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.

Good site containing having lots of books!

Get the books !

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 :)

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...!

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.

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 ....

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....

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.