I was probably not very comfortable in the group-dynamics part of life… or so.. I thought… So, I then did get a room + terrace combo all for myself… and it was nice… alone, in total peace with myself, solitude, and all those sordid, sober words!!!

But over a period of time, ( 1.5 years actually, of having done nothing in my life other than the regular job of pumping out water from my room everytime the overhead storage tank overflowed and my room got flooded ), I decided that it was better I moved out of that forsaken place!!

And now, I’m back to living between a lot of noise :-D.  I have now shifted from C. V. Raman Nagar to Jayanagar, and moved into @daaku’s place where we are now 5 people.  That would mean a lot of noise wouldnt it???

Its gonna take time for me to get accustomed to so much of people around me… but yeah, life’s good!!! noisy and fun!!! And the best part, I get hot roti’s and sabji EVERYDAY for dinner!!! Which effectively means that I eat everyday!!!

The only trouble that I see is travelling on Inner ring road into Koramangala and onto Bannerghatta road.  Quite a painful ride… but hey, when u have Linkin Park giving you company, “It doesn’t even matter!”

Life is good!!! Life moves on…

P.S.: I felt compelled to write this post because I need to give the roomies credit for putting up with me

When I had time to take a coffee break, I had this sudden flash of thougths that ran across my mind and hence this post…

Till May 16th of this year, till I landed in Turin, Italy, I had nothing on my track record to prove that I was a useful, as the corporation calls it, “resource“.  Since then, Life has come around so fast and so full that as I gave more thougt into the whole sequence of events, it did seem not only gratifying… It also felt extremely complete… the whole scenario connected!

I actually got a pay raise! and transitioned as a Senior Engineer in the organization! Special credits to my Manager for making this happen!!!

I got into a high-priority team at work! Apart that being a huge incident in itself, I also realised that I’ve not lost a lot of symbian in the last 2 years of not coding on symbian! I’m not the sharpest… but I’m still sharp… Probably the late night coding sessions with @daaku paid off finally!

That apart, the team I work with has so much of electricity (OK, I am not accepting any lame jokes on this pun) in it that work becomes a breeze… I’ve started falling in love with code once again… Irrespective of how painful it is to take a crashlog, figure out one bug among about a million or so lines of code that my team uses, fix it, ensure that it doesnt get repeated on other components that might use the code, et. al. et. al.

As I was writing the previous paragraph, I was reminded of Chetan Bhagat’s One Night at a Call Center.  In the book, when God speaks to the people stranded in the Qualis at the bottom of the pit, he mentions to the main narrative Syham that a Bad Manager is the root cause of all evil :).  And God also tells Shyam and Vroom about getting a bonus in the process of setting things right!

That just happend with me! The very same damn thing happened with me :D!!!!!!  I’m sure more than half the industry is ruined by people like Subash Bakshi!  My first year and a half at work was totally ruined by horrible managers!!!

Well, turning back, it was overall a bumpy ride… some really big potholes hidden under water, getting caught unawares many times, and at the end of the day, coming out of it all…

Life has come a full circle for me and I must thank you all for putting up with me for whatever I’m worth!

P. S.: I love twitter!!!!

Italia was lovely… India just leaves me speechless…  I’m not going to do the Italy has this… India doesnt have that kind of a comparison post…

But I’m definitely compelled to answer a few people that I met and keep meeting time and again with a “perspective” about MY country…

The answer is straightforward… The math is simple… When you dont have population, you dont have scale, and you can micromanage more effectively.  Europe as a continent has just about the population India has as a country!

India is never about micromanagement… Heck, India is not even about management.  India is just about scale… The scale of a billion and more heads… and counting… And still running strong…

And on a post that comes on the Independence day weekend… I can always still go back on the sentence I wrote a couple of lines above and say thus:  Europe may have a truckload of things indians always dream of… But come august 15, no Italian ever has the pleasure of listening to A. R. Rahman’s rendition of the country’s national song!!!

Vande Mataram!

&
Jai Hind!!!

Cinque Terre was 3 days of awesome holidaying on one of the most amazing coastlines I’ve ever seen in my life!  Awesome treks along the coast.  Again…  Some of gods best art executed in total true colour…  Enough of explaining… A small sneak preview of the photos that I’ve uploaded on Flickr! here.

A small sneak preview, if you could call it… is here:

So many colours in a single photograph

My Kodak camera can do this??? Whoa!!! :-0

The Cinque Terre — five picturesque fishing villages perched on Mediterranean hillsides, splendidly brushed in sun-washed colors.

Or so say websites and it truly a paradise on earth…  Ever since I saw this place on the way back from Rome, I’ve been soo wanting to come here and spend a couple of days and trek along the cliffside.  And this petty dream has come true today… with my generous PM offerring to give tomorrow off!  Friends heading to Rome and I’m headed to the Liguria province where Cinque Terre is located.

For those that’re not really comfortable with Italian, heres what Cinque Terre means: Cinque (Chink - kweh) meaning 5, and Terre (Therre) meaning land.  And it is… the paradise consisting of 5 small villages from south of the coast to north namely: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Cornigilia, Vernazza, Monterosso al Mare.

I’ll be spending 3 days at Riomaggiore and covering as much of the rest of the coastline by foot and by train.  This is gonna be an awesome trip!!!  Expect some good photos when I get back.

’til then… Ciao!!!!

A few snapshots:

The rest of the innsbruck story is here on my flickr stream.  Its a quick and small post, but then yeah, Pictures would be better in explaining the experience!!!  I’m at a complete loss of words!!!

Image Courtesy stetre76 on Flickr.

No Euro 2008 matches happening this weekend! Nevertheless, its gonna be a cool B-) weekend! Pics will be uploaded to Flickr after I get back!

Until then, Chao…

Week 1: Rome, Pisa

Week 2: Basilica di Superga, Torino

Week 3: Venezia

That has been it! A lot of touring, some very interesting places, Some cities held back in time (Roma), Some interesting incidents, Some very lovely people for Company!  It has overall been 3 awesome, out of the world quality weekends!!!

Some of the photos are here.  The rest are at home… and I will upload them as I find time!!!

And oh! I’m visiting Innsbruck, Austria this weekend!!! B-)  And sadly, I dont have the tickets to any football match of the Euro 2008 cup!!!

The Colosseum, Pic courtesy tjsuresh

Off to Rome tonight! I will be spending 2 full days at rome and then visiting Pisa on Monday on the way back to turin.  Lucky us, Monday is a National Holiday for Italy on occassion of Foundation of the Italian Republic (I) .  So, advance wishes for a Happy Birthday, Italy!!

Thanks to colleagues at work, we got the Trenitalia tickets at dirt-cheap rates! 65€ per person for the entire Turin->Rome->Pisa->Turin trip! Thank you guys! Grazie!!!

Thejesh a.k.a. @thej pointed us to Youth hostels in Rome which was again a total boon! Dirt cheap rates for quite decent accomodation!  Thankyou dude…

The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Pic courtesy dgmfotos

Thanks to @Netra, who patched me up with @hanisha who stays in Pisa, we have a guided tour in the works!  This is going to be a good weekend!!!

God bless Social Networking!!! Roma, I cometh!!! Let the Race begin!!! B-)

As usual, wordpress blazed through the upgrade with no hiccups whatsoever and I was done with ftp-upload, upgrade, one-click, all that in under 5 minutes.  And then When I looked at the website I realised that I’ve been using the black-gold theme for quite some time now.  So here goes, a quick theme change.  The current one is called Brilliance by Jai Nischal Varma of Blog-Oh-Blog.  He has a wide array of really good looking widget-ready and browser-agnostic themes on his site and Brilliance was the one I picked up to use for a temporary period of time.  Till Navjot and I are through with designing our own theme.

The design-a-theme-in-12-hours thingy never went anywhere beyond 4 hours… navjot got busy, I got sleepy, but the theme is coming along good… and we’re both learning and enjoying the theme creation process.

That theme will be put up on this site once its done and production capable! Thats a term I pickedup from work

Till then, Chao…