Hey folks,

It’s been quite a long time since I posted on this blog. Not that I’ve been busy, just didn’t have the inclination to sit down and post. A lot of draft posts lined up but nothing completed. To those of you looking for a cheerful light-hearted post, don’t bother reading further. This isn’t it. On the other hand, if you’d care to know what’s been going on in my life in the last 3 weeks, please read further.

The last 3 months in life have been totally amazing. Not only on the work front but also w.r.t personal life. People who’re close to me would know that I’m a born Leo. Arun would vouch for how short-tempered I used to be whilst in college. Probably, Sathya might vouch for it too.

The day myself and Srinath started Sit, to discuss our personal value and belief systems on a quasi-public platform, we (knowingly or unknowingly) ushered into our lives a movement towards increased tolerance and openness. To many, this might sound like a statement worth ridicule. But to the few who have known either (or both) of us well pre and post Sit, the difference would be quite visible.

To this day, there are people in my circle who laud this openness and there are people who criticise it to the core. The truth is that neither of them is wrong. I chose to go ahead with the openness because somewhere inside me, it felt good to continually keep changing for the better. Irrespective of who or what brought about the change.

About three months ago, I told Srinath I would make the first ever attempt in life to remain a lot more patient. To tolerate a lot more destructive and constructive criticism. To remain calm and react to them with a balanced state of mind. A lot of people were responsible for this little attempt. Namely, Dr Annamalai from Gandhi Study Centre, Milind Jadhav, Srinath himself and finally, my greatest inspiration in life, M K Gandhi.

Randomness has been my best friend and worst enemy, both at the same time. It waited for 22 long years to let the above mentioned piece of wisdom dawn upon me. But, fortunately, it gave me enough chances to test my patience and my conviction towards the word I gave to Srinath.

As my Facebook and Twitter trail would indicate, work-life has had a lot of positive progress. So much so, that a few people who had written me off have bothered to contact me and let me know I’m doing a good job. Nice. But there have also been some really pressurising times when I used to work hours together for no apparent progress to take place.

Those pressurising times made my process of transition towards a calm, balanced self a bit more elusive. Every human being has an emotional high point and every human being makes mistakes. But, fortunately or unfortunately, they had to take place at the same time in my life. This led to a lot of unnecessary complications and a lot of emotional pressure.

I have always kinda had a fear of offending people. As a result, (in recent times) an apology from my side would never be a moment too late, if the mistake is/was on my part. Sometimes, the apologies would get a little too much. People are different. So, there is also a chance that someone would get offended by an excessive apology!

It is a little sad that I’ve been completely ignorant of that fact in life till now! A little incident involving such a person created quite a bit of emotional pressure over 3 weeks of time. Srinath, Teal, Pavithra, Arun and LVS would remember this incident. They usually know everything there is to anything in my life. I didn’t bother telling Vinay, Vinay and SrinathC for (their respective obvious) reasons best left untold here. At best, they would’ve noticed that I wasn’t normal.

I have to kneel down and acknowledge the support that all of them provided to me during this rough patch in life. But for them, I would’ve lost my cool completely, long ago. A special thanks to Saranyan for telling me a few subtle points about my own personality. Some things I had failed to notice even after some introspection.

It was VERY difficult, trust me. But, I’ve kinda made it through the rough patch with as much patience and balance I could muster on my mind. Naturally, due to work life and its pressures, I would’ve had emotional high points and would’ve lost my cool. I felt like a naxal who wanted to return to society and lead a normal life. Society would never accept him initially. But, over a period of time, even Society would change seeing the conviction of the guy towards leading a normal life and towards patiently awaiting forgiving. Though these emotional high points led to a lot of complications, all it took was one single long conversation to set things straight.

The first time I waited patiently for a person in life, it has turned out to be a nice outcome. The first time I tried to consciously maintain the balance of tolerance and self-respect-breach. The first time I stepped forward to admit all my mistakes upfront. The first time I continued to show respect for someone who was totally pissed off with me and kinda ignoring me. This moment in time, as I’m typing this post, I feel a sense of victory I have never ever felt before in life.

Not even when I’ve done my best feats and not even when I’ve won prizes. This seems beyond all that. The sense that I have won trying to do something I never believed I could do, only 3 months ago. It is truly an amazing experience.

Time might fly and people might come and go in my life. This incident will stay as the one that lead my transformation towards greater tolerance, greater patience and a stable balance of emotions.

I just felt like putting this up as a regular blog post. No specific reasons. More of gut feeling.

Will post in the coming weeks about a lot of positive and VERY happy things.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I have tried my best to put down the outline of incidents. The granular details need not be dealt with here. There is an alternate space for that.

Hey folks,

This is my first blog post from college. I’m kinda having fun here. Not started studying, as may be evident from the long gtalk sessions!

It’s been a nice month, this one. I’ve realised that I was more observant than I had ever imagined. I had managed to notice a lot of things that others seemingly missed. Things that relate to most people’s lives for that matter.

Other than that, there has been a lot of progress on the work front. A social media internship for a company called Electrosocial has been the most happening thing for the last 2-3 weeks. I’m kinda liking it a lot. The content is delivered twice a week and packs a lot of insight with relevant links for further reading. I was even asked to post once on their blog and contrary to my guest-post record, the post has come out very well!

You can find it here. About a month of the internship is left and I think it’s only going to be more interesting!

I also got my hands dirty with a small-time market research project for the college involving life insurance. Learnt a lot of things about professionalism and how it doesn’t come with age and 2 years IT work experience for certain people. A lot of networking with some CXOs from the insurance industry as well. Not that I knew enough about insurance to engage them in conversations!

Other than that, I’ve kinda dusted my old stuff a bit and have started working on a small idea I had in the past. I’ve luckily found people to work on it with, this time. So, you can expect a post on that in the future on this blog. It would involve research, more research and even more research. But not the typical geek nerd research! This is more of logical analysis relating to life.

Me and 2 other people here have kinda developed a business idea and would be working on polishing it soon. Hope that works out as well. It’s a nice thing and fits the current market well. There is a funny thingie here! We had actually spent serious time researching for some business ideas and we thought of this one while randomly chit-chatting in class!

I’m going to be involved in organising an event in Chennai in November. Though this is still in the preliminary stages, I’m sure it would pick up momentum in the coming weeks and would be an amazingly fun experience for me.

A couple of conferences, some contests, (hopefully) one research paper, a video for Sit and some work for Mozilla are other stuff in the pipeline.

This post also serves as a reminder for me. I tend to get a little too forgetful and irresponsible if I don’t have my commitments listed in a single place!

As for the post title, I’m kinda experiencing early signs of insomnia. It’s a state I’ve forced onto myself, in a way. I’m hoping to take a week off sometime in end August. Let’s see if that works out!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. Most of the content on this post was completed in college but the computer guy got mad and drove me off the lab. Apparently, I hear he hates working. Understandable. India still has a lot of scope for change!

Hey folks,

A recent unpleasant happening in my dad’s extended family has totally shaken my belief system and has pushed me to look at the rest of the World with a lot more compassion and care.

I was thrown awake to the rude fact that the best metric to judge the quality of one’s personality is the number of people who genuinely cry when he is no more. This fact just made me see my own ‘close’ circle in a different way.

So, here it goes. If I have ever hurt your sentiments or have ever imposed my views upon you or have ever been a complete asshole, I unconditionally apologise for the same and assure you that I would put my best effort to see that I change for the better. I would also like to let each one of you know that I am there for you and that I shall help you out in whatever way that is best possible. I assure that I will give you a shoulder to cry on and a hand to pull you up when you’re down.

However, although I don’t expect any tangible return, I would feel better if I could get a little care from your side too. A pat-on-the-back occasionally and a good joke every now and then.

In the upcoming week, I shall personally contact every single soul I value and shall do my bit to make his/her life happier and easier. For others, I’m always there. All you have to do is just ask!

On a more serious note, I request all of you to make it a habit to get a master health checkup done every year on a recurring basis. In the most unlikely of cases, this should cost you around 5k. It is usually lesser than that, I think.

I also request you all to put in some effort and try to avoid procrastinating things. I am doing that from this very moment onwards. I will try hard not to procrastinate in life. For all you know, I might not be there to execute things tomorrow.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I hope this post finds you all in good health and a pleasant state of mind.

Hey folks,

I had the opportunity to talk to a self-made entrepreneur who tried his hand at politics during the recent elections, from Chennai. Contrary to public perception, this guy is accessible just on paper. His contact details have been put up in the public domain, yes. But little do people realise that there is a whale of difference between approachability and accessibility!

He is often portrayed as the man who rose to fame from a very humble background. I have no heart to deny that. That is a success story that needs to be documented for future entrepreneurs to read, no doubt. But many people have two sides no?

Behind that ‘next door guy’ image, this man has a far darker side. He is someone who expects to be given paramount importance wherever he goes. He expects limelight, fame, popularity, attention and the ‘wow’ factor wherever he goes!

The man can’t even talk proper English but goes around flaunting his educational background! I am tempted to think that every educational institution, however great it might be, has some amount of error in choosing candidates, about 5 misfit people out of every 100 or so. I guess this guy got into those places because of such an error factor.

A standing example of the fact that appearances are deceptive, this man actually contested in elections and won nearly 16000 votes. I can understand if illiterate folks have no etiquette and a lot of ego, because they ain’t educated, dammit! Srinath (Boss) used to keep telling me years ago that a good proportion of the fellows passing out of the country’s topmost educational institutions add no value to the country but have a very high ego. I realise that now, thoroughly!

I am even prompted to believe that illiterate (or lesser literate) folks would do a better job managing the country’s government than well educated fellows like this entrepreneur!

Of course, I wasn’t supporting him at all during the elections. I even argued with one of my juniors, who was supporting this guy during elections, saying this guy can’t make one hell of a difference. The man has no track record doing any proper societal service, either physical or intellectual! Yet, he shamefully claims that he is going to save the country from greedy politicians! Dude, have you ever done some self-introspection at all in life? Have you atleast heard of the word ‘Self Introspection’ ?

Learning: Never ever ever buy the face value that people depict! Such a value is almost never the real one! Watch out for the real sides of people!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. It’s such a coincidence that I’ve known a couple more people who passed out from the same institutions as this guy, very well for a long time. They’re such nice people that I’m guessing the error-rate theory I’ve come up with has to be true, indeed!

This is my 22nd year of existence on the face of the Earth and I can, quite certainly, say that none has been as special as 2008 has been. There are a lot of reasons, good and bad.

The learning that I could get from experiences in 2008 was enormous. Something that has never happened to this extent so far.

Here’s what I’ve learnt.

1. Never exercise anger immediately. When feeling angry, postpone the impulsive action for 30 minutes. See if the anger still exists. If it does exist, go ahead. Otherwise, get on with life.

2. Always know clearly as to where to draw the line between friends and best friends and between friends and acquaintances.

3. Never judge a person by mere looks. That is the worst way to do it! At the same time, never under-estimate anyone. You never know who would become what tomorrow.

4. Be egoistic if you want to, but never show out anything. It doesn’t help one bit.

5. If someone praises you, don’t blindly brush aside the praise. If you deserve it, take it. There’s nothing wrong. If you dont’ deserve it, pass it on to someone who really deserves it.

6. Never say die. There is always more than one way to do anything in the World!

7. Never talk to people about your aspirations. Keep them within yourself until they have materialized!

8. Don’t postpone anything! You never know if you’d live to see the light of the next day.

9. There is no point talking/cribbing about anything. Get down to action! That’s all that matters!

10. Dont’ get over excited/enthusiastic about something and end up over-pressurizing/irritating peers.

11. Finally, Don’t assume XYZ is your friend/best-friend because XYZ talks well and treats you well. Never ever! There are a lot more things to it. Don’t decide hastily.

Apart from the gyan, there are also a few memorable incidents that have given me the energy to go on with life.

1. The fun that I had with Arun during the project days. We ended up putting slides in a different random order for each review and got the staff mad at us! Changed the algorithm on University Review day just before the External Examiner came to see our project! There were time when I lost interest in the project and Arun has to be given due credit for pulling me into it whenever necessary.

2. Signed up to become a Mozilla Campus Rep. Did little ground work in the end. Contributed to their forums and bug billboard.

3. Started this blog and ‘officially’ started blogging.

4. People like Srinath V, LVS, Arun, Pavithra, Sowmiya, Ash, Sathya and GAPP have influenced my life and lifestyle a lot. They have to be given due credit as well. Some have shown me my positive side and some have shown me my negative side. I’m grateful to each one of them in a distinct way.

5. Dropped Infy. This was something I never realized I could. It’s not something great when looked at in general. Lots of people do it now-a-days. But for me, I never knew I had the courage to take a risk in life. All these years, I’ve been a very safe player doing things the no/little risk way. The encouragement I got from friends has been something startling.

6. Worked hard for MBA. This is another thing I’ve not done in life. I’ve never WORKED HARD for something related to academics so far. Whatever I’ve gotten in School and College has been only what I could do with an ordinary effort, nothing phenominal. The first time I worked hard for academics was while preparing for my MBA entrance tests. For many, MBA entrance tests might not be tough at all. But for me, they are. I do have to admit that I’m just about above-average and I’ve worked really hard this year. Really hope something materializes in the coming days/months.

7. Started the SIT with Srinath V. This is another thing I’m proud of. We have managed to put the idea from paper to practise in these 8 months. We have learnt a lot lot through various experimental measures. Although it isn’t formally an NGO yet, I would say we’ve managed to create a good NGO model for the SIT through a (severely-battered) learning process over the last 8 months. We do have to thank all those who’ve stood with us and helped us do things without expecting any tangible returns. We have set a few personal targets w.r.t the SIT for 2009. I am only hoping that we manage to reach all of them soon.

8. This is more of a learning through a set of events. I’ve learnt that there is no use running behind a single short-sighted target most of the time. I was looking around for a single solid internship in marketing for about 2 long months. Around June-July I guess. Nothing really materialized. I lost heart and dropped the idea as such. Now, in hindsight, I realize that I have learnt a more about Marketing and People’s Minds in the last 6 months than what I had expected to learn from any internship. Maybe I would’ve learnt more from an internship but my personal expectations are met and that’s all that matters.

Apart from all this, there is one thing that has been a bit disappointing for me. Arun left India on July 28th 2008. I couldn’t get to meet him even once during his last week in India (before leaving for the US). Now, it looks like I won’t be able to meet him for the next 2 years! The same goes for Navneeth as well!

In all, 2008 has been THE single most important year in my life for both good and bad reasons. It will be long remembered in my mind as one year that largely shaped me.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I’m tired of using ubuntu live for 2 weeks now. Is Windows XP even available anywhere in Chennai?

I have been having this small disorder for the last 2 or 3 days. Suddenly one night my left eye started irritating and, me being the easily-pissed-off types, I fought with my eye and tried to dig out the dirt. The irritation stopped for some 30 mins and came back mildly again. I didn’t let it bother me and slept off. The next morning, I wasn’t able to open my left eye easily. It was that afternoon that I realized that my left eye was almost perennially red! I thought it was some infection and asked my mom for some cure. Both my parents brushed aside my allegations of it being some infection and said it was due to the heat.

But, now, It’s confirmed. I have Madras Eye. I’m gonna have to stay indoors for a few days and take eye drops as medication. In this regard, there are a few more sad things that are bothering me more than the Madras Eye.

1) I can’t go to ‘Iron Man’ with Srinath tonight.

2) I can’t go down to Landmark and scavenge on ways to spend my 750 bucks worth gift voucher this weekend.

3) I will, most probably, have to postpone the first meeting of the SIT.

4) I can’t play cricket with the guys here for another 2 days at-least!

5) I have to sit and watch TV with my eyes closed, at times!

6) My parents won’t let me sit on the computer for hours together!

Damn this Madras Eye! People tell me that this is not the ’season’ for Madras Eye (as if it’s some exotic fruit delicacy! damn!).

So, there it is. I’ve got an out-of-season eye infection now!

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I’ve got something that’s not available in this season. Is that great, by any chance?

I got pissed off with the lack of entertainment during the day in the month of May. The evenings are taken care of by the Indian Premier League. The daytime is, however, a suicidal bore! I decided to download some recent old Tamil movies and watch them and learn how to write reviews and how to judge films. I also decided to start off by downloading Billa 2007. I got hold of a torrent from seedpeer and started downloading. Given that I’m on BSNL limited plan, I download only form 2 AM to 8 AM everyday. The download goes well from 2 AM to about 7 AM. Suddenly something happens and my download speed comes down to below 1kbps. There was a funny thing that I noticed here. On the first day, I had put the file for download only at around 6 40 AM IST. As usual it started off at 50kbps and then almost zeroed down at 7 AM IST. Here’s the funny part. The upload rate alone continued to be  above 65kbps for the entire session.  And, there were about 20 seeds and 1 PEER! I had only downloaded some 59MB! How can my torrent keep uploading the 59MB at a greater speed for a longer duration to only ONE SEED?

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I hope to be able to download Sivaji DVD RIP next.

We buy three newspapers at home everyday and a few more on Sundays alone. Out of the regulars is The Economic Times. I was prompted to read an article on the IT sector in India by my dad and it has proved to be quite an eye opener. You can read it here. It presents a slightly shocking picture. IT majors have stepped down the aggression with respect to recruitments. It is expected that campus recruitment can go down by as much as 15-20% from current levels. This is generally attributed to two main factors, the hike in value of the Rupee and the Sub-Prime economic breakdown in the US.

The hike in the value of the Rupee is due to several reasons. Exports in all sectors (actually, most of the important sectors) from India have gone up in this FY. Of course, it is also attributed to the weak economic situation in the US that is pulling the value of the Dollar down.

The Sub Prime breakdown is a very interesting one. The story starts with the September 11 attacks and the IT recession in the US then. The Government had no way to improve the economy because everyone was apprehensive about spending every dime from the pocket. It’s pretty obvious that only a positive cash flow can improve an economy. So, the Government decided to do something that it considered ingenious then. Now, however, it’s feeling the pinch. ‘Prime’ is generally something with paramount importance and quality. Sub-Prime is something that is not of paramount quality. Hence, ‘Prime’ loans are loans given to people with good financial soundness. Sub-Prime loans are loans given to people without proper collateral and repayment capabilities. The Government decided to give loans to all kinds of people from all facets of society to encourage them to shop and spend and thereby improve the economic situation of the country by creating a positive cash flow all round. This was where the Government got carried away and even instructed private banks to give loans to every Tom, Dick and Harry around! The problem here, again, is that the private banks in turn borrowed from top banks from all over the World (for loans that might never be repaid). Banks like ICICI had to write off a part of this money in their results QoQ. All this made sure that the Dollar doesn’t go up in value at all. The Government of US has to find a suitable way/ways to plug the loans and re-direct the US from it’s path towards economic insolvency.

As a direct result of these factors, the margin of profit for the IT majors has gone down. They wouldn’t increase their bill to the clients because of the fear that the contract might get shifted to other alternate firms from growing markets all over Asia. Thinner margins, lower reserves, high employee base. This is something that no company would love to encounter.

If you’re planning to look at IT in India as a career option, I strongly advice you to keep yourself up-to-date with trends in IT and remain competitive and aggressive throughout your career. Otherwise, chances are that you might get chucked out at any time.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I would say that the healthy lifetime of the Indian IT industry would be another 5-8 years maximum after which it’s certain downslide would begin.

I have this habit of talking to my dad about something or the other at nights. Not a very long conversation, not more than an hour. It was during one of these conversations that he was telling me how his friends’ children thought their generation was competent and their previous (my dad’s generation) was terribly incompetent. He said that most kids my age thought high of themselves and low of their parents in the career and competence sense of it. The fact is that these people rarely realize the importance of a factor called ‘growth rate’. When one has decided to make a comparison with the past, one has to look at the opportunities that prevailed then and those that prevail today. There will always be a clear difference in this factor. I have to agree that this factor is conveniently neglected to blow achievements and accolades out of proportion. Also, the ego that people have these days has simply shielded them from looking at a factor as important as this. It’s not right to look at the bottom line and decide in these kinds of issues. This is not like writing a book review or a gadget review. It’s an issue of performance of an individual and I personally think that it deserves a deeper look into it. I don’t know how I came to this stand but I don’t intend to change it. So, all you ‘Gen Next’ fellows, please don’t think you’ve moved mountains. These days mountains come with roller skates making it easier for you whereas for your dad they came double riveted to the ground.

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. My Infosys job, itself, is supposed to pay me more than what my dad got at 40. This doesn’t mean he’s an incompetent dunce and I’m a genius! Never! Never ever!

I was reading this review on the new movie Kuruvi starring Ilaya Thalapathi (Young Lieutenant) Vijay on behindwoods. More than half way through the review I realized that it sounded almost exactly similar to a local version of Blood Diamond! I am literally shocked at the fact that Dharani who was remaking all hit telugu movies has decided to copy Hollywood! And who can be better than Vijay to do the lead role?! Vijay always acts in remade or stolen scripts so that he never fails. I am sure he has no guts to experiment! And, for this fact alone I prefer Ajit to Vijay. I hope I don’t hear Vijay fans comparing his ‘excellent’ acting skills with those of Leonardo de Caprio!

Yours Skeptically,

uleadin

P.S. I was/am/will-always-be a die-hard Kamal Fan!