Friday, September 26, 2008

Tandoori Nights

Tandoori Nights

Today while coming from GOREGAON I was listening radio when I heard this song. It’s a song created by HIMESH. Though many people might feel that he is obnoxious weed, good for nothing man, I certainly believe that he makes some amazing songs and Tandoori Nights is just one of them. We as people, many a times criticize just for the heck of it. I mean HIMESH is extremely popular musician. Many people have an issue with him since he sings supposedly using his nose!!! So what!! His music is a new generation sound- a sound which is so peculiar in this new day and age- a music which is a part of modern Indian culture. It’s the music for the car driving, auto-driving, disco-going, rhythm-loving, lyric-loving people of the country. Lets except the fact that he is popular and he is here to stay. He initially was only a musician and now he is also getting into acting big time. No producer is fool enough to give HIMESH a leading role. Every person knows about the amount of public interest that he generates wherever he goes, whatever he does, whichever music show he judges…There is this tremendous demand for his kind of persona. Perhaps he is the only genuine rock-star of the MUSIC-REALITY-MADDENED nation of ours. In the entire reference to the great man I have used CAPS for him. I genuinely like the man… He has his own style and he can pull it off like no one can. Only person I can compare him with in the Modern day era has to be NAVJOT SINGH SIDDHU.

ENOUGH FOR TODAY….

Cheers

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Life in a Metro

Life in a Metro

Today, living in Mumbai is not a very easy thing to do. Prices of things are really high and unfortunately the rate of growth in salary is not proportional to the rate of growth in wants and necessities. But the best part about the entire situation is that no one seems to be content. Even the richest people want to earn more and they also have their own set of problems. While a poor man tries hard to make two ends meet, the rich man is losing sleep as to how he is going to save tax. Every rupee earned is extremely valuable and hence every one has a right to think about how they can save. This leads us to a very basic nature of the human being. We as people are ambitious. Ambition drives us. All of us have goals. We live by these goals and these small missions define our very purpose of living.

Trains will always remain crowded. Bosses will always anticipate better work. Malls will grow. Prices will shoot. Saturday-movies will be more expensive. Traffic is going to increase exponentially. Power-cuts will be frequent. A bomb blast in every two years is expected. We know all this. We know how things are shaping up and we know how things are going to go even worse. There are many problems and we have to be smart to dodge these hurdles and somehow survive in the city. People have become very smart and they have started finding many solutions. I will give an example of the solution; it’s related to education;

These days getting 90 pc in Board exams seems to have become a normal thing. All the parents anticipate a very stiff competition for their kids and hence each and every student in this city goes for tuition class. All the teachers in the school are aware about it. So now the responsibility of the child’s education isn’t solely on them. Coaching classes have become massive businesses today. I have a nephew of mine who is right now in eight grade and his mother has already enrolled him into the tuition for the ninth grade. This is called anticipation. Parents have such a great sense of judgment in that they know that the teacher in the school won’t be able to handle their child’s education. Teachers might as well say that it is very difficult to focus on each and every child in a class of more than 65 students. But then the number of students in the class is always going to grow high. Problem is present; but teachers haven’t yet found the solution; parents have.

Though we may feel that the city is going the New York way, its not the same. In NY, people cannot survive if wife and the husband both do not work together. Even in Mumbai that time is slowly coming. But like in NY where people only have to think about their immediate families, in Mumbai people are still extremely attached to their family, their neighborhood, their relatives in remotest corners of Mumbai and in other parts of the country. Even though a daughter-in-law would be allowed to take up a job, she is still expected to do all household work right from cooking food to taking kids to school. Life for the Mumbai woman is going to get challenging by the day. Situations can become very tricky. Marriage in the neighborhood is as important as meeting with the client. Juggling priorities will become the order of the day. However, I believe that the women in the city are ready for this kind of life. Women not only are capable of multi-tasking but are also capable of achieving quality in all kinds of work that she takes up. This leaves us with men. I can’t comment much about how men will evolve. I seriously do not know how men are going to react. Perhaps Sangeetha can give us some insight as to what she feels. Readers of this blog (I know very few…lol) can also chip in with their inputs.

Life in the city is certainly going to keep us on our toes. It’s a game each and everyday. I wish and pray that God gives us enough stamina to handle the stress, enough vigor to work tirelessly and enough time so that we can spend quality time with our families.

-Jay

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Thought Connection

Thought connection

I often play a game with myself whenever I want to create some kind of idea. Though the trick has not been fruitful in materializing into a full fledged poetry, but I would still like to go ahead and experiment as I keep writing this article. I would name this article as though connection. As you read along, things will get clearer.

Start:-

KHUDA JANE SONG FROM BACHNA E HASINO

God knows that I love you.
Love is the trickiest four lettered word in this world.
The world is round.
What goes around comes around.
Mind is a freak, it wants to go places.
Mind is fickle.
Fickleness is associated with a change in thought process.
Change is universal.
Nothing is permanent but change.
I just got permanent a month ago.
A month ago, my cool friend SANGEETHA had come to Mumbai from US.
US is the destination for all the South -Indian engineers in India.
Talking about South, I really like South Indian cuisine.
Though it’s not heavy on stomach, the taste is awesome.
Taste is a very relative word.
There are many relatives that we have. But we don’t like all the relatives.
We don’t like the taste of all the relatives.
Relativity theory was started by Albert Einstein.
Every young science student aims at becoming Einstein.
Being student it one of the best experiences in ones life.
Experience is a very important factor when an employer hires employee.
Factor is a mathematical word meant to describe the various components of the equation.
Equation can also be related to compatibility.
Compatibility is the key for any marriage.
Key again is a very positive word since it resembles a solution.
A solution is also something that girls apply on their faces before putting actual make up.
Making up is a term used to lie.
Lie is something that I do not like.
Talking about my likes and dislikes is pretty obvious since this is my BLOG.
BLOGGING is a very common interest that people share.
Sharing is something which comes very naturally to humans.
We share our problems, our happiness, our sadness. etc etc.
Happiness is a great feeling.
It’s somewhat spiritual in nature.
Spirituality is something closely related to God.
God knows that I love you (starting line)

END



ROCK ON

Today, life is again so quiet. Irony is that I have just watched ROCK ON today. The movie was pretty ok. Though not as cool as it was hyped to be, but there are certain dialogues in the movie which were really thought provoking. I don’t exactly recollect as to what the actual dialogue was, but the theme went like, everyone has to make a compromise in their life. Everyone has to adjust. Another dialogue went like when we are in our twenties we assume that world is at out feet. I don’t want to comment much on those lines because eventually it all boils down to same debate. Being practical or being emotional. When we are in the dark room for 3 hours, everything is possible. When I am in the team meeting, achieving everything seems possible. But the reality is different. We often get bogged down by our own capabilities or for that matter, even the lack of it. Often circumstances do not allow us to make the correct decisions. Every decision has to be thoughtful decision. Gut feelings and intuition are the tools used by extremely successful managers- a knack which comes after taking n number of wrong thoughtful decisions. Often fear pulls us down. Often our own family which is supposed to be an asset becomes the liability.

As the thinking-chain slowly moves on, I was again thinking about the various factors which a person should take into account when he is planning his career. The tricky part here is planning. I have seen many people getting brilliant opportunities and they making the best use of it. I believe everyone, someday or the other will get such opportunity and when opportunity does call…one should make the hay while the sun shines. It can again be co-related to the college life and the office life. In college we used to be kings. We played our own games, with our own rules. In corporate life we are mere pawns in someone else’s chess. We are made to play waiting game. The person who plays the best, wins the game. Sorry to go off track, I was talking about the factors.

Prime factor as per me has to be interest. Interest is a very relative term. Few believe man is born with interest. I believe interest can be created. I believe career is just like a marriage. If things aren’t interesting, then people strive hard to make things interesting. It’s like arranged marriage. Slowly and steadily people start liking each other and then also start loving each other. As a person I am a huge advocate of arranged marriages. As such I am a huge fan of marriages itself. Though, I myself would like to go for love marriage. If a man doesn’t like what he does, he should try hard to like it. There are many ways in which things can be made more likeable.

Second factor is money. I need not say more about this factor because millions of writers have zillions of times stressed on the importance of money. However, I would like talk about one important thing- Money trap. Most of the people in this world earn more in their life as compared to what those people earned two years ago. Thus, people feel that they are prospering and leaving a job which is extremely high-paying will be the stupidest mistake of their life. This is the trap- a trap which sucks you in. We believe that we have many responsibilities for which money is extremely essential. But any amount of money is not enough. It’s a rat race; today even as I type these lines, I know that there may be a time when I myself fall in this trap;

Third factor is growth. Every human is perfectionist by nature. We always try to do next assignment better than our previous ones. In this effort we often fail but then that’s how we make mistakes and then we learn and eventually become better. No one likes monotony. So new challenges become a very important part of one’s career.

Fourth and the final factor is HEART. I believe that even in practical world if a man puts his heart in what he does, the output will even better. It’s the driving force between doing the mandatory work and trying to do something extra. It is the factor which overrides all the above factors. I believe that if man does his work whole heartedly, money will follow, so will the growth. I believe that even a work that a person does not like but if he does it whole heartedly, he can deliver a terrific result. Many people call Heart as ATTITUDE. Success is 99 pc attitude and 1 pc aptitude. Well I certainly second that….

Enough for today…

Bye cheers.

From Disillusion to Solution - Part one


From Disillusion to Solution - Part one (Aug 20)

I brainstormed a lot during last weekend. I was wondering about what needs to be done as far as my career is concerned. Do I want to do an MBA? Should I do an MBA? Do I want to blindly follow my heart and get into teaching? Do I want to continue the way my life is going? Do I believe that I am a fit for IT industry? Should I quit the industry? What should be my game plan for next few years? Should I take up teaching? Too many questions were there. But it feels cool to eventually come up with answers. So in this article I am going to talk about my career plan;

First thing first- Why I don’t think that I am very happy right now?

The work that I am doing right now does not have bright future. I am not specializing in anything. I am working on COLDFUSION and SQL as front end and back end technology respectively. Well this might seem a very normal case for any IT person. But catch is that the project is maintenance and the kind of work that I do doesn’t allow me to learn more than what is required for the project. It’s more of a bug fixing, converting front-end codes into PL-SQL format, migrating an application from COLDFUSION 5 to COLDFUSION 7 etc. Now the management is pushing me into ENDECA search engine. I think I will be stuck with it for some time now. The time that a fresher might take to even start liking any particular technology is pretty less. Amidst all this there are also certain configuration tasks and other project related tasks. I may be a great boon for people working in my team, but being jack of all and master of none is not going to take me too far.

Why Teaching?

Since last 4-5 years I have realized that I am quite creative. I believe it’s a boon that I have and there is no better way to use my creative skills than by using these skills to convey concepts to young children. The educational system that I have come through never prompted me to think. It was more like a spoon-feeding. Though engineering was different, school life was very simple. Now-a-days the pressure on young kids to perform is very high. Coaching classes have become massive businesses. Parents are prepared to grill their kids. There is hardly any time to play for kids. I don’t know how the next generation is going to be. I mean it will be sharper, smarter, and ready for competition but I am not sure if it will create any new things or make new inventions. It will still follow the same old paths. There is a huge desire in me to make some contribution.




Why I can’t teach at this point in time?

I realize that to even become a good teacher, I need to specialize in one particular thing. I don’t see any value addition to any one if I get into teaching. Neither do I have tremendous knowledge nor any massive skill set. When I feel that I am confident enough and when I feel that I have enough patience and when I feel that now I have enough knowledge, perhaps I can take that step. Perhaps being qualified (B.E), can give me that edge.