Yamming & Tweeting

Its a week where I read in the newspaper that Paris Hilton wants to stimulate the world economy by shopping more (Hmmm, I dont know about her stimulating the economy, but she certainly managed to stimulate a lot of men by her videos ) . On a more serious note now, one of the events that happened during this week, made me think about the kind of work one ends up doing. It all started in a meeting, where my manager stressed on the need of increasing communication. The topic here was site called Yammer , it basically your Twitter modeled for your office, communicating with your colleagues. Personally I have never moved beyond FaceBook and Orkut with respect to Social Networking. It was one of those days in office where I had time to myself, that enabled me to try out Yammer. I found it interesting, when I joined it. So went ahead and joined my Team's private community on it. (PS : My team's community on yammer was owned by Software Development Director in US i.e, SDD for short). What happened was,I used my actual name as in most of my official documents G@#@!# K#@!#!. But in MCE( my company) its screwed up as G@#@!# R!@#!@#( Apparently when I joined here, they wanted the name as in Passport, which was G@#@!# K#@!#! R!@#!@#) . Taking the first name and last name, they made it G@#@!# R!@#!@#, again nobody knows me by this name outside MCE.

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Vaaranam Aayiram Review

It was one of those arduous weeks, where nothing seems to be going right. First couple of my favourite t-shirts got ruined, due to mixing of wrong set of clothes while washing. Next the visit to PVR cinemas got cancelled due to the lack of tickets. Not a great beginning to a week, but finally ended up doing some serious work at office. Coming back to the movie, this one was on my list of movies to be watched, ever since I heard the songs. But I never planned it for watching it in Bangalore. As things would turn out, on a dull Thursday where random power cuts seemed to be more erratic than women’s mood swings, I fell asleep on my table and my mind drifted onto a dream. It was a multiplex theatre; I was standing there not able to get tickets, while one of my friends pops out of nowhere showing of her credit card and tickets that were bought by her to me. Thanks to show of antics, I snapped out of my dream and sleep, it was almost like a challenge laid out to me, whether I could tickets in a multiplex without a credit card on a Sunday. Well, the next day after I walked around my area to find the new multiplex in my neighborhood. As with most things I life, you keep searching for things far and wide, when it’s actually near you all the time. In fact the Inox multiplex was more near to my house then my office, yet I never seemed to realize it. It was all set for Sunday night show at Inox theatre (never mind the fact I paid 180 for this movie i.e., I am sure a few of my friends jaw would have dropped on reading this). The only dampener being one of my friend who would have showed up with me, failed to come cause of his illness, leaving me a loner at the multiplex. As the say, if one door closes, the other door opens, at least it did for some time before shutting altogether. I had my seat number next to a decent looking girl (I couldn’t make out the details in darkness of theatre though). Just as I thought something was going for me, her dad who was next to her, exchanged the seats and sat next to me, moving the girl out. It’s not as if I was bothered about it, may be I should have said to him, if your daughter had just come alone, she wouldn’t have minded sitting next to me at all. But seeing movies alone is boring affair, though this was a Tamil movie, there was no need for translation, nevertheless a willing translator next to me as I got for ‘Rock On’ would have made it more pleasurable.

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Perseverance Pays Off

Well, ever since I moved to Bangalore one of my top priorities has been to get a broadband connection. While rest of the world defines a minimum speed requirement 2 Mbps as broadband, in India we have conveniently lowered that standard to 256 Kbps to suit our poor quality standards. Anyway, among the handful of ISPs which provide service to home’s here, I decided to go for BSNL. The reason of choosing BSNL was obviously speed. Back in college days, my friends used to boast of download speeds of 200 – 300 Kbps. With me working during week days and Sunday being a holiday. It just gives me Saturday for this stuff, where I had to take care of washing my clothes plus the visit to the nearest BSNL office. The ordeal of getting BSNL went like this:

• Week 1: On this Saturday, I got a photo for my application ready, with my passport has address proof for applying broadband and went to the office to apply. But only to be rebuffed, that I needed a local address proof in Bangalore, not from the city which I am from. As I recently moved to Bangalore, I had no local address proof leaving me to scratch my head.

• Week 2: I think, I had a holiday coupled with the weekend, so had gone home. So no visit to BSNL office this weekend.

• Week 3: I talked to my seniors, in this week about the problem. They suggested that a letter from my Company HR stating that I live in so and so place in Bangalore would do the trick for address proof. I had gotten the address proof and application form ready this time and went to the office. But this time, it turned out to be second Saturday i.e., a holiday. A wasted trip to office.

• Week 4: Well, it turned out to be my lucky weekend. The office was open and also there was special offer for two days where if I applied, I did not have to pay any installation charges or the cost of WiFi enabled modem. But the only worry was that there will be two different guys coming for first LandLine phone connection and then the Broadband connection .If both this guys show up during the weekdays, I will be at office with the house locked, they would just move onto their next work. Leaving me to scramble to office on the following weekend to ask them come back to my house, to give the connection.

• Week 5: For every problem, there is a solution. It’s just that everyone can’t see the solution. While bouncing of ideas with my roommate, I thought a poster on my house door in kannada, asking the BSNL guy to call me at this phone number would do the trick. Since my house was few blocks from my office, I could show up in 10 mins of the call at my house. With help of my well favored friend, who gave a lot more attention to my request, then what I had expected, I got that done pretty fast ( I wish she was the Manager for BSNL in my area, at least I would have got my Broadband in no time in my home with attention like that). The following day that too within 1 week I got a call from Landline guy, thanks to poster saying that he will come tomorrow, which luckily turned out to be holiday. So I was at my home when he showed up. But I had to pay him a compliment amount for showing up on a holiday. (Why do people in government expect compliments, for doing their jobs, for which government also pays them as salary???)

• Week 6 & 7: It was elusive waiting game with BSNL. For every call that I get in mobile, I used attend to it that it could be BSNL guy. I never looked forward so much to get a call, even from a girl. The only calls that I kept getting were from annoying bank people asking me to take loans and investment plans. One of the calls was like my asking me for retirement plans. I barely completed 3 months in my first work; they’re talking about retirement, stupid banks.

• Week 8: I had completely lost my patience, a frustrated man. To add fuel to the fire, I was simply bounced of from one table to another table when I needed to enquire about the broadband connection. Finally, as if that wasn’t enough, the guy in charge of connections for my area was on leave on that Saturday. But I didn’t budge, I met divisional manager, got the installation guys number. I called him in the morning, but as my luck would turn out there was power shutdown in Bangalore that day. So that guy couldn’t finish installation, he had already had gone to. He nevertheless said he will come, once the power comes back. The power came back; the next one hour seemed like an eternity, with me standing on the balcony looking out for that guy. Dogs, Cats, Pigeons, bikes, Auto’s , Good looking girls everything came in the road expect for the BSNL guy who never showed up. I was so frustrated the next day, that I started getting dreams about BSNL modem and browsing (I hardly get any dreams about any girls, so getting dream about BSNL modem was weird).

• D-Day: Finally, after a number of calls, after that disappointing weekend. I did manage to get that guy to agree to come on Wednesday. To make matters worse, it was raining the whole day. But I didn’t want to give up, call after call and loads of bugging him. BSNL guy at last agreed to come at 5 30 pm. I had to skip a meeting in the office and run from my office to be at my home in rain. Then to add another twist, he backed off saying he will come tomorrow since it was raining. I had to entice him that I will even pay for his auto charge, if he comes. But he was like if you don’t mind pick me at office. Then I decided I am going get this broadband today, no matter what. I wanted this so badly. So I borrowed a bike, went to BSNL office, had a close call with skidding in the rain. But I did manage to bring him to my house and install the modem. I even attended the meeting that day via online. Seriously, if I had put half the effort that I had put in wooing that BSNL guy on a girl, I think she would have said yes to me. I guess perseverance pays off whether it is your boss, work, girl friend or in this case BSNL guy. To add final twist, I found out I was in Business Unlimited 15000 plan to my horror. I was not prepared to pay a bill of 15000 per month. But it later turned out that since I had taken the broadband in offer, for the first 15 days I will be getting free BUL 15000 service and then later will revert back to Home 750 plus. Finally, the modem I ended up was a type 4 modem (which is better one i.e. three more Ethernet ports than type 2 modem), though it was type 2 which I ordered. May be, I needed this final bit of luck for all that I had gone through.

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Heaven or Hell Rock On

What do you think; it’s like experiencing heaven and hell at the same time. Nah, I am not talking about the philosophical stuff (Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody is wants to die). Last week, I was in the middle of oracle training (just back from a demanding weekend at home) thanks to the vagaries of Bangalore weather, I got sick again. This time it was fever combined with body ache which made even sitting in cushion chair miserable for me. As the Tamil saying goes “ Kaiku eatunatu , Vaiku eatala “ ( You can touch the food with your hand, but not eat it with your mouth ) , that’s when my manager called me said we have a big team outing tomorrow, so come to PVR multiplex and after that for a dinner party. The thought running through my mind was, Why now God??? Why can’t they have the outing when I am feeling as cool as cucumber? Well, I was in dilemma that night, whether I should skip my first team outing or not because of fever. Eventually I ended up going to the movie and party, thanks to temporary relief provided by crocin. On a brighter note, I was able to hitch hike a ride on my manager’s car to PVR, rather than take a bus from my office. As far as the movie was concerned, it was ‘Rock On’, a Hindi movie (I hardly know any Hindi) so it was pretty much going to be a good sleep for me at the theatre. But as luck would have it, I got my seat next to one of my teammates who joined MCE along with me, who happens to know Hindi and also tries to speak ‘Taamil’ ( like Tamil heroines say “ Ennaku Ennaku Konchum Konchum Taamil theriyum “).

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ABCD

ABCD… I m not going to talk about English alphabets here, though the things I am going to talk about start with this letters. Let’s start

‘D’ for Dress or dressing sense to be more precise (If your friend of mine, I ought to be surprised for your raised eyebrow by now). Back in college days, I used to have really flashy, eye catching style of dressing. Well, as I have mentioned in my previous blog entry, liberal dress codes is one of many advantages at my office. It’s funny how people make use of this new found freedom with regard to dressing sense from college to office. The other day I was using the lift to move to the cafeteria. As the lift was moving up, my eye caught hold of a t-shirt. Natural intuition on my part was to read it, it said “I am a party girl, don’t Force me to Study ...! “. When I finished reading it, the other guy standing cross to me in the lift was giving me a really weird look. Then it struck me, what must have gone through his mind. I thought to myself, for God sake I was not staring at the women’s boobs, I was just reading the quote. First of all, people (guy/girl) who wears t-shirt with quotes wants other people to read them, so they shouldn’t be complaining for getting extra attention to their things. Another interesting thing I notice here is, people wearing socks with chapels which I thought was ridiculous in the beginning, but most people seem to do this in Bangalore. Then I see plenty of women wearing jeans and sleeveless t-shirts (Whether it looks good or not is entirely a different question, sometimes they bring out the wrong features to the fore, I seriously wonder what their boy friends say about their dressing sense..!!), I wonder why men don’t wear sleeveless t-shirts to office (What’s good for the goose, must also be good for the gander going by the feminist views). Sometimes it’s confusing with the jeans and t-shirts, like one of friends finds it hard to differentiate between guy and a gal from the looks at the back. Cant blame my friend for that, it gets even more difficult when your dealing women with short hair. Another interesting and unique style, I observed was the hippy style (to make it clear it’s the costume you see heroes wearing when they sing songs of advice in old tamil films), where people wear shawl over their t-shirts, just add a head band to this costume with a guitar, you will start looking like a hippy. Last but not least, its important to know your body when you dress, just because a dress looks good on Hirtik or Katrina doesn’t mean it will look good on you also ( though the self image that we have of ourselves is like that). To keep it simple, your dress should accentuate your right features and attenuate your anomalies, as a whole make sure your body looks symmetrical.

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MC 'E' Xperience

At last, I have found some quality time for my blog, which had been deserted by me for the most part of august. It has been an exciting first month where I had been living on my own; to fend for myself, wash my clothes for the first time (it rained the whole day, when I did that, leaving me scratching my head to find a place to hang the wet clothes). The first week of august was pretty much a boring affair (and probably it will hold the record for the longest duration for which I listened to presentations). To start things of, it was on the last weekday, where I had met my team mates; it was just three of us in our team. I could never understand why they put me in this team; rather it was the case with most people, who were curious to figure out the basis why they had been allocated into their respective teams. A thorough out and out Java guy like me was put into Perl and UNIX domain. Well, I am prepared to make the most of what I have. Coming back to the point, the second week was a tantalizing affair with soft skills which by the way was at our office. Liberal dress codes and flexible timings are one among many advantages when you’re working with US Company.

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Glimpse of Corporate life

Well, to start things this was not my first visit to Bangalore. I have visited the city thrice before. But all these three times the sense of purpose was that of a tourist. It looks rather funny now, the first time when I traveled there. My dad and mom took me to Bangalore airport (My memory not failing me, I think I was 6 years then) I was awe struck at the site of planes taking of into the sky. Being a stubborn child that I was back then, I made a big fuss at the airport to let me go in one of those planes. I just wanted to fly of into the sky. I cried and shouted so much, that the airport security guard had an enquiry with my dad, just to make sure nobody was being kidnapped. In the end my parents managed to take me out of the airport.

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