To show the content change possibilities

A test to check the content rendering possibilities

• Test bullet 1
• Test Bullet 2

Lies – A micro story

‘So what is your dreams’, the boy asked her. She thought for a while, looked at him deep into his eyes wondering whether she should tell the truth or the lie. A deep breath and ‘ I want to die’ said she. He was transfixed, could not move, did not understand. It seemed the wind was blowing her hair for no reason, felt that such a beauty of hers is wasted. He felt the smell of hers deep down in his throat, his mind screaming the question ‘WHY?’, but he was not wanting to ask it. Strange, why, why had he become such a hard cold being, though such beauty existed, physically, in their friendship, in their love??

a while passed till he brought his thoughts back to where they were, standing in the middle of the road, waiting to cross to the other side, waiting for life to go green. It did finally turn green, both of them stepped down, and a big red bus swerved and hit him, leaving his body mangled under it’s enormous tires.

She broke down looking at him, and she screaming, ‘ I was lying, I was Lying’

Goals

What kind of Goals do we have? Sometimes I wonder if we are not disciplined enough to put down a goal and try to reach it. It is going to be like walking in a misty morning on an unknown path, groping and hoping we are going in the right direction.

So what are goals? I mean not the dictionary definition, but more what do we feel what goals are? In my view goals are desires, are dreams, are wants that pull us every step further to reaching it.
Types of Goals? Well we could classify them into Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Professional, Creative and Social.

Some examples from my goal list are
Spiritual

•  Learn to meditate and calm myself, be more disciplined in doing so.
• Cut down on wants and needs as I travel along the path of life.

Physical

• Run the half marathon
• 100 burpees
• Yoga

Intellectual

• Meet people from other areas of life
• Read more

Emotional

• Spend more time with my daughter and wife

Professional

• Make a revenue line product for my company
• Get more customers onboard
• Build a superpower team

Creative

• Paint a painting(one of the toughest)
• Build more Lego models
• Practice more calligraphy and juggling

Social

• Give back more than what I get to animals/trees/humans.
• Generate business out of non-profit activities for people to sustain the eco-business growth
• Generate business models for the lower income groups, which will sustain them

So this is my list, what is yours do share. Also I seek advice from people who have already been sucessful in doing things on this list, please help.

A nail driven through my mind

I feel like a nail is driven through my brain when I think of what we as Software Engg in India are trying to achieve. The general notion of a software engg is one that of a person who is a cheap knowledge worker. When it comes to owning product lines, very few companies have been able to pull it off. We have branded ourselves as a group of talented people who will maintain systems for eternity at a low cost. When are we going to change this? When are we going to be selling products to the world and not services? Is it a utopian dream.Technorati Tags: Software Engineer, Life, India

Dark Chocolate and Tea

I confess, I confess, I have a soft spot for dark chocolates ( for me the definition of dark chocolate is anything above 50% Cacao), it is a strange feeling, I get when I eat, the bitter symphony. The taste swirls in your mouth and affects all the centers, and stays to linger on for hours on end.

Of the people who seem to enjoy the darkness of chocolates, I gues my Aunt( actaully my friend, I’ve named her aunty) is the only one apart from who enjoys this darkness. Somebody at one point told me not to drink dark stuff as it makes the skin darker, I’m yet to see aunty dark, she is as white as a fairy.

Speaking of darkness, it brings me to tea. Tea is another being in my favour. A good cuppa always make you feel fresh. I’m not talking about the Chai, which is rather famous all over India, for its spicy aroma and sweet flavour( I love that too), but I enjoy more subtle flavours of Darjeeling, as tea to be had without milk.

I rather enjoy a tea named as Enigma, I guess this is only available in Infinitea, a shop in Cunningham Raod – Bangalore, which serves the best possible form of Enigma, “Enigma on the rocks” . The drink looks more like whiskey (except that you could drink this one in copius quantities, depending on the capacities of your bladder). It again has a queer taste, more like tannins in a aged red wine.

These are the two things I could kill for. If I die I would rather die eating dark chocolate and drinking Enigma on the rocks.

I wonder how a dark chocolate would taste with Enigma on the rocks?

Coders vs Programers – Redux

My earlier write on Coders vs Programers, gave a nice platform for me to understand various people’s thoughts on this topic. So I thought, why not take this discussion further?

I’ve been interviewing quite a few people for my company off lately. The interviews being for positions of innovation related activities. More specifically look at something/s and come up wth better ways to do it.

Even to select a single individual I’ve sometimes had to go through 30-35 interviews, with regards to programming.

Some examples being, a java expert once came in for in interview with 3 years of Java Experience on the resume. All I had to ask to end the interview was what is public static void main mean. Is this the level which we expect from 3 years of working in Java. Knowing the language does not mean to say knowing about how to use JDBC but why are you doing what you are doing.

We talk about  moving into an economy of innovation from services, but where is it happening when we are producing coders and not programers. Abhijit talks about it here very acurately.
So what can we do? Change the education system? Or change our poilicies of recruiting? Neither, it is a question of attitude by individuals, we need to get beyond the focus of how much am I earning? to What am I contributing? We need to get beyond from Am I going to get an onsite oppurtunity? to Am I going to be working with smart people/a challenging project?
Unless and until this come in, we will always be coders.

Marathon Bangalore

It is time again for the Bangalore Marathon, there are 2 of them happening, one is the ULTRA Marathon, for the brave hearted and the normal one, both are in the months of December. Unfortunately my friend Sathish is not able to participate due to an injury. However he is the experienced one, any queries on how to train and what to do,  please do contact him.

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Tags: marathon, bangalore

Where am I going

We are always runnning behind something in life,
    money, date, a job, a promotion, peaceful life…
Why is this so? Is it simply because society expects some form of behaviour from us?
If so let us get to the definition of who/what is society?

Atleast by my understanding Society is/are a group of INDIVIDUALS, who follow a common
norm, principles, values to achieve a certain goal. When we talk about norms/rules, call it what you may,
it is just that somebody has thought that we must do certain things for a better life. Maybe those rules/norms
were good for the person who made it, it made his/her life easier, it does not mean to say that
you have to follow them.

I remember a podcast I heard a few days ago from Timothy Ferris, he said, microtest in your life. Made a lot of sense
in terms of what you want to do professionally I thought. But on deeper thought, everything can be a microtest,
microtest whether you can like somebody, microtest whether you have to follow only one religon.

Microtest everything, failure is something imminent, so micro test failing too and getting out of it, that
way you would not regret failing itself.

I’m currently undergoing a certain phase in my career, where I do not know what direction I’m going in
currently I manage people, a few days ago I managed people and I worked for a certain product, making the
product better, teaching people what I know and making them    better. But now I don’t know why I’m doing
what I’m doing and why I did what I did. It is more like, trying to look for an identity, I’ve lost one.

Well all this seemed rather confusing, till last night when I realised, hey what is the rush, where am I trying to
go. Am I in a mad rush to achieve things, if so then what after I achieve it. Why not enjoy today, and not think too
much about tommorow.

I’m yet to get a lot of answers. And I guess I will get it.

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Tags: life, questions, seeking

Blood Pressure

Funny never thought that I would have high blood pressure at this age, just found out that I have 150/100, my wife is a little worried.

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Tags: bloodpressure, life, health

New Phone

I finally bought a new phone, the older one was pretty much used up, the keypad was giving me trouble, so which is the new one, here it is.

I’m still expermienting with the phone, it is the cleanest UI on a phone I’ve ever used, feel so happy using it.

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Tags: motorokr, phone