Down memory lane

This Saturday I had the chance of visiting Fort after many months.
I had to visit the main Branch of HDFC to subscribe for the Tata Steel rights issue. It was Saturday so the usual office crowd was missing.
I reached very early and had to stand in the queue for about 10 minutes. Once the bank counters opened it was really a breeze. Kudos to HDFC bank for managing all this very well.
Now work done I had some time in my hand to roam.
Fort area in Mumbai is the downtown(in US speak) where all major corporate offices exist or use to exist. With the advent of the BPO and IT industry much of the action has shifted to suburbs. But due to the stock market in this area major banks and other old corporates like Tata's still have there corporate HQ's in Fort.
I started roaming the once familiar streets where my dad or my grand dad had worked.
These streets were familiar with old stucco buildings which had never changed since the last 50 years. I had worked here during my articled clerk days eating at the roadside stalls and sometimes in hotels.
Roaming those familiar streets I was struck with awe that little had really changed.
Some of the shops had vanished and these spaces were occupied by plush Tata Indicom and Reliance outlets. The stock exchange has been converted in to a Asian NASDAQ with a giant screen and a stock ticker.
I began searching for the usual eateries which me and my friends frequented.
Military Cafe(for Kheema pav and Beer)--I was a teetotaler and a veggie then
Dwarka (for usual lunch)
Coffee House(for its bitter coffee- which I did not like much back then and i use to ask for the sweetened one),Coffee house still exists as is (I use to work here in 1993-1996).It was a rule during the article ship days to take turns to foot the bill for everyone in office(normally not more than 10)after lunch for a simple coffee.
It was like i had fallen in a whirlpool of memories.
The book seller at the Fountain bus stop still lives with his ever burgeoning business.
This is where I had discovered books from Human Anatomy to Swahili Grammar.
Where else could you find a book on Swahili at dirt cheap prices.
I wound my way back from the narrow gullies passing by Pancham Puriwalla.
I had to get back home and attend to household chores and I returned happy yet vowing to spend at least half day to loiter on these streets like a vagabond again some day.

Where do you want to get to?

Confused
Precisely the situation I faced for the past 1.5 months.
One fine hot and humid day I got frustrated and started to think about my future and the purpose behind shifting into a IT career. And I thought hard and started to look out for a change of job. Although I am in a win-win situation in the present job with respect to location, timings,salary(decent), I am not getting the so called required exposure and so a change was due. It is really difficult to get out of this comfort(lazy) zone.

Amidst a big renovation taking place in the house, I made a successful yet thwarted attempt to change job. And finally I am back to square one. I say thwarted because I consulted too many people on the options available and got confused and each opportunity was turned down.
Too many faces too many opinions.
Finally I have decided to follow my heart rather than my mind.
I aptly remembered this passage from Alice in Wonderland and hence the title

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
- Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Time flies.......

Well, literally. It is unimaginable how fast the year has passed by and we are in the last quarter of 2007 and as I write this already 2 days of that quarter have passed.
It is the way we look at it. It is a year exactly when I made my first trip abroad to the USA.
But again when I look back to my 2nd trip to the USA and our office picnic to Panchgani it appears that it was just a few months back.

Perspective matters

Announcements page requested

Every morning when the newspaper comes in particularly Times of India, the first news to hit my sleepy eyes is about some infrastructure development plan or Mumbai along with other news.
I am fed up with these developmental announcements and would like to make a humble request to all newspapers to publish a seperate page named "Announcements" or "Political Announcements".
Atleast this may give some extra paper to print some relevant news or more room for the letters from readers.
Just have a taste of some of the recent news/announcements or whatever you call.
Metro project to be completed by 2011
Mumbai to have monorail, lightrail and Maglev(great imagination)
Skywalks to be built around stations

I am confused, will it lead to a jam of rail bridges for different transport mediums.

Most of these projects are still on paper and those which have seen the light of the day have been delayed way past there initial deadline and has incurred serious cost overruns.
The Bandra-Worli sealink project has been going on for the past 8 years and still is incomplete with the completion date now in Dec 2008(hopefully).

At least the newspapers can ignore printing this announcements as news on front pages, as our politicians will not stop giving fake promises

T20 world champs

Can you define the phrase "electrifying atmosphere". A mere definition in words will not suffice you have to be there to experience it. Well I am referring to the India vs Pakistan final in the first ever T20 cricket world cup. It all started at 5.30pm IST (actually even before that) on Monday 24th September. The office had become an abandoned place and lest for 5-10 poor souls engrossed in work all the others were in the canteen in front of the big projector screen. It was mass hysteria to describe the least. Everyone was cheering for even the single run and there were blood curdling cries really sounding like someone had been murdered , for a 6 or a wicket.
It went down to the wire with Pakistan letting it go from its hands and then suddenly jumping back into the game leaving us almost having strokes. Finally India won it.
When our men in blue where on a high with MSD(Dhoni) the Sensex was making new highs every single day. The sensex just crossed 17k and this 1000 points were surpassed in just 6 days.
Surely India is on a roll ..............................

Big Apple trip

Actually this post should have been made earlier, but for my laziness and the so called urge required to blog which seldom arises. Better late than never.
In my 2nd trip to the USA I finally visited NY after almost considering all other major cities in the mid west, south and east--Miami,Las Vegas, Atlantic City,Orlando, NY and DC. Many were of the view that since I had been to Chicago, NY would be just another city. Paying no heed to anyone I decided to make the trip to the big apple. The weather had been very harsh the earlier weekend with temperatures going below zero and I had to spend the weekend cocooned in my hotel room. Luckily enough on the day I left for NY from Dayton the weather was superb (20-22 deg Cel). The Weather channel reported a very much normal day ahead and storms on Sunday. So I had 1 full day to roam NY and prove that NY was not just another city similar to Chicago.
I left Dayton on Friday 13th April via a short halt at Cincinnati to NY. I had already spoken to a college friend who resides in New Jersey and who eagerly invited me to stay over for the 2 days in his house. Intricate instructions were given by him to help me reach his place(Metro Park).
A week prior to my trip I was prancing on the net to find all the available info on NY, places of interest, modes of transportation and cost and also if possible visiting Washington.
To my surprise every place of interest, mode of transport or anything else had a web site with information to the minutest detail helping me plan my trip but also confusing me to no end.
The best guide is from NYtimes itself titled 36 hours in NY and barring the eating and drinking joints it gives a short summary of the places of interest and the commuting routes. Although the title says 36 hours it is divided into 3 days suiting all and sundry.
I could get only 1 day to roam around NY and I saw the major attractions,
A cruise on the harbour passing by the Statue of Liberty, Wall street ,walking through downtown, Ground Zero (was a waste) and Times Square (the best).
I thought I spent way too much time walking the streets in downtown(which was empty as it was a Saturday) and this time could have been effectively used in visiting one more place, Grand Central station.
To conclude NY resembled Mumbai in many aspects, the crowd, the hustle bustle, the water logging during the rains etc albeit you cannot ignore the cleanliness and infrastructure of the city.
Chicago was very much different proving many of my friends wrong. Chicago has a slight laid back attitude and yes the infrastructure and other amenities are more modern and better equipped than NY.

India @ 60

India @ 60 is it old or raring to go after 60years? Frankly I am not 60 and so cannot comment the past years. Surely but slowly India has changed over the last 10 years. There has been a communications revolution and a computer revolution which has really brought India into the global limelight. India is improving day after day but the difference is never felt as the improvement is at a snails place.
We talk of cities (especially Mumbai-the financial capital) bursting at its seems and becoming unmanageable but the real India lies in the rural hinterland where development is a fading dot.
The economy is booming and we have a robust financial market but we lack the basic necessities
like infrastructure, education, and cleanliness. Corruption is still rampant with no implementation of policies. This needs to be cleaned up at lightning speed so as to make a mark in the global scenario, else India with a teeming young population will fritter away its core strengths.

Happy Birthday India

Bavra mann dekhne chala ek sapna..........

I am returning back to India. Last time when I visited USA in the last 2 days whilst leaving I was obsessed with "Zindagi ke safar me guzar jate hai jo makam woh phir nahi aate..... woh phir nahi aate" from the movie Aap ki kasam. This time round I am obsessed by this
song Bavra mann dekhne chala ek sapna from the movie Hazaaron khwaishein aisi.
I had heard this song in India on Fm in the wee hours of night at 2 am and i found it so soothing that I wanted it to hear it again. I forgot about it after a day or two. Then it came back to haunt me again such that i had to somehow find it somewhere to listen to it. Google and the internet are your best friends in such times.
Now that i have found the link i have played the song more than 50 times in the last 2 days, and the more i hear it i find new meaning and melody in it.

Did I miss the bull run!!!!

One fine morning in office I just decided to sift through the news through a newsreader.
I use google reader. I stood up when I saw this via google reader.(Check the prices of RPL and ITC in the image).

I was even more surprised when I saw that ITC had outpaced even Warren Buffet's stock Berkshire Hathaway Inc.



I am out of touch with the Indian stock markets as I am in the US, but surely not to such an extent :)

Something to write......................

A lot has been happenning for the past 3 months that could have been blogged about but the inner desire to write a blog post has vanished. I started the new year with a resolution to write atleast 1 post per week and actually it is just a post per month or not even that.

I am back in the USA (Dayton, Ohio) for the 2nd time and am blogging from the hotel. I pondered and thought, scratched my head and finally decided to write something just to keep the blog going. Maybe a synopsis of the 3 months gone by.

January was the school admission month. I stood in long queues to get the admission forms in about 4 schools and finally Anish got through in one of the 2 favorites in our area. It was a ridiculous task thanks to the Indian government whereby education is a business rather than a public service. No matter how much I fretted and fumed I had to stand in the queue from 5am in the morning for 3-4 hours. My kid also went through an interview, for which we prepared him in advance. And alas this was not the end as we kept our fingers crossed till the results were out.
Man, this was difficult than looking out for a job
January also saw a visit to Hyderabad for a week which was fun and also we had to return in a hurry, a day early than scheduled due to the admissions. This entailed coming by flight and my sons first trip on a plane. Hyderabad is a nice place with many parks and places to visit. The Salarjung Museum was amazing especially we had a chance to witness the display of the Nizams jewellery collection. The jewellery collection had all types of precious stones studded in necklaces and crowns. Majority of them where diamonds,rubies and emeralds, also some where uncut precious stones. However one display caught my attention, it was a diamond (forgot the name) displayed seperately. The information about this said that it was used as a paperweight
by the Nizams. Awesome!!!!!!!

February saw me getting busy in training as a part of our mandatory performance review.
I covered PL/SQL and Unix in about 10 days although both were seperated apart.
My first live concert (Roger Waters--Pink Floyd- already blogged) attendance was also fun although I felt the tickets were priced high and wished I had been a wee bit taller(maybe by 2-3 inches) as I had to sometimes stand on my toes to look at the stage and my foot pained in the end. An onsite(USA) trip in March also materialised .

March entailed a picnic to idyllic Panchgani with the office team. The place was unimaginable on a cliff with 5 tents equipped with beds and all the amenities for the much required bio breaks.
It was a 2 day trip and we enjoyed it with the resolve to go on more such outings in the near future.
The flight to Dayton was delayed by 6 hours and all this caused a delay of 1 day to reach destination. I travelled by Air India (our national airline) which sucked big time. I think the Maharaja needs a revamp at the earliest. Luckily Air India arranged for hotel accomodation for the night (part of the night as i reached the hotel at 2.00am).
This was my 2nd visit to Dayton and the excitement of the first time was absent.
I was occupied with work for the first 10 days(including weekends) so did not have much of a problem as to how to spend time. Now I am sitting in the hotel room surfing the net as I cannot go out as the temperature outside is -3 deg celsius. Maybe in the evening I may go out and take a short walk. These temperatures are abnormal for April and hopefully the next week seems marginally ok.

The great gig in Mumbai-Roger Waters live

Sunday 18th Feb 2007 will go down as a great day in my memories. It was "us and him".
Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd) had a live concert in Mumbai. It was also my first live concert. I had missed his live concert in Bangalore in 2002.
I cannot say missed in the literal sense but it was not possible to attend the concert due to various myriad reasons e.g non-availability of time, traveling to Bangalore etc.
This time round I was dead sure that I would not miss it as all the cards had fallen into the right place(time,location,money etc). The tickets were expensive but i really did not care about it.
The concert was fantastic although I wished I had taken the highest priced ticket, where there was a more clear view.
He played the usual concert favorites
"Shine on your crazy diamond"
"Wish you were here"-(A tribute to Syd Barrett-Original founder of thr group Pink Floyd).
A new track I heard was "Leaving Beirut" were the Bush administration and in general the US were criticised.
After a painful 15 minute break he played my favorite - whole one side of the
"Dark Side of the Moon" album . I am especially fond of " Breathe" and "Time"
He ended here abruptly and I was disappointed as no "The Wall" track had ben played.

Surpisingly the whole band came back to the loud chants of Once more to play
Another Brick in the Wall and Comfortably Numb

The concert ended quite early by the normal live show standards.

I got hooked to Pink Floyd's music very early, when I was just 17. I knew nothing about English or Rock music then with the only known bands being BoneyM (because they toured India), Michael Jackson(as he was in the news) and Madonna( for all the wrong reasons).
Those were the carefree college days when you had all the freedom and no responsibilities. My cousin, elder to me by 10 years introduced me to Pink Floyd and eventually "The Wall" album. I was fascinated by the sounds in DSOTM and with no other known group started accumulating all the cassettes when released. Surely after listening to all the albums Dark side of the Moon and Wall so many times , the tracks were etched in my memory and slowly there was a meaning to all those sounds and songs.
When I graduated and started working I lost a bit of interest in English music in general and started following more of Hindi music. So listening to Floyd after a long time really brought back memories of those carefree days.

And finally these lyrics(in part) are my all time favorite

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

An analysis of the DSOTM can be found here and a short quiz on Pink Floyd here

AC climate sweltering in between

Mumbai, for the past month is experiencing a pleasant climate.
It is winter and the temperatures range from 26 deg celsius(day) and a low of 17-18 deg celsius(night). I always dream of such a climate throughout the year for Mum. I term this as AC climate. Traditionally November to February and maybe even first half of March was considered the best season in Mumbai, with low humidity and a nice breeze. But this period has been altered by global warming, El Nina/Nino and what not.
Suddenly in the midst of the bliss the last week saw the mercury rise to 35 and the humidity level shoot up causing health problems. Hope this ends and the AC climate continues through Feb 07.

Banning youtube

I was seriously irked by this Times of India article.

Can we ban youtube?. Yes we can if we want to return back to the Stone Age. Surely we ban youtube then blogs and then even chat just because some person posted a video or commented on a blog about a great Indian personality. And yes as we return to the stone age we will be devoid of any competition. We wont be compared to China,Brazil etc anywhere.
Surprisingly enough this news only appeared on the headlines of the TOI and i could not locate it in any other newspaper.

The govt needs to focus more on healthcare,infrastructure,education and not stiffling each individuals right of expression. Banning the offensive video in question would serve the purpose.
Surely there will sites like pkblogs for videos or if there arent any they will surely mushroom as a result of the ban.

New year and a post finally

Happy New Year.
A day to make new resolutions (so they say) -which will not be achieved even in 365 days and probably will be pushed as next years resolutions. Why do we require the 1st day of the new year for making resolutions?. If one really wants to achieve anything it can be decided upon anyday.
So be it, each one has his/her own ways.
After saying all this the first thought that came to my mind in the morning was to look for a suitable to-do list preferably online. There are many such sites on the web. This review helped me to choose one from the 25 reviewed. So I have a list at backpackit.
I had an idea that I post in my blog everyday--which could include (as I am lazy ) just a simple link, or just a sentence or two about life or my rants and ramblings on life or a full bodied post which makes my point through. This would make 365 posts for the year and maybe my blog would atleast have some ranking on technorati, maybe the most regularly updated blog (with crap).
Ha Ha, Here I am, after a week into the new year, too lazy to just post a link also which is just a copy and paste operation and does not involve any key punch operations to hurt my fingers.
So the first lazy links,news,views and questions
Who or What is a dorkbot? I came across this term in article in Wired which lists top 10 tech towns.
In simple terms dorkbot refers to a group of affiliated organizations that sponsor meetings of artists,engineers and designers who work in the field of Electronic Art.

In the news
The gruesome Noida killings rock the news since last week. I am surprised as to why the proceedings to identify what has exactly happened and who is to be blamed is taking such along time. This episode is in the news for the past 15 days and there has been no conviction against the culprits. This is Incredible India for you.
The Chief Ministers brother Shivpal Yadav quotes these killing of children as
"Choti moti ghatna". This is sheer disgrace. Tomorrow if the ministers kith and kin are kidnapped there will be no inquiries and the culprits traced and punished immediately.
This is again the same incredible india.