Tuesday, January 04, 2005

verbal foreplay

(drama name="small talk" genre="boring")
(charactor name="manasan")
(charactor name="malavika")
(scene location="temple outside the entrace to the town" time="evening")
manasan: hey malavika, the sun is setting, lights are going away, and see things that we saw
all day are getting covered up so fast. (pause) life is so short malavika.
malavika: hey manasa, why do you tell me all this, as if i dont know that.
manasan: (pause)
malavika: hey manasa, dont bore me.
manasan: (pause)
malavika: why dont we just fuck, and let me go home.
manasan: ok, so no need for foreplay, ha
malavika: no more of that verbal foreplay of yours.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Video

video
-----
proceed with cuts between guy and gal

guy : south
gal : north

guy : chubby
gal : slim

guy : hindu
gal : muslim

guy : grey
gal : wheatish

guy : oiled dark hai
gal : straightened chestnut hair

guy : thick lips
gal : thin rose lips

guy : eats rice sambar
gal : eats roti dal

guy : black powerful eyes
gal : brown eyes

and then they meet!

Months back, when i was a good worker

select * from ...

This is the way my day starts ...
and i end it with ...

ORA-0213 MAXIMUM SIMULTANEOUS CONNECTIONS EXCEEDED. Kindly Logoff neech kuthe kamine!

in between, we go for breakfast break, lunch break, tea break, piss break, mouth look break, conference break, doubt clearing break (when ramnath screams in agony .. "nihaaaaaaa! the query is returning null!!!" ...) , water collection breaks (filling seethas water bottle from the distant dispenser-near the toilet!!! aaah bad architecture - much like the human body)

though Allen Mammen (comeon ! you dont know him? .. do i ?) .. says that all these breaks are to be mentioned in kintana (a time tracking tool), we dont because, we dont write about the extra effort we put in either . Everything is perfect in web technologies... You plan for 20 hours with 2 resources ... finish it off in an amazing 1 hour with 50% utilization of a resource .. voila! thanks to the OFFSHORE PROCESS MODEL designed by SOMEONE SITTING AT ONSITE and driven by an account manager, who cant find the windows key on his keyboard (Oh.. he stopped programming 10 years back!!).

in between ramnath again pops in and whispers "nihaaaa, the query did return 1 row, i didnt see it. he he he "

CUT:
"I was jolted from my tiny nap with my (newly wedded) tl's snoring!!!"


i try to get myself out of the SCREEN by clicking on Google News (something genuinely legal ?) ..
Websense : This site is blocked due to unmentionable reasons
ha ha ha .. This gives me an oppurtunity to actually use my $%^#$skills after a loong (read it as current_date - date_of_employment) time ...

and when i am chewing google news ,i hear ramnaths footsteps !!!!
CUT TO MATRIX NEO SEQUENCES : PRIMARY ESCAPE FROM AGENTS!
aah. .. "try to keep yourself low.. cross over to the next cabin ... now!.. rush to the toilet .. peace :).. stay here for a while"
(dont forget to switch off mobile).

S%#%%$ is complaining about something ... Thats something rare !, I lend my ear ...
"They selected that guy even after we rejected him twice !! I gave him a -1 for tech skills! and they are sending him onsite ?! This is heights!!!"

True, very true, POLITICS sucks !

after the 4'oclock tea (which is a must - freshers break :)), when i return to my 4x4 prison, i see k#$&% crying .. or is he laughing ? He highlights two lines in the email sent by the onsite coordinator

"the requirements have been delayed by 2 weeks, you can adjust the intermediate tollgates and deliverables,or in other words , you can do whatever with the Microsoft Project Plan, BUT THE END DATE WILL REMAIN THE SAME :), keep up the good work, with love... "

i respect the software industry . i respect the software moguls. i honestly believe that organizations like mine and the products like the one i develop are the real reason, people believe in God.

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Words Random

forced, fed,
left undead.

last hope,
enough rope.

lost time,
reason, rhyme.

enough said
heaving head.

tuneless songs,
mindless throngs.

Causal analyses,
fatal catalysis.

prematurely aged,
ferocity caged.

rage denied,
nature defied.

throbbing impotence,
celebrating ignorance.

blessed meek,
gloating keep.

chained heroes,
glorified zeroes.

faking faces,
mistaken places.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

When i had my job in trivandrum, the first 8 months i used to travel 15 kms a day by two buses. I used to have the company of a bus full of little school going children, all cheerful and noisy. They would be with me for half the distance. I would listen to the little boys playing silly games and little girls chatting. Then i used to walk a little every day on the same path, which runs through a residential area. The whole travel thing gives you a lot of space even if the buses are crowded and even when you are travelling the same path every day. Looking back from here they all look interesting, though i might have been a lot bored with them some times. The worst would be the wait for buses. Most of the days i used to wait for around 1 hour in the night at a bus stop which did not have even a bench to sit. I used to think of making concrete benches there. 1 hour is a lot of time to stand alone and you get the craziest thoughts in your head.

Later i moved in with my grandpa at a house closer to my office. Living with grandpa was kinda difficult and the lack of freedom hit me really hard. And then again my escape was the quite and calmful 3 km stretch from my house to the office. Many days i used to walk both ways and i had about 6 combinations of paths to take. One of these paths passed through a residential area housing most of the the state ministers. Huge, old and beautiful buildings with lot of grand trees around. And a i used to touch two schools in the way, so again the company of little children. Then there was the 7th way by getting on a bus and then i have to walk only half a km. Mostly i took that way in the night when i give company to my friends for dinner. That way had a church like thing with people doing mass prayers most of the time. And a girls hostel in a beautiful old fashioned house guarded by two ferocious dogs. Just accross you see a huge unmaintained pond which looked very inviting. A great place to commit suicide. The pentecost prayer hall also used to entice me a lot. I used to call somebody(mostly nihas) when i had a chance to walk this way.

So in hyderabad on a whole i miss mobility, space and those charming paths. Another thing would be people with whom i communicate via telepathy. And the children.

And the little things, like the small tea shops, fish curry meals, occassional film festivals, sea food ...

breakDown

Welcome December ! I love you !
Today my vehicle stopped at the kotturpuram signal , after clocking 45 kilometres to a litre ... hmmm .. i thought it would reach 50 ... anyway, i took out the petrol stored in the bottle (kept in refrigerator last night :) and poured it ...
me horse wouldnt start !! I tried the two step choke , one step at a time .. nope .. no hope ..
Today is supposed to the blue day at office and i am wearing a blue executive shirt , blue naturally faded jeans (4 yrs and still counting... ) and a blue reebok shoes (after persuading shobin over the phone for 4 minutes) and the blue Timex watch (Balz) .. so i think i am looking cool today and all the chicks racing on the scootys and hugging on to their dear lives behind their pulsars are having a second look at the smart chap stuck on the road and kicking his ass !! oops kickin his bike !! ..
went to the near by shop .. shopped for 20 Rs petrol .. and came back and filled ... NO HOPE YET! ... call up bala , dog ,vikram , and seetha....
Called up Varnad at Hero Honda , Adyar and informed ..
His suggestion "Seems you got an AIR BLOCK , Keep the petrol tank open and kick start ... "
"OKEY >> THANKS .. " I said .
After cutting the line, i realized the HORROR !! if you open the petrol tank lid .. you cannot possibly remove the key from it .. how then do i use the key the switch on the vehicle .. Oh!!!!
Brain wave ... Fought furiously with teeth and nails ... aah! shit ! doesnt work ..
Cross over : .. Bargained furiously with teeth and nails .. Rs 50/- for the auto rickshaw ! THIEF ! ROBBER ! BASTARD !!!... went home , picked up the spare key came back and then opened petrol lid , switched on .. kick kick ..
while (1) {
kick();
if (started()) {
break();
}
}
Broke the infinite loop after 15 minutes .. reason "tired .. "
Called up Adyar motors again .... Varnad Promises help in 10 minutes ... Called up everyone near and dear again .. just like that .. i was enjoying this :) ...

Sudden Screach ... WHOLE of kotturupuram froze ! a Qualis breaked just in time ... phew !! Culprit : YET ANOTHER SOAMFA Auto rickshaw which took a sudden U-Turn .
Autos have only one front wheel which helps then i sudden turns (90/180) .. which leade to accidents !
meanwhile, my god-send-helper (mahesh from adyar motors) was searching for me infront of IIT .. I called him twice .. went to Voice mail and finally got him ... phew .. told him that i was at kotturpuram .. our communication was 50 % effective (english - tamil - gibberish) ...
finally he found me and did this ..
Open petrol tank lid ... blow air .. close lid .. open fuel pipe from near reserve knob , leak out some petrol , switch on choke ... one start ... switch off choke ..
VOILA !! grrr .. ambitions purrs like a pussy :) ... yahooooooooooo!!!
Felt really good that day .. because i wasnt in the fucking air conditioned office explaining my existence :) ha ha ha ..
To make sure you have proper attendance , dont swipe out .. at 12 midnight , it will automatically do it ..(exception single swipe!!) ... thats one small flaw in the system :) so i clock 9 hours .. ie 3 pm to 12 pm :)

NB : The climate has been near perfection in the last few weeks !! Hallelujah ! That could explain the high spirits :)

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Work

Here i am ... in my company , which saved me from shame (?!), gave me true purchasing power, and made me believe that i am really worth something ..

Its been 15 months in the same project .. 12 months on the same desk , same location...
people came , people left , people went onsite , people cursed and banged the door, people got appraised , people were given T-shirts ....

Ultimately one statement still holds true
" You can play around with the intermediate tollgates, delays in requirements should be adjusted and the final delivery date will ALWAYS be the same as decided".
Even the death of an employee should not effect it , because we are a process driven company , not an ethical or humane company ..

General rules as elsewhere apply , if you lick ass, your mistakes will be covered and you will be praised for other peoples work ...

English is the best language for making you work more, because of inbuilt words like "VALUE ADDITION", "PRODUCTIVITY" etc....

For the past 6 months the worst has been happening ,
Along with the pressure to finish a 6 months project (with proper requirements) in 1 month (without proper requirements) , you are also supposed to educate an idiot sitting at onsite about the work that he is supposed to give you and try and explain over phone (takes usually 4 to 5 hours a day) why you need a particular info.

When i look around, i see that we have grown ..
yup, thats true, back in november 2003, when we transitioned from noida to chennai, ours was a decaying account .. we lost almost 4 projects ("MELT DOWN" is the term used, obviously because we have a lot of third party consultants onsite who are only happy to blame offshore for everything). Yup, everything was bad ...

Now, my team itself has grown from 6 to 16 ... and the account just crossed 120 or something .. thats really good .
The strategy has been to recruit freshers , because they wouldnt complain even if they had to work for 24 hours a day . In college, if you are working on your project , you wouldnt know if you worked for 24 hours ..because you love the work ...

Here , you are supposed to develop an application in 10% of the time it would actually take, deliver it first time right, on time , and other crap .... because you are really competing for the 5 inch pizza that the Client throws with other CMMI 5 dogs in the arena!! Yeah, we have only rusty rocket launcher who is licking ass onsite, but to make it a profitable buisness, you have to squeeze out every ounce of energy from the offshore team ....

There used to be some people i respect , but they all left the company ..

After recruiting freshers , the first thing you do is make them good for nothing ...
i dont know if this holds true everywhere ...
The first 6 months would be spent in EXCEL Sheets and Time sheet filling for the whole account and other value addition activiites like communication initiative !!!... and then you make him work on 12 different projects ...

The aim of this is that if you are working on 12 differenct technologies , you really know nothing of anything .. you just know something of something (HA HA , i love this statement) ...
ie, you know little bit of java, little asp, little oracle , maybe little soemthing else ..
so , if this guy wants to hunt for another job he cannot , because he has not specialized in anything ! he just knows what to do with the given work in his project . in short , he is just fit for the project he is handling ...
Now, if he thinks of learning it during the spare time ,that is during saturdays and sundays or maybe after work .. it wouldnt take much time to realize that it is impossible ... because he will be working 14-16 hours a day and on saturdays and sundays ..
maybe he will get a sunday off .. but that will be spent sleeping .. or getting all the lost sleep ...

Diwali - The festival of Noise !

Diwali should be rightly renamed as the festival of Noise , because its current description of "Festival of Light" doesnot suit it anymore...

approximately 16 hours before the real Diwali day, i , stimbi and Rayi were put into a prison (our own home) .. and there were kids , grownups, women, dogs and everyone lighting crackers .... babies were crying , bikes were falling into pot holes , debris of the crackers were hitting wind shields ...

one 16 yr old was particularly amused at "mega-bombs" or "gunds"... he was cracking them non-stop for almost 24 hours.. the only breaks he took was a 2 hour sleep (4 to 6 am) and a tiny lunch break of 15 minutes ...

The Noise was repetitive "padaaaakh..." .. and the entire building shook .... and i dont know if i am a a heart patient , but we awaited for each bomb, (interval of 2 minutes each) ... and i couldnt control my heart from jumping .. my ears being hurt and mood getting changed ...

the sad thing is that there was nothing i could do about it !! and fuck! i still remember the torture ! even after almost a month , which means ... it was really something !!

i would really want to tie up the bastard in a cracker room and set it on fire.. and his family too.. or maybe tie a maala padakkam (chain of bombs) to his wee wee and make him wait till it reaches him...!

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Sauve-moi(Save me)

I saw the movie at one international film festival in trivandrum some months back. I was attracted by the young faces in the poster and in fact took half a day leave from company to see it. And it was surely worth it.

The commentry given by imdb:
SAUVE MOI (Save Me) is a simple-but-excellent `slice-of-life' story about French-Algerians living near the Belgian border. Mehdi(Roschdy Zem), who has lived in Roubaix all his life, meets Agatha(Rona Hartner), a seemingly-carefree drifter from Romania who has wandered throughout Europe. He introduces her to his group of friends, including Cécile, his current lover, who befriends Agatha. The Algerians, living in a localized area, find difficulty finding even menial jobs. There is cooperation and moral support among Mehdi and his friends. It seems that this worthy film about an unpublicized ethnic minority in France has been ignored by the art film critics.

I read the commentry just before writing this blog. After reading that only i knew they were talking about French-Algerians. I was thinking that its the story of the simple people in a french city which was not that prosperous. Any way the movie was good. The actors were good.
The movie starts with the view from the moving cab , mehdi being the driver, a nice sequence with the cab moving close to the different groups and they staring at us with a strange looks on their face which lies between interest and disgust. And the view every time swings away from them. Then we see a building from a long view which gives the impression of a railway station or aerodrome. Intro our beautiful heroine, Agatha draped in a long frock dress and may be some funny coat. The buildings that we see around are neat and old. Mehdi picks her up in his cab and drops her off at a hospital where she wanted to go. There was a conversation and we get the idea that she has come here to visit a doctor whom she has worked with as a nurse, hoping for a job or something. And mehdi leaves her there only to pick her up later on the road when the doctor fails to remember even her name. In fact mehdi comes back to pick her up, searching the near by roads, until he finds her.

I liked the opening sequence very well, the understanding between open minds, being too touching. Agatha got accomodation at mehdi's friends attic, in a house with no electricity, and there are funny scenes with them trying to steal electricity from neighbouring old couple, then policemen gently reprimanding them. They had this small community, with one middle aged fellow looking like our raj kumar with tvs 50 like bike as a elder brotherly figure, a few young men and women and an old couple. And they were building a house for one of the fellows. Mehdi is having an affair with cecile who is mehdis brothers ex girl friend and now married to another fellow friend. Ceciles huband is really distressed because his boss is stealing half his salary(and his wife), and this leads to our rajkumars intervention resulting in the death of the boss, but that comes near the end of the movie. Agatha with her sprity nature easily gets into the group and we can see a lot of characters getting attached to her. There is this scene with her singing a local song, and that was good.

Agatha has plans for going to romania, and for that she needs money. Mehdi in the mean time tries out his hand in a new job, which involves helping a fellow, who was some kind of money collector. Soon mehdi gets angry with his way of extracting money from the hapless and ignorant people and quits that job. He was trying to get enough money so that Agatha (and himself) can get out of city. And near the climax we see Agatha getting money from an elderly fellow in the group and leaving for romania without Mehdi.

The youthful spirit of Agatha, is surely going to get any one who watches the movie. It inspires you. The same spirit helps her overcome the bonds of love. At one side we see her independence while on the other side we have this caring community of simple people. Perfect contrast except in the matter of love in their heart.