A toast for my novels past

I always loved writing, though the past few years saw me write pretty much just work-related emails, and no literature. Sometimes I blame it on writer's block, but may be I guess I'm just lazy to sit down and start writing.

Its interesting, that when I look back, the most I used to write was probably when I was in school through college, during which I authored numerous poems, about half a dozen novels/long-stories, a lot of short stories, a handful of dramas, some essays, and an earnest attempt at a book on Christian spirituality.

Highway robbers - now at Trivandrum!

Highway robbers (aka highwaymen) and their exploits have been (in)famous since time immemorial. Whether the way was through land or water, they had that their role in history, legends and folklore, and the lone travellers of the old never undervalued the importance of having their fingers wrapped around an object of defense - be a log of wood, or a blade of steel. The subject popped back into my attention today, when I heard the account of a colleague’s close bump with the kind, here at Trivandrum!

It happened yesterday night. He was driving back from Kovalam along the NH47 bypass, and heard the vrooming sound of a motorbike at his tail. The phenomenon not being an uncommon one, he at first chose to ignore the reckless rider who probably was just trying to chase a fast car for the thrill. But then, suddenly the motorbike overtook the car, and the pillion rider started throwing eggs on the windshield.

IRCTC, get a cape, folks!

I’m not the guy who thinks a glass is half empty, nor one who thinks the beautiful things in life are transparent. But I’m telling you – its high time IRCTC gets at least one thing – A BETTER SERVER!

Ofcourse, IRCTC saves you from standing in the long queue at the railway station, but, well it kinda makes you sit almost the same time in front of your computer :

• Waiting for the login page to appear, and then the logged-in page to appear


• Waiting for the train availability to load (with the wait-wheel going round and round and round…. Sometimes, I feel it even gives a villain laugh – “buhuhahahahahah”)

I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME!

The scene’s from “Watchmen” – classic DC comics graphic novel turned major motion picture. Rorschach’s been arrested, and dumped along with all the baddies he had put behind the bars. The rouges are excited as time has come up for their revenge, with Rorschach all alone in their midst. They plan an assault at the food court, and the protagonist retaliates, delivering the classic line:
“None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with *ME*!”

Ah! What a line!! So simple, but so powerful!!! One that makes you hunt mercilessly for an opportunity to throw on someone :-) The interesting fact is that one doesn’t have to be a black belt in Kung Fu, or bitten by a radioactive spider, to deliver it - What it takes, is a simple look around.

TUSGIR (The Unofficial Survival Guide to Indian Roads) Part 1: Introduction

I learned to ride a bicycle when I was around 10; and was promoted to an active cyclist by 12 when my father bought me a blue BSA SLR on the eve of Easter 1992 – my first public ride on it was to attend the Easter mass at our parish church.

The only ‘rules on the road’ I knew that day, were:

• Ride on the left side of the road (courtesy my father)


• Look both sides before you cross (courtesy my mother)

Simpler times, they were… and I did pretty well.

How I came to carry two mobiles!

It was on Sat Aug 16, 2008, that I won the bidding on my "HTC touch diamond" from Ebay, for £295 + £15 postage. It was my first smart phone - well, just that in another two days, I painfully discovered that it was "smart", but not very much of a "phone". It showed me google maps when I needed direction, it showed my GPS position when I was lost in a forest, it helped me write documents and create spreadsheets while on the move, it helped me take notes, draw pictures, record videos, click snaps, listen to radio - yup - all the works - except that I prayed each time I made a call, or took a call! Yeah - it worked like a charm except for everything except "telephoning".

"Numbers": How they change perceptions!

It was lunch time, and during general chit-chat, I broadcasted to the crowd around the table, my latest addition to the fitness regime - 20 push-ups and 20 sit-ups every morning, with an aim to raise it to 100 gradually in two months' time!

And, guess what the first response from an overwhelmed colleague was?! "How do you find time for all these!!" A couple of heads nodded along, as if, yeah! How do you!!?

5 addictions of life

Alright, been long since I'd been consumed heavily by work; and my good little friend Cris has nudged me, with a rather loud "Oy! wake up!" :-)

:-) thanks, Cris... for the nudge... and more than that, for caring to...

Well, okay, the tag is to list 5 addictions of life... and here I go...

The "late" Indians: a quiet retrospection

This may sound rude or offending to some, but tell me, when's the last time you had attended a function or a meeting, with all the "Indian" attendees arrived on time? Well, my motive here is not to condemn this trait or anything, but instead, to take an interesting perspective on it.

An event pops in to my mind as I ponder more on this topic: I slept over at a friend's place on a Friday, and the referred-to episode happened the following morning around nine, as we sat sipping coffee at the living room, frisking the newspapers. My friend's elder brother and family too had come over the previous day, as they had to attend a wedding in town. The wedding was at 9:30, and there was around half an hour's drive to the venue. The elder brother had a son, aged five.

"On the move" blogging

Okay, now this might sound a bit like a technical boohoo, or like the confessions of a bloody technocrat a geek; but here I go... cant resist the temptation of just blabbering it out :-)

As I "write" this directly on to blogger.com, I'm cruising in a super fast "national rail" train to "Newcastle" in northern England, a place just below Scotland (to meet my cousine brother and his family). I started at 6 am from Ipswich, (South-east England); time is now 8:40 am, and I still have over another hour to reach my destination.

Gone are those days when train journeys used to be unproductive... Here I sit with my "HTC touch diamond" Pocket PC running windows mobile 6.1 (which also, by the way, serves as my mobile phone). Connected to the train's wireless internet, I'm browsing the net, scribbling emails using the stylus directly on to the touch screen which dynamically recognizes my handwriting and transcribes it into ASCII text...

Fearless!

Its called "fight or flight", and we all choose one of the two, when confronted with a hostile situation. We either avoid the situation, or decide to face it chin up.

What do you think the majority chooses? Lets take some situations, right from childhood (my non-Indian readers might not be able to relate to most of the following):

1. You are a 6 year old kid, playing in your front garden. A ragged man comes by, and peers over the fence. You study him for a few moments, he looks dirty, he has a rucksack, his hair long and grown, he looks at you and grins. Would you just resume what ever you were doing, or would you run back home to your parents?

The magic of incentives

Sitting late at office is a common trend found among (very) young Indian IT professionals. There are many reasons why it is so, probably I'll have another article on it later, as it by itself is a topic worth writing. Anyways, everybody accepts that its not really good for both - the employee, as well as the employer. Its the employer who has the most obvious repercussions, and each keeps reminding their employees in various ways to get out of office in time, not to sit late, and have a life outside. Well, the trend hasn't changed a bit in the past many years I myself have been observing it; people still sit late - most of them, browsing the internet, or even playing games. I'm not considering the ones who genuinely work, in this article, that again would need another account of itself :-).

Now, if you go and ask many of these folks why they sit late at office, they might have many reasons, but at the end, if you put all these reasons together and factorize and re-factorize them, you'll find that people don't leave office in time, because they don't have an incentive to! While, to sit back, they have enough and more.

The importance of co-locating your team

Sometime ago, back in one of my previous projects, I had to ramp up my team by one, to resource some new work that came in. The new person was a 1.x years experienced lady, with technical skill set cohering with what I required in my team.

Now, before this lady came in, my team used to sit in two large multi-occupant cubicles, with just a small partition in between, which practically made it a large bullpen. This facilitated much interaction between the team members, who utilized it well to maximize exchange of information & knowledge, and of course jokes and light moments. I too found it most efficient in conducting stand-up scrums and short ad-hoc meetings, as we just had to pull our chairs together into a circle, and not hunt for a meeting room. We had consumed all seats in the two cubicles, and there were none free, when the new lady came in.

Creating a bolder generation

A few months ago, back in Kerala, I was on a visit to a certain school for some social work. It was lunch time, and kids generally play around for a while, before getting back for afternoon sessions. I walked around through the school grounds, watching the kids play, and kinda reliving the moments of my own childhood.

It was a muffled cry which drew my attention to near a tree, where three kids were standing around. They seemed around eleven or twelve; there was a girl, and two boys. It was the girl who was crying, and the expressions / body language of the boys did look a bit nasty for their age. It seemed that the boys had said something, and the girl had started crying. I looked around if any of the staff were around; upon seeing none, started towards the trio, intending to solve the issue. But hardly had I reached there, when another little girl came running towards the three.

Roadrash!!!

Back in college days (1997-2001), when PCs were becoming popular in Kerala, 'Roadrash' was one of the games which had glued me to a seat. (Well, to be frank, I was never much of a computer-gamer; Roadrash, Minesweeper, Solitaire & Mah Jong being the only ones I've ever laid my hands on, other than the ones I had authored myself: a flavor of Othello, a memory game which I christened 'Ormma', and 'MathWars' which I wrote to improve my calculating speeds.)

I guess Roadrash got popular exploiting man's inherent urge for transgression, adrenaline, and a passion for lawlessness. I used to play on all the four routes available in my version, and was thrilled to the core when I could take a real-life drive along two of them: the 'Napa valley' & the 'Pacific Highway', when I worked in the USA.

Anyway, my taste of Pune roads during the current month-long visit surpasses all those elements of transgression, lawlessness and adrenaline-rush!!! read on...

Aati kya Khandala?

Okay, so it was my 2nd weekend at Pune; half of saturday went partly at the gym, and mostly in reading up stuff and working on a presentation. Dude, weekends are to chill-out - throw that laptop away!!!. So, mounted my (? oye, its Shoby's!) motorbike, and took off to Dann's & Ajith's. Dann was already off to Trivandrum for the long weekend, and Ajith's bro, Sreejith had come to Pune for his. So, we decided upon a Hindi movie (Hattrick) for the evening, and a bit of trekking for the afternoon. So, rode to Baner and went up the hill to fetch a glimpse of sunset. But alas, the stupid sun had already set!!! An hour there, and then off to E-Square for the movie. Dropped by at a Smoking-Joe's on the way, for some Indianized Pizzas. Well, as for the movie, Hattrick turned out to be a pretty good entertainer, after all!

Thus came the dusk, the dawn and day 2nd !!