The UK Adventure

I am going to do the daring task of apologising to people for not keeping in touch after I flew from Calicut. Sorry folks! And in my defence I would say I didn’t have a permanent phone line and an internet connection yet all this while. Which is why I have been thinking of writing something down about this whole UK adventure in my blog, and so here I go.

London Heathrow:

I arrived in the 2^nd busiest airport in the world on 1^st Oct. There was a big queue in front of the immigration counter. As my turn came, I realized that I didn’t have the funding proof (loan letter) with me. But I survived the scare as they didn’t ask for it. Will I ever learn?? I took the bus from London to Nottingham where I was supposed to meet my brother in law. Jet lag, hunger, head ache and sleepiness were compelling me to close my eyes as I sat in the bus. But the beauty of London did not allow me to! Picture perfect! We could take random snaps at every 2 miles and each of them would be brilliant wallpapers!

The Great Chennai rush!

After spending a day with my brother in law, I was waiting for the bus to Coventry at Broad Marsh bus station in Nottingham. I had a fairly large luggage with me to be loaded onto the bus. As the bus came, I tried to work my way to the luggage section with all my 3 bags, so that the driver can load them onto the racks. As I did that, I think I brushed the hands of 2 black men and one of them was so annoyed that he shouted at me “Whats the matter with you man? The whole bus yours!”. Yeah right.. I wish I could take those 2 guys to Chennai so that I could show them the Great Chennai rush!! J The first thing I noticed about this place, is the amount of personal space each individual possesses. You are supposed to apologise if you come even remotely close to a person!

Everything for a price

As soon as I reached Coventry, me and my roommate started house hunting. We checked out the city centre in between only to learn that you will get anything here for a price. Taxi will cost you atleast 5-8 pounds and minimum charge in bus is 1.2 pounds . 1L Beer for 2 pounds was a welcome sight atleast for me. One should really come here as a working professional or a tourist with lots of pounds to spend. Instead, I have come here as a student with lots of pounds to shed!! Yes, I am sure to shed some pounds as I walked almost 15km on our first day doing house hunting!

The Warwick Business School

We managed to get a temporary place to stay inside the university for a few days thus buying ourselves more time for house hunting. First day at WBS was awesome! We realized that the ‘Mallu teashop in moon’ story could actually be true as we learnt that there are 6 mallus in an international class of 65! Besides, we have people from Spain, Nigeria, USA, Azerbaijan, Greece, Cyprus, etc and ofcourse the Brits and the Asians to form a truly international community. I might join the football team for our class with Antonio Medina, Serik Akimgerev and co for the University 5-a-side league! Honestly, I am way out of my comfort zone. But I like it. If I was missing something at my work in Chennai, It was probably this. The word ‘awesome’ might fall short in describing the sprawling university campus and the facilities inside. Its all exciting and fun. But in the evening, when all of this is done, I return to my room and switch on my laptop, I see that all my folks back home are either offline or idle! Yeah, the 5 hour gap implies that all of them would be asleep. I now know why my good friend in New York comments on any photo uploaded by our folks in orkut. Its his way of telling people, hey I am still alive, and I miss you all!

Alright folks, thats too much for a single post. Let me leave it here. And as you might be aware, comments from people helps me know that atleast some one has read it :-) Good or bad.. keep them coming!

Powered by Punjab National Bank, Driven by Instinct!

This is a delayed release. I had written this entry long back but I held back from posting it due to a specific reason. When one of my friends asked me why I am delaying the next post, I told him its a “technical issue”. I will be explaining the issue later in the page.

For those of you still wondering what the title is all about, it is about my Post graduation plans in UK and PNB is of course the bank which was kind enough to sanction the necessary funds for that. I have been planning to do something with my life for almost a year now. Simple reason being my monotonous office life in the same damn project in the same damn position in the same godforsaken tool for a mighty 24 months! That is when I started speaking to educational consultants for US, Singapore, UK, Australia etc. But typical of me, my planning process is never continuous. I will meet a consultant on a weekend and then forget to follow up for 1 month. I think I should not be blamed so much coz I know its typical of a software Engg to fail in finding time for personal things.

Serendipity:

That is when 2 of my friends from Calicut rang me. They had a tone of desperado in their voice. “Dude, lets go to UK for MS, Its now or never!!”. Next time I went to Calicut, they took me to another consultant over there. I came back to Chennai carrying the same spirit they had instilled in me, went about the internet, found the course I wanted, and applied. All along I used to check with my good friends what they were upto, they used to tell me “yeah, waiting for this letter, that letter from HOD” and stuff. My application for MSc in Information Systems and Management in University Of Warwick got through and almost simultaneously, my good friend flew to London for an Onsite assignment! The other guy lived happily ever after in Calicut! Serendipity is ‘accidental discovery’ and as many of you might know is a John Cusack movie. Those of you who don’t know about the movie can still find peace if they have seen “J-J”, the Maddy flick in Tamil which is an adaption of the English original. Yes, I accidentally discovered that I am post graduate material!
I think lot of us are driven by instinct. Some of us just ignore the gut feeling and continue with life. “Look before you leap”- wise men used to say and I actually follow a tweaked version of the saying. I look for the worst case scenario before every instinctive leap. Given the state of Job market in UK, the worst case is, I come back to India, after the course, having to pay 25K EMI for the educational loan. It is not as bad as feeling guilty 2 years down the line, for not attempting a change in life, I thought. However, irrespective of what I think, I have no absolute idea of where life is going to take me. Varunnidathe vechu kaanam! Which leads to:

The Uncertainty principle:

Coming back to the specific reason due to which this blog was delayed, I was not sure of revealing my plans in my blog as I didn’t have my visa at that point of time. And my worst fears came true when I was handed the rejection letter for my visa for a banking term misread in the loan letter!! Those were times of uncertainty for me. I found myself surrounded by mammoth realities of life – The Visa rejection – The enormous Loan – The Job I had already quit. That is the beauty of life isn’t it? One moment you feel you are cruising through and the next moment, you find yourself hopelessly not in control of things! But then, I took care of things that were within my control, talked my way through and extended my stay on the job, re-applied for visa and waited. All’s well than Ends Well. The end was good, I got my Visa stamped!

I will say bye to Chennai soon and I am looking forward to my 10 day vacation at home before I finally take the flight to UK. As my time here runs out, I get the feeling I am leaving behind a lot of good things. I thought I had made all the friends I could make when I was in College. I was wrong! I have made so many good friends here in Chennai, as I keep on adding to my colourful friends list!
Until next post... Comments please! As always 

The 3 perspectives: The Cribber, The Lemonade and The Elephant

I can see that my last post here was in Oct 2008. I know 10 months is a long time for a Gen Y blogger to go without posting. But I am not a typical blogger am I? I put crap either when I get bored or when some crap happens to me. Now, I am bored. So here goes..

Once a friend of mine told me that virgo men are keen observers. If you don’t already know, I am Virgo and I feel I am a decent observer. Not that I believe in character of an individual being determined by his sun sign, But they(sun signs) sometimes give interesting observations about people. This obviously means that sometimes they fail in it horribly as well. But that was not our point, was it? The point is and was, I am a decent observer. Decent enough to gather enough information of character traits of people around me and to categorize them into 3. This is by no means an exhaustive set, simply because observation is an ever running process.

The Cribber mentality:

The cribber is never happy or at least he pretends to be always unhappy. He looks upto people above him and laments his fate that he is not in their shoes. Surprisingly, I have learned that cribbers are the easiest people to get along with! Provided you can let your ears take the beating once in a while and you can insulate your senses from his words. The positive of having such a person along with you is, no matter how deep the shit you are in is, you will be able to forget it just by looking at this guy. But then, there is this irritating feeling of pessimism around them.. always. If four cribbers are locked in a prison with Rakhi Sawanth, they will still crib about not having Jennifer lopez with them until the point where Rakhi gets irritated and disappears!!

The Lemonade mentality:

I came across this punch line or quote somewhere on the internet – “If life gives me lemons, I will make lemonade out of it” and I feel that several of my friends fall into this category easily. Such people always try to make the most of whatever they have. If being happy is the aim of life, this will be the easiest way to fulfil that aim. But then, some might argue that such folks lack ambition, which in some cases is true. This line of thought suppresses the potential of some. If 4 such guys are locked in a prison with Rakhi Sawanth, they will probably exchange her for 4 ladies from her make up crew and will live happily ever after!!

The Elephant mentality:

Now this is a master piece, for 1 in every 10,000 will have this line of thought. Imagine yourself all dressed up for office, fresh as ever walking out of your apartment. Suddenly you step on an unruly part of the road and falls over on your back facing the sky. A crow flies by and answers the nature’s call all over your face. Now as you lie there, with shit on your face, facing the lovely blue sky, if you are able to console yourself saying “thank GOD, for Elephants cannot fly!!” , then you are of elephant mentality. It’s not over, you are still lying there, and by some weird natural phenomenon, an elephant flies by and does the same on your face. Yes you know what you should be telling yourself? - “It’s OK, It’s my fate!!”. There will always be this “it could have been worse” dimension to such peoples’ thought and there is an air of submission around such people.

In the highly unlikely case that you are still with me and still reading, I am sure you are guessing who all in my friends circle will fall in these categories. Where do I fall in? Hm.. I would say in the lemonade set of folks. But I would call mine the Neo-Lemonade mentality. Coz, if I am given lemon after lemon after lemon, I will quit! And try to change something in my life using parameters that are within my control.

Right, I know where I am heading. But you folks will know in my next post. Do try a new feature that I have added in the blog, thanks to Google Connect - you can “follow” my blog using the top right section if you are kind enough after you leave your valuable comments. :-)

Million Dollar Industry

Folks, It has been a long time since i ve posted something here.
Like many of you, I was caught up in the tide of project delivery, support
and bla bla.. Its not that I ve got rid of all these stuffs now... actually its
even worse than before now. But the only difference is that I started to realise certain things. In this industry, the hard worker will go on working hard...
He ll get more and appreciation and bonuses... Until he realise that his best days have just passed by.

It took 15 months for me to realise the golden truth that "controlled commitment" is the way to go about here. :-)
I know I sound very technical. Its some thing I ve picked up from my office culture.

If you are assigned something at 6 30 in the evening and you dont want to take it up.. you should sent a mail with the line "this will be the first thing 2moro morning" and just leave.. have a beer.. do whatever..:-)

As long you are able to throw out weird jargons at regular intervals, it doesnt matter whether you do your work or not. There will be some committed folks who ll get the work done at the end of the day. Frankly I was one among such folks until not long ago. Like srinivasan says to Mohanlal..."Ellathinum athintethaaya samayam undeda.." Yes it took some time for me to realise this.

Another pivotal thing point that I dint know was how to play according to the audience. You should not keep on playing well as there is the imminent risk of ending up impressing the wrong manager...!!

I got bored of my project and I approached my manager planning to give a hint that I need a move on.. MY manager let me in, offered a seat.. and then, what followed was unbelievable. I was totally brainwashed. I felt like working for Microsoft once the discussion was over.. Now I know why these folks are paid so high. To keep people like me interested in the challenges and oppurtunities which are really not there..!

I dont know what made me say all this.. This might not be of any help to the freshers in the industry also. coz most of the above points will sound silly and funny. You will not learn until you are victimized.

Whatever.. atleast I started blogging again now.. Now that I have my lappy and net.. I m looking forward to putting some more crap here....

Comments.. please......

Referral:
Please check my friend Doni's blog.. Its updated and its quite good.

Hot hot Chennai

I really want to do blogging regularly.. But I dont have a PC there in Chennai.May be I can take my old one over to Chennai. But as of now, I blog only when I come home and feel like writing something..

My last post attracted some steamy comments from some. Although I didnt understand completely what my friend had said, but I did get the essence of his state of mind while writing it. Anyways, I wrote what I wanted to say, and I really dont want to create a cascading debate.

Now about the title.. I think the title is actually a massive under statement. Chennai is
damn hot. So hot that I dont feel like coming out of my AC office or my beach side
apartment. Now we are hearing that within a week the temperature will increase a
small matter of 5 degrees..!! We have a football team in our company and we practise every weekend. That is when we feel the real effect of Hot Chennai sun. Towards the end of the session the ground almost fumes..! and its not even 8 o'clock in the morning..! I wonder how Sehwag batted for 1 full day, in Chennai Chepauk stadium. Hats off.

Speaking of Chepauk, we went to see the IPL match between Chennai and Kolkata. My business analyst team mate calls the IPL a "daylight theft". He is right. We could see all 5 days of the test match from morning to evening for 200 bucks. But now its just 3 hrs for 200 bucks!! But the corporates have now sort of accepted this... Anything cheap is considered substandard by our folks rite..? Anyways I went for the match only due to utter curiosity. I had never seen a cricket match from the stadium. Never again. Not that I didnt enjoy it, It was great infact.
I could see Dhadha and Ponting in about 20 mts distance. But its not about the game. Its about the big names when it comes to cricket. It can never match the excitement of a football stadium. Probably Doni will disagree. After all he had sustained 3 full days of Chennai heat seeing the test match..!

What else in Chennai? Yes the 'Aadi' sales will kick start shorlty. Anyone planning to come to Chennai, dont even think about it now. Probably August mid will be the best time. Thats when you can buy 1 AllenSolly shirts and get 2 free..! and the climate will be much cooler as well.

Its 1:20 pm and I got to board the 5:25 Chennai mail. Back to Chennai, back to deadlines and
project meetings. Comments.... :-)

The Proffessional:

Hi people. If you had read my last blog, I had mentioned that I wondered why my company is paying me for sitting idle. Now I know why. And yes I am eating my own words. For the past 2 months I am in project and very much a 9am to 8pm proffessional.

I was just reading through my last 2 posts and was literally laughing because; the situation now has really changed. Gone are the days when we used to spend hours ‘thinking’ whether we should go to college. Here although nobody cares whether you are coming in time and all, they really do care about the deliverables that should be submitted on time. This means if I go home early today, that automatically implies I have to stay late tomorrow.

To make matters worse, the work is not all about sitting in front of machine and coding. There are so many things to do before we actually do what we thought ‘programming’ was as many of you might have already realized. I have to design a datamodel and present it to the bosses. It will be at least 1 week of clarifications and changes before it finally gets froze. These designing days are far more stressful than the development days!

We have a small MH at our home in Chennai. Don’t worry, I wont go bla bla bla about MH again. By the term ‘small MH’ I didn’t mean a small group of MHittes. We have 2 seniors (not our college) and Tinu also apart from me, Doni, Sumesh and Amar. This is not including the 3 seniors who left onsite since we came here. After a stressful day at the office we people usually go to the nearby beach. Then everybody will try to leave their office frustrations at office itself and we will discuss about ‘the new babe near our cubicle’ kind of stuff. By ‘MH’ I meant the tight bondage(typical of the MH) even though we are small group. Recently we have another small MH as well where Jovin and co lives. So, all is well after office. But It couldn’t be said about office though. Some days will be ok, some days will be awful. All part of the game.:-)

3 months in Chennai and have we changed? Yes. I have certainly put on some weight. Sumesh and Doni have gone more stupid. We hear more Malayalam melodies. We are putting such songs as our ‘hello tunes’ as well. Amar has more responsibilities and Tinu has more girls to get gifts from than before…!

At last one word to the Banglorians… We have not reaped business out of friendship. When we call some one from our batch, first thing we ask is “enthundeda” and not “ethra cheque kitti?” (like Banglorians)
No hard feelings…….. Just my thoughts.. Please leave your comments as usual… :-)

Corporate Days..!!

I dont know why I dint blog for this long. Maybe because I related my college andhostel too strongly to my blog. So when those 2 disappeared , I felt like zero inspiration.Or maybe I was reluctant to admit that my best days have passed me by without my knowledge..!!
I always believe that 'boredom is mother of blogging' . I m bored bored and bored....Thats y I started blogging again.So here I go...


Daily morning, I to come to this freaking cold place, sit in front of the system, and somehow see off the day. Every 3 or 4 days I ll have a module test. Then only I realise that I ve been taught the Marvellous concepts of datawarehousing and also that Cognos, informatica etc are pretty cool tools which can earn me a lot of cash. I still cant digest why the hell my company pays me for this...!! Maybe this is a grooming phase.. maybe I ll eat my words later..;)


I had only heard of the 'weekend' culture. Now I m living it. All we want to come our way now is the one and only 'Friday'.Me and my friends here plan so much for the weekend during the weekdays that we had separate email threads for that. And then the 2 precious days (saturday and sunday) flashes by so quickly that I dont even get time to get a decent nights sleep..!! InCollege everyday was a Sunday. Oh I love lookin at the comsci timetable i posted earlier....!!


Once I finish my training I was told that I ll be transferred to ' the bench' . Some of u might ve heard of it. They say its the most enjoyable part of our career. Technically it is the gap between our training completion and project assignment. The HR calls itthe Available Talent Pool or HR backup or something like that. Anyway I m lookin forward to the bench which will be my secondphase of 'doing nothing' .


Now a word to those still awaiting call letters. No matter how bored u feel urselves at home, believe me it will be so much betterthan the life in the corporate world. So guys enjoy ur life at home as long as u can and also practice sitting idle for 6 hrs everyday..Coz you may need it...!! Watch this space.. U know.. maybe I ll post some more crap again when I get bored... And dont forget thecomments... ;)