Finally Sterling met to its destiny

Few weeks back one colleague told me about the probability of sterling commerce's acquisition. But it was not possible for me to figure out the reason behind IBM's motto of buying and AT&T's intentions of selling. On the contrary it was my fear that ignored the facts which were strongly signaling the forthcoming unexpected changes.

Few weeks passed without any significant events. One such general day I reached office at my usual timings. There was something fishy in the environment. People were standing in groups and they were discussing something which was still unknown to me. As per the human nature my curiosity had already been reached to 100th time. I sat down, opened laptop, started outlook and read all the mails.

Oops I dint find anything unusual, Okay let me ask reason for such unexpected activities at the floor. My TL predicted the possibility of an announcement in the Sterling worldwide meeting which happens on last Friday of each month. Speculations were heating up, gossips were increasing and rumours were spreading. Though it was impossible to predict the flow of the events but to in line these events sterling pantry was filled with max possible groups.

Finally meeting started. The first shock, IBM big guns were accompanying Sterling's bosses. People were clueless and they were hushing. We all had idea and no one wanted to believe until the announcement was official. People were praying of an announcement about a business tie up with IBM.

Sooner or later dream were to be broken. Meeting started with Steven Auldts, VP Sterling commerce, who was anchoring the meeting. After his first few words, he showed the reality to the people and announced the merger (merger: Big fish eating small fish J ) of Sterling Commerce and IBM.

Oh I was Sterlite when I joined the meeting, and now I am an IBMer since I left the meeting.

Bangalore No More heaven for me

Few years back Bangalore was heaven to live. People/Friends were there to hang out with, few had more time, noon were not as hotter. Everything was just like living your dream time with your own hard earned money.

Now things have changed. Noon is exposed to more UV rays than earlier, College friends have chosen their destiny. As part to their decisions either they moved to other states or re-entered to colleges or could not find time as they need to fulfill their other important commitments.

Am I happy with this life? :(:(:(

Hmmmm, nice question :)... As we always say there are pros and cons for everything. Are there any pros? Oh surely there are, I can list few. My manager who never expected me to work 8 hours now expect me to code for 15 hours a day because I spend more time in office rather spending it at home. So chances of getting good rating has enhanced a lot. I can read more books(It rarely happened) at home. I can learn new technologies(Techie thought). I can learn some instrument(Oops no music sense), write more blogs(Poor in talks), talk to people more on phone(Oops noone calls me as well) and may be because I am not surrounded by guys anymore; I can find a partner(No good girl in my circle) for me.

Oh I never thought there can be so many advantages :( :(. I know I know I am bullying a lot but...

Oh what are the cons of the whole migrations? Hmmm, I don't find people to hang out with, people to fight with, people to argument(mostly nonsensical manner) with . I think this is what matters most to live the happy life. Now if I have to go out to shop, i have to think 10 times and but there was a time, when people used to ask and I used to deny as I had been to market twice earlier in the day. So all in all I miss a lot of things wwhich is named Bak*****.

Muththathi - 11 April 2010 - Continue

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Now no nosense, all this will make sense.

We were 8(Srikanth, Gautham, Mitalee, Soumaya, Om, 2More and me), all were ready to trek and enjoy the heat of mountain. There were 7 peaks, and we decided to hoist our flag on all the peaks. Our glucose level was very high. It was a 3 hours trip but the trip was under the surveillance of sun god,
who was producing more heat than normal. (Dude, I have one important question - How the hell does Sun god know that I am going out to trek?  Shhhh he never let me trek, I was still praying, he will prey some
other group today).

There we were, are we? All of us did not know if this is the right place?

We verified as well. Oops there we were, next to a shrine, next to a hill station and near a river (ravine or I should say dam - Place where water smells as stagnated water). As there were no clear pictures of the hill tops, no clear ways to travel up to enjoy trekking, so the verification was the continuous process. First step

toward the journey was to cross Kavery, vehicle was a circular boat and driver was a 10 year old kid. In the mid of the stream our boat was little unbalanced and we were scared. Dude what is the depth here? How many of us know swimming (For the matter of fact there were 2 swimmers only)? All those questions were remained undiscovered as it was desired and finally we were on the other side of Kavery. Oh did I
tell I helped kid to row down the boat with long hands like pole.

There were two sides to trek up and we choose one. We started horizontally to find the way to trek vertical. We walked and walked horizontally in the heat on the sand, in the treeless forest. Two were down soon. Mitalee and Soumya seated under a Banyan tree and rest of us walked to find way up. We walked one more mile and our patience also went down. Here we found only one place where stinking water of river was producing sound effects(Somewhat similar to fall). To reduce down(omit) the tiredness and heat we spent few minutes at the same location. But all was in vain. We came back under the Banyan tree. There we had snacks brought by Mitalee and while eating I figured out my hands were still recovering from the smell of stinking water.

Okay It was over, we returned to our cab and moved to Bangalore. For me it was the worst trip of my lifetime. Stinking River, unfamiliar smell, treeless forest and horizontal trekking was the achievements of
the journey. May be it was the bad timings, but I would suggest if you want to enjoy the day then stay away from Muththathi and if this does not scare you then you are worth the place like us.

Muththathi - 11 April 2010

On Apr 9th, Friday, my colleagues forced me to plan to go out. They (I am included) were exhausted with the work pressure (Hard work put up@ TT/Foosball) and heat waves (Truly hot) of Bangalore. Somewhere out??? Dude, you guys could have told me before; now I have committed my Saturday. But their thirst to go out was so unquenchable that I had to accept their proposal***.

*** Conditions apply: Trip was trimmed down to one day and we had to find place near to Bangalore.

Now time to finalize the place. We got few places which were were spread out over several categories. Few of the categories got interesting comments like this. Shrine was the place where people could have lost their Jawani ('chiiii, Bhari Jawani me sadhu nahi banna chahati mein'). One guy could have failed his history exams because of Archeological Places listed(Before each history exam I used to be in dilemma - 'Akbar Auranjeb ka baap tha yah Auranjeb Akbar ka'). Dams were short of water (Shhhh, what will we do there? Machi pakdenge pure din). Hill Station was too tiring for people who had already put extra pounds (Mera BF patla ho jayega).  Birds sanctuaries dint have charm (I do not have interest in watching chidiya bird, ohhh birds are there around - Though my company does not have many arrre bhai any...)

Anyways after whole set of comments, arguments, advices, and place promotions it was fixed. Oops here it came, the place unanimously (Dint find any good competition) selected was Muththathi (It took exactly 10 days to pronounce it correctly.). Others preparations were booking the cab (booked late Saturday night), getting the road map (Nobody had any idea) and getting something to eat (Oops thanks to Mitalee, with this act she improved her gal quotient in my eyes). Okie dokie, lots of nonsense, come to the point. Oh this blog is growing. Ok I will split it here. Arre one more click please.

Hope this change will not change

For past few years we all had lost sense of any game other than cricket. We ate, slept, drank and even worked cricket. The whole nation was traumatized with cricket. But, due to some astonishing performances in recent past, we have been recovering from the state of trauma. Let it be either tennis diva mirja or speed master kathik or badminton ace Saina or snooker champion Advani or grand master Vishvanathan, we all talk about them. We all managed to sneak on their activity and get time to discuss about them. Media started showing what Indians are doing in those sports. So it feels refreshing to see media, people, and papers to talk, discuss, analyze, and argument about sports not cricket.

Currently we Indians are witnessing the Hockey world Cup. What a cup it had been for Indian hockey team. Though they were not able to carry forward the initiative taken in the first game against Pakistan, but they have given hopes to Indian hearts. I have seen people, at my work place, talking about S-A-I-N-D-E-E-P, talking about B-H-A-A-R-A-A-T and many other players, many other teams, many other techniques. Though they were neither experts nor players but there was heat in their words, there was passion in their arguments, it is same heat and the same passion which were always reserved for cricket. The way media and Celebes have promoted, people have cheered, we have watched the hockey it seems we have left behind the reservations of cricket and started giving place to other wonderful games in our heart.

It would not be surprising to see more Indians world champs soon in each and every sport. It is not deniable that support any other game with the spirit of cricket is impossible but adoring other games may lead to change of luck for us in other games also which is a very pleasant change for Indian sports.

CATrama - Cat 2009 Drama

CAT went online, this is old news. But news channels across India horrified each and every participant interested in IIMs. On 28th Nov 2009 all the TV channels were neither concentrating on Indian Cricket Team nor fighting with Pakistan terror groups, but all of them were flooded with the news of crashing servers, with the stories of the students who could not take the exams and with the views of negligence of Indian Institute of Managements. Each small or big journalist was rebuking IIMs’ display of negligence and blaming IIMs for compromising with their testing and judging standards. All news papers, TV channels, kids, forums were standing together to slam and doubt the reputation of world’s most renowned Indian institutes. Were IIMs really worth of this flak? Dint IIMs take all precautions to ensure their own reputation?

In my personal view, they were not. We all are in a society where we are living on the tip of valley where minimalistic error could disjoint our bones. IIMs are no exception to this rule.

IIMs’ biggest mistake was not able to ensure that the prometric server would take such a huge load on day 1? IT call it performance testing. So the question is; whether IIMs ever questioned Prometric about performance testing if not then it was the biggest loophole which they will add in their priority list for next year. This loop hole was exposed the very first D-day which scathed the reputation of the institute. But even after considering it as a glitch, if we look at the percentage number of the students who could not take the exam at the designated day is hardly .5%. Considering such a huge software problem there were 99.5% students who could complete their exam on the designated time and place without any hiccups.

Second problem was IIMs could not control our hands and legs (L, why not?). Now if some terminal restarts in the middle of the exam then on what grounds can we blame IIM? Do IIMs need to draw a line between our body parts and terminal switches or do they need to provide a rope to tie our legs in case our legs (During exam my leg spread apart as my mind does not know load sharing JJ) are not in control? At few locations candidate could not open test before restarting the server. Were such problems huge? Na, but such small problems were aired to probe how casually money minded IIM’s dealt with CAT.

Except all these we have few more test takers who are reporting unfair advantage to the students who are going to give exams on last days. How it is unfair? Is it unfair because IIM is publishing the last slot papers and telling the students to prepare from the same questions or unfair because we are helping others to use unfair means? Is there a way to stop people from telling questions to their friends? Exam takers have already signed a non-disclosure agreement with IIM, but even after this if we do not have value of such agreement then it is us who are at the wrong side. Surely IIM’s can not ask government to block the test takers SIM card. Otherwise media (I am sick of this media now) will raise questions of Right to speak and many others.

I am not accepting that this time everything was flawless. There were people who got extra advantage, there were people who could not take exam in best suitable conditions and there were people who were sent back but in the path of major change these hiccups were minor. We human generally stand against Change that we are not accustomed to but once the change is applied we inherit it into our system. The question always arises, then why were we sacrificed for this change, but then who? Will this question change even after the century? Someone has to be sacrificed then why not us.

As an Indian, we all should respect our institutes which have given us the identity at world level. I appreciate the stand taken by IIM. They are neither scraping CAT-2009 nor planning to return to old format next year. We are in the society where small changes need solid heart because every small error could turn into infinitesimal outcry. IIMs have taken the right and big step and I feel they are almost successful in their aim. People will always have concern, but few things need to be negotiated, ignored in the way of innovation. Go green IIMs.

Badlaav Jarrori Hai

Chikmagloor Trip - Day 2

First day

Next day Psycho started his day with early morning walk in the chikmagloor's dense forests. Among us, few were still struggling to fetch unproductive sleep for few more seconds and rests were getting ready for Manikyadhara Falls. We took some nice shots of wild flowers and plants which were fresh like us at the start of the day.

We drove to down hills and after a small distance driver told us to hire a Gypsy as it was not possible for him to drive further. WTF, why can not you go? But as instructed, we hired it to reach to the falls. So hiring the Gypsy was the beginning of the most troubling road journey.

Our downhill road was little like road featured in Mountain Dew Ad campaign (Darr ke age jeet hai...). The road did not have concrete dammar path, whole path was rocky and above to that Mr. Driver was taking sharp turns as though Schumacher was driving his Ferrari in Chikmagloor GP. All of us could not enjoy the green on the roadsides to keep our head away from Gipsy's roof. While driving Michael pointed out the little stream of water, which was suppose to be most charming fall @ Chikmagloor. I was asking myself, did I waste so much of my energy for such a tiny stream of water? Was it a repetition of Waynad's abby falls? Why on earth I came to see this fall. But there was no return, so we kept rolling down the hill. Finally Mr. Schumacher stopped 2KM away from the fall and asked us to walk.

Manikyadhara fall was in middle of dense forest. Environment was so calm that running water was also creating a rhythm and Ashish sanyaas plans were straightening more. In such a peaceful jungle we crossed rivers, crossed big stones and finally reached to the spot. By now I was tasted from 3 blood sucking leeches. Seeing these stuck to my legs, girls screamed first, I almost jumped, gulti lost his motion (Most scared too). It was terrible to see these species sticking to your body and sucking your blood. You could not just take a second to throw it away.

Finally our jungle walk was finished; we were in front of the fall. To see the height we need to stretch our neck 60*, such a huge fall in the wild (Can’t be at my home for sure :)).

Thanks to our early morning efforts the fall belonged to us for next couple of hours (We were the only and lonely group there). Rocks were slippery, Water was freezing and wind was adding spice into it. But it took few thoughts to enter into the water. ASA I could get a place, I was welcomed with a splash of water on my face, in the same way I replied without loosing a second.

Garima, Vidushi were just sitting and video tapping five half naked guys :).

Wild has a problem, it makes people Jungly. So in its effect we were screaming, shouting and enjoying the moments there. After spending couple of hours the wildness came to an end. We returned back to our car in an hour.

Next destination was the Karnataka’s highest point. First we targeted highest peak seen from the parking. It took few minutes to reach to the peak.

That's it, is it? So were we standing 1926 Mt's above sea? No clouds, nothing like so high, where are we? I dint have either an inch tape or a barometer to measure the height, but I looked around to find out, am I on the summit of the mountain? No, this was not it; there is one more peak which is higher, a lot higher. So we still had lot to cover. Psycho did not have courage to move, but it was impossible to return without meeting to the clouds. We convinced vidushi to accompany us, so psycho was alone and bound to come. Here we started, first rolled down, then climbed up, climbed more and was reducing the gap with the summit.

We were above Clouds, breeze was cold and wet. Would you believe we had our lunch at the highest point of Karnataka? Locals there inaugurated one temple there and were distributing Prasad. Our lunch of the day was biryani with pachranga pickle (Truly earned lunch: P).

we were still few stairs away from peak. After lunch break journey was resumed. We were walking in the clouds and Clouds, that were covering the whole place, were growing denser. Downhill view was just stunning. My words may not be able to fill the cavity between what I watched and what I wrote but that experience of watching the world from this height was great. We stayed there for a little gossip and took some souvenir pictures before returning back to the parking place.

There was nothing much left in folks, so moved to Bangalore. On the way we had our dinner at chikmagloor that was sponsored by ashish, reached back to Bangalore 11 o'clock in the night. Chikmagloor trip was a great trip, all the members of the trip had great time together and at least I did.

I am looking forward for next trip very soon in future. More pics

Trip to Chikmagloor

Can you u imagine the trip after 3 years of college with college friends? Reviving your college memories is always an enlightening experience. All of you (Trip crew) know each other from the deep root level. So such trips, with college geeks, remain memorable and fresh through out your life.

It was Thursday night. Kunal reached home, we opened Google, searched tourist places near Bangalore, and found 3 probable destinations. Gulti with his little experience finalized our future for next two coming days. We all were set except few hiccups, like Psycho, did not want to come with out his friend vidushi, vidushi could not come without any other girl.

I do not think there is any need of introduction with all big guns. Vishal me, Gulti the exitincting species, rajhans saint, kunal evergreen, psycho sharmila, vidushi our new listing in friends, Garima my sister.

We planned to leave Bangalore at 7, but because of Bangalore’s morning traffic, our car arrived 5 hours late. Dude, Gulti's eyes were boiling in rage. I did not know what is going to happen to our driver. I was thinking Gulti should settle the things in little arguments. Once driver reached, he fired up, and he asked, "Kya bhaiyyyya, itni der kahan laga di, traffic mein fans gaye the kya" :). That’s all really.

Trip was started at 12 and our first stop was a temple (Name: I am still thinking :)). We all did not enter into the temple, and none of us had courage to climb down approximately 100 stairs. So we planned to ease our self and find the fall's starting point. Here the wildness of ashish woke up (Some time our saint behaves like a rahul Roy in Junoon.).

One decent guy told us that this water is coming up from top of the hill and hill top is just 300 meters above. So here it started. Water, mud, Stone, big stone we crossed everything on the way, just opposite to water flow.

We completed one KM, no peak nearby, we completed 2 KM's still no peak (Was the peak also walking with us???-RVG can only answer this...AGYAT-2). Gals behind us were just to faint, then my conscience woke and I asked Rajhans to halt, who was not willing to stop his journey in the excitement of discovering something unknown/unseen. Kind hearted Ashish finally decided to adjourn his tracking all because of those poor gals, who were at the verge of surrendering the courage with which they started their passion to accompany us on such a difficult track. Now we choose the safer path to move little up in the forest. But there were no stairs to reach at top, Psycho tried searching in each direction (Actually he lost the directions so he was wandering here and there). Finally we all gave up finding source of water. All of the sudden, Gulti's weird imagination went into Stone Age and started putting off his cloths (:))... Gulti wanted to cover his whole body with leaves and woods. Thank God, gals were there with us. Otherwise Gulti ka name bhi "Patte Wale Baba" hi hota (God with leaves).

Oh yeah, how can I forget, Kunal successfully saved one tree there from us. he saved it by giving it a big hug. So this was little forest trip.

After wandering in the forest we marched ahead to find the place for spending the night, as sun started hiding and announcing the EOD. We found one lodge and lodge manger informed about unavailability of the rooms. Where will we go? Will we need to spend our night in mogali (Jungle Book hero) mode? Kunal was quick enough to start making friends, Ashish started dowsing (Got chance to sleep in nature.), Gulti started talking in Gulti with driver (Jugaaaaad), Psycho was shell shocked and gals were cool. I was the one who still had some guts to talk with the rishwatkhor manager and manager came up with two vacant room and we got place to spend our night. After dinner, it was walk time. Dark night, no lights, no men on the streets, some screams, some wild sounds, on such a horrified road we were walking in the direction of nowhere. Will we become the inspiration of RVG's next movie? After 20 minutes, we headed back toward lodge. We all settled down and talked about college, college friends, achievements (Who all could manage to escape from marriage till now, who all could manage to find a gal and run with her and few talks were about jail... etc).

12 AM, Ashish became the victim of atrocities(It was his b'day, and we did bumped someone's a** for a long time. Poor ashish :(). It is night, got to get a nap.

Good night.

Road to Where???

Development, progress, and growth these synonyms are more associated with developing countries than developed one. Today developed nations are secure enough to feed their people and take care of their needs, but developing countries are still struggling to feed their people. Apart from all these, developing countries are marching ahead, crushing the needs of their citizens, in the desperate attempt to reduce the gap with developed territories. Have we ever thought what are we loosing to reduce that margin? What have we achieved from these developments? Is our progress mocking the saying "To Gain, first you need to Loose."?

Today I read one article that was covering the story of protest held in Delhi by the farmers to claim their agricultural land from big entrepreneurs. This article took to me 2 year back, when I had discussion with my roomies about the building path of progress. Their thinking was to rule out such demands without delay as they are the road blocker in the path of development. According to them it is not possible to keep 1 billion happy at the same time. To make progress possible, the Indian government has to take such harsh decisions. To achieve the progress developed nation had followed the same trajectory, then why should not we follow the known path?

Now, are the comparisons between developed and developing nation fair enough? When comparing two countries, why do not we look at the infrastructure/resources possessed by each country? For the matter of the fact, USA is the 3rd biggest country in the world, while Indian continental total field area does not even stand in top 5, and the people using that piece of land is in 1:10 ratio. The land available to one person of USA is equal to the land utilized by 100 Indians. Wookay, Why to compare with the extreme, china is also developing faster than India. Then why not compare with china? China and India both overpopulated countries, but the land available for 1 Chinese is equivalent to 2 Indians. So in china too richness of resources, area available is far better than Indian Territory.

Lets just consider the Land requirement for the purpose of development; land is the resource which is the starting point of new set of troubles. Indian Rural population is marching toward cities to find a job, because either there land were snatched or were bought in the lower prices by big guns which is resulting in demolition of agricultural India. As land of agriculture is reducing, it is leading to less grain production, asking for high import of grains, so in few years we will be eating imported floor. Won’t it be a luxury? Poor will loose their jobs. So India will move further, but along with the increasing burden of problems.

Guys, I am not really against the industrialization, but why are we chasing the external dragon, even if our internal dragon may swallow the country soon? Do not we have some moderate path which will not save us from destruction marching us to the construction?

X-factor

In office all of a sudden this discussion was sparkled. We could not finish this debate there, so I thought of sharing it. The question was, are Muslims more Aggressive/Ill tempered in compare to other communities?

I will leave this on you to decide. in our discussion one answer was hanging in between of other two generally acceptable answers which was supporting both sides by stating that Muslims are chauvinistic about religion. So anything stated against there religious believes turns them aggressive.

I was on the side of NO. My thinking says it is all about teaching they have got in their journey of life. For example, In our rural areas, Muslims kids are sent to study in Madrases where center of their studies are narrowed down to teach hating people other than Muslims. Most of the part of their teaching is, "what is bad in others?" which is a negative start of life. If someone other than Muslim would have brain washed in the same way, it would have been the same results. So in whole If someone is kept apart from the world, providing him the knowledge of X-factors only, then the person will get plenty of time to process and understand the X-factors. Any human being can be moulded to become aggressive if situations are contradictory to those X-factors. There are muslims who have learnt with us in the same school where we have learnt. Can we figures out the differences between them and us?

It is true in current scenario "Ismal's modified studies" are posing the threat of extinction to Human being. But these studies are introduced by people who do not want others to know positive of society. Looking at the difference of change seeker's and Orthodox's, there is a need of prophet's reincarnation. He only can lead them to teach and learn the positives of Islam instead of negatives of others. That can bring peace to human breed.