Reaching NY!!

Almost all of them, to whom I have talked after reaching NY, have asked me the question... "How do you feel here?". Now, thats difficult question to answer... why... because I feel differently ... when I am at places... like I feel almost defenseless when I reach WTC station and I see the site of World Trade Center being constructed... where as few lanes ahead... when I reach Wall Street ... I feel excited as well as nervous... as this is the place where anything related to finances which will impact whole world happens. Anyways... answer is its good and place is well organized and disciplined.

After leaving Pune-Airport at around 11:30 AM IST (3rd Apr), I boarded Indigo Airlines to reach Ahmedabad at 2:30 AM IST. To my astonishment, I found international terminal of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport as locked. After enquiring a bit around there, I learnt that I dont have any place to dump my 49 Kgs of luggage. Hence, I just kept waiting for 30 mins infront of domestic terminal. In that span of time, near about 30 cab-drivers approached me and I said to everyone that I dont want to go. Finally, one more cab-driver came to me and as it is truly said that business is a gujrati's religion, he some how convinced me to book a hotel room upto evening. If I compare to this cab-driver in Gujrat to a cab-driver in Pune, there is a hell lot of difference. This man kept helping me in carrying luggage. He took me to nice hotel and took my luggage properly till room. It was so nice, that I got a feeling like this is a crooked plan to take away my belongings :)

Anyways after a sleepy day at Ahmedabad I finally checked-out from hotel room at 10:30 PM and reached international terminal, which to my delight was open and allowed me to check-in. I checked-in my luggage and kept waiting for Immigration check to take place. Police men over the security check looked to me and gave me a look like ... "shit.. first timers !! .. so many questions". Due to that I did not try to ask him any question and went ahead to board flight AI-191. AI-191 was comfortably good. Best part was on a three seat, they just allotted two seats. I was too happy to see that... it was not over-crowded and happily dumped my extra baggage on middle seat :) I postmortem the screen ahead of and remote in my seat :D and tried to watch every movie on the go. Till Frankfurt, I did not even realize, half of the journey was done. Food was ok types. They did not include chapatti and just replaced it with bread every time. Substitute works but does not gives satisfaction :P

After a thorough check of me(shoes, jacket, watch and belt) and my hand baggage, they finally allowed me to board my own flight. I did not understand the whole purpose of that check as we were supposed to be on same flight.

When we left Frankfurt, it was already 09:35 AM local time and we were already more than an hour late due to traffic (Runways are more crowded than roadways)

Now, Pilot has started playing a lot of videos about New York, culture, process and commutation. Mean while I received I-94 form which I filled and started watching my 3^rd movie in a row. After hour or so cabin-crew announced that we will be reaching Newark airport in few minutes. Every one started collecting their things. We locked our seat-belts. And nearly after 30 minutes we finally landed on Liberty International Airport, Newark. We were directed to visitors line to get immigration clearance. Now, here tragedy happened, moment I reached officer, he told me that I have not filled departure form and asked me to fill it and come again. I filled that form and again stood in that line. By the time my number came, the officer over the window went away. Again I had to jump to some other line. In between, all this, 3 more flights landed and queue was already quite long.

It took around 1 hour to get that thing over and finally I went to collect my luggage. Then in 2 mins I was out of the Airport... standing free… feeling the cold breeze of NY !!

Copy-Paste World!!

This one comes after a good public demand!!

I visited Cross-Word this morning(I rarely buy books, but try to read them completely over there only, as most of us :P). I saw a book over there which said "Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win". I said to my friend that I am not convinced. He replied saying that it is true, only original thing works and sales at business.

I started my philosophy(Got a chance to start my pravachan ;)). I asked him, are you having an ability to innovate something new? Can you introduce something which was never implemented/thought of? No. We are common people(mango people :P). However, does that mean we can never grow/ never do anything great? Cant we desire for something big/beautiful? Again a big no. Nothing works like smart work. It does not need to be original from you. Most valuable thing which comes out of Windows operating system is "Copy-Paste". Most of Hindi movies are copy-paste of either Hollywood movies or south-indian movies. Will you call Hindi movies a failure? Most of the policies implemented by our governments are already implemented somewhere in western world, does that mean we are not good? No.

We have to start accepting and recognizing the fact that someone is good than us and we can desire to be like them. Its nothing wrong. We have to change our mind-set that beautiful girls are not good natured.(So called middle class saying ;)). Hence as per me to win in business, you dont need to invent new business, you need to change the way you do business.

Why so serious?

You dont even smile for a day. It takes you more than ten minutes to remember your last happiest moments. Why do you behave like you are struck by Swine-Flu? You feel like you are unlucky and facing every problem in life? You are not able to buy your dream house? You are not able to get that big opportunity at the job? You are harassed by your boss? You feel home-sick? You are not able to find bride or You are married? Baat kya hai dost? Why so serious?

I have tried my best to list down all problems I can think of. However, I am not going to discuss solutions to these over here.

I am going to list down what all we miss thinking of these problems. You have not met/talked to a friend in last three weeks. You are not able to cherish a successful run of your first code in production. You have missed that road-side panipuri. You have lost, your innocence. Finally, you have lost your life.

There is a saying: K Sera Sera (I came to know about this when I watched Sarkar produced by K Sera Sera productions) which means "what will be... will be". In worrying for your future dont forget to enjoy your present.

CAUTION: This does not mean that you dont appear at office for a whole week and keep saying your boss K Sera Sera.

I passed out intelligent, but process killed me!!!

This is the funniest title I could think of for my near-about three years in IT industry. If you ask me how I felt when I left previous project. Really speaking I was relieved. I scared night shifts(I am BE first class with out any night out ;) ). However, when I look at previous project from my current project, I understand that my previous was much more complex project and we were not technologically competent.
I am strong in logic. Hence I think I am good in programming. However, point is how many times I applied logic or I did programming in my previous project. It was not lack of opportunity, it was lack of time. Out of 9 hours we used to work, much of the time was spent in following SLAs and processes. So when one of my friend from Mumbai says that if you dont work hard right now when will you work hard? I say that I am ready to work hard. However, work should interest me. If I am not competent enough I must be given opportunity towards it. If I am judged through how many extra curricular activities I am doing rather than how I am working then it will be a wrong decision. A wrong decision for me and for the organization too.
I am not against process. I think process streamlines your operations. However, when a person develops from one year to another and his brain is not given enough challenging tasks he will get frustrated. As an intellectual person you are not getting chance to prove yourself then chances are you will move out. Again opportunities are also very important in life. Just imagine you get married and have one kid and you are offered an onsite opportunity. Certainly you may not want to disturb their lifes. Lack of opportunities at correct timings can be very well reason of frustration and boredom.
One thing is for sure, I met friends of life at my previous projects. It was very well mixture of simple, good, intellectual, smart and very smart people. I learnt a lot of project/management tricks from their. It was really nice to be a part of it.

From my DIARY!!

Scene of sunday morning... My sister called me and said "Chintu, my Mummyji is going to Rajasthan and we have to go to Pune Station to see-off her." I donot want to go.I mean what is the need, she was travelling to our home(Pune) in afternoon and till that time she was with her. So it was not supposed to be a bharat milap scene.

I did not wanted to say her no over the cell-phone. In addition, I thought that anyways it will be rainy in the evening, so why say no when we have rains to blame.

She reached home around 3:00 PM and around 3:45 PM we started for Ravivar peth for some shopping. I told her while driving that there is no need to go to station to see-off. She said I promised mummyji that I will come. I did not paid any heed to it and teased her about her divine love and respect towards her mummyji. We were supposed to buy a school bag for her daughter, but we looked at thousand things and passed time well. It was around 5:30 PM we started back to reach at Big Bazar around 5:50 PM. We had a big list to buy as this month's sodexo coupons came just three days back. We finished around 6:45 PM and reached home by 6:55PM.

After such a hectic day and travelling, she wanted me to take her to station in 45 mins, to catch the train which was supposed to leave at 7:50 PM. Nothing was prepared at home. Coffee was not ready, nor were poha and not even the so called travel special aloo ka sabzi. My dad started scolding us that why we came late. I started telling her that it is impossible to catch the train. My mom said that it will not be easy to prepare all this and go to station, if rains came. The whole atmosphere against her. Everyone saying no. My sister was calm and firm minded, did not even replied us. Just said, I promised mummyji, I have to go. She moved fast, cut aloo into pieces, put poha in the pan, prepared coffee. Every thing ready in 10 mins.We moved out of house. I was still negative, I looked up and said its going to rain. She said you have jerkin, I am going to get wet by rains, why are you worrying, drive quickly. Since I drive by same road, I knew how to reach fast and by 7:40PM we were at pune station. I went to take platform tickets and she moved to boogie. She met her mummyji.

We came back home, my dad said it was just because of her firm mind, she made all of us move and we were able to make it. Lesson to learn is never say die in all odds.

Lets get transformed!!

The new tag line got added to my blog... "Lets get transformed". Half of my relative and more than 90% of my friends work in IT. However, how many of them or how many of us really work on developing something. We all work on either house-keeping systems they developed or performing the operational activities. I am not against it. I am not against process we follow. However, time is come to get transformed. If we really want to turn India a super-power, we need to have vision to get transformed from back-end operations providing country to the country capable of developing anything. We already have acheived half milestone by understanding systems and processes. Now we need to bring in vision and creativity in our work. Learn from their mistakes and donot repeat them. This can happen only with good leaders and we need it drastically.

Arey Man Mohana re Mohana

If you too think that it was due to Rahul Gandhi... Congress had a clean sweep then you have decided it without full thought.
If Congress has made it through then the major reasons were
1) Manmohan Singh's image as economist / Global Recession.
2) No other option from opposite side.
3) Sixth pay comission and Loan waiver to farmers.
4) Going ahead with Nuke deal even after opposition from Left.
If you consider voters as fools and unaware of situation, then let me remind you that you are in age of Information Technology. Every one listens to news and is aware of situation. There are good numbers of News channels who analyzes situation and explain it upto last point. Voters are aware that they need someone who is able to understand economy and boost it.
I agree to the fact that Rahul Gandhi is a poster boy for Congress, but gone are those ages when people used to vote only on speeches.
Congress won half of India by two things first was sixth pay comission and second was loan waiver. Rest were influenced with recession :)