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.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Depression - how to deal with it

Depression - An Emotional Turmoil

Essentially we are all helpless,
but that doesnt mean we don't show off :)


Last time i called Ram, he said he was depressed.
Depression is a disease, which we all suffer from..
Frustration comes in immediate succession to Depression.
"lashes of Depression" . .that would be a good usage... with every lash, you fall deeper into the black hole, until you react.This reaction is of mostly a violent form.

The best way to deal with depression is to do something that will make you feel humbled, awed, humiliated .. no dont feel humiliation, that will get you back to depression.

Now, feeling humbled would be extremely difficult for a LEO,
because there are rarely things that he doesnt excel in,
though sometimes synchronized acrobatics do make them
feel humbled.

Feeling AWED is the easier of the two. Its pretty simple.
Get out of your city , Get out of your work, Go back to the Nature.
Depending on personal choices, you may prefer to be lone(which i like),
or keep the company of close friends. Here is what i do..
I take out my bike and race on the ECR (The East Coast Road) ,
till i have a near death experience. The feeling is profound...
the perfect mix of being humbled and awed. The last time ,
it was raining heavily, god was flashing his torch every now
and then , cars were moving dead slow, even the rain drops that
touched my hand were hurting me.. oo, 100 kilometre per hour!
steady..as a rock ... so this is essentially the point where my
depression reaches a peak of haught (a word which bala dont like).
and then suddenly, a cow which was crossing the road , stopped
abruptly , and started walking back .. EEEEKS!!! I almost hit..
the curve drops abruptly to ground zero! phew... I am still alive,
Now that is where i feel a little humbled, Repeat this a few times,
WIthin an hour or so , i am at some lonely beach , just me and the sea,
and then you can chew on your good old memories , this is when you
have an erection again... i mean you go up the curve and rest there
for sometime .. but good old memories are few and then you
(in classic eminem terms) .. snap back to reality , up there goes gravity!
oh... you are so sad.. (big secret .. you could try crying out loud too
no one is around ; but i prefer screaming and shouting at the top
of my lungs) .. aah what a satistfaction it gives ....

if you are sure of yourself, you could try some physical excercises,
which leave you exhausted.. (tried running ?)
I feel humbled when i see life around me .... such a complicated thing...
People scurrying around.. i feel humbled , when i see parents trying
to get the best for their children, i feel humbled watching even the
simplest machinery, and i am happy for my ignorance .. because i can
be humbled so easily ... i can even be humbled by a good illaichi tea:)

maybe we are too immature, but thats really a good thing , because
if we are 17 at heart , we are doing things that most 17 yr olds
cannot because ,we are really 23 and earning something , staying alone,
bachelors and a lot lot other reasons...

depression can be broadly classified as two

Class 1 : People Hater
Solution : Be Awed ... Get back to Nature ..

Class 2: General Depression
Solution : Be humbled .. Look around and see lesser life around you
(Just ignore the greater life , they mean nothing ;)


Love can be the root of some, if not all Depression, amongst us
bachelors. Now, the reason , i use Love and not Lust or Sex is because,
essentially we all are good people, and not perverted bastards. Noone
would really want to go bang bang as they show in the tripleX movies.
Watching such stuff would never make you depressed ...
The Dangerous ones are those who display DIVINE LOVE ..
"TO know someone every square inch" as bala rightly remarked ....


TO BE CONTINUED ....

Friday, October 01, 2004

I remember bala saying about failure once, that let it be small or big failure is failure. I can feel it now. No matter what they say, that it was a game or you learned something from it, failure is failure and its crushing me down....

Thursday, September 23, 2004

backward growth

feeling humbled by the new surroundings. feeling timid. afraid. dependant. would like to feel pain. would like to enjoy the pleasure in gambling. would like to be a little more normal. good blogs friends. will join you soon.

Friday, September 17, 2004

truly, madly, deeply

stagnating in this incessant pool of python orgies,
vocabulary doesnt count, nor does grammar,
its only the capability to lick arse ! right after a flung dung ...
and i spoke to myself on the Phone, after pulling over at a highway ?!!!
if thats possible, i can very well create 4 real life characters,
and call them dog, zeus, ram and morpheus and live their lives too!!!!

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

sucide in easy installments

So I finally enrolled in a gym and am killing myself a few grams at

a time. The pain is continuous and never lets up at all. Just when

you think you are used to it, you go there and do just that little bit

more which makes you feel a lot more dead and leaves you a little

more alive...

Friday, September 10, 2004

Enjoying my final days in this office of mine before i shift to a new company. one year and two months. hell happy ness for a lazy fellow. a company which has been working for more than 3 years making not a penny of profit. a ship sailing towards a huge goal, with a buch of simple people and a great captain on board, none seems to beleive in the goal. the atmosphere is cozy, like a family. we even have a grandma (captains mother in law) residing in the lower floor who scolds us when we leave the lights or ac on.

Friday, September 03, 2004

Going Home

Its feel nice to step back into the shoes of the goody good mama's boy, even though its for a couple of days. Its a place , where everything is taken care of, where i sleep at 10 and wake up at 6 no matter what. For 6 months after the entrance exam, i was at home. It felt good actually. I was least concerned about the commotion going on for the Re-valuation. I actually did what i felt.. watched a lot of movies, ate a lot (whenever i felt), got myself a driving license, thought of learning C programming (ha ha), and slept .. snored ... in peace ...

Every morning .. there was breakfast ready at the table ...
Clothes were neatly arranged in tha almirah, just to be selected . (Holy! they were even ironed!).

If i had continued staying at home ... hmm lets just assume ....
I should have been teaching in some near by college about computer science .. a clean 9 to 6 job with 10k in hand ? .. some extra hacking / cracking work ... sundays off ... i dont know .. maybe i would get bored ..

is there anything we dont get bored of ? .. or is there anything i am bored of ?



There was a time, when i used to restrain myself from writing Shit , i mean , things which i felt was absolute shit ..probably because i had a concern for the reader ? (nay i didnt have any concern for the reader , even if it meant me reading it for a second time .. - refer the Lets fly like pigs .. over the green grass poem!!!) ...

But since you guys are churning out classics (ram is famous for his RESTRAINED WORDS WHICH PIERCE LIKE ROSE THORNS).. I thought of taking an alternate plan .. called
TOTAL EXPRESSION .... bala gave up his Rhyme ?!! Man, that was natural ...shouldnt have done it ....