o/p. I was embarassed as its taking more time and it might give a bad impression. Finally after I got o/p , was excited and presented the code. To my dismay , I was told there is some thing fundamentally missing. I was surprised and wondering and couldn't really figure out what could be wrong, when I can get correct output. Finally after 15-20 minutes, the interviewer said me, you don't have the practice of documentation and there is no comments any where, and such codes can't be presented to client. I really didn't know what to say, although I felt embarassed , I realized a valid point in his words.

Finally it all ended at 1:45 after starting at 10:45 and I was asked to leave home and HR would get back to me. Generally "GET BACK TO U" words are a polished way of "REJECT". Anyways I didn't have any better option to walk out.

3 days later, I was asked for my documents, they knew , I don't have any job in hand presently, so I couldn't negotiate on salary much. Finally I got an offer from them, but with same salary as what I had before. I was relieved from great mental anxiety and that's all it mattered to me more than anything else.

Really God is great. I realized your hopes and beliefs get really shaken , during bad times and that's exactly the right time to hold on to your hopes stronger and more determined which many of us fail.

Subtract Time in Java

2008-11-27T06:25:00.000-08:00

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss");
try {
Date s = sdf.parse(time1);
Date e = sdf.parse(time2);
Calendar scal = java.util.GregorianCalendar.getInstance();
scal.setTime(s);
Calendar ecal =java.util.GregorianCalendar.getInstance();
ecal.setTime(e);
result = (e.getTime() - s.getTime())/60000;

}
catch ( Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
}

Getting a list of running/active Threads in java

2008-11-12T23:27:00.000-08:00

ThreadGroup group = Thread.currentThread().getThreadGroup();
ThreadGroup parent = null;
while ( (parent = group.getParent()) != null ) {
group = parent;
}
Thread[] threads = new Thread[group.activeCount()];
group.enumerate(threads);
int i;
for ( i=0; i < threads.length; ++i)
{
if (threads[i] != null && threads[i].isAlive())
{
try {
System.out.println(threads[i].getName());

} catch (Throwable e) {e.printStackTrace();}
}
}

WISHING U ALL A HAPPY DIWALI

2008-10-24T22:48:00.000-07:00

Happiness is just beside u

2008-10-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

Identify what you're good at and do it. Self-esteem is linked to happiness and surveys show the feeling of success is one of the commonest sources of joy

Boost your self-esteem

Identify what you're good at and do it. Self-esteem is linked to happiness and surveys show the feeling of success is one of the commonest sources of joy.

Don’t multi-task

Research has found that people who multi-task are likelier to have high blood pressure. So instead of talking on the phone while picking up the kids' toys, sit down and focus on the conversation.

Count your blessings

Focus on what you have got, not what you're missing. A recent study has found that people who took the time to count their blessings once a week boosted their mood and improved their health and energy levels. And it relieved pain and fatigue, too.

Get rid of annoying tasks

Visit the doctor, answer a difficult e-mail or buy something you need. Crossing an irritating item off your to-do list will give you a rush of energy.

Pamper a pet

Walking and stroking pets can relieve stress, lower blood pressure and heart rates. One study showed pets are better than spouses at relieving stress.

Get enough sleep

Few of us get enough sleep and that makes us grumpy. Getting into bed early one night with a book — and turning the light out an hour later — can do more for your mood than any amount of retail therapy.

Stop worrying about age

Celebrate all your birthdays. Remember when you were 10 how 21 seemed ancient? Enjoy your age, because you won't be this young again.

Ignore the stock market

Researchers found a direct link between the daily performance of the stock market and the mental health of those who follow it. If you don't have money invested, ignore it. If you do, give your investments time — and give yourself a break.

Volunteer

Helping others, less fortunate than yourself, puts your own problems into perspective.

Change your thinking

People who survive a terminal illness, accident or witness a tragedy have a different perspective on life. Many say that they no longer leave anything until later. They travel now, learn a new skill now, contact an old friend the same day the thought pops into their head. Follow their lead — try living for today and not tomorrow.

Puzzlessssss 4 U

2008-10-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

There is a column of soldiers fifty feet long. At the end of the line
there is a dog. The dog begins to run forward at exactly the same time
that the column begins to march forward. The dog runs to the head of the
column and then, without loosing any time he turns back and and runs
towards the rear of the column. He gets to the end of the line of
soldiers just as the column advances 50 feet. What is the distance
covered by the dog? (Assume that both the dog and the soldiers travel at
constant speeds.)

There are 25 horses and 5 lanes. You have no idea about which horse is better than other. Find in minimum possible races, the first three fastest running horses

Please come up with valid explanations for your answer.

Web Design, Interior Decoration, Visiting Card Design & Lots more

2008-09-22T02:22:00.000-07:00

For Those who are keen on development of architectural designs, they can come in touch with me, for high quality and economic designs. We are doing it as part of Free lancer's handworks

1) Visiting Cards

2) Logo Design

3) Interior Design

4) Print Media

Hey Pals, If anyone of you on look out for any Web Design, Website Development, Visiting Card Design, Interior Design, Print Media or anything under the sky for Architectural designs, Please contact

Vinod Jayachandran
mob: +91 9962002339

email : j.vinod@yahoo.co.in
vinodjayachandran@gmail.com

E-mail using C++ code

2008-09-17T03:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone in today's world knows to send e-mail from browser, but hardly anyone knows how it actually works from backend. I thought of sharing my knowledge, how you do it from C++ code.

Requirements

1) SMTP SERVER(If you have IP of any configured SMTP server that will do)

2) libvmime 0.8.1 (Library of C++ . You need to download and install from sourceforge.net, Instruction are given at sourceforge.net how to install and use it)

try

{

vmime: :messageBuilder mb;

// Fi l l in some header f i e lds and message body

mb. setSubject (vmime: : text (”Message subject”) ) ;

mb. setExpeditor(vmime: :mailbox(”me@gmail.com”) ) ;

mb. getRecipients ( ) .appendAddress

(vmime: : create (”you@gmail.com") ) ;

mb.getTextPart()−>setCharset(vmime: : charsets : : ISO8859 15) ;

mb.getTextPart()−>setText(vmime: : create

(”This i s the text of your message . . . ”) ) ;

// Message construction

// Create an attachment

vmime: : ref att =

vmime: : create

(

/ f u l l path to f i l e / ”/home/vincent/paris . jpg” ,

/ content type / vmime: :mediaType(”image/jpeg) ,

/ description / vmime: : text (”My holidays in Paris”)

) ;

// You can also set some infos about the f i l e

att−>getFileInfo ( ) . setFilename(”paris . jpg”) ;

att−>getFileInfo ( ) . setCreationDate

(vmime: : datetime(”30 Apr 2003 14:30:00 +0200”) ) ;

// Add this attachment to the message

mb.appendAttachment(att ) ;

vmime: : ref msg = mb. construct ( ) ;

// Output raw message data to standard output

vmime: : utility : : outputStreamAdapter out(std : : cout ) ;

msg−>generate(out ) ;

}// VMime exception

catch (vmime: : exception& e)

{

std : : cerr << ”vmime: : exception : ” <<>

}// Standard exception

catch (std : : exception& e)

{

std : : cerr << ”std : : exception : ” <<>

}

// Create a new session

vmime: : utility : : url url (”smtp://example.com”) ;

vmime: : ref sess = vmime: : create ();

// Create an instance of the transport service

vmime: : ref tr = sess−>getTransport(url ) ;

// Connect i t

tr−>connect ( ) ;

tr->send(msg);

There are still lot more you can do using vmime library in C++ for mailing purposes, For further info you can mail me or refer vmime-book.pdf , which you can easily get on the internet.

Education has become a mere business

2008-09-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

Education today in India has merely become a business. With the population explosion day by day, today in India there is a huge demand, for any damn thing that you sell. With all these commodities is education which has also joined the list. Today with an urge to come up in such a competitive world, where for a limited supply , too many number of people are competing and effectively the suppliers have begun the exploit the situation.

Today just within couple of years of birth of a child, the rat race of life begins and man begins to run on and on till last minute of his life. It all begins with the admission to school. Generally people have begun to develop a opinion over the past few years, the government school, are very sub standard and with time it has been established as an image as, those school whose fees are cheap are cheap in grade. These are all few wealthy ass creating such wrong image. Effectively people consider only very few hand picked private school to be high in standard and good in quality. The majority of crowd, hardly have neither time nor patience to analyze or asses, how good or bad these schools really are and simply follow the rest blind folded. And these school, seeing a over flowing demand tends to utilize the opportunity and cost a whooping fees. Today people tend to pay a fee of Rs 60 -70K per annum for a school. More than realizing the necessity, they tend to send their child to such exorbitant school, just because their friends and colleagues send their kids over there. In fact it has become a matter of prestige issue. It all sounds simply ridiculous. Hardly any one questions these institutions, who unnecessarily charge lots extra and the best part is the government doesn’t impose any regulation.

As the classes proceed ahead, then comes the coaching institutes who say that they coach you for the competitive exams , while one is about to leap into next stage of graduation. They have a handful of students, who made it up to top institutes and market with that. God knows whether the students really made it up with their coaching or self effort, but it has become more like a saga, to join these coaching institutes just out of fear that if I am not joining the institutes I am missing out something crucial , which would prove to be very fatal in my career. Finally when a student doesn’t make it up to esteemed college for his graduation, then its always blamed on the student’s effort and never on the coaching institutes. And parents need to understand, how much ever one tries, like any game, when one wins other has to loose, there are very handful of seats and not all the thousands attempting to make it up can achieve it. And if one doesn’t end up in the aimed institute, that’s not all the end, but at that stage of life one doesn’t realize.

After stepping into your under graduation , perhaps its only the initial few happy years, then one starts to realize that, every year there are thousands of graduates coming out as me , and its really hard to keep up your marketing value. So just to prove yourself to be better from the rest in this corporate world, one feels the need of a post graduation in his career. The moment post graduation comes into one’s mind, its all back to square one as one begins to prepare for all the competitive exams and compete with all the thousands, including both seniors and juniors. At that moment the competition indeed becomes stiff.

Even at this moment, the so called esteemed universities and colleges play the dirty game of utilizing the opportunity. They try to dig into every loop hole possible, and make a means of money, which one couldn’t even ever imagine. This is how the dirty business goes, every college conducts their own entrance exam independently, and charge a huge fees of around 2000. So one easily ends up in writing over 10 competitive exams just as the process application begins.

Next stage in stepping into your post graduation, are the various screening process, just as GD/PI etc. Many colleges charge a high fee to attend the PI as well once you clear the written. I don’t understand any point in charging another high fee after written exam, for the interview process. Any student for it may matter, out of anticipation and desperation to get a seat will quite obviously pay that fee too, thinking it’s a one time golden opportunity, and not everyone gets it and as though only he has got this golden opportunity due to his excellent performance in written exam. Sooner he realizes that it’s all a myth, and he realizes that almost everyone has got the GD/PI call. Anyways, but as he can’t afford to miss the opportunity, he goes ahead with the screening process. To one’s dismay he realizes to find out 1000’s of people same as his position. Trying to be optimistic one goes ahead with the interview process preparing himself mentally with a wide set of questions. Alas finally he finally faces the interview panel, and realizes he is hardly been asked any questions and clearly experiences the professors interviewing just merely for namesake with a total disinterest. One obviously tends to get pissed off, when he finally faces unfair screening process after all his efforts to strike it to best.

I wonder where this world is leading to, every one needs a post graduation, as that only yields you a well paying job and end up in all these mess, putting one self into all the mess with loads of expenditure and losing all valuable time , fun and stressing oneself over and over every weekend attending various coaching classes drama and making yourself a pray to these money making wizards.

Another Pirates Puzzle

2008-08-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

There are 13 pirates and they need to protect their treasure chest. they decide that they should only be able to open the chest if the majority (at least 7)
agree that it should be opened. they ask a locksmith to come and put a specific number of locks on the safe. every lock must be opened to open the chest. there can be multiple keys for each lock, but each key only opens one lock (i.e. no skeleton keys). the locksmith can give more than one key to each pirate. how many locks should the locksmith use and what strategy should he use to distribute the keys, such that only when a majority of the pirates agree can the chest be opened?

Pirates Puzzle

2008-08-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

There r 5 pirates,each of them is given a rank 5,4,3,2,1 respectively.There r 100 coins which they hav to ditribute amongst themselves.The highest ranked person proposes a method of dividin the coins amongst themselves.If the others approve of it with a majority only then it will be implemented else the highest ranked person will be killed and the same procedure repeats.Ones own vote is also counted.

Tell the distribution that the 5th(ie,highest ranked) leader must make to obtain maximum profit.(When there r 5 ppl,majority req.is 3,for 4 its 2,3 its 2 all cases including ones own vote.when 2 are left leader2 can decide)

Post your solutions in comments

Putty with Tabs

2008-08-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

A Free Telnet/SSH Client

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. Many of us (software engineers) use putty in our day today life, to telnet or ssh some of our remote servers. Many of us are aware of the basic version of putty, which is easy to install and that comes first when we search for putty on the net. I have been using putty for the past 2 years, but one of the basic inconvenience which i came across was, if i wanted to log into 2 machines simultaneously or want to look into 2 files simultaneously, I was compelled to open as many number of seperate new windows as reqired.

This initial inconvenience was there even in our browser, primarily IE. Later on, firefox came up with TAB facility of browser , which clearly outsted firefox over IE and compelled microsoft too to come up with that feature in IE 7.

Same as the case, our favorite putty has also come up with tab version which is indeed convenient. I came across through this in the internet and from 2 of my friends , namely dheeraj and abhishek. I pay a tribute to both of my X collegues, in helping me out with this. I felt its very useful and good to share with the world to help out all.

DHEERAJ NAPHADE

ABHISHEK CHAUHAN

Requirements

This software is a C# application. Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is needed. Setup will download and install if needed. Standalone will not work if .NET Framework 2.0 not present.
SetUp

Once you install the above set up, its all done, go ahead and enjoy a easy and comfortable tabbed putty as per your convenience.

Parse an XML from a XML String

2008-08-18T00:42:00.000-07:00

This post is my first technical post. I happened to come across one of the hurdles in my organisation where I had to parse an XML , where the XML is stored in a string. Generally we parse the xml from an XML file. I came across a situation where the XML was not present in a file, rather was in a string.

Here is the small snippet of C++ code developed by me which could be useful for many. Primarily you need to have Xerces installed to use the below code.

DOMDocument* XmlReader::parseXmlString( String buffer )
{
MemBufInputSource* memBufIS = new MemBufInputSource((const XMLByte *)buffer.c_str(), strlen(buffer.c_str()), "anytext", false);
XercesDOMParser *parser = new XercesDOMParser;
parser->parse(*memBufIS);
return parser->getDocument();
}

Once DOMDocument is generated from the above method, you can use the various DOM classes/API available , to parse the DOMDocument and read the required content.

Life in a start up

2008-08-06T05:08:00.000-07:00

In today's job market, one gets to hear so many jargons about the place of work. The media judges various work places and publishes ranks as well. Some of the common work places are service based or product based company, multi million dollar MNC and start up companies.

Right or wrong in general, the general public opinion is product based companies are better places to work than service based. For the common man , thier anticipation is, in product based companies, one develops a product, loads of coding is involved and effectively more intelluctual work is involved and hence better profile of job, which definitely lacks in service based companies. As they say, the more you ask opinion from a large set of people , more you end up in confusion. And perception is more a deception than reality. In today's world, not even in big product based MNC, there is hardly anything much happening. The existing product exists for ages, and maximum that happens is mere customization. Rather I feel its more appropriate to call it as CUSTOMIZATION based companies rather than PRODUCT based companies. Hardly very few develop any product from scratch. And when you peep into know what really happens in this customization ? All you realise end of the day is they develop versions of the same product for various clients. In Version development, all that you get to do in one version different from the prior one is, merely a few extra lines of code on the existing code. Many at times its mere deletion or commenting the existing code too. So effectively , u get a vision of just few lines of code just specific to one particular function and as such rest of product is mere greek and latin. And rather even those customization with a particular client takes place for couple of months and things get stabled, and there is no further new requirement from client and the company just continues to maintain the existing stuff. And effectively you end up in supporting the existing product with no further new addition. So as an employee with all high hopes one joins a product based company hoping to develop a product. So the vicious circle leads something like this....

Product Development -> Customization -> Support

This has been my personal experience after graduation, I started up with a product based company , and effectively do nothing different from service based company. I realsied in my life Big Product developments in MNC is a MYTH.

So as the saga continues , when it comes to support, as people say city never sleeps. When its support , it quite obviously demands 24/7 support and gradually one ends up in shifts and finally end up as mere call center job.

After this, comes a comparison, whether its good to work in a well established popular MNC or a buddy start up company. One will get to hear unanimously from a majority of people that well established MNC is better for quite obvious reasons , that its very prestigious, you have a brand name in the society, when you go out and say to your friends and relations that you are working in so and so BIG MNC, you get a feel good factor. You get various facilities with big MNCs such transport service, free break fast, subsidised lunch etc. Above all , people hope to have business trips across country. One of the biggest key factor, for people opting for big MNCs, are our own parents who have been our friend , philosopher and guide rite from our birth. Parents often judge a company , by thier turn overs, and performance of thier stocks. I agree , that gives you a fair idea about the company, but that hardly matters for a salaried employee and it gives no fair about the nature of work an individual does amongst the 1000's of already existing employees.

Effectively one turns out to be a drop in the ocean, and one continues to live with it as you don't have a better option. In this process majority doesn't realise that, one's knowledge and technical skills get depreciated and effectively after couple of years one realises that his market value becomes zero, and it becomes too late to revert it back and continues to stay in the same company as he unable to help himself much.

Coming all through these, I realised one day, where am i heading to in my career ? Then I decided at this early stage of my budding career, without much of financial responsibilities behind me , i decided it pays to take a risk in career and even if i fail, nothing much to loose as i am still young to revert back. I started hunting for developer job in few start ups. Although such opening are very less as these start ups don't recruit in huge numbers. It took me 3 months to find couple of them and finally decided to settle out with one of them.

Parents were really scared for quite obvious reasons of fear of insecurity of job. As the old saying goes, you get a girl only if you are a GOVT employee as that's the most secure job. But had to take a bold decision based on what ever my hunches said.

After joining , you really realise the difference. Generally people say, in today's IT industry every company is the same , and ever tom dick and harry do the same job, and in and all its bull shit every where and only thing that differes is the compensation that one gets with years. And the job satisfaction hardly exists anywhere , and humans are greedy animals and no end to money satisfaction, always the more the better. So its all the same story every where.

Amidst all the controversial views of friends and relatives, I decided to go and join a start up. After joining i found a himalayan difference. The environment was totally different, with just hand full of employees. My company size is smaller than my college lab. A very small group of people indeed working really really close. The best part of all, on day one i was given a laptop with an OS installed in it and nothing else in it. In general in MNCs, you have a seperate IT team to set up all your PC. The most cool thing was all work was based on open source, OS was linux and i started off with what i really need to do here. With just over all basic requirement intimated to me in 2 lines in an e-mail, I was asked to get started to develop a all new product right from scratch. The best part in Start ups is , you don't get many mails, hardly one or two that too once in 2-3 days. In big MNCs, you get 100's mails in a day and half of your day , one spends in reading e-mails and in case you don't follow up you e-mail properly , your leads and managers call it as though its a big sin and start yelling at you.

Finally i got started and found out what the basic minimum softwares and set up files needed to start up with my coding. At that stage, that too in linux , i started downloading all the RPM files from net and started installing one by one, by reading the manual. It took me almost a week to set up my PC itself. Initially i got pissed off thinking why any damn asshole helps me out here, but with time i realised it was all for my good and in the process i learnt a lot. After setting up my PC, I came to realise, my job was not do just coding here , but to do everything end to end. I realised, Iam the DBA, DESIGNER, ARCHITECT, DEVELOPER(CODER), TESTER, RELEASE MANAGER and what ever you could think off , for which everything you have a seperate team in MNCs. Basically i realised, I need to do whatever under the sky to just make my product work.It was indeed a pile of hurdles, definitely nail biting and head breaking. I was under heavy pressure to come through all these andfinally make my code work. I hardly got any time , all i used to do during those days was just to eat, sit with my laptop, sleep and nothing else. Everyday was the same day , but everyday i could note a progress in my product. Everyday after 10-11 hrs of work, while i used to return home alone on my bike, I had a sense of satisfaction of learning lots and doing something really productive and marking some significant progress for the day. That night's sleep gave me immense satisfaction, although i realised its still a long way to go, but there was a satisfaction to reach the intermediary goals atleast. With time i was assigned to manage 2 projects. Whether you call it as lead/manage/focal point , watsoever. In just a handful of people you get to do everything, and the fancy designations doesn't matter. All i knew was , for 2 products , if its something , its going to be me and no oneelse. Definitely a great pressure accompanied with pride and satisfaction too. Its exactly said , with great powers comes great responsibilities.

I agree with fact that prespective varies from person to person, so does the job satisfaction or for what ever factors it may matter between each individual. Some one likes coding and some one doesn't. Some like to manage people and some consider it as head ache. But the fact is , going by the general view point is not necessarily always correct. Counting on safety and security, and going by general public need not suit all. Many at times , your inner hunches prove better, though not always. Perception , reality and deception all play thier own part in life.

Life and its ways

2008-07-22T04:17:00.000-07:00

Recently in this weekend I saw the movie “If Only” suggested by my friend in this weekend. That movie clearly depicts a Guy and his Girl friend living together. Both leave their home and live in UK. It clearly depicts the varying interests between the two. Quite obviously as it is, the guy is more concerned about his career, business and work. The girl on contrary is more keen only on every subtle factors such as making love in the morning, her every little personal feelings, expecting her boy friend to notice her new over coat with a word of accord, remembering certain dates when both decided upon certain things, expecting her boyfriend to visit her relative’s place amidst all busy schedules and so on. But the guy is all focused about his office and work and develops a sense of guilt and regret that his love life is not happy and his girl friend is not happy with him. In spite of so many issues at work place, he makes it a point to be on time to her musical concert and please her, in spite of all it all screws up. Although the movie is not all about these, even I am not here to describe you about the movie.

After seeing all these even I started analyzing and happened to realize where the life is after all leading us to. Right from childhood, all is well as studies and play goes hand in hand free from all worldly worries. As year pass by, one goes up in standard, as far as I remember in my childhood in standard nine is when, you start studying all biological concepts and more about our own human system. As a general tendency reproductive system chapters attracts more to your interest. That’s the crucial part when the attraction to your opposite sex starts. This follows with infatuation with every attractive female surrounding you at your age. But that age one is too young and majority don’t develop the guts to really go and speak.

With time, you reach the graduation stage of your life after passing the cloud 9 days of school. College days and especially UG college days, anyone would accept as one of the most memorable and happy days of life, irrespective of however you score in your exams. For majority of people, it’s the stage when you get to start to booze and smoke. After enjoying to the max the initial years, towards the final year of graduation, one realizes, ops damn, my graduation is going to come to an end, and I am expected fetch a job with descent pay package. At that stage one really doesn’t think or care about the nature of the job, but just about the numerical figures that you have in your papers. At that early stage , you are more focused about those figures only because , rite from childhood, one’s parents start populating (rather corrupting) their mind with giving figure of X’s son earning so much in so and so company , Y’s daughter earning so much in so and so company. ABC company has so much billion $ turnover and sends its employees to foreign countries for deputation and so on and on, with all damn , scrap , irrelevant, stupid and all bullshit what ever you might attribute it to. That’s the stage, when something really crucial goes wrong in one’s life.

Wondering what’s wrong? Man gradually turns out to be materialistic. This materialism is the greatest slow poison which kills one gradually, and props up into its various branches such as jealousy, greed etc amongst your own peers, friends and rather even between siblings. Damn this goes so weird even to such an extent that one starts comparing one’s own salary with his dad. Holy shit, do people really realize what they are up to. And once stung, it never leaves you for live. You start becoming calculative even on certain occasions where you are not really supposed. Only handful of people realize this, but by the time they realize it’s too late. They rather realize only when the same is reflected on them by their own kids. This passes on from generation to generation.

Having completed graduation and excited with a new salary account and money getting credited to it, one develops a feeling as though he has achieved some thing great in his life and starts roaming just as a hero. Many at this stage or perhaps during the late stages of colleges, when he gets bitten by the love bite. One has a feeling at this stage of life that he has money in hand and completed his education, and only thing left out in his life is a sweet bubbly girl friend all time by his side. So he goes on hunt of this. Unfortunately majority of them fall into this dirty pit without realizing the after effects of it.

It’s always rosy in the early stage and only after getting bit deeper into ugly dirty shitty pit, one starts to realize how badly it stinks. One rather realizes the guy and girl’s psychology and chemistry turn out to be literally north and south poles. Well I better don’t discuss further intricacies of it. Anyways after several adjustments, couple of years pass by, and the girl gets enthusiastic about marriage, while the guy would have not even got remote thoughts about it. Rather he would never like to fore go his bachelor life. That’s the first time, it all starts, when the guy gets develop a feeling that perhaps he shouldn’t have got committed. But he also realizes that it’s already too late. Mostly out of compulsion (hardly out of willingness) the guy makes up his mind, then realizes he really needs to step into the next stage of life. Till that day what ever seemed to be rosy to him, he gets to feel only the thorn in the rose, rather than the rose.

In order to step to next stage of his life, he realizes that his current salary is just not sufficient to support a family. While from the girl’s side, every damn girl or girl’s dad today needs only a abroad settled Indian, Generally one who has already managed to get a citizenship of a nation which is wealthier than India or a developed country, for simple reason that after marriage even his daughter will become citizen of that country and that’s done for the entire following generation, as even kids will become the citizen of that country. Generally to get a foreign country citizenship, it needs over 6 years. These so called dads of girl child, doesn’t really care however older the guy might be. God damn assholes I wonder whether they are looking for their girl’s marriage or a business. If the fucking money and status is all that matters, then why don’t they get their daughter married to a foreigner? They are scared about the culture and hence in order to be secure they need a Indian but settled abroad. If the same Indian is settled here at Indian with a descent white collar job also, they look them as literally beggars. I really feel like one tight slap to those assholes. These assholes really forget , what economic status they were at the time of their marriage. They rather even forget that this the same nation where they studied and came up. They really look at these India based Indians with scorn. The same Indian doesn’t matter what ever bullshit or low profile job he does at abroad, he is looked upon by these parents as better and higher in status than a person however higher profile one does in India. These people are seriously blind. They don’t have eye lids closing their eyes, rather its their money and materialism closing their eyes. Over a period of years these assholes earning hand to mouth, have learnt what investment and savings in life is. They have realized over a period of time that neither of the investments FD, mutual funds or even real estate is so profitable as getting their daughter married to developed nation settled Indian. Gone are those days when people used to prefer a male child. The bottom line for all is materialism. Even those days they needed a male child only as only male child used to earn and they reap good returns. Today the trend has changed. For your male child to settle in abroad, one has to spend lots for his education, face many uncertainties such as Visa , work permit and apart from all these you have to wait for at least over 6 years to settle down finally. While in case of a female child, its easy, just get any graduation for them in India cheaply and export them to abroad at the age of 22 soon after education. Once married it’s done for the following generation too as following all kids will become the citizen of that nation. India is a developing nation and it will continue to be the same for long. Life is short. No one can’t wait for so long. The short cut is marriage.

Our lover boy is effectively never happy with what he has got, current salary or what so ever. To win the girl, he tries to think off all weird steps to move higher in status. The various steps of these are, try to get in touch with a consultant who helps you in getting a contract job and visa abroad for a huge fee, trying to do some post graduation abroad, or try studying a MBA. These stupid guys don’t understand, there is no short cuts to come up in life in short span of time. Effectively they end up in trying everywhere, yet fail to achieve what they aspire. Many at times Man proposes and God disposes and you just can’t help it. Better accept it as for your good. Without realizing these, people build up frustrations in themselves. At this point of time the girl, who was all supportive till this time, clearly says I can’t come against my parents and only you have to come up to my parents expectations. In effect it adds more pressure to the guy with failure. Rather than understanding the guy is trying his level best and support him, all merely just add up to pressures.

Hey foolish materialistic people, why don’t you realize that there is no end for this rate race. One puts oneself in loads of pressures, just to fulfill his immediate desire, but fails to notice that its not the end and it continues for ever with a chain of desires on and on.

What the hell God damn is one going to do with all the wealth accumulated in this non ending rat race through his life. Where does this materialism finally leads to ? All one gains is loss of peace, happiness and valuable time in life. Please realize what you are doing and after all why you are ultimately doing all this for.

Note: The above narration might not be true with many cases, and I really apologize if it had hurt the sentiments of certain readers.

FORM 16 Income Tax Returns e-filing

2008-07-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

Financial Year Ending has arrived along with Form 16. Last year 2007 was the first year I filed my tax returns. All I knew about form 16 was it was used to file your Income Tax returns. And you have to file it immaterially whether you are supposed to get any returns are not.

Last year , I was in Pune at this time and it all sounded gibberish to me , so many numbers , that too concerning your money . Rather it all frighten me as I was never sure whether what I am doing is correct and above all if something goes wrong , to get back your money from Govt of India is next to impossible and it takes indefinitely long duration of time. Fortunately in Pune I was surrounded very elderly responsible team of people and they arranged for everything. I just had to pay 200 bucks to a agent and he did everything. I didn't even have any idea what it was and just signed at a single place that he showed. I was relaxed and felt so satisfied that I have become so responsible in life that I have done a great job of filing my IT returns on time :-)

A year passed by in no time, with so many changes in my life and career that now I am in bengaluru with a new company which has a headcount of just 20 at bengaluru office. I was fortunate enough , that I received my form16 from my previous employer on time without much hassle. But one thing i could realize was that there was hardly any responsible person surrounded who would do help me out as it happened last year. No body bothered to file returns just out of lethargic and laziness. Rather than that its more because people have got a mind frame set that if its some work related to Govt of India its going to be tiresome accompanied with bribe, which effectively ends up just in frustration. So hardly anyone showed any concern to go and file these returns. Since I was new to the place , I didn't know any agent who would do all these. I also got busy with my work at office and suddenly i realized its half way passed July and I still didn't do it and it got out of my mind completely.

One fine day suddenly my sister called me and I realized my lethargic nature. The next morning i woke up tensed and called my relatives and friends at bengaluru to find out if any body had any contact of any agent to do this for me. Unfortunately nobody could help out and everybody had some office accountant who does that for them at an cost. Ultimately I decided to call my friends at chennai and my dad too , to check out if there is some way i can do it. The following weekend I had planned to go home and get it done from some agent through my friend at chennai. My friends assured me to enquire about it. As ever usual parents are the living God who come to rescue and my dad asked me to relax and assured me that he himself would go to IT office at chennai and get it done for me. That was the last resort left out to me, although I wasn't very comfortable with it as its a huge strain to my dad , he has to travel around 2 hrs on road and hot sun for this.

Finally on Saturday I reached home , Me and my dad started to fill the form togather and we were done after some time , but we didn't know what to fill in 2 of the fields. Suddenly at that point of time my school friend Bala, who works for TCS, cautioned me that he had contacted one of the agent who intimidated him by saying that its better to file it from the place where you get Form 16. Hearing to this even my dad got a doubt and was apprehensive in doing it from chennai

I really got crazy hearing to all these, Currently I am at chennai for vacation, I work at bengaluru and my previous company is at Pune , me going to Pune for the sake of filing it was simply beyond my scope of imagination even. Some how i felt these all are weird and definitely things won't be so stupid as this, as it doesn't make any sense and there would thousands of people like me shifting jobs. Still to be on safer side, I called X room mate Jeril at Pune, who indeed is a very good friend of mine, and pleaded him to help me out as the worst case and assured him that I would send him the documents by courier. Jeril assured me that, he knows an agent at Pune and it would be done at ace at an cost of 200 bucks

Finally something prompted me that in today's world there should be something online possible. I started googling it out. Although I had my own doubt , whether Govt of India will be up to date in today's technology. To my surprise I found a website of Govt of India , to file returns online. It said E-Filing. Wow I was amazed and pleased. I badly wished if it gets done by this so much of strain would come to an end in no time.

I had to first register and create a login with my PAN card, and follow the sequence of instructions. After creating a login id , I had to download an Excel Utility from the website , fill all my salary details and generate an XML from that Excel. There were friendly links to generate XML from Excel file in the utility. So there I go , I decided to get started and fill the excel, I filled it half way through and after that I went to fill the second sheet, It said me the sheet is locked and although i tried repetitively to unlock it , it prompted for password and I couldn't. I got pissed off, and started calling names of Govt of India for developing such stupid utility. Then I suddenly i realized that I am able to update neighboring cells and not only those selected few. Then I decided to study the help instructions calmly and found out that certain cells are locked deliberately as those fields will be automatically filled after performing certain calculations by the utility itself. Then I realized, Oh Boy this is cool !! Then started to proceed the other mandatory fields after reading the instructions properly and to my surprise it was all so easy and I rather submitted my IT File returns and I got the acknowledgment too in no time by e-mail. I was so pleased. One job which was eating my mind for past 1 week, got over so easily sitting at home, without any running around and no extra expenditures of 200 too :)

After all these got over 1 in the midnight with my dad, I realized as usual some very valid lessons in life. I understood no point in getting pissed off, and one has to have patience to go through all instructions which would in reality save lots of your time. Above all "Necessity is the mother of Invention" Only when i had no other way out, I started to find about these online E-filing. although i never heard of anyone doing all these before.

Friends for those who are yet to file your returns, Follow this below link to do it with ace rather than paying unnecessarily to agents.

Please do read the instruction fully before jumping out to fill it out. Even after that if you have any issues , you can always mail me to vinodjayachandran@gmail.com for your queries.

Always realize one thing, if you feel , what ever you are doing is getting more complex and difficult , that means you are somewhere wrong. Always the next stage of Genius is being simple.

INTERVIEW: TACKLING behavioural questions

2008-05-28T04:09:00.000-07:00

W HEN asked a traditional question like, "What would you do if you had a customer who wasn't interested in buying the product?" you can make up a story.

But when you're asked behavioral questions, the interviewer is listening for specific examples of how you have handled situations or problems in the past.

When presented with behavioural questions be ginning with phrases like, Tell me about a time when" or "Give me an example of," the interviewer wants to hear your real-life examples. When interviewers ask such questions, they are listening for examples of how you handled situations similar to the ones you may handle for this company This is your chance to talk about your accomplishments. If you can demonstrate through examples (preferably recent ones) that you've succeeded in certain areas of interest, you'll likely be considered a strong candidate for the position. After all, if you did it somewhere else yesterday, you can do it for this company tomorrow.

Your success stories should include the situation, the action you took and the result. Here is an example if you were interviewing for a sales position: The situation I had a customer who did not want to hear about the features of my merchandise because of a prior interaction with my company .

The action I listened to her story and made sure I heard her complaint. I then explained how I would have handled the situation differently and how I can offer her better service. I showed her some facts that changed her mind about dealing with the company again.

The result She not only bought the merchandise, but also complimented how I handled her account.

She is now one of my best customers.

One way to prepare for this type of interview is by writing out your stories before the interview. Determine what stories you have that would be appropriate for the position based on its job description. If the job requires dependability, write your story about a time when your dependability was recognised or made a difference with a customer.

You can use the stories you prepare even when the interviewer does not ask behavioural questions. If you are asked a traditional question, use your prepared story and preface it with, "I can give you an example of a time when I used that skill on a previous job."

By preparing for the interview ahead of time and recalling your past successes, you will be able to have examples in mind and will not be caught off guard. There is no way you can predict what the interviewer is going to ask you, but you can prepare what you want him to know about your past as a predictor of your future performance.

-Monster.com

For those who work on Computer

2008-05-28T01:39:00.000-07:00

Horrible/Craziest Journey Ever

2008-05-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

This blog of mine, Iam expressing one of my life time experience which i have never experienced so far. A really hilarious experience. For those who are reading this post of mine directly , this is a sequel of my previous post

IRCTC -- TATKAL

After I resigned my job , I was all set to sail through my journey to relocate to Bangalore from Pune. In between I had a 2 week break and I was out for vacation to my home sweet home :)
After my last day in company at amdocs, I was literally restless and wanted to rush home ASAP as it had been over 3 months since my last visit to home. 23rd May was last day at amdocs and the earliest I could leave was the same day night. I had already booked my train through tatkal as i have stated in my previous blog and the train I could get was scheduled to leave from Pune at 3:35 a.m, while it departs from mumbai at 11:30 p.m. Since it was 3:35 a.m , I had booked my ticket for date 24th May. This was my first tatkal experience, and as you all might be knowing you need to book and pay straight from source and destination, and no intermediary fairs were allowed. Anyways I was not really very bothered about the minor fair differences, all the concerned me was a smooth sail to home with loads of luggage.

23rd May night was indeed memorable for me, not because I was heading home, but because that was the moment when i really realized i had one of the greatest and most valuable treasures in my life, which i failed to notice. Wondering what I am talking about ? For those who were with me on 23rd night its no surprise, Yes it is none other my most valuable friends who were with me till the last minute. I repeatedly insisted my friends that it makes no sense for them to be awake till 3:30 a.m till I leave. But my friends gave no ears to what ever i had to say. Four of my friends Jeril, Arvind, RK and Rupesh , inspite of insisting lots many times, were there with me and they all had arrived at my home at 2:00 a.m, all were really all set to leave. I got Greeting cards and loads of memorable hugs. At 2:00 a.m when i was all set to leave, suddenly I realised my e-ticket print out was missing. I had taken sufficient number of copies. Yet I couldn't find even one. There it goes, that was the moment when it all got started. We had no time to search even , we decided to rush back to office ASAP and get another new print out of the ticket. I didn't have my bike with me as I had already transported it through movers and packers to Bangalore. Exactly 2 days before only Arvind had bought his new bike and he was at my home. Arvind suggested to rush to office to take print out. I felt it to be indeed sensible. I gave all my luggage to jeril and rupesh who had brought an Auto to my home by then. Handing over my luggage to my friends I rushed to office to get my ticket with Arvind. I was tensed and restless to the core. Arvind dropped in exactly at the right moment to help me out. That moment seriously Arvind in front of my eyes appeared to be as God sent :) For those who don't know , that's my smart buddy Arvind

And that's my best buddy/roomie for 2 yrs :)

We immediately rushed and to my surprise we noticed this Indian Railways server is deliberately down from 11:30 p.m to 6:00 a.m :( Damn I could access their server and take print out . All I had left out with was the mail which i got from IRCTC. I took the print out of it and rushed to railway station. I know that's not the actual ticket, but just a proof of my ticket. I was bit scared about eth problem the TC might create because of that as well. So I went to the inquiry counter of Pune railway station and wanted to just inquire whether that printout is fine. To my surprise I realized some new problem , at inquiry counter guy said me there is no problem with mail print out , rather the problem was, the boarding point was mumbai. The guy at the inquiry point cautioned me that if nobody boards the station till one station , the TC has the right to give to some one else. In between bombay to Pune 2 stations come, so I was like scared and praying God the seat should not be allotted to someone else.

Train arrived on time , we were standing at one corner of the platform where Ac 2 tier was actually supposed to come, but it came exactly the other corner of platform. Anyways we had to run till the other end and finally got into AC 2 tier coach. There was no list pasted outside the train for the set of passengers. Anyways its Indian railways and can't really expect things to be on place and time. So I got into the train and exactly as expected in our seat berth 17 and 18, some body else was already sleeping. Alas !! There came the shock. I could smell something fishy. My friends , caught hold of the TC and inquired. Some how we were of the opinion it was boarding point problem only as cautioned at the inquiry center . The TC said he can't do anything now as the tickets are all full , although the TC was kind and polite, he expressed his helplessness and requested me to wait till next stop and check if nobody gets in at pune station, he shall give me that ticket. We had no option. Till then with around 9 bags , we had merely sit beside the toilet in the sleeper coach. It was really hell as it was stinking so badly and dirty to the core. One of my friend suggested , if you can't travel like this for next 25 hrs like this, better quit this train, catch some flight and make a move. But some how i was determined to make a move on that day itself. All 6 of my friends who had come to give me a send off , were cracking some or other joke to relax me as they could read my face as i was pissed off to the max. It dreamed it to be a emotional sentimental bidding adieu to my really dear friends, but it turned out to be all tensed. Arvind and jeril were full of all consolation and safety precaution advises. I seriously owe my life to both these chaps for that night.

Finally we got into that train and it departed pune station at 4:00 a.m and after paying 1800 per ticket me and my school friend were sitting just adjacent to sleeper toilet with all legs and hands stretched apart , so that we have a touch on all the luggages, so that nothing gets stolen. The consoling part i had was, I was not alone in this miserable situation and my school friend was by my side. So we decided to sleep only on turns on an hourly basis. It was already half past 4 a.m on 24th morning. So initially i dozed off and at 5:00 a.m , the first stop daund came and i immediately approached the TC and requested and inquired if there is any chance of berth. He flatly denied me and asked me to wait till next stop at 7:00 a.m. I couldn't really help it. Then my school friend naveen immediately went and spoke and to my surprise the TC immediately offered a berth in 3 tier AC. I was amazed how he denied me 2 minutes back and now when naveen inquired he gave a birth. Then I realized, it was the bribe that was playing the crucial role , and once when naveen offered him , he immediately offered seat. But still we could get only one seat , but that was atleast fair enough to keep all our luggages safe and one person to sleep. So initially i went and slept till 7:00 a.m for 2 hrs , till the next station. Then I called naveen and sent him to sleep for some time. After some time , I met the TC and requested him if there is any update. Then the TC called me and said , there is one seat in Ac 2 tier and he shall give that. Then he asked for my ticket, I gave him my print out and then came the next disastrous shock. The TC said , my name doesn't exist in the train name list at all. Rather even i haven't seen it as it was not pasted earlier. Then i said I have booked ticket for sure, and asked him to verify with PNR number. Then the TC realized and said this ticket is of 24th. I said today is 24th. and I boarded on 24th morning only. But the TC said 24th is the departure date from source station mumbai, the current train has departed at 11:30 p.m from mumbai. Hence my actual train hasn't departed yet. I have got into a train one day before :( It was not the boarding point problem, the date it self was a whole problem . I realised the blunder I have committed and i felt like giving 2 tight slaps to myself . So TC said this situation he can't help and we need to buy all to gather new ticket. At that time we were in sholapur station. The Tc said actually you have to buy ticket from Pune to chennai , but he posed as though he is considerate and suggested me to buy ticket from Sholapur to chennai which costs Rs 1400 per head. Already we had spent 1800 for ticket and there is no reimbursement for tatkal tickets also. But we had no other go. Other wise TC was suggesting to go back to sleeper class. That was something impossible for us and as no other option was left out, we had to pay it and get a ticket. Thus we had to pay almost double the fair , instead we could have gone in flight itself. Anyways the only spirit that kept us going was I was fast approaching home and so rest all is fine.

Finally we were bit settled down. We started getting calls from our friends and parents inquiring whether we were fine. Things were bit settled down. Head was aching like hell as last night it was just a 2 hr sleep. Some how the rest of the day passed. We ate like hell during the dinner as throughout the day was pathetic and we didn't get anything good to eat. By dinner guess we were really hungry and ate what ever we got. Feeling bit relaxed , we decided not to think about the expenses and were chit chatting, reading magazines and playing chess and slept and next day morning we noticed early morning we have reached chennai. Oh goodness . Thank god and my friends. I recollected , in my tenure of 2 yrs at Pune , the only greatest thing i earned was my handful valuable true friends apart from work experience certificate from amdocs :P

How to get a Nice Wife

2008-05-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

There are times in a person's life when he needs to take crucial decisions on his own. Marriage is one of them. Believe me, the decision on whom to marry is the most important decision a person will make in his life. After marriage, your wife is the most important person in your life. She can make or break your life. The mere thought of this is very frightening.

Some of the questions that crop up are -

a.. What sort of a girl do I marry?

b.. Will she adjust in my family?

c.. How can I decide on a girl by just meeting her for a few times?

d.. When should I get married?

e.. This is my life. So, I should choose the girl I marry, but then what if I make a mistake? .. so on and so forth.

I will try to address these & many more questions in the following sections.

The Ten Rules of Arranged marriage

Rule 1 - Magic no. 28

In an ideal scenario, a girl goes to college at the age of 18. By the time she graduates, goes for her post graduation and/ or works for 1-2 years, she will be about 23- 24. This means that she has spent about 5 years away from her home. In the 5 years period, she would meet many smart guys at college or during her first few years on job. So, in all probability it would be difficult to find a good girl older than 24 yrs. Secondly, in Indian families there is lot of pressure on the girl's to get married by the time they become 24-25.
Statistics says that there is a generation gap after every 5 years. So, in such scenario, one would prefer to marry a girl who is about 3-4 years younger to you. Thus, working backwards, an ideal age for a guy to get married is by 28. Earlier the marriage, the better it is.
Well, as we all know, in the current market scenario, there will never be stability in our career. So, I believe there is no such thing as, "I will marry when I settle down".

Rule 2 -- Subset of marriage-able girls

At times you hear statements like, "I am not getting the right match, I will look after 3 months, I will find a better match then". Well the truth is otherwise. The subset of unmarried girl looking for a match is fixed. From this subset, there would be girls who would get married & there would be new girls added who would be looking for a match. The net result is that at any given time, the variety & number of marriage-able girls are fixed.

Rule 3 - Competition for girls

Like all other facets of life, there is lot of competition for good girls. So, if you are looking for a girl who is post graduate, done her Engg, is working, very beautiful, smart, from a good family etc. etc, just think again. There are other guys who are also looking for similar girls & probably they are better off than you in terms of career, looks personality etc. Given a choice every guy would like to marry Aishwarya Rai. So, set your expectations accordingly.

Rule 4 -- Understanding girls

You would have met a lot of people during your life. As we all know, its difficult to judge a person based on a few meetings. I am sure you would agree with me that in case of girls it is even more difficult to understand them in a few meetings. I know people who are still trying to understand their wife. ;-).. Understanding your spouse is a life long assignment. So, then how do you select a girl based on a few meeting? This is where you need to take the help of your parents/ friends & latest technologies like email/chat to choose your girl.

Rule 5 - Society expectation

The selection process is tough on every one who is involved in the process. In arranged marriage, involvement of family & society is pretty high. You can't meet a girl 3-4 times & then say no to her. It is bad for her future. So, you should have a good short-listing criterion. Meet only a few girls & be sure what you are looking for. It is for the benefit of everyone involved.

Rule 6 -- Marriage between equals

Unlike love marriage, in arranged marriage you also marry into the girl's family. In arranged marriages, family support plays a major role in ensuring a successful marriage. This is where the compatibility of social status, family values & caste/religion plays a major role. Its important to note that in case there is a perfect match between the two families, the marriage is destined to succeed.

Rule 7 - Know yourself

Unlike love marriage, in arranged marriage you first marry a person & then fall in love. So, it's very important that you do a self-assessment on the kind of person you would love. They say, "Opposite attract", while they also say, "Bird of same feather flock together". So, you take a call on what sort of person you like. Take a pen & paper; write down the kind of attributes you are looking for in a girl. Say, she should ideally have the looks of Sonia, the style of Monica, the voice of Sheena, the patience of Rashmi. You will certainly not find the perfect girl, but then you would have a good idea of what you are looking for. The secret here is to set some minimum criteria for selection. Don't forget rule no.3 here.

Rule 8 -- Girl's Beauty

A girl's looks attract, but then no one wants to end up marrying a dumb It is like buying your bike. When you initially buy it, you are crazy about the looks, but later on you love it for its reliability, fuel economy & comfort level. Similarly, a girl's looks are important, but then it should not be the most important criteria. Later on in life, you will get bored of her looks. It is then that her personality & behavior will make all the difference to your marriage. I am sure your parents will be able to advice you a lot better on this topic.

Rule 9 -- Taking advice

As I have mentioned in the next rule, it's very important that the final decision on whom to marry must necessarily be yours. However, don't do the mistake of isolating yourself from the world while planning your marriage. Discuss with your parents & very close friends on this issue. They are your well wishers. Secondly, in such important matters its necessary that you analyze all possibilities. Remember, I am not suggesting that you follow others' advice, but don't forget to take their advice.

Rule 10 -- Own decision

All said & done, it's your marriage & your life that is at stake. Once you are married, you & your wife are the only persons who will be facing the music. Don't marry a girl just because your parents or friends asked you to do so. After marriage, if things don't work out & you end up saying, "It's because of my friends or my parents that I married you", then your marriage is destined for disaster. If the girl is of your choice, it is you who will be responsible for whatever happens. That's when the marriage works out perfectly. So, ensure that you marry the girl of your choice. How to approach the selection process?

From the day, a person decides to get married; the selection process takes a minimum of 3 months. The whole process needs a lot of patience & commitment. The ideal steps to be followed are:

a.. Definition phase –

Define the minimum criteria for the kind of life partner you are looking for in terms of education, physical appearance, social status, family values, future career plans. Remember the Rule 3 here.

b.. Lead Generation phase –

Place ads in various newspapers, magazines, websites, through friends, family friends, family societies & association etc. You need to exhaust all possible means of getting bio-datas at one go. Remember the Rule 2 here.

c.. Short listing phase –

Based on your selection criteria, short-list the interesting bio-datas. The general process followed for correspondence is as follows:
1. The initiator sends a one page profile of himself/herself.

2. Based on the profile, the receiver sends his/her one page profile along with request for detailed profile, photo, horoscope.

3. The initiator then sends the requested information along with a request for similar information.

4. The receiver send similar information.

5. If the bio-data is selected, it is passed over to the next phase. A.. Casual interaction phase –
Based on short listing, about 7 to 10 bio-datas are taken forwarded to this phase. The next step to follow here is to exchange email/ chat ids. The guy & the girl then interact for 10 - 15 days to try & judge mutual compatibility through email/chat.

B.. Family interaction phase –

Based on the earlier phase, about 5 leads are taken for consideration in this phase. During this phase, the parents get involved & check the background information about the families to find mutual compatibility.

C.. The dating phase –

Based on the earlier phase about 3 leads are taken forward to this phase. During this phase, the guy & the girl interact by going out alone for 2-3 times. The guy needs to prepare a set of simple questions like who is your favorite star, what are your hobbies? He needs to use his judgment to analyze the girl based on her responses.

D.. The D-day phase –

Finally, the D-day comes when the guy has to select the girl he wants to spend his life with. If the process if followed systematically, there will be no ambiguity in deciding who should be your life partner.
Finally, my dear friends, marriage is all about compromises. In spite of all the planning that you do, there are a lot of uncertainties in a marriage. In fact this is the best part about marriage. Just remember that the person you marry must be of your choice. In such case, there would be no going back for both of you.

A few words of advice: To make your marriage a success; just believe in the age-old virtue, "Never do anything to others that you don't like for yourself".

IRCTC -- TATKAL

2008-05-19T00:05:00.000-07:00

Counting my last few days joyfully, I knew , I hardly had very few days to stay anymore in Pune. It was a mixed feeling of excitement to return back home accompanied with emotions of parting my close friends and beautiful place where I have led for quite some time(2 yrs). To experience the feelings of partition much better in words you can go through one my friend's blog

Partition- a virtue

So I knew the "D-day" , but I had no idea as of , how am I going to pack things off. Nowhere I could get a ticket for 24th May, even thought i tried almost 1 month on 29th April on wards. As it was school summer vacation time, there was literally no ticket available any where. But I had no other go , than to leave home latest by 24th May. To my consolation, I had one of my dear close school friend who had also resigned and was heeding to home on the same date. He assured me , that there is still one way out to book tatkal ticket from Indian Railways, But my brother insisted me to book a air ticket. Personally i preferred to go by train , as I was totally packing off from pune and there would loads of luggage and its not very comfortable to transport it by flight.
Although my friend assured me, we both us were pretty skeptical about it as there is very high risk and we badly wanted to reach home ASAP. But since my friend had some prior experiences of booking tatkal, We decided to take a chance. We really didn't want to go to any of the travel agents as they charge of nearly 250 , just to bribe the railway officers over there. I really didn't want it that way, I never wanted to promote these any sort of bribery business. But being a common main many at times, you are left out with no other option rather than to do it. So anyways we decided to take a chance and try for one day to book Tatkal ticket on our own and if it fails , the we were mentally prepared to go one day late and get it booked through travel agent. The number of tatkal tickets are really very very limited. It simply flies of in no time.

To be really well prepared , my friend used to come couple of days at 7:30 itself to check out the IRCTC website and have a mock drill. Everyday to our dismay, the ticket bookings start at 8 a.m , but within 10 minutes , by 8:10 , no tickets are available. And the best part is for the first 10 minutes , the web page doesn't open at all. I used to wonder, when its not opening for me, how would the webpage open for others and then how will it available for others. Rather I realized that, within first few minutes the webpage is deliberately blocked and within that time, everything is blocked and bought by the travel agents and sold at a higher price.

We wanted to travel on 24th to home and 19th(5 days before date of journey) was the earliest I could book tatkal. We were ready since 7 a.m. We had opened sufficient number browser windows , for each train and for each class (Sleeper, 3rd AC and 2nd AC and so on) and were planning to click at one go on each , go with which ever ticket we get as we were indeed desperate to go home. Since we logged well in advance, we had to see to it and keep clicking on some or other link to prevent the web page from getting TIMED OUT/SESSION EXPIRED . Finally the time arrived 19th May 8:00 A.M . Everything took place as planned , rather i would say as expected. The web page was refusing to open, with every click it gave me all weird such as "Please try after 8 a.m" , while it was 8:10 a.m "Server undefined" , "Server not found", At times when it proceeded ahead, just at the time of payment it say "Please try booking in some other class". The only difference was added more frustration from the rest of the mock drill sessions. We had 2 broad band connections at our home. We 2 friends were sitting at both PCs and trying simultaneously . Suddenly i noticed for one of the webpage the window proceeded to payment window, I didn't even notice which train was it or which class it was. With only hope on previous setting that it wont be a wrong train , and hardly caring about fare charges or class of ticket I just entered the card details. To my amazement I saw the message that Ticket confirmed. I couldn't believe my eyes . I jumped out of excitement and called out my friend to show that. Inspite of seeing in every train only waiting list, i couldn't believe how i got the ticket. After booking i noticed which was the train and class i booked and wanted to double checked whether all details was correct. After my friend confirmed after cross checking i came back to senses. I just couldn't realize what's happening. Only thing I realized was its was mere God's grace. It was my first tatkal ticket booking experience. I realized that, although we fret and crib about the mis happenings to us and blame some one or the other, above all there is one supreme all mighty , who destines everything and gives you what one really deserves. He plays his role in every moment in every one's life.

Praise the Lord

GMAT IDIOM LIST :: HELPFUL

2008-05-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

Different ... from

Trigger: Different

Rule: from

Example: Democrats are not so different from Republicans in the United States.

Contrast ... with

Trigger: Contrast

Rule: with

Example: My father likes to contrast my grades with my brother's.

As ... as

Trigger: As

Rule: as

Example: Memorizing idioms is not as fun as playing bingo.

The more ... the –er

Trigger: The more

Rule: the –er

Example: The more you ignore me, the closer I get.

Superior ... to

Trigger: Superior

Rule: to

Example: My pasta sauce is far superior to my mother-in-law's.

Just as ... so too

Trigger: Just as

Rule: so too

Example: Just as I crossed over to the dark side, so too will you, my son.

Target ... at

Trigger: Target

Rule: at

Example: The commercials were obviously targeted at teenage boys.

Not so ... as

Trigger: Not so

Rule: as

Example: He is not so much smart as cunning.

So ... as to be

Trigger: So

Rule: as to be

Example: She is so beautiful as to be exquisite.

More ... than

Trigger: More

Rule: than

Example: The chimpanzee is much more intelligent than the orangutan.

Either ... or

Trigger: Either

Rule: or

Example: I must have either chocolate ice cream or carrot cake to complete a great meal.

Neither ... nor

Trigger: Neither

Rule: nor

Example: Because Jenny was grounded, she could neither leave the house nor use the telephone.

Both ... and

Trigger: Both

Rule: and

Example: When given the choice, I choose both ice cream and cake.

Not only ... but also

Trigger: Not only

Rule: but also

Example: She is not only beautiful, but also smart.

Perceptions and Guesses (top)

Worry ... about

Trigger: Worry

Rule: about

Example: If you worry too much about the GMAT, you'll develop an ulcer.

Regard ... as

Trigger: Regard

Rule: as

Example: Art historians regard the Mona Lisa as one of the greatest works of art.

Consider ... (nothing)

Trigger: Consider

Rule: ( --- )

Example: Art historians consider the Mona Lisa one of the greatest works of art.

Think of ... as

Trigger: Think of

Rule: as

Example: Think of it more as a promise than a threat.

See. . . as

Trigger: See

Rule: as

Example: Many people see euthanasia as an escape from pain.

Define ... as

Trigger: Define

Rule: as

Example: My GMAT teacher defines the conclusion as the main point of the argument.

Credit ... with

Trigger: Credit

Rule: with

Example: Many people credit Christopher Columbus with the discovery of America, but Native Americans were here first.

Attribute ... to

Trigger: Attribute

Rule: to

Example: Many amusing quips are attributed to Dorothy Parker.

Believe x to be y

Trigger: Believe

Rule: to be

Example: His friends do not believe the ring he bought at the auction to be Jackie 0's; they all think he was tricked.

Believe that x is y

Trigger: Believe

Rule: that

Example: His friends do not believe that the ring he bought at the auction is Jackie 0's; they all think he was tricked.

Estimate ... to be

Trigger: Estimate

Rule: to be

Example: The time he has spent impersonating Elvis is estimated to be longer than the time Elvis himself spent performing.

Associate . . . with

Trigger: Associate

Rule: with

Example: Most politicians prefer not to be associated with the Mafia.

Hypothesis ... that

Trigger: Hypothesis

Rule: that

Example: The hypothesis that aspartame causes brain tumors has not yet been proven.

Power and Permission (top)

Forbid x to y

Trigger: Forbid

Rule: to

Example: I forbid you to call me before noon.

Require (noun)... to (verb)

Trigger: Require

Rule: to

Example: Before you enter the house you are required to take off your hat.

Prohibit . . .from

Trigger: Prohibit

Rule: from

Example: He was prohibited from entering the public library after he accidentally set the dictionary on fire with a magnifying glass.

Permit . . . to

Trigger: Permit

Rule: to

Example: I don't permit my children to play with knives in the living room.

Try ... to

Trigger: Try

Rule: to

Example: Try with all of your might to stay awake during the essay section of the test.

Ability . . . to

Trigger: Ability

Rule: to

Example: If you took the GMAT enough times, you might develop the ability to choose the best answers without reading the questions.

Extremities and Ranges (top)

So ... that

Trigger: So

Rule: that

Example: He was so late that he missed the main course.

From ... to

Trigger: From

Rule: to

Example: Scores on the GMAT range from 200 to 800.

Argument, Blame and Consequence (top)

Debate over

Trigger: Debate

Rule: over

Example: The two girls refused to end the tiring debate over whose shot was the most
impressive.

Argue about

Trigger: Argue

Rule: about

Example: I choose not to argue about the frustrating futility of learning English idioms.

A result of

Trigger: result of

Rule: A

Example: As a result of the migraine, Martha refused to come to work today.

Result ... in

Trigger: Result

Rule: in

Example: Not learning one's idioms is sure to result in difficulty with many GMAT Sentence Correction questions.

Idiomatic Expressions with More Than One Use (top)

Uses of Responsible

1) Responsibility to

You have a responsibility to take care of the child.

2) Responsible for

You are responsible for the child.

Uses of Distinguish

1) Distinguish...from

I can distinguish black from white.

2) Distinguish between...and

I can distinguish between black and white.

Uses of Native

1) Native (noun)...of

Mel Gibson was a native of Australia.

2) Native (adjective)...to

The Komodo dragon is native to Madagascar.

Uses of Agree

1) Agree ... that (fact)

He agreed that my car needed to be washed.

2) Agree...to (action)

He agreed to wash my car.

Uses of Fear

1) Fear ... of (noun)

He had a terrible fear of spiders.

2) Fear...that (situation)

He feared that her behavior was getting worse.

Uses of Raise

1) Raise ... by (action)

He raised the plank by exerting great effort.

2) Raise... to (level/location)

He raised my salary to 90,000 dollars.

Uses of Need

1) Need ... to (verb)

He needs to study harder.

2) Need...for (noun)

He suffers from an acute need for attention.

Uses of Attribute

1) Attribute x to y

The doctor attributed the condition to her adamant refusal to wear shoes outdoors.

2) x is attributed to y

The condition is attributed to microbes that enter the blood stream through the soles
of the feet.

Career Shift

2008-05-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

Career is one of the most essential part of every human being's life irrespective of gender. And especially in today's competitive world it has become as essential as food, clothing and shelter.

Jun 12th 2006 was the day when I had a stepping stone in my career where I moved from a student stage of life to a corporate professional :) . Feels nice while saying, but frankly telling doesn't really make a big difference, rather the college student days are more memorable and joyful.

Marching ahead with pride and confidence , I joined Amdocs Development centre Pvt Ltd , product development company in Telecom domain. Although I was not a technical geek, but I had keenness in some coding as the final output of the code used to give me immense my satisfaction and boost my confidence. That was primarily reason behind , although a got another job offer from much bigger company IBM, I was not intended to join it as it was on the services domain. As ever usual friends and relatives were always suggesting me to go ahead with IBM, as all they know is the reputation of the company , based on which they decide and further more IBM's posting was at Bangalore and Amdocs posting was at Pune.

Advise is perhaps the only thing known on this earth which is ever cheap and totally unaffected by the inflations of the world. Everyone was behind me after IBM as that stage , none of them were even heard of Amdocs in India, but for my Bro at Europe. Finally I decided what ever might happen, I went by what my inner heart asked me to do . I want to take a decision solely on what i feel as right or wrong, so that I am responsible for what ever that turns out good or bad, rather than blaming others and repenting for it.

There I go , Finally joined amdocs amidst all confusions , hoping to do some quality constructive work . First few days of traning were rosy indeed , with loads of new friends from various colleges and various places. It was indeed exciting. It was a matter of pride at that time to work at amdocs as the head count was just 1200 and we were said that amdocs is very choosy in recruiting and selects only best candidates from premier colleges. Hearing to this i was of the opinion that i have made up to one of finest places and felt proud . Days passed on , I was assigned a project, Hearing big client names made me still proud. To my satisfaction I was given a development work as per client request, which involved coding a all to gather a new C program. Initially I had to struggle really hard with pointers and finally one day when my code worked, it gave me immense satisfaction and pleasure and felt Iam at the right place and rightly doing what I wanted to do.

Six months passed , then came an unknown crisis , which i was probably innocent of. The client's requirements came to a temporary halt and Every one were sent to different projects. In the same process even I was sent to a project which was mere support work . Joined as a fresher , the managers well utilized my ignorance and brought me into support work. Gradually I started to realize the bitter taste of support work. Things started to change more monotonous and boring. There was hardly any challenging part. Worst of all there was no coding involved at all. There was not much requirement to think or apply any brain at all. With time I realized what is that i did constructive and productive EOD is 0. What is the value addition that is happening in me.

At that stage of my career , I was rather in a dilemma as in whether to pursue my career further in this technical line or should move more into managerial as ultimately that is the one which fetches you money. Bitten by the bug of MBA craze, I also started with that crazy maze game. First thing i did was to join the classes and thereafter all that happened you can read in my other blog

Respond Rather Than React

After realizing that studying MBA in India is not my cup of tea as it needs either of the following
1) Really the top cream of brilliant student(while I was just an above average, trying on and on..)
2) Either a OBC/SC/ST certificate, doesn't really matter what you really are
3) Really very very well to do financier who can sponsor your studies , to escape from India's competitiveness and reservations and read abroad.

While unable to meet any of the above eligibility criteria, I decided to hop job finally as the current one was no worth staying further. Till now, the only thing that kept me holding was preparation of these exams and I didn't want other disturbances. Now that the door was closed , decided to hop. One of my really close friend at amdocs , hoped me right at the correct moment. It was Feb 2008, when i realized all the Big MNCs in India was only Service based industry , which are primarily flourishing because of cheap labor and nothing . So where ever I go it is going to be the same old story.

That's when small start ups tempted me or to start something of my own excited me. I thought forget about this money and running behind Big MNC's at this stage and I wanted to do just that I love and enjoy. As money would always follow in the long run. I started getting calls from few start ups. Every close friend and relative of mine cautioned me about the insecurity and poor HR policies in general start up companies.

Certain start up companies even I was indeed concerned about security. I really had to deny atleast 4-5 companies's offer . One of my best friend , moved to ZAPAK the online gaming portal. I have hardly heard of any person working there or even the company recruiting. But the online portal really excited me. The chief Promoter was reliance and hence my feeling of insecurity was erased. Salary I was not really very concerned and I didn't have high hopes as well. My only concern was about the nature and quality of work. I never wanted get into this support profile which was shifting more towards like support -> KPO-> BPO-> Call centre. I visualised that is the way my career was drifting. To my assurance my close friend quit amdocs and joined zapak and to the satisfaction for the past 3 months he got to do really satisfying development and good work culture. Then i decided , it would be good to go ahead with it and give it a shot and check out. the only concern left out was to drill up my technical skills back again which had gone really out of touch working in support profile. I decided that shouldn't be tough and took a couple of days leave and brushed up things . I was fortunate enough to have full guidance from my friend who was working at Zapak. There it goes, series of interview started. I had 3 rounds of telephonic and one final face to face. Clearly every round one after other was like clearling great milestones in my life. Lots of efforts was imbibed in it . More than me, my friend working at Zapak was more eager and excited. Although I was too good and up to the mark in any of the rounds of interview, I was fortunate enough to scrap through. Perhaps so many factors either i was lucky, had god's grace, my friend's influence or they couldn't get any better candidate than me. Whatever I was really thankful to God and my friend. Finally I got selected.

Next was the crucial part of compensation decision. Unfortunately I was getting the same what I got at Amdocs and i was getting no better as far as money was concerned. Again , neither of my friends nor relatives found any point in me making a shift, but for a handful of people. Went through quite a few days of confusion , and then whatever i reason out , always I realized my inner heart was more inclined towards nature of work than money. So totally going by my inner conscious I decided to move to the new organization and experiment in my life. I wanted to take the risk of small start ups , which opens me much better exposure at this early stage of life as I don't have nothing much to loose rather than getting an opportunity to grow much better in a small organization.

Although I am not sure whether my decision is correct or not, but all i know is never to repent on my decision. Taking risk is the route to scaling great heights. I believed it and was indeed strong on it.

Just say no to your Negative Thoughts

2008-05-13T03:04:00.000-07:00

If you want to succeed, it’s very important that you remain positive

Is there something you always wanted
to do but gave up midway because
somebody told you are not good
enough? Maybe it was just a cursory
remark on your abilities. But negativity
has tremendous power and it
sticks. People may have made wonderful
comments about you as well, but
all of them are forgotten in the face of
one negative comment. It is also the
one that remains in the background to
hurt and torpedo your dreams.
Do not allow negativity to blur your
vision of how good you are and what
you are capable of.
Negative thoughts or comments
that have the potential to damage
must be put through a positive sieve of
your mind so that you see it in a proper
perspective. Even Amitabh
Bachchan was first told that his voice
was lousy and that he did not have the
personality to become an actor. Today,
advertisers and film makers are ready
to shell out millions for his voice and
his acting prowess.
So, ask yourself what you want to
do, where you want to go to fulfill your
dreams and what your goal is. Life is a
lonely trudge. Just focus and go for it,
step by step. You are at your best when
you are doing just what you want. As
the negative comments come, dissect
them to see if there is anything you
can learn from it and whether the criticism
is worth it. If not, discard it and
move on. No one wants you to succeed
as much as you.
Unless you are an incorrigible optimist,
the negative streaks will come in
to mar your dreams. But have a singular
purpose of following what you are
doing with passion and purpose. Systematically
brush aside negativity.
This will need effort and some doing.
Ensure you are physically fit as it
needs lots of energy and being fit
gives you the natural surge in your
bloodstream to do more.
Be on the alert when you spot negativity
within you. Deal with it immediately
before it grows and spreads.
Work on sending positive affirmations
to yourself. It may be a good idea to
write them down so that you can see it
again and again.
Often, we are our worst critics
sending negative messages to ourselves
all the time. This can do more
damage than others. Negative vibes
drain a lot of energy and if you want
to do something, you cannot afford to
lose any of it. Anger and frustration
stems out of negative thoughts. As
soon as you change it into positive
thoughts you will notice a drastic
change in the way you feel. People
around you will enjoy being with you.
Ultimately, what helps you neutralise
negativity is faith in yourself. If
you have it, you will be able to embrace
positive ideas and thoughts
much more easily.

Useful Links

2008-05-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

Hi Friends

With this blog of mine, I have decided to provide you more useful information, with really handy links, which would help you for quick access.

You can always help me , by suggesting more useful links about various sectors , so that i can develop it further and make it more useful to public. You can either drop in your comments or mail me at vinodjayachandran@gmail.com what ever feedback or constructive comments you like me to add

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Best Articles

2008-05-01T05:15:00.001-07:00

Hi Friends

With this blog, i have decided to add some value to everyone's life who visits my blog and yield the satisfaction of visiting

Iam here by providing you one of the best , which would give the satisfaction of knowing about those or reading about it

7) Don't Worry Be Happy Always

6) Love the things that irritate you

5) Big B's Blog

Bored of Vinod's Blog ? You can now read Big B's Blog with the above link :)

4) Inspirational Articles

These articles gives you a positive attitude over any problem in your life and changes your perception all to gather.

3) Negotiating salary? 4 important tips

Helps you understand your CTC split up and plan your Tax benefits better

2) 10 things to avoid at your job interview

Nice tips on your behavior , attitude and traits during your interview

1) Dark side of the jobs boom in India

This articles gives you the picuture of what Job sector in india truly is , what are the prospects and it clearly depicts that things are not as rosy as it is depicted. Rather than me telling you more, you can go ahead reading the following article

Learn to forget the Past and move on

2008-04-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

It is stupid to live in the past, hold on to
painful and negative memories, whip
ourselves in anger and fret and fume
with self-pity. But most of us do just that.
We need to ask ourselves if it is worth
holding on to these memories in our
mind’s vaults.
These are toxic memories that can
damage you every day for the rest of your
life. Let us do a cost-benefit analysis of
whether it is worth the trouble to live
with pain, helplessness and anger.
We cannot build a future on our broken
past. So start healing yourself today as
life is short and time is of essence. If we
do not deal with our pain, it will slowly
devour our insides.
If we want to take a happy step into the
future, it is important we bury the burdens
of the past. Our present is much
more valuable than the past but we are
wasting it dwelling on a past that cannot
be repaired or changed. It is the present
that can change for all of us as we are in
charge of it.
Junk self-pity starting today. All of us
have bad experiences with people or go through
trauma because of some unpleasant
incident. Dealing with it only
makes us stronger and helps us think logically
and unemotionally.
Forgive all those who caused you hurt.
This is absolutely crucial as otherwise
you will carry the anger to your grave. It
takes both magnanimity and courage to
forgive but you must have both to heal
yourself. The moment you forgive completely
from the depths of your heart, you
will feel light and free. You do not see
yourself as a suffering human being anymore,
but as someone who has a new confidence
and a new direction. You transform
yourself from a victim to an empowered
individual. You start realising the
value of the present and stop living in the
past. You stop being self-destructive.
One good way is to give positive selfsuggestions.
You can also write down negative
feeling and then decide it is the last
time you will think of them. Or you can
draw, paint or just talk to someone close
to you. Re-live your pain and then let it
out of your system forever.
Sometimes, you realise that you were
to blame. So accept responsibility. No
more will you live in shame and guilt.
Reliving the experience and then letting
go requires effort, energy and
strength. But when you do, you will feel
lighter than ever before. You see a new
world emerge before you. It is important
to let go off the self-destructive anger, you
have been holding on to all these years.
Tell yourself you have the power now to
let go and do it. Don’t allow any of it to
linger on, as you will again be encircling
what you hate most. Only then, can you
move beyond suffering to discover a new
you — a self that accepts every moment
of life is wonderful and beautiful.

Think of your challenges and get energised

2008-04-11T20:13:00.000-07:00

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever.

The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh.

The Japanese did not like the taste.

To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats.

They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish.

The frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish.

So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? If you were consulting the fish industry, what would you recommend?

How Japanese Fish Stay Fresh:

To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged.

Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired & dull, so we need a Shark in our life to keep us awake and moving? Basically in our lives Sharks are new challenges to keep us active and taste better.

The more intelligent, persistent and competent you are, the more you enjoy a challenge.

If your challenges are the correct size, and if you are steadily conquering those challenges, you are Conqueror. You think of your challenges and get energized. You are excited to try new solutions.

Harihareshwar Trip - 06/04/2008

2008-04-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

It had been over a year ever since, I had gone for a outing as we all friends got more and more career centric and didn't really have anytime to relax and chill out in life. As days passed by we realised each one was is taking different directions in career and slowly parting apart with time.

One fine day we all decided to have an outing all of a sudden and we decided to make it happen the following weekend itself as we had bitter experiences before of planning too much in long term and things never really getting implemented. Even this time also I expected te plan to get scrapped out at the last minute.

We were 6 people who marched on to the journey. Our planner was Gaurav, who schedules project events as well at our office. 5 a.m was the scheduled departure. Quails was booked. Previously night was Saturday night. I was having fun with room mates and it got pretty late to sleep , but some how managed to keep alarm at 4:30 a.m and woke up at 4:40. After brushing teeth , I called up to check if vehicle has arrived and to make sure things are fine in place. He just woke up with my call and assured me that vehicle would arrive in next 5-10 minutes from now. It was pretty cool early in the morning. I had a double mind whether to take bath or leave not. I was more inclined not to due to laziness and also because I knew we were going to visit a beach and shall take bath over there and I was also bit worried that the scheduled time was 5 and now its already 4:50 and it might get late because of me and my friends might get pissed off waiting for me. In and all I had every reason in my inner heart to support me , not to take bath at 5 in the morning, but above all my inner consciousness empowered me and i decided to take bath in that ice cold water. I was literally shivering after the bath. Immediately after bath, the first thing i did was to check if i got any miss call from my friends. To my surprise there wasn't any. I realised everybody would have got bit late due to sleep. Then i decided to do some fruitful utilisation of my time. I did some prayers and opened my laptop and sat down to study some online stuff for GMAT. I was rather immersed in the study for quite some time and then i realised that there isn't even a single call from any of my friends. I felt it won't be nice to call frequently and pester them and decided to have a short NAP. After some time i realised my roommate wakes me up at 6:30 a.m and asks me , haven't you left yet. Then woke up out of shock and took my phone and saw if i missed any call in sleep. The funniest part of all. Even then i didn't receive even a single call from any of the pals. Getting pissed off , i realised for what cause i woke up at 4:30 a.m and iam still on my bed at 6:30. I woke up from bed and called my friends and realised that they are on their way finally.

At last they arrived and picking up all friends by the time we left Pune it was almost 7 a.m. Although I got bit pissed off with disturbed sleep , I was back into full enthusiasm and excitement once I met my friends. We were 5 stars who left for the picnic. Me, Gaurav, patry , nalu and Raku. Along with us was patry's mom , who was in and all out care taker. Homely care which i would say something better than heaven.

Finally flagged off and we started our journey chit chatting and pulling each other's legs. With just a single break for tean in between , we finally reached our destination at around 11:00 a.m. During the journey itself we got to see so many beautiful natural scenarios and lakes. We were all very excited to get down from quails and jump into the beach. We had a rough idea of various places to visit at harihareshwar. Often the websites misguides us. Things are never as rosy as it is projected in the websites.

First place we landed was harihareshwar. There is a vary famous Lord shiva's temple. We started our picnic quite spiritually with a temple visit. The temple was on the sea shore. Unfortunately to our surprise, the beach was full of dirt.A wall was also built and there was literally no sand to play around with. The localities of the place said that initially the place was good , but sea water came inside so much that a wall has been built. Effectively the place was a big mess but for the temple. Most of them in the group were disappointed at such a poor started. Although me and Patry were optimistic, rest all were literally frowned. There after we happened to enquire couple of localities over there and realized that there are 2 more god beach near by. There were Srivardhan and Divya Ghar. So those were the last hope, We realised that both of them were pretty near by but 35 k.m away from our current location. We decided to have our lunch and then get started again optimistically , hoping to see something good at least in the remaining 2 places.

We landed on Srivardhan beach next. It was altogather different experience. Can you ever imagine a tourism spot in such a populous country as India, with literally no human bieng around. It was a great experience with total privacy and only we 6 were there on the whole beach. It was so peaceful , mind blowing and soothing place. Initially each one us was hesitant to even walk out of the vehicle as the sun was really bright and hot. But we didn't have an option. Gradually as one by one stepped out , my goodness there we go , I realised heaven on earth. The cool breeze literally attracting each one of us to the sea shore. Gradually as one by one starting jumping into water and it was simply awesome. Swiming with and against the breeze was simply spectacular. We had a fullfledged bath in the beach. We had a volley ball also with us. We played volleyball and football as well. We collected some shells and took loads of pics too.

Our next final destination was Divya Ghar. On the way to the beach which was 15 k.m from our current destination. Through the on road journey itself it was awesome. It was full with fantastic natural beautiful scenaries. We couldn't resists seeing all those scenaries from car. We got so many pictures taken from each other's camera. Finally we reached Divya Ghar. This place was all the more beautiful , It was not blessed with scenaries but also with babes :P It added more spirit and enthusiasm over here as , it was evening and climate was at its best. This beach had a different kind of soil where the sand just doesn't stick on to your wet legs. So we were literally lying down on the sand during the sunset , listening to the natural music of the breezes. That was one of the most peaceful moment in my life in recent times.

Carrying the golden memory we marched on our return journey. The whole group was fully tired. We all returned sleeping most of the time during our return journey and finally reached home by 11:00 P.M.

Harihareshwar, Srivardhan , Divya Ghar and my sweet group of friends made a lasting golden impression in my life indeed.

Game Plan - Movie Review

2008-04-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

Game Plan , the name of the movie totally contrasts to what the movie is all about. As any common man would expect, I decided to see this movie with an expectancy that it would be full fledged sports based movie just as our Indian hindi movie hits such as "CHAK DE" and "GOAL"

The movie begins with really thrilling American football match . The Hero of the movie is "The Rock" World Wrestling Fedration Champion. The Rock is the captain of BOSTON football team. Quite as expected boston football team wins the match. There after goes the intoduction of the hero. He has been projected as one of the finest footballer and every channel is telecasting his interview. In certain channels have critics against him , as he is getting old and his form won't last for long. The Hero has too much of self pride and believes he is the best and he has popular tag line "NEVER SAY NO"

One fine day , someone knocks at his door and he goes and opens the door, he finds a small girl standing at the door step. First he feels the small girl to some sales girl , and then he gets to hear from the girl that she is his daughter. He simply gets shocked and refuses to accept. To his surprise the girl says that she is the daughter of his X Wife. But he stays confident that , he and his X wife never had any kid. The little girl hands over a letter to him , which is written by his X wife. The girl says him that , her mom has gone to Africa for some camp and its now her school vacation. The Rock Star calls his PA and his PA suggests a DNA test, but later they decide not to go for it as it would create a big hue and cry in media.

Initially he totally dislikes the girl and get irritated with every childish activity of the girl. As days pass by he starts to get emotionally attached to girl and the girl starts moving well his whole football team. Everyone gets close and so much emotionally attached to the little pretty girl. He starts to take the girl for his daily practice sessions as well.

One fine day , It so happens that he remains bit negligent , and girl becomes sick , and realising this a new charecter comes into the picture, and she happens to be non other than the care taker of the girl . Thereafter only the "The Rock" realises that , his X wife no more alive and its been few months since she passed away. The girl had lied to him and come to him . Having learnt this The ROCK star feels too bad and sentimental. At that moment he gets a letter from his X which she had written 8 years ago, which she had not posted. The letter says that , she had a baby girl 8 years ago but didn't let him know as he didn't want kids as it was just budding stage of his career then. And he felt family and kids as a distraction to his career. Hence his wife made up her mind for divorce with , just not to stand as an hindrance in his career.

The care taker fumes looking at the little girls condition in the hospital , and decides to take the girl back with her. But the hero refuses her to take the girl back and argues that he is the father of the girl and won't let the lady take the girl with her. Amidst this heated arguement the girl wakes up and misunderstnad that her father still hates her and decides to go with her care taker and leaves her dad.

Emotionally broken down the THE ROCK star , goes to play his final match against Newyork. Within the first quarter , he gets hurt and sits out of the match and Boston is almost about to loose against newyork. Just before the end of the match , the girl comes back to her dad and the hurt hero goes to the field and makes his team win. All is well that ends well.

As such the movies has good cinematography, screenplay and story line. The direction has been to its perfection. The acting and emotional expressions of the THE ROCK star and the little is simply perfect and thier chemistry really goes well. I suggest this movie as a must watch movie.

For further info you can refer to the following below link :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0492956/

Mist -- Movie Review

2008-03-28T22:55:00.000-07:00

Recently I happened to watch a Horror movie "Mist". I would like to share my experience and review about the movie, so that people have a better view about the movie before they watch.

After studying the review from imdb.com , It sounded to be a descent movie for me. It's a stephen king's movie released in November 2007. The movie is all about a Mist that comes to a city and all the side effects it creates in the city.

A certain group of people are locked in a shopping mall, and a mist comes to the city as a natural calamity. Initially the people in side the mall don't realise it and are totally unaware of it. First of all only one person the hero notices it in a generator room and he hears real wild sounds. Frightened by the sound , he goes and intimates couple of people working over there. But nobody believes him quite obviously. Rather they speak so ill of him as well. The people over there so on to switch on the generator and open the shutter in a room , but he asks the other people not to do so. Later just as the shutter opens they realise , some more wild weird creatures that has come with the mist . They see large tentacles and it literally eats up one kid present in the group. Later the the whole group realises the hero's words and try to convey it to rest of the people in the mall and prevent them from going out.

Just as expected none of them believe this small group of people and it leads to lots of verbal assaults and one person without relying on these people's words walks out of the mall and he is immediately shattered into pieces and eaten up the creatures and only lower half of his body is thrown back to the mall. Thereafter every single person in the mall get to believe about the mist and wild creature associated with it. There after few flying creatures gets into the mall and these people struggle to fight against it , and in the meanwhile couple of people end up in sacrificing their life's. The hero's kid is also locked in the mall and he gets so frightened looking at these.

After some time they realise that they can't continue to persist any longer inside the mall as the creature where marching inside the mall. Finally only 5 people remain alive , including the hero and his kid. They try to escape from the city in a Jeep and try to run till the fuel lasts.

Finally the they end up in stage where they can't proceed any further and they have a revolver with 4 bullets but 5 people. They decide to shoot themselves , rather than being killed by the evil creature. The hero decides to face the evil creatures and get brutally killed himself than anyone else in the group of 5 people. In effect and even his son dies and when he faces the evil creatures and shouts at the creatures , and right exactly at the same time the mist leaves the city and every thing calms down. Every body die including the hero's kid and he alone remain left out.

The movie could have been taken in a much better way , The direction was very average , animations were very mediocre . All in all a movie which is made totally out of shape. Just a time pass :-)

For further review and comments you can refer to the following below link from imdb.com .

http://imdb.com/title/tt0884328/

Live a Life

2008-03-28T02:42:00.000-07:00

We spend major part of life judging various people and event that happens to us. Rather than spending our days judging the events and experiences of our life as good or bad, we better adopt a neutral stance and simply accept them for what they are.

We all travel different roads to our ultimate destinations. For some of us the path is more of hurdles or hard than that of others. But no one reaches the ultimate end without facing some or the other form of adversity. So rather fight, brood or crib about it, y not to accept it as it is the way of life? Why not to detach ourselves from outcomes and simply experience every circumstance that takes place in our life to fullest? Anticipation and expectations from everything creates disappointments and miseries in our life. I know we as human beings, it’s indeed hard to lead a life without expectations. But expectations are a mere mental state of being. It’s rather our state of mind that creates all the miseries in our life. Rather we can go ahead with asking, how mind sets are created for various people. Every human being has an all together different mindset. Where do these mind sets come from? I would rather say it’s all in your attitude where it’s situated.

Attitude -> Mindset -> Expectations -> Disappointments -> Miseries in Life

Man is a very greedy animal. With the computer industry booming ever where , he has also been trained and tuned like a computer rite from childhood, which makes him expect an output for every input provided. Same is what applies to every effort that he puts in as input, and when you get the desired results for your effort, one gets frustrated. We have to realise that our life is not a computer system. Not every single effort (input) leads to success (output). Life doesn’t work out in that equation. Only consistent effort leads to success.

Let us face life as it and feel the pain and savour the happiness. If you have never visited the valleys, the view from the mountain is not breath taking. Remember there are no real failures in life, only results. If the desired result is not achieved, then it is not a failure, it is just a mistake. I would define failure only as the one, when one fails to learn from the mistakes and withdraws himself from further efforts.

There are no true tragedies, only lessons. And there really are no problems. Only opportunities waiting to be recognised as solutions by the person of wisdom

Develop a honest philosophy

2008-03-23T04:31:00.000-07:00

We live in world of broken promises. We live in a time when people treat their words lightly. We tell our friends that we will call them after some time ,knowing very much that we won’t have time to do so. And we promise ourselves this will be the year, we will get back into shape, simplify our lives and have more fun without any real intention of making the deep life changes necessary to achieve these goals.
Saying things we don’t really mean becomes a habit when we practice it long enough. The real problem is when we don’t keep our word, we lose credibility. When we lose credibility, you break bonds of trust. And breaking the bonds of trust ultimately leads to a string of broken relationships.

To develop an honest philosophy, begin to monitor how many small untruths we tell over a course of a week. We need to practice the philosophy of “TRUTH FAST” for the next 7 days and vow to be completely honest in all your dealings with others and with yourself.
Every time we fail to do the right thing, we fuel the habit of doing wrong things. Every time you don’t tell the truth , you fuel the habit of being untruthful. When you promise someone that you will do something, just do it, else don’t give your word. Be a person of your word , and not a person of mere words and no action.

Success isn't sexy

2008-03-20T03:05:00.000-07:00

Getting to greatness - Personally and professionally - requires sacrifices. A primary sign of maturity is the ability to give up instatnt gratification for a much more spectacular pleasure down the road. And true, the right thing to do is generally the hardest thing to do. But here's the good news: With daily , consistent effort in the direction of your dreams and an application of fundamentals of sucess , you can really get to the place you've always dreamed of getting to.
"Sucess isn't sexy". Its all about working the basics of excellence with a passionate consistency. I love the word "CONSISTENCY".

Stick to the fundamentals that you know in your heart are true and you'll do just fine. What are those fundamentals ? Things like bieng positive , taking responsibility for your role in what's not working ni your life, treating people well, working hard, bieng an innovator rather than a follower, getting up early, setting your goals, speaking your truth , bieng self disciplined, saving your money , caring for your health and valuing your family.

Getting to your best life is simple. Not easy but simple. It just takes focus and effort. Do little each day to get you to your goals and over time, you will get there.Small daily gains lead to gaint results over a life time.
"Every dream starts small. but you need to start . Today "

Success Breeds Success

2008-03-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

A great note for all to read, it will take just few seconds to read this & it will change ur thinking. Hope this story will touch ur heart & Inspire u for better way of Life.

There was a farmer who grew superior quality, award-winning corn in his farm.Each year, he entered his corn in the state fair where it won honors. & Prizes.

One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew his corn. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors."

How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?" The reporter asked. "Why sir,
'' the farmer replied, "Didn't you know? The wind picks up pollen grains from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior, sub-standard & poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I have to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors to grow good corns."

The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbors' corn also improves. So it is in the other dimensions and areas of life!

Those who choose to be in harmony must help their neighbors and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must helpothers live well. The value of a life is measured by the lives it touches...

Success does not happen in isolation; it is most often a participatory and collective process. So share the good practices, ideas and new knowledge with your family, friends, team members and neighbors & all.
As they say: "Success breeds Success."

'' Everyone has beauty, but not everyone sees it........''

Do what you can,

for whom you can,

with what you have,

and where you are !!!!!!!!!

Try to understand the problem better before taking a harsh action

2008-03-17T00:19:00.000-07:00

The train has started moving. It is packed with people of all ages, mostly with the working men and women and young college guys and gals. Near the window, seated a old man with his 30 year old son. As the train moves by, the son is overwhelmed with joy as he was thrilled with the scenery outside. " See dad, the scenery of green trees moving away is very beautiful" This behavior from a thirty year old son made the other people feel strange about him. Every one started murmuring something or other about this son."This guy seems to be a krack.." newly married Anup whispered to his wife. Suddenly it started raining... Rain drops fell on the travelers through the opened window. The Thirty year old son , filled with joy " see dad, how beautiful the rain is .."

Anup's wife got irritated with the rain drops spoiling her new suit. Anup ," cant you see its raining, you old man, if ur son is not feeling well get him soon to a mental asylum..and dont disturb public henceforth"

The old man hesitated first and then in a low tone replied " we are on the way back from hospital, my son got discharged today morning , he was a blind by birth, last week only he got his vision, these rain and nature are new to his eyes.. Please forgive us for the inconvenience caused..." The things we see may be right from our perspective until we know the truth. But when we know the truth our reaction to that will hurt even us. So try to understand the problem better before taking a harsh action.

Y MA in HR

2008-03-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Having led a corporate life for past 2 years, I realised the complete work structure and functioning of an organisation on an end to end basis. During the course of my professional experience I realised, for successful functioning of any organisation, team work matters much more than any individual contribution as such.

Team work involves more of co-ordination and co-operation amongst people within your team. As a team we can achieve anything effectively and successfully with a dedicated effort in the correct direction. Hence in this process I realised that for any success its mutual, cordial and collective effort. For salutary benefit in this approach it matters more of valuing human relations and values.

One has to be very effective in dealing with people, maintaining their relations and making cordial progress as a team. Convincing people is an art in itself. I believe any conflict or difference of opinion among people can be fruitfully sorted out with mutual agreement, talk, adjustment and co-operation. There is never a problem without a solution.
After completion of my graduation and understanding the corporate world for sufficient amount of time, I realised I need to tune up my humane skills now. I realised technical skills alone isn't sufficient for any growth and success. The combination of social skills, such as maintaining human relations along with technical skills is mandatory.

For fine tuning my skills, I wanted to learn it from the masters in this. For this I wanted to do a specialised course, which truly focuses on social skills and human relations. Hence I realised TISS is the right destination for me to meet my interest, requirement and goals which gives the best exposure for today's world.

QUALITY AND NOT QUANTITY IS LIFE

2008-03-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

ONE BEDROOM FLAT...

WRITTEN BY AN INDIAN SOFTWARE ENGINEER..
A Bitter Reality

As the dream of most parents I had acquired a degree in Software
Engineering and joined a company based in USA, the land of braves and
opportunity. When I arrived in the USA, it was as if a dream had come
true.

Here at last I was in the place where I want to be. I decided I would
be staying in this country for about Five years in which time I would
have earned enough money to settle down in India.

My father was a government employee and after his retirement, the only
asset he could acquire was a decent one bedroom flat.

I wanted to do some thing more than him. I started feeling homesick
and lonely as the time passed. I used to call home and speak to my
parents every week using cheap international phone cards.
Two years passed, two years of Burgers at McDonald's and pizzas and
discos and 2 years watching the foreign exchange rate getting happy
whenever the Rupee value went down.

Finally I decided to get married. Told my parents that I have only 10
days of holidays and everything must be done within these 10 days. I
got my ticket booked in the cheapest flight.
Was jubilant and was actually enjoying hopping for gifts for all my
friends back home. If I miss anyone then there will be talks. After
reaching home I spent home one week going through
all the photographs of girls and as the time was getting shorter I was
forced to select one candidate.

In-laws told me, to my surprise, that I would have to get married in
2-3 days, as I will not get anymore holidays. After the marriage, it
was time to return to USA, after giving some money to my parents and
telling the neighbors to look after
them, we returned to USA.

My wife enjoyed this country for about two months and then she started
feeling lonely. The frequency of calling India increased to twice in a
week sometimes 3 times a week. Our savings started diminishing.

After two more years we started to have kids. Two lovely kids, a boy
and a girl, were gifted to us by the almighty. Every time I spoke to
my parents, they asked me to come to India so that they can see their
grand-children.

Every year I decide to go to India… But part work part monetary
conditions prevented it.. Years went by and visiting India was a
distant dream.

Then suddenly one day I got a message that my parents were seriously
sick. I tried but I couldn't get any holidays and thus could not go to
India ....

The next message I got was my parents had passed away and as there was
no one to do the last rights the society members had done
whatever they could.

I was depressed. My parents had passed
away without seeing their grand children.

After couple more years passed away, much to my children's dislike and
my wife's joy we returned to India to settle down.
I started to look for a suitable property, but to my dismay my savings
were short and the property prices had gone up during all these years.
I had to return to the USA...

My wife refused to come back with me and my children refused to stay
in India... My 2 children and I returned to USA after promising my
wife I would be back for good after two years.

Time passed by, my daughter decided to get married to an American and
my son was happy living in USA... I decided that had enough and
wound-up every thing and returned to India...

I had just enough money to buy a decent 02 bedroom flat in a
well-developed locality.

Now I am 60 years old and the only time I go out of the flat is for
the routine visit to the nearby temple.

My faithful wife has also left me and gone to the holy abode.

Sometimes I wondered was it worth all this?

My father, even after staying in India, Had a house to his name and I
too have the same nothing more.

I lost my parents and children for just ONE EXTRA BEDROOM.

Looking out from the window I see a lot of children dancing. This
damned cable TV has spoiled our new generation and these children are
losing their values and culture because of it.

I get occasional cards from my children asking I am alright. Well at
least they remember me.

Now perhaps after I die it will be the neighbors again who will be
performing my last rights, God Bless them.

But the question still remains 'was all this worth it?'

I am still searching for an answer..!!!

START THINKING

IS IT JUST FOR ONE EXTRA BEDROOM???

LIFE IS BEYOND THIS …..DON'T JUST LEAVE YOUR LIFE ……..

START LIVING IT …….

LIVE IT AS YOU WANT IT TO BE...

Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

2008-03-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

You see things as they are and you say, "WHY ?" But i dream things that never were, and I say "WHY NOT ?" Let us dream and ask how we can make life better for us and those around us.

For centuries, ships were made of wood, because people believed only wood could float. Then people questioned this belief and found that ships made of iron were cheaper to construct , could take greater loads and withstand rough seas. People stopped building ships made of wood and began construsting ships with iron. This would not have been possible if mankind would have limited itself to wood.

Everything in this universe is a movement of energy. Higher and faster energy over slower and lower forms of energy. In humans thoughts are the fundamental seeds of energy. A low thought leads to decay and destruction, whereas high thoughts lead to growth.

Being concious of our thoughts, we can direct ourselves to live actively and add value to ourselves and the people around us. We need to connect to sources of high energy thoughts.

It is important to keep the company of people who are foccussed on constructing rather than destroying. It is important to associate with people you want to emulate. If you want to lead a positive and successful life, you have to start spending time with positive ans successful people. Reading inspiring material and watching constructive things will add to the vibrancy of our minds. All of us want to better ourselves in every area of our lives. So it is upto us to select what we want to become.

I came across a short story where , Once a grand father said to his grandson, "I have 2 voices inside me. The first voice is filled with anger, hatered, bitterness, and mostly revenge. The second voice inside me is filled with love, kindness, compassion and mostly forgiveness". Which voice will win ?" asked the grandson. The grandfather replied, "Whichever one I feed"

"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human biengs, by changing the inner attitudes of thier minds, can change the outer aspects of thier lives."

Open source Vs Priced software

2008-02-24T22:46:00.000-08:00

Open source – priced software the next debating and one of the most happening topic, is something that i felt is worth while writing in my next post. Those were the days when hardly very few people knew hardly anything about computers and things associated with it. People used to get afraid of the terminologies associated with it and would get really sick and uncomfortable with the jargons. But just as we say time is bound to have changes and end of the day everything happens to be a cycle and today computer has become a part and parcel of everyone’s life today and there would hardly be anyone who doesn’t use computer on any given day. It has become part of your daily cup of tea .

If we happen to go into depth and start investigating , how such a spectacular change has come into place in such a short span of time, I would say it’s accessibility, necessity and comfort factor. During the initial days of computers , people weren’t at a very great comfort level with it, because things weren’t familiar enough and it was really costly enough to be affordable by the common public. Computers used to be of really large sizes occupying on full room due to vacuum tubes. Effectively it turned out to be a commodity of elite people in the society. Thereafter came the revolutions after revolutions and made things really compact and handy. Yet there remained something to break the ice, apart from the hardware, and that’s software.
Initially with the soft wares acting as an interface between humans and hardware, were indeed priced really high, for very obvious reasons that only handful of people were masters of it and maintained the monopoly of it and the price they quote was the price without any comparison and restriction.

All good times have to come to an end , and then entered the threat and villain to these highly priced soft wares , which was none other than the concept of open source. I would say open source as something which rose for the noble cause. It is something based on the concept of knowledge for all and knowledge cannot be hoarded. Knowledge is something which grows the more you use it unlike money.

Open source as the name suggests is open to all and it provides a source to all. The best example to open source is LINUX and the biggest example to its counter part priced software is microsoft’s windows. Open source which is completely transparent and price software totally opaque are literally north and south poles in themselves.

The below cartoon would express a hypothetical situation at its best , what if all software products were made open source and no business would be there and no need of salaries to be paid by the companies to its employees

Open source codes are so much exposed to everyone that code is easily accessible to every one and every end user is encouraged to make constructive add-ons to it. In and all its totally a white box. While on the other hand the priced soft wares , survive on the basis of confidentiality and preventing the access to many. The original source code is maintained totally confidential and they are not subject to change by any one. Thats trick and they try maintain monopoly. But unfortunately today with the abundant exposure to knowledge and internet , hackers get the trick out of it and loop holes are always generated.

Priced softwares obviously have thier valid point from thier end, as there is no free meal on this earth. For all the efforts and research performed , they demand the price and reward for it. Even you and me expect a fruit and result for the work we do. Ideally thats business and you do something for money and the business secrets are never let out and kept as trade secrets and are never let out no matter which ever field of business it might be.

Any debating topic have different prespectives of viewing it. Open source view any software development as common society , where the at first the end user expresses his requirements, his requirements are initially handed over to developer and a developer develops it and hands it over to a mass of end users and few end users realising the need of change and with the constructive intensions make changes to the development made by another developer , in turn acting himself as a developer and then delivering it to end users again after deploying it.

Apart from the developers and businessmen, from the end user point of view cost and quality are the prime factors. If you can get quality products literally free of cost and custmizable according to your requirement, then obviously that wins the bet. Open source led to the concept of freewares where softwares were let out for free and anybody could download it at no cost. Hence it makes every sense for the common public to use it.

To comment on Priced software or open source which is ethically and morally correct is very critical, but ultimately the world is driven demand supply curve with cost as an limiting factor. Which exactly has led to the concept of knowledge for all. Knowledge is a power which you can't hoard .

Outsourcing Vs In house development

2008-02-18T01:23:00.000-08:00

Outsource and In house development are like 2 opposite sides of coin when you flip it. Both co-existing is like next to impossible. To describe these 2 terminologies, there could be so many synonyms just as these EAST n WEST, NORTH n SOUTH , WAR n PEACE and so on.

I decided to write about this debating topic after reading the book the "World is flat" and a deep long discussion with one of my close friend. And also i decided to choose upon a topic where in people can pour in loads of thier opinions as comments to my blog :)

Its more like Cat standing on the wall and confused which side to take. Rather than talking on a generalised way , i would like to put myself in other's shoe and talk how as a individual you would support or stand against it.

Primarily and most importantly view point is more based on i would say nationality. If you are indian or chinese or from any of the developings nations you would strongly support it. As it provides tremendous emplyment oppurtunities and effectively great financial and economic benefits for your nation. But suppose you are on the other side, If you are native of a developed nation, its for very obviouos reasons , you would be against it, as its nothing but snatching it from X and giving it to Y. The super set of available job oppurtunities is rather fixed and constant only , the secret behind 1000's job oppurtunities at developed nations is because its bieng cut from developed nations. It's rather a very funny situation , where the economy of the developed and developing nations as well grows. The work is getting done at really one eighth to one sixth rate , which enhances in developed nations economy and for developing nations new opputunities, greater employment and for them even the one eighth of the developed nation's amount is pretty high. Hence its kind of mutual win win situation , but the ones who get unnoticed are the people of developed nations who end up in losing thier job, which in turn leads to political disorder in the nation.

Next I would like to put myself in the shoes of a corporate businessmen , who really outsource the work from developed nations and also in the position of those who recieve outsourced work from developed nations. Business people from developed nations who provide outsourced work to developing nation, woould be really excited to get the same work done from similar skilled and qualities of people, with same quality and that too at one eighth of the cost. The developing countries who recieve the oppurtunities are also at limelight to have new contracts signed every other day and showing growth rate of over 50% every quarter , which is something tremendous. From outer picture everything seems to be fine, but the people who are really getting impacted with this are also get unnoticed, who are the small scale scale sector companies in developed nations, who fail to compete with this outsourcing.

In and all as darwin's theory goes , its a world of "SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST". Every deed benefitts few and it hinders few others. Its all a game, somebody has to win and somebody has to loose. Beyond a certain extent you can't restrict anybody's growth politically in the interest of others. Anyone would like to get the job done at least cost and best quality for maximum benefitt. In this process, certain competitors die out and really hard to take on anybody's side.

Art of Resume Making

2008-02-03T18:59:00.000-08:00

The resume is the first impression that the prospective employer gets of you.
It introduces and presents your experiences, skills and academic training to
prospective employers. The company will decide whether to call you for the
interview or not after looking at your resume. Hence, it is very important to
know how to prepare a resume well.

IMPORTANT POINTS WHILE PREPARING A RESUME
1. Use headings: it is very important to use proper headings in your CV. They not only guide the
reader through your resume, but also give a framework to it and make it more presentable.

2. Customize your resume to the company: many people make the mistake of taking several print
outs of one standard resume and using it for all the companies. This practice can be quite detrimental.
Make it a point to customize your resume according to the nature of the job and the company. For
example, you may require highlighting the sales and marketing experience you have, or the projects that
you have done in this field, when applying to an FMCG. When applying for a job that is less specific in
nature (e.g. A desk job that requires administrative skills), you should not focus on one particular aspect.
Instead, try to highlight points on your resume that show how you have handled administrative or
organizing work whether at work or in your college.

3. Do not put a full stop after the line you have written against a bullet point.

4. Be Original: Though it is important to take inspiration and look through sample resumes, it is equally
important to make your resume yourself, and in the format you think suits your profile best.

5.Use simple and comprehensive language: Do not use long sentences or flowery language.

6.Stress on the presentation part: Remember that a HR manager or a recruitment firm spends an
average of 15 seconds to 1 minute on one CV. You should therefore make a CV that is easy to read, and
looks impressive in the first glance.

7. Do not write "Resume" or "CV" on the top.

8. Do not use "I" in the resume

9 . Feel free to make your resume beyond one page, unless the company to which the resume is to
be sent specifically mentions so.

10. Always check the print out taken at least twice before sending it to the company or the recruitment
agency.

Make the most of bad experiences

2008-01-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

It is strange when we realise that most of us love to wallow in our misery even though it has been long gone. There is nothing we can do to change the past, so why do we allow it to weigh it on our minds? Feeling sorry for what cannot be helped, saying that you wish something hadn't happened, is just a waste of time.

It is important to shake off the burden of your past if you want to enjoy the present and plan for the future. There are instances in everyone's past that they would like to burry. It is best to shake it off , learn from your mistake and walk into present. Is it so easy you may ask ? It is. All you have to do is to tell yourself that you have finally bid it goodbye. Autosuggestion has tremendous power.

Many of our painful memories lie around in our minds like fossils. Even though it happened years ago, it's as fresh as if it happened yesterday. Every detail is so well-etched, so sharp. You would think that with the number of years gone by, the memory should have dimmed and gone out of focus ? But instead, it is brighter than ever and strong enough to haunt your present. If its a negative memory, the stronger it will be. Negativity has tremendous impact and power, which can ruin the rest of your life.

Every minute we lose 60 seconds of our life. Worrying about past over which we have no control, is just not worth it. How many of us invest in the present and live every moment ? We must value life to realise how important it is not to lose time. "Today is the greatest certainity. It's right here before you, and doesn't deserve to be wasted.

Hence you view you every moment experience into various positive categories as below.

Weighing ourselves with negative memories of the past will definitely affect the way we live today and design tommorrow. One way to let go of the past is to forgive those who created those painful memories and forgive them whole heartedly. You will be amazed at how it liberates you almost immediately, making the energy flush your insides and create a new you. Bitterness can function like poison, it's just not worth it.

Another way is to accept responsibility for what happened in the past. You will become more mature and will have new courage that you earlier thought you never had. Use hope to rekindle faith in yourself and the promise of a better future. Hope is a fantastic balm to ease your pain.

The stress that comes with living in the past can be painful. It can damage your health in complicated ways. More immediately, it can impact your attitude.

There is nothing called as "bad experience". All expperiences are good if you look at them that way. Even the so called 'bad' ones are actually good as they teach you so much. Every experience teaches you something that you never have learned otherwise, so make the most of the lessons you learn.

Let go of the past and experience a new you -- full of life, vitality and joy.

Love , Ego and Realisation

2008-01-24T03:58:00.000-08:00

There are three persons: First person, second person and third person. Most of us are comfortable in addressing the third personHe; as 'I'.Intellectually we can see, but teh conciousness inside does not let you do that, because you se imperfection.So to come from 'He' to 'I', one has to pass through 'YOU'. It means having a direct relation. By doing that, the limited knowledge about 'Me' opens up.

You are not just your mind or body complex. You are a field. You are all over.In you is the whole world. But what you think as you, is only your little mind , thoughts and concepts. How do you come out of that ? That is through a connection love.

Love is what ? You and everybody are love. When you love somebody, you say "You are my life" or "You are part of me." That 'you' means that small "I" or that ego "I" dissolves. When ego dissolves, all discomforts go away with it. Its better to loose the ego within you , that to loose the one you love. Discomfort is because of ego. Ego means just the seperation - he is different , Iam differenct. Enlightment or evolution comes in 2 steps. The first step is from becoming somebody to nobody. I want to become somebody important ! You get stuck bieng somebody :either you are to special or part of everybody. "They are part of me".

That's is whay jesus said, "If you have to go to my Father, there is no other way, you have to go through me alone. " This is exactly what all teachers all over the globe, right from budhdha to Jesus to Krishna have said. Krishna first told arjun : "Surrender to him, to teh God, who lives in everybody's heart." Then he says, "Just surrender to me" Then he said, "Surrender to that divinity deep within your self. And get out of this illusion of me, you and all the seperation.

The whole world, the universe is one living being. Each one is just a part of that. This is the highest knowledge and every knowledge has to lead to this universal truth. Just like space, you are in everybody. Only then service also begins.

There is so much sufferring in the world, that's why it is very essential we do some solid work. When we all just think sit and think, "What about me ? then its hell. This is teh technique to get depressed. The body is decaying. The direction of body is to move towards decaying and destruction. the direction of you soul should be towards the immortality, the non changing, imperishable. As you grow older, your mind should mature and look towards that eternal, something thats is undying, something thats doesn't change, that is deep in you : THE SPIRIT.

Bhagavad Gita 13.19

2008-01-23T04:31:00.000-08:00

Bhagavad Gita 13.19
iti ksetram tatha jnanam jneyam coktam samasatah
mad-bhakta etad vijnaya mad-bhavayopapadyate

SYNONYMS
iti--thus; ksetram--the field of activities (the body); tatha--also; jnanam--knowledge; jneyam--the knowable; ca--also; uktam--described; samasatah--in summary; mat-bhaktah--My devotee; etat--all this; vijnaya--after understanding; mat-bhavaya--My nature; upapadyate--attains.
TRANSLATION
Thus the field of activities [the body], knowledge and the knowable have been summarily described by Me. Only My devotees can understand this thoroughly and thus attain to My nature.
PURPORT The Lord has described in summary the body, knowledge and the knowable. This knowledge is of three things: the knower, the knowable and the process of knowing. Combined, these are called vijnana, or the science of knowledge. Perfect knowledge can be understood by the unalloyed devotees of the Lord directly. Others are unable to understand. The monists say that at the ultimate stage these three items become one, but the devotees do not accept this. Knowledge and development of knowledge mean understanding oneself in Krsna consciousness. We are being led by material consciousness, but as soon as we transfer all consciousness to Krsna's activities and realize that Krsna is everything, then we attain real knowledge. In other words, knowledge is nothing but the preliminary stage of understanding devotional service perfectly.

Don't make mountains out of molehills

2008-01-20T23:24:00.000-08:00

Mercury inside the thermometer rises when the temperature outside is high; and falls when the temperature outside is low. Many of us behave like the thermometer, our self-esteem rises and falls according to what others say and feel about us. somtimes, situations we face also defin our self-belief and attitude towards others.

There is a Hindi quotation that goes something like this: 'Nap tol ke bolo'. I would like to add something to this:'Nap tol ke suno'. It is important that we are deliberate in what we speak , because it affects others. It is equally important that we are deliberate when we listen.

Remember the fable of a man and his son travelling with a donkey. Intially, the man rides the donkey while his son walks along side. Passers by advise the man to walk while his young son rides the animal. so he puts his son atop the donkey. A new set of 'advisors' commented on how shameless the son was to be riding the donkey while his father struggled along. So the man sat behind his son on the donkey. Yet another set of people commented on teh atrocity to the poor animal, so father and son got off and started walking alongside the animal. However, there was another set of passers-by who commented on thier folly- they had a donkey but weren't riding it.

Many of us give others a chance to affect how we feel and act. It is important to learn that, despite the opinions of others, how we act is important for us to lead fulfilling lives. While it is important to have advisors, we need to ensure that we close the right ones. Also equally important is that we decide for ourselves the difference between right and wrong. Otherwise, we run the risk of becoming timid.

Take 100% responsibility for your life. Wrong doing on another's part is a cause for concern. But our own low self esteem will push us to discuss these concerns, making a mountain out of a molehill.

Work Life Style in Indian IT Sector

2008-01-16T20:48:00.000-08:00

IT.. That's the buzzing word today in INDIA. Hope everyone knows the reason why. That's one field in India which is one of the maximum paying and easy job yielding sector . People shift over jobs the day they get bored with the current one. This is the only profession in today's date which gives you job immediately after your graduation.

Things are not Rosy as it appears always. Only when u go deep into it, u realise how it stinks :)

Having worked in IT , industry after passing my engineering with dedication and interest from esteemed university, i realised all i do in the S/W company is mere bullshit.

The day you enter, everything seems really rosy, everything so porch , royal and great. You feel indeed nice, with the hospitality and great sky rocketing assurances and promises by the HR. During your induction phase all you are told just about the monetary benefit aspect of it.

Any organisation you enter , first few days are the training phase to understand the system and environment of the system, which hardly anyone follows or understands. Although first couple of days there are high spirits in all the employees, after few days hardly does anyone even make an effort to listen what the person is blabbering in the training. All goes on is the anticipation for a tea/snacks break or other wise just browsing orkut and chatting secretively.

After the training phase , is when you exactly march into Project allotment. As a fresher when you are initially put on to bench , u feel so embarrassed and insulting and feel as though you are worth much better. Only after project allotment, you realise the golden moments of Bench days and badly want it back , but you never get it back again. Bench days are only few days which activates your mind to think simply out of the box. Total 9hrs of free time a day. You really need to use your mind how to pass it daily for the whole 9 hrs. One starts reading 2-3 news papers a day, same news from different news papers , and spending hours in canteen and pantry, analysing every roti and every rice particle and complaining about every this and that.

At last after a long wait , Project is assigned. Every one usually gets so baffled and excited listening to the Client name. For obvious reasons client Brand name is much bigger than the organisation which you are actually working with. People start claiming with every one as though they are working under the payroll of the client just for a show off and image.

Once we are truly into the team , one starts realising the true colour of work culture. At college everyone gets carried with a tag as working in a product development company is more prestigious than any service company. Only at product development company you actually use your Brian and do good quality actual work. But poor chaps realise all are same bull shit scrap after joining the organisation. Product development company or Service oriented company , either of the places you hardly use your brain and do any worth while work.

People divide this IT industry into various sectors. Broadly they can be classified into 2 different branches. IT and ITens(KPO, BPO, Call centres) . There is a clear cut image as though ITens is bit inferior than IT, but only the insider realises that every where what one does is just browsing the net and talking on teh phone which they call it in a very professional way, communicating with the client and being on the bridge. All it matters is how you talk. But these days even people who hardly can speak English get into it :-)

In this IT Sector too they have major sub divisions called as (a) Development and (b) OGS(On Going Support). Again here there is a opinion as if Development team is superior to OGS team both in the quality of work and monetary value as well. But things all boils down to same thing. The Holy mantra of all Computer based companies are just "Copy & Paste" . I wonder how all these IT sector companies would have survived if there was no CTRL+C and CTRL+V functionality. CTRL+C and CTRL+V is the mantra of all software companies. Hardly any person would be coding with freedom , using his own ideas and implementations. Every one just uses the ready made tools for efficient work and hardly even realises what they do.

Indian IT economy is ruled by wholly service and support oriented. To put it in black and white terms its merely defect handling and fixing. Namesake we fix any defect. As days pass by every one develop laziness and a mentality to bypass or surpass the defect than to truly fix it. Its rather not the individual fault even rather. Management wants maximum work to get done from minimum head count. Hence with loads and piles of defects one has, hardly anyone develops any mentality to fix issues, they merely want to get rid of the issues. As again if someone spends more time on any issues, trying to figure it out or fix it, it reflects in his productivity and it reflect a black image for him saying only so many issues in so much of time. The individual poor chap tends to put a sorry face.

More funny crazy part with these defect handling, is just the real life scenario as no body would like to take blame on their head , and try to blame it on some one else or some other team, or give all possible out of the box excuses.

The more greener part, which people fall for is the on site opportunity. Only Once maximum in a year hardly anyone person from the whole team is sent to and that they project it as great on site opportunities and clients all across the globe.

In spite of all pit falls, this is the only field that gives employment to masses of crowd to meet the population explosion of India. I really wonder if there is good quality of work any where after all or only to India the big shot tycoons Software companies give merely low quality job as here its cheap labour and doubting the potential of Indians

The day is not too far away, when India will also emerge as software destination hub and start proper research and development work, create products of their own, create their own employment, fulfill their own needs and mark their feet on a better commanding position, rather running behind others for clients, doing any given job which hardly matter and carrying a cheap labour nation tag on their fore head.

Renunciation and Devotion, 2 sides of a coin.

2008-01-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Hare Krsna,

Man lives in ignorance with so many superstitions and wrong assumptions and beliefs, which leads him further to darkness by his own deeds and assumptions.

Arjuna asks Lord krsna, that Krsna, at one point of time you tell to renunciation from Work and perform sacrifices and get free from all these materail world, but at the other time you also ask to perform your duties with devotion. Arjuna asks Krsna that Iam confused whether i have to do renunciation or perform work with devotion in krsna consciousess.Actually its not the doubt of Arjuna, Arjuna asks on behalf of the whole human mankind.In response to the above doubt, Krsna replies, that Arjuna if u have to choose between renunciation or work with devotion, you have to do work with devotion only. Certain people who act as saints and simply renounce from work, without Krsna conciousness, which will not yield any result. That has no use, its mere fooling the outside world. There are different stages at which Man is destined to perform different duties at different ages in his life.Krsna doesn't advise you to shut yourself away from prescribed duties. At the time of performing one has to fulfill his duties in Krsna conciousness, so that he doesn't get perturbed by thier results or attaractions. He does his duties in dedication to Krsna and not for sense gratification or material pleasure.

RESPOND rather than REACT

2008-01-14T09:59:00.000-08:00

Graduated as Engineer from an esteemed Engineering college, I believed that I have achieved one of the greatest milestones, and life ahead is a cake walk here after. But life is not always what u perceive as or see it as. I truly experienced as what we say Man proposes and god disposes.

With 2 Job offers in hand, I was leaping ahead to step into the software IT industry, i was literally at my cloud 9. And it was one particular day , when i was discussing with my best friend, who prompted a spark into my mind, that we are no way gr8 or achieved anything after all, as there are 2 Lacks Software engineers passing out every year. We are just a drop in the ocean. That was the time when i realised there is lots more further ahead. I decided that i wouldn't be a drop in the ocean , rather a volcanic eruption , and every deed of mine should create waves and impacting 1000's. We realised to have a upper hand over other majority, i realised that we need to add cherry over the cream which would yield us status , power and money as well.

Programming as far as to me as CS engineer, i realised that it means to me nothing more than CTRL+C and CTRL+V, and when ever i started scratching my mind with coding, i merely ended up in Run time error even if i manage to surpass compilation error although even i had many success full projects of mine at college level.

I was more motivated and attracted towards getting work done from others , then by doing it by my self :P, and felt that's better to manage , hence was tending towards being management guru. That day in my final year, i would never forget when this Management craze dropped into my mind and strongly holding up till date. Hence i was motivated for BTECH+MBA tag behind my name. Even today i wonder if my craze and decision was correct, and if i analysed my requirement in career properly, Was it influence from others , or race after status, power and money, i don't know, All that went round and round in my mind was Rule than being Ruled.

Rather than truely determining, what i need is somethng i really the rite one apt for me, i just started focussing , planning and targetting on how to achieve, my target. Walking along the college grounds, i started figuring out what and when it needs to be done. Enjoying the merry , fun and frolic of final year, i realised not to burden with any kind of preparation. Those final days of my college were indeed palace and heaven on earth.

Then i started analysing what is that they expect from each management apptitude tests, I realised its mere simple mathematics and school level english, and i was pretty confident that its shouldn't be that tough and all a matter of speed and revision. So thought that just a bit more added effort should suffice. So estimating a systematic and regular effort would do , which was nothing new to and i was used to it since my childhood school days.

April 2006 was when i graduated as engineer and within a week after i returned home for vacation, in May itself i started preparing for various Management tests. Somehow before leaving college i made sure that i collected sufficient materials from friends.

June 2006 was the day when i joined my job, One of the most memorable day in my career, 15 days i lived really porshe way , in company provided accomodation, utilising all the resources to maximum. Gradually after 15 days me and one of the college mate of mine we moved to a house near by office, and i started preparing for those rite since we moved to the new home and settled. There after it started on and on and on. To my help office environment and surrounding were at its best. I started loving the place , its climate and ambience.

As every movie has its climax, i appeared for all the tests, but effectively it ended up in no results and big zero :-( Basically bieng a high time optimist, decided not to sit down and rather bounce back. Having a opinion as though only self study wasn't that effective, i decided to give it all one more shot with proper coaching institutes.

It was all with the begining of 2007 , i started it all again from scratch. Right at the same time within 6 months of my term at office, i was shifted to new project in office. Hoping everything to turn out smooth and fruitfully, without knowing much about that project , i decided to take up the new prject. Gradually classes at the coaching institute also picked up and every weekend as a good student i used to attend every class without fail, although they didn't matter much or brought out much change in me. As every other office, fresher was properly utilised and proper advantage was taken of my ignorance, and i was put into support work. Support work as every one knows is the one where u are made to suck 24/7 without any application of brain. As part of this there raised a necessity to attend offices even in the weekends. That was a bottle neck , weekend was the only time where i used to get study peacefully and attend classes and even that gradually rose up to be an issue. Certain weekends i had to spare classes for the sake of office and it was in the month of May when every weekend test started coming up and that was something which i didn't want to miss out at any cost.

Everything had its own limits and so was with my persistance also. Finally had to talk it out to the management that iam not available in the weekends due to personal goals. I knew it for very obvious reasons that , its going to create a black mark in my career in the organisation, but i had no other option. It was a do or die situation as I regarded my MBA goal was more important than my current profession as software engineer. After loads of arguement and discussion along with confusions i had to do it and things came into place and I could make it upto every weekend examinations without fail. As days approached, every week simply flew really fast with really too busy and hectic schedule at office and with weekends classes and test, i hardly realised the difference between weekday and weekend. Realising that mere weekend study is not going to fulfill my ultimate goal, I planned and decided to wake up early in the morning and somehow make it up 1.5 hrs of study both morning and evening before and after office , totally some how making it up to 3 hrs a day. As this kind of a schedule came into my daily life , i had to act as a govt employee restricting me to only the daily stipulated 9 hours of work, ideally work for the time you are paid for. But unfortunately the culture with indian IT software companies especially bachelors are such that they are ready to work even 18 hrs a day given few thousands of money and just to create a good impression at office. And i also could realise from my team mates, who were envious of me for coming in time and leaving in time. Although i knew all these happened behind me, i decided to not consider anything and just focus on single MBA goal and negelect whatever comes on the way.

Days passed by so on with every weekend tests and study , but to my surprise i never realised if i was so poor and repetitively my performance in the weekend tests were poor with some minor fluctuations. Although i didn't loose hopes , efforts went on and i started registering for every management tests that came through my way and ended up in spending upto 25K for registering and sending applications to various colleges alone. I decided that this was the last chance and its a do or die situation and not to think about expenditures.

Meanwhile, all came when it was not desired and the one in queue this time was my On site oppurtunity. All these again added to confusions and finally i had to take the hard decision of denying on site oppurtunity as well , for the sake of these exam preperations and practice at home.

Finally the D day arrived and final exams after exams rolled by ... and then there after results after results from various colleges rolled on , all leading -ve and pulling my morals down. And time came when i realised that there was no college where i stood any chance. I was sorting out what else were the options.

Exactly rightly at the same time did the employee performace valuations came into picuture and for very obvious reasons and politics , only those who were mere pupets for higher managements and used to spend all night and weekend at office we were graded better and i was graded average. It was truly properly on the streets, having spoilt at office and exams as well.

That was a point of time, when I realised its not all over now. Its again a still long way to go and i started realising better oppurtunities in career ahead, stated focussion on GMAT and better job oppurtunites. I realised that all came for good and now i was at a better advantage in trying to much better colleges/universities with much better experience as well. And i also realised "Look for something, Find something else and realise that what u have found is more suited to u than what you thought , you were looking for :-) "

With every downfall, i faced, there was one friend of mine who was always by side , truely motivating, consoling and reassuring me . I realised it as a God sent gift. Even now i wonder what i would have been today, if that person was not by my side throughout.

There after i realised that with every situation , there are 2 sides of a coin, good n bad part, positive n negative part, angel and devil. Its all upto your attitude and vision of looking at the situation. There after with any situation that happened with me, I realised that I better "Respond" to the situation then "React" to it. In every moment God has given to us, there are lots of happiness, joy and successfull moments attached to it. The only aspect is we tie our own eyes and refuse to look at it in the right way.