Changes - which looks slow

Human tendency and so mine, when they go into a city in which he used to live, he see the changes. Last month I have visited Delhi, where I live here almost 6-7 years .Last to last month I visited Hyderabad where I live almost an year. These are so called the fast growing city of India but somehow I am not impressed with the changes in last 2 year or so.

Talking about Delhi, the capital state, Roads always used to be good, so Government started some new kind of Buses which are very low and comfortable, some people call it big bus. Still newspaper is full of Blue-line bus accidents and cab accidents. Something happened wrong in terms of IT development in Delhi. As people saying, Delhi is one of the hub of IT sectors, but I felt it lacking in IT sector and more growing in BPO sectors. There may be some reason why Google, Yahoo or any of such big company are not opening there office(Development office) in Delhi. Since, BPO sector has grown wisely, cab accident, rape cases, murder cases increased(wisely). Rest of the things are gradually improving which is a demand on time, so we can't consider a development.

Hyderabad, 2-3 yrs back, one of the best growing cities still grow with a high pace. Big building are coming on the way and company preferences are no. 1 for opening a new branch/sector/building. Transport is still in panic mode, still there are no metro lines, traffic can kill your time in busy places, roads are as it is(good but not great). I have more hopes with Hyderabad in coming years.

Now, let me talk of Patna(I have not been there for 2-3 years) but I have seen the improvement in photos. As all of us know the disaster happened 2 months back, effect of that lot of people moved to Patna(capital of Bihar) side, causing more robbery activities because these are people who left they place flooded and came here without any job. Young Blood, without job for long can be a cruel mind. They don't think of eating 2 Roti in place of 4 but can think of putting a knife on your neck and force you to give 500 Rs. I have seen/read lot of robbery in Patna for an amount of 200 or 500 Rs, because situation force them to do that. On the other hand, roads are improving, bridges are coming. IIT got started last year. Some companies are ready to invest and overall infrastructure is coming from -2 to -1. See one new bridge and one new railway station:

Met expert at Petrol Pump !

Petrol drives a big part of economy. And this is how it is done in Bangalore :

Incident 1: Location: JayaNagar, 9th block, Petrol Pump:

Me: Give me 100 Rs Petrol.

(He has given me 30 Rs petrol.)

Me: 100 Rs Sir.

He made that 30 unit to 70 and start arguing, I have added 70 more. So, its 100 now. Fighting for 2-3 more min, he added 30 Rs petrol more.

Incident 2: Location: JayaNagar, 9th block, Petrol Pump:

My friend: 100 Rs Petrol.

They set the meter at 50 and made it 100. After talking to Manager, he was able to get rest of his petrol.

Incident 3: Location: JayaNagar, 1st block, Petrol Pump:

Me: 100 Rs petrol:

He start filling it. And he asked me, when you have taken this bike. I just saw him and replied 8 months back and it was done. I got my 100 Rs petrol. I got to know there is some locha here. But I want to see the actual problem.

Next day, I went to the same place and start watching others.

One guy: 200 Rs petrol.

He starting filling it. Petrol filler asked some question. He turned up. There is one more guy standing near the petrol tanker and he is the one - The expert, the genius. He reset the button and type 200 there.

Sir, your 200 done. (Actual, he reset it at 130 Rs)

Then I have seen one car. 500 Rs petrol. The reset has been done at Rs 410.

Sad part is neither bike nor car can tell the exact amount of petrol.

Here, I told you the story of 2 petrol pump but this holds good for 90 percent of the petrol pump in Bangalore. Be aware !

More updates -- Bihar relief !

More updates on Bihar Relief:

Help for Bihar Victim from Bangalore. Use following Links:

Online –Transfer your donations to ICICI bank
Name: Ashok Kumar Sharma,
A/C Number: 005301022273,
Branch: Jayanagar/Bangalore
Please mention flood relief and your name in remarks section while transferring funds
Also mention your name in the comments (will help us track).
After transfer send an email with the transfer details to ashok.1857@gmail.com
We will send you a confirmation for the same.

NGO Prayaas
Institutional Donor and as well as individual can donate via our Sister NGO PRAYAAS
Account in on the name of: M/S Prayaas,
Current Account No. : 10447347087
Bank Address : State Bank of India, Indiranagar,
Bangalore,Bank Code : 3301
Routing Number (Swift No.) : SBI NIN BB 147A,MICR number : 560002021

For more read the following blogs:

http://http://removing.blogspot.com/2008/08/bihar-floods-how-to-help.html
http://biharflood.wordpress.com/

We are collecting money, please contact Abhishek(09966010096 or iabhishek(at)gmail(dot)com) or Me(09886796985 or vaibhav.kumar@gmail.com).

Feel free to ask any question !

Flood Relief Link !

Please come forward and help the flood victim :

http://biharfloodrelief2008.blogspot.com/2008/08/bihar-flood-relief-your-contribution.html

We are reactive, not proactive !

It hits again. Here we have a major problem. I don't know why this problem, I see all the way in our country - We are reactive, we are not proactive.

30 Lakhs people, 38 district and money(who cares) this is the quantity we are talking off. I don't know for many of us it looks fancy but 95 percent of us have seen our village. Can you think of a picture in your mind - existance of your village is no more, it get flooded. Thinking itself is panic.

We are talking of Bihar, which is one of the poorest state in country. For central government it's just a place from where they can get some good amount of party seats. Kosi is all time called a face of disaster. But that's all a blame game. Relief is going when ? When, the affected people count will increase from 20 lakhs to 30 lakhs. Its just because they are poor, they don't have rights to live. Well, that's true. Its happen this time in a different way, so not a big deal. I have spent years of my life is Bihar and it always happen. Story of Kosi is not a new sensation for me. We all maintain a personel boat in home, so that we can go and buy some eatables.

I just wish God give them power to fight with the fate and hope to see a brighter day. Wish I can go back and see my place again.

It doesn't matter...

Years back someone has told me to blog on Service Oriented Company(SOC) and Product Oriented Company(POC) but then I decided to write my experience from TCS to Sun. TCS is one of the India's best Service Oriented Company and Sun though lacks in little business but one of the makers of Cutting Edge technologies. Though my experience of TCS was horrible but again bad luck is the entry point of Good Luck. Out of my 11 months of TCS job, I have done around one and half month of training in Orrisa. Point to be noted : SOC focus a lot on training, companies like Infy and Satyam also provides a regress training. After 2 months of training, I was on bench for 6-7 months :-). No, I have not done any crime in Training, I was a good student in the mass. My wrong decision(every wrong decision gives you the capability to think right) was to select Hyderabad center. Point to Note: Most of the SOC gives you offer to select the place because they have office across India. As a career beginner, I had accepted my bench, whereas I heard some good news about my friends working in Mumbai and Bangalore office. After 6 month, I got an offer(offer means order in SOC) to join Mumbai office. In one night, they have shifted some 70-80 bench Engineers to Mumbai(SOC keep on doing such stupid move). Mumbai, ahh, I like the place,people. I finally got an over crowded office. I had Project in my hand but oops, I didn't have computer. Finally I start working and decided to quit when I got an offer(I already described this word) to do night shift. Finally my TCS job ends up with 2 month of work and a overall experience of 1 yr.

Then I joined Sun at Bangalore, there is no option, because it has only 1 office located in India. Open culture, where people play cricket inside office(till they break the glasses). Most of the engineers working from home. Pressure is less. But off-course you are always surrounded with talent minds and they can put you in inferiority complex and push your heart somewhere to do better than what you are. Food/Canteen was not as good as TCS and it was justifiable because for 200-300 people you can't expect an awesome caterer. Seats are pre-allocated before I joined the office. Work is cool and calm, you just have to reply yourself.

My point is, nothing is good or bad. Everything gives us a new experience in life. Be handy, take the challenge as simple as it can be. Best part I learn in TCS is, never keep on singing your problem, everyone has its own bundle.Listen others, they will be happy and you forgot yours. Best in Sun, I learn is to be independent as much as possible, at least in your work. Just one line of Einstein thought "I am not smarter than you to solve this problem, I just stay with problem longer than you".

Blog, Knowledge, Share, Money and many more

One year back, Blog word didn't exists in dictionary. Now it is ! Even though I have searched a lot but I got some vague results. It defines:

It's a short form of web-log. Web pages that work as a journal that are normally updated daily.

I guess this is not what blog means. It's a platform to share knowledge, writing thoughts, reading thoughts, kicking your ideas and provide a virtual existence of the same what you are in real. I regret to say for some this definition is : to copy thoughts, to make money, to do time pass, for fashion.

I have seen people writing such a sober, free minded blog that you just read and you feel relaxed. But, I don't know what happened with us. Actually some companies made it a marketing place where they can sell their product with your thoughts and ideas. Now it all depends what type of blogger you want to be : a free mind writer or a money making writer. For first one, you don't need anything, just set the mind free and write whatever attracts you, remember Shakespeare resides within us. For second one, you need to be technically strong, learn how Google page ranking works, see how feeds work, see how you can increase the number of hits, see how you can fool others, see how you can grab some good ideas of others.

Lot of people disagree my ideas. Why I should not gain, if I am writing something good ? Good point: I remember the dialogue of Joker in the Movie "The Dark Knight" - "If you are good in something, don't do it for free" and yes why not, if you think "words can be sold", sell it ! Why only writing, even sell what you speak. Tomorrow when you sit with your friend, tell him after the end of 1 hr talk, you need to pay me 100 $$.

My simple judgment: Do it(make money),if this is your profession, but don't do if this is your hobby. And remember, there is only one profession, do that with Power and Pride.

CD format in Vista !

Ah awesome Problem. Yesterday I came to Hyderabad to meet my friends here. In some free time, we tried to install Ubuntu on Abhishek's machine. Machine already got Vista so doubt was very high from my side for installation. And again, machine is AMD64. Anyway, first I tried to install from from Hard Disk. We are looking for Ubuntu 8.04 installation which you can do inside windows and the installation is awesome. Uninstallation is like do in Add/Remove Program in Windows, you will get a application with name Ubuntu, click Uninstall and that's it.

Anyway, installation directly was unsuccessful. Then we tried to make the ISO file and then tried to installation. But here goes something funny. CD size was 702 MB and the ISO file is 698 MB, so not a big deal. Before opening the CD, Vista do formatting of CD and after formatting it makes it 692 MB. OMG !!! what is this. And I for testing purpose ran the formatting again and size of CD went to 683 MB ! What the heck. Our final conclusion if we keep on formatting a CD on vista, size can go to zero :-). Still we have not installed Ubuntu on Vista, will keep on updating the problems.

Breaking news !

Though these things lowered down my blog standard. But this is how our media works. And these are the breaking news of our best news channel "Aaj Tak". I guess most of you have seen these news which I got in some forward.








Enjoy the party... !

World - 2025

I have thought of world after 18-20 years from now. Please add if you have any serious or funny concern to add here:

1. Water is going to be the major concern. Very possible, we need to manage it per person rather than paying the bill at the end of month. Water tapes are like phone booths where you put a coin or 5 and water will come out for limited time. Maybe in office, you have to swipe your card for getting water.

2. Bicycle is one of the items in demand. Petrol cost will either go too low because of some revolution or it will go very high and may not be accessible to everyone. Not only cost, pollution coming out from these stuff will also need a check. May be, government will not allow you to drive your car more than 20 Kms per day.

3. Electronic items will be too cheaper and maybe one of the most giftable(I don't know this word exist in dictionary) items. There will be lot of company which just do the recycling of electronic goods.

4. Most of the systems will be governed by Software and there is a good chance(I don't want) that some big incident happen due to hack or misleading software mechanism.

5. Terrorist will hit the target more than what they miss. Crime will go in a more organized fashion.

6. Global Warming hmm .. "we should not", "we have to" should be the action.

7. Blogging is one of the major channel to communicate. Social network have power to do things.


There are some more .... I am not inspired by any English movie. I have perfect believe that Robot is not going to walk with us in next 20 years, neither we will see any superman flying in the air.

7 reasons why Autowala in Bangalore will refuse to take you !

Its Peak time, you are on Bangalore road and you are looking for an auto, don't lose hopes.

Here are some predictable conversations:

Occurrence: 50 percent
You: MG Road ?
Autowala: (He will take the head up, think like he is thinking some rocket projectile equation)... he will go without speaking a word.

Occurrence: 30 percent
You: Forum ?
Autowala: 20 Rs. extra Saar.
You: Why ?
Autowala: (if its weekend)traffic saar..(if its weekday) no return passenger saar.

Occurrence: 80 percent

You(in night at 7.30 or 8): JayaNagar ?
Autowala: 1 and half saar. (1 and half rate goes after 9)
You: 7.30 boss
Autowala: No saar

So, here are 7 reasons:

1. No reason, its his wish
2. Location is not good
3. You are not looking good
4.You haven't asked him in a respectful manner
5. Peak time - in peak time, they don't carry any passenger
6. Traffic on your way
7. CNG is not working

Initially it was all frustrating for me, but now it all looks funny.

Chasing dreams and being practical

Some news to keep the motivation up. I have directly copied the news because its all from Horse's mouth:

Suri: As they sat behind the railway booking counters, few would have spared them a second glance. Crouched over the desk, furiously counting money and issuing tickets to impatient passengers - that’s what ‘office’ was for the two of them. Surely one of the most monotonous jobs possible, you’d think. But now the names of Ravikant Singh and Keshavendra Kumar are on one of the most elite merit lists in the country. Both have cleared the civil service examination this year: Keshavendra bagged rank 45 and Ravikant 77.

Till the two friends join the IAS academy in Dehradun, Kumar will serve as the railway booking clerk at Suri station in Birbhum. Singh works at the same post at Ukhra station in the neighboring district of Burdwan.
Their theme for a dream can be traced back to their first meeting in Barrackpore. Both of them had seen struggle in childhood, and could relate to each other. As they were both employed with the railways, they vowed to pursue better careers together.
The going was far from easy. Though Singh and Kumar had graduated from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), they did not have the family support to study further. Singh, who hails from the Akhilitolla village in Bihar’s Ara district, lost his mother in childhood. He and his five siblings were brought up by their father, a milkman.
“We were extremely poor and looked down on in our village. I wanted to prove myself and the only way to do that was to work hard. I knew that my father was in no position to send me to a good school or pay for private tuitions. What I needed was a job - any job to support my family,” Singh said.
After completing schooling from Ara, Singh joined a Barrackpore college. He cleared the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) examination and joined Eastern Railway as a commercial clerk in 2002. “I could not dream of becoming and engineer or a doctor. But I knew that becoming an IAS officer was within reach as I would not require much money to prepare for the exam,” Singh added.

It hurts !

Generally I write fun loving things on my blog. But sometimes news and happening force you to think and ... to rethink. I love my country and I guess everyone of us love it. But we can't hide the ruthless face of this country. There is a high degree of crime and there are some states which have not been progressed even a bit from last 30 years.

List is very big, if we start counting the person died because they have tried to do something good. And same happened with Lalit Mehta. Jharkhand based this guy was killed on May14, simply because he want to do something good, fight for right.

More details are covered here and one of the my friends Abhishek has written and even fight for justice. Nothing has been done from last 1 month by Police/CBI and I am not even expecting. From here, I can simply aware people to have a look, where we are going !

Sometimes I feel helpless and getting an internal feeling what we are doing is all crap. We are here to see news and laugh on it. If we are good, then we can be a part of news like Lalit.

Photo of the Day !

Photo of the day on National Geo:

Here

So cool,calm,composed place. I want to be here for some day, for sometime in my life. Its my personnel feeling that beauty of nature fills beauty in us as well. Any angry person can come down if he see beauty like this.

Help required !

Hello Friends,

For all the reader of this blog (I know very few :D) please fill this survey:
http://fewsurveys.donate.sgizmo.com/

Based on this there are some further steps need to be taken. I will update that soon in the blog. Thanks for your time.

Where is Web 2.0, I am hearing Web 3.0

I tried to find the meaning of Web 3.0 on wiki. And wiki ... : "future of WWW". Not even 2 years back, I heard the same for Web 2.0. Web 2.0 defined by O'Reilly in this fashion:

Web 1.0 Web 2.0

DoubleClick --> Google AdSense
Ofoto --> Flickr
Akamai --> BitTorrent
mp3.com --> Napster
Britannica Online --> Wikipedia
personal websites --> blogging
evite --> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation --> search engine optimization
page views --> cost per click
screen scraping --> web services
publishing --> participation
content management systems --> wikis
directories (taxonomy) --> tagging ("folksonomy")
stickiness --> syndication

Sounds quite fine. We almost moved on Web 2.0. How about Web 3.0?

Web 3.0 talks of Data(Content) which is THE important, managing data in a RIA(Rich Internet Application) format and many more which is not clear in my mind.

Scenario:

One of my friend, Ankur passed this link : http://www.verveearth.com/landing/. Is this web 3.0 ? Sounds like.


This link will show you all blogspot blog on Google earth. Data moved from Database into representation format, offcourse RICH. And this is what written about application "VerveEarth is mapping the internet's content onto a global map. Discover the voices of your world. Get started by exploring the map or registering to add your blog." And Yes,this is RIA(according to me). Internet content is enormous, scattered in a useless format. Gathering those information, giving a useful shape and presenting it on a RICH view is what I thing Web 3.0 is.

Comments are welcome, corrections are most welcome !

Google tools - :-( I am sad !

Google is going great, but still some of the web tools of Google sucks. Two of them are blogspot(which I am used from long time and can't leave now) and picasa. As technology and programming languages growing rapidly, smartness of the software depends on how many pages I need to traverse before my work is done, how many clicks I need to do, how many hyperlinks I need to traverse. And I am surprised company which is one of the greatest promoter of AJAX, where things are done so smartly, itself use some useless stuff.

Condition: I need to upload 5 photos in my blogspot from its photo uploading option. It will give you to upload one photo at a time(what the heck is this), not only that after uploading that photo you need to close that option and have to start from beginning - pathetic.

1 photo -> Click on option -> See a new page -> Click on browse button -> Select the photo -> Wait for uploading -> Click on done button.
2 photo -> Click on option -> See a new page -> Click on browse button -> Select the photo -> Wait for uploading -> Click on done button.
...
...
...

Justified ? At least not for me. On the other hand, no doubts there are some cool feature like editing blog page, themes and many more. But there are still some more options which frustrate you.


Now, coming on Picasa, this is the real one.

- Click on next photo, photo will come in a blur mode and then it will be like that for next 20-30 second(mind it, my net speed is not slow). (which is great in flickr)
- Last week, my friend Ankur mention the great threat of using unlisted option in Picasa, which public generally thinks as private and safe options. (which is great in flickr)
- There is no code generation and no way you can give a static link of your picasa photos, so that user can only view photo not picasa UI(which is great in flickr)
- Photo uploading from offline Picasa tool to online picasa is a good option but if someone want to upload from online Picasa site, get ready to cry :)
- There are many more .. which keep on coming in my mind when I use this site.

I hope Google guys are taking action on these tools and will provide a better option soon.

Butterfly ...

Some more photos, taken by my bro :-). By the way, I am little concern of the name butterfly. Butter means something delicious to eat.. how come butterfly.

People and Relationship

I bet it happens with everyone "First impression is wrong impression" . Generally what I have seen is what I am writing.

Most of the time, in initial talks you see some people less talkative and not so user friendly but I am damn sure in long run they are going to be your good friend. Just give one minute break to your mind and think of your good friends, good friends of same sex. If its a matter of different sex, equation is complete different and I don't want to go further on that.

Some guys/gals you find in the initial meet very talkative but after 5 or 6 month, you feel him complete different from your initial experience. I have a valid reason to define my point. Silent person believes first on time then on knowledge. His mindset says: Let me take sometime then I will show you what I know. Whereas more talkative person which people generally feels more smart and dashing believes on knowledge and then time. His mindset says: Let me impress this guy first, afterward I will manage.

Both approach is correct. This is my personnel option. So no crimes. May be some crap !

Photo - Kodaikanal

Back from trip of Kodiakanal. So time for some more photos :D