For all you bloggers out there, there's a blogging competition being held at Saarang. You can get more details at
http://saarang.sulekha.com and
http://saarangtalk.sulekha.com

All the best :-)

How does one behave when one is in the presence of a celebrity? Do you dog his footsteps? Or do you ignore him completely and go about your business? I wish I could have neatly fallen into one these categories. Instead I walked about the gym with casual indifference and then when no one was looking, goggled at him with my mouth open.

I didn’t really think of asking for a photograph until it occured to me that by pure luck I had my digi cam with me. Earlier in the day I had taken a lot of snaps at the office. Our internal website needed each individuals photograph and profile and so my digi cam was in high demand. My cubicle had been converted into a mini studio. I took the photographs while my colleague beautified (and later mutilated with warts, pimples, buck teeth, drool, Veerappan moustaches and horns) them with Adobe photoshop.


When I realised I had my digi cam, I became simultaneously excited and nervous. The rewards were obvious. I could flaunt the photo at the office and be popular for a day. On the other hand there was a good possibilty that Vikram would give me a disgusted look and ignore me.


I circled him hesitantly several times and each time he looked questioningly at me, I’d pick up the nearest dumbell and exercise some randomly chosen body part. In the space of one hour, I lifted 2.5 pounds for my biceps, squatted 100 pounds for legs, performed over 15 sets of crunches for my abs and did endless sets of push ups and pull ups.

I gradually realised that while I was setting up myself for an early death at the gym, I still hadn't asked him for a snap. So I drank a litre of water, did another 5 sets of squats and tripped and stumbled my way towards him.


When I actually asked him, it felt like an out of body experience. I heard my voice say something like “Vikram, would you mind if I had a picture taken with you? Then the world stopped rotating.

He smiled back.” Shall I take it using my cell phone?” he asked, showing me his fantastically advanced mobile. I didn’t hear a word of what he said. My God, he’d actually replied!

“I’ll bring my camera!” I blurted and ran up to fetch it.

So then I got him to stand next to me and got the former Mr.Chennai who is one of the instructors to take the picture. Because Vikram is one of the biggest stars in the Tamil film industry, he can smile confidently at a camera. Because I am a software engineer with one-year experience in Java, I can look with supreme confidence into a camera and look like I have amoebic dysentery.


I guess Friday the 13’th was a pretty lucky day for me :-)

I'm back...

Well, sort of anyway.

I'm on vacation at the moment. I'd taken a weeks leave to prepare for the upcoming exams. Big mistake.

I've realised I've lost the ability to sit and study for long hours. Everyday I find myself casually wondering whats going on at the office. I long to get back. I miss my cubicle.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The CAT zipped by. It stopped just long enough to bite a big chunk out of my ego.

Interestingly enough, its the verbal section thats left me a little puzzled. I did sort of decently in quants and DI but I found the verbal section impossible to evaluate. When I looked at the answer key at the IMS and TIME website I found that they didnt agree on practically anything. SO frankly I dont know how well I've done. I suppose I do feel like I've done a decent job overall. Much better than last time anyway.

Slew of exams coming up,this IBCD shall retreat behind his books now.

Thats Aparna and Niranjana, the lovely ladies who reside in the neighbouring flat(Click on the picture to get a bigger image). Due to some pretty heavy rains in Chennai, schools have been closed and the two of them have been running around.Yours truly has also been unable to go to work :P.

I suppose there are few things better in the world than getting up in the morning and hearing that school has been cancelled :-).

Seeing them, I simply had to take a snap. I'm really not one of those people who gush over kids but this time I had to make an exception.

Later, coaxed by her mother Aparna recited The story of the 5 fingers. She strode into my room, fixed a stern eye on me and bade me to listen. Once she was sure she had my attention, she assumed a wooden expression and recited the entire story in a single breath. Her eyes glazed over towards the end and just as I was getting worried she finished the story and ran out of the room.

For the first couple of months after I joined my present company, I had plenty of free time on my hands. While the more senior people in the team spent day and night slogging it out to meet deadlines, I would calmly pick up my bag at 6:00 PM and head out of the office. The fact that I was considered a working professional by outsiders was enough. Actually working was out of the question.

My views on work changed slowly. I started to hear horror stories from the guys who I trained with, about crazy deadlines, fanatical project managers and permanently jumpy onsite coordinators. I on the other hand could only narrate with great enthusiasam the menu's of the various restaurants I had dined at with the team.


The people in my apartment complex began to look at me funny each time I entered the building by 6:30 PM. "But my brother comes back only at 1:00 in the morning!" the neighbour would exclaim. To them an IT professional was one who bathed, shaved and ate at the office, coming home occasionally to take a nap and then head back . I proved to be the complete antithesis of a pukka IT professional....and it puzzled my neighbours a great deal.

I began to feel vaguely guilty that I was getting home so soon. I felt like I was letting down the entire IT community. I began to look for ways and means to stay back at work but I wasnt given any tasks to complete. The project was at a very critical stage and they could'nt trust a fresher with bare minimum knowledge of java.

I longed to complain of heavy workloads, crazy working hours and managers who belonged to an asylum. I wanted to be part of that exclusive inner circle, to be part of the guys who'd been to hell and back several times during a project. I wanted to carry two cell phones. One for personal use and the other to get calls from the onsite coordinator at 3:00 in the morning.

My prayers were never answered. I had no work, I left by six and my manager was a really nice guy who kept organising team dinners.


As the days went by, I started getting small tasks to complete. Sometimes testing, sometimes ensuring that quality standards were followed and sometimes looking after bug tracking. Nothing spectacular, I was just doing the work the senior guys referred to avoid. I once stayed back till 10:00 PM to compile a list of bugs. I was gloriously happy that night. I felt like I truly belonged now. The next day I was back home at six.

Things changed when one of the guys who had to code a module left to replace the onsite chap. I was summoned and asked to do his work.

I was pretty pleased. I was going to sink my teeth into some real work now. I opened Websphere Application Developer and double clicked on a java file. It immediately leapt out of the screen and bit me.

I had never seen anything so fearsomely complex in my entire life. Monstorous chunks of code all calling each other and sometimes even calling themselves doing God knows what. A carnal orgy of Mainframe calls, JDBC, MQ Series, Java Beans, Enterprise Java Beans, DB2 and SQL Server hits.

I made about a hundred visits a day to my Team Leader's cubicle. I read the architecture document about a zillion times before the code made any sense to me.

I took slow hesitant steps. The server complained all the time. I encountered warning messages written by come deeply cynical programmer." If you see this more than once,things are BAD". " Hi Buddy! stored procedure failed!" " Hurrah! The value returned by the database is: NULL".

I put my heart and soul into developing that module.As the weeks passed, my code morphed from an innocent collection of hard coded data to a large and clumsy Frankenstein. I looked with awe and not without fear at what I had brought to life. It was large,it was fearsome and it bristled with mainframe calls, stored procedures and Java beans transferring information like no mans business. I began to lose track of what did what. At times I would stop coding and scroll up and down seeing neither end nor beginning.

I started to lose track of time. Time just flew. Before I knew it, I was sitting wearily in front of the monitor at 2 in the morning trying to get the damn thing to work. If I was'nt in the office, I worried over possible defects and bugs. I wrote code in my dreams. I had nightmares of defects being found during the production phase.

I didnt know what was happening at home. I just slept there for a few hours before coming back in the morning to see my inbox full of mails from the onsite chap. The office became my life.

I have finally made that transition from being a jobless professional to a stressed out coding freak who comes home at odd hours. My neighbours are not even awake to see me come home at 2 in the morning.I have plenty of things to complain about and share war stories with the guys I trained with.

I have begun to feel guilty if I'm home on the weekends. My concience is wracked with remorse if I leave the office before 11 PM. Sometimes when I'm home, I dont quite know what to do with myself.

My official life as a software engineer has finally begun.

I guess I'm going to be a pretty infrequent blogger till the end of the year. I'm facing unreasonable deadlines at work and the CAT is only 3 months away. I worry about the CAT in the office and worry about work when I study for the CAT :P.

I'm taking a break of sorts from active gymming. Not only because of the lack of time but also because I want my shoulder and knee to heal from their respective injuries. I'll be keeping it pretty light for the next few months.

Nothing more to add. The next few months are going to be critical for me. Wish me luck :-).

I'd like all of you to join me in wishing my sister Mrs.Supriya Devarajan,B.Sc M.Sc,PHd a very happy birthday :-). Terribly sorry I didnt call you first thing in the morning sis.....I was just a little too stoned :-).

Have a great day!

Your beans are not in the session,
May I present you a null pointer exception?

True glory lies not in never falling but rising each time we fall,
ps:- The mainframe has not returned your call.

You make your request,
I choose not to respond,
Reflect, repent, and restart,
Uh-oh.. I guess your code is gone...

Code worked before tea
Code worked before coffee,
Application crashes after egg puff.
WebSphere Application Developer moves in mysterious ways.

I have been wrenched away from my cubicle and allotted a new one.I'm shattered.


When I first joined my project after training, I didnt have a comp assigned to me.I led a rather nomadic existence, moving from computer to computer as demanded of me. Naturally this was a bit of a pain because just I settled down and started to do something productive I'd be asked to move.

I had always had my eye on a particular cubicle. It was unoccupied but the computer was not on the network, making it impossible to use. I had repeatedly asked my project leader for that particular spot but she would give me the same reason each time. Then one day as I sat cramped between two people with a comp that acted as a server for the neighbouring project(painfully, painfully slow!) and the keyboard on my lap, my PL tapped on the shoulder, smiled and said "Its ready and its all yours!"


The next couple of months were sheer bliss.Only those who have experienced the torture of running Websphere Application Developer on a 256 MB RAM machine will know the happiness that comes from migrating to a 512. The cubicle was by itself perfect. Unlike the other one's where four people each got corner, I got a small cubicle all to myself. True it was the size of a cardboard box, but as a former nomad without a machine, I considered myself extremely lucky. I settled down between those 3 walls and spent many a happy afternoon dozing after lunch. I even had a blue dustbin all to myself. I felt truly at home.

But in the software industry, everything is ephemeral. Just as you settle down, things turn upside down and everything changes drastically. This holds true of both the customers requirements and the cubicle you use. One morning as I was just making myself comfortable after breakfast, I was curtly asked by my project manager to move 3 rows down as another team was moving in. I wasnt given a chance to argue. I had to pack up and leave. The only good news was that my machine would be moving with me.


My new location is not as good as the old one. I have only two walls instead of three. I share the cubicle with 3 others and there's a large pillar to my right. The teams on either side are a noisy enthusiastic bunch and make my afternoon nap a sheer impossibility. I think its going to take a while to settle down.

Much apologies for this delayed update. Hours at the office are at best unpredictable and the CAT is only 4 months away....besides I've lead a remarkably unremarkable life in the last couple of weeks. Will update soon.

No Anon, I did not remove your comment because it annoyed me.I removed it because you were right. If I was writing about my english teacher, the least I could do was to ensure that the spelling and grammar was right :-). I've removed all the mistakes I could find. Do let me know if I've overlooked something.

Mrs Rani Chandran, perhaps the best teacher I've ever had passed away last week. She was killed in a tragic road accident.

If I'm able to cobble my words together today and then twist the sentences into something interesting, I owe it all to her. She was the first person to really encourage my writing. Sure, I dont have any complaints against my other English teachers but I always worked extra hard to please Mrs RC. Her compliments made me feel on top of the world.

It’s a pity but our first impressions of each other left much to be desired. My english teacher in the 7th standard got frustrated with my stubborn refusal to do english homework and sent me off to meet Mrs RC who was the head of the english department. I'd never spoken to her before but I strode jauntily into the staff room fully confident of myself. No way was some pavum English teacher going to convince me to do homework. A lot of my confidence stemmed from the fact that my mom was also a teacher in my school. I was a lot more casual towards my teachers than the rest of the kids.

RC tore me apart.

I walked in expecting special treatment. I was after all a teacher's son. I knew my teachers personally and expected a couple of gentle rebukes before being let off the hook. Instead I was ripped to pieces.

She examined my class notes and my homework for the year, the grand total of which came to exactly two sheets. Then she got angry, very very angry. Who the hell did I think I was anyway? What kind of handwriting was this? Was I too good to take notes and do my homework? The lashing went on and on. I lost all track of time, space and motion.

I came out the staff room, knees shaking, heart palpitating and ears bleeding. I spent the next couple of night’s frantically compiling class notes and homework. My mother was thoroughly ashamed and gave me hell at home. It was a very trying week.

I lived in complete fear of RC for the next couple years. Then when I came to the 9th standard, she handled Shakespeare...and it was amazing. She was one of those few people who could really lift the level of your thinking. If you answered her questions correctly, you would feel so damn smart.

I still remember the first time I 'acted' on stage. It was a skit on road safety. Another english teacher was directing the play and after having paid special attention to my excellent theatrical skills and the wide range of emotions I could display, she made me part of the road. Yep, I had to wear black and lie down on the floor with some other unfortunate kids while more acomplished actors walked all over us. I felt pretty lousy about it until RC took over. She made every kid feel like he or she was vital to the success of the play. It didnt matter what role you played. Suddenly I was incredibly happy to lie down while other kids stepped on my face. I was PROUD to be part of the road

I got to know her very well over the next couple of years. I played more prominent roles in the plays she directed, took part in debates and edited the school newsletter that she was in charge of. When it came to extra-curricular activities, the last couple of years in school were the best.

I'll always remember RC as no nonsense woman who would encourage you when you were down and put you in your place when you got too cocky. She spoke the Queen’s English and carried herself with such dignity; you couldn’t help but be in awe of her. Now THAT was a TEACHER.

When I was in college, I had no idea what it meant to actually "work" in an IT company. In my infinite wisdom, I assumed I'd be paid gobs of money to go to office in a big air-bus, wear a tie, sit in an air-conditioned room and surf the net.

I began to like my own version of the job profile. While I was yet to master the intricacies of tying a tie and somewhat averse to learning, I was sure that I could take sitting in an AC room and browsing the net to a whole new level.

I worked religiously towards my goal. To clear the written test and interviews, I pushed myself through a dozen aptitude books and tried my best to come to terms with fuzzy concepts like pointers and linked lists. Several times, I came close to including "Many years experience in sitting in bus" in my resume.

My hard work paid off. I cleared the written tests and blinked stupidly at the interviewer only occasionally. I was through.

My first few days of work were even better than I thought it would be. I took delight in dozing in my pushback seat in the bus. I persevered through the five-minute walk from the bus to my cubicle office, eagerly awaiting the cool embrace of the centrally air-conditioned office.

I took special pride in flashing my access card. In my first week at the office I flashed the card with gay abandon, often locking myself out. It took a lot of effort to not automatically fish the card out of my pocket while entering the restroom.

I discovered Kimberly Clarke tissue paper and liquid soap. I played with automatic taps and Nova Tech hand driers. I fell into the routine every IT professional goes through. Apply fragrant liquid soap, stick hands under automatic tap, take four times the number of tissue papers necessary to wipe your hands and face and then stick your hands under the hand drier.

I made frequent trips to the cafeteria. I sampled every food item available. I guzzled fruit juice and powered my way through veg puff and egg puff. I drank everything from lemon tea to soup at the dispensing machines and explored the variety of food each floor offered. I withdrew money from the in-house ATM's, yakked over the cell phone with my corporate connection and paid periodic visits to the shoe-polishing machine. In short, I was blissfully happy.

Then one day, when I least expected it, I was given some work.

My immediate reaction was that of horror. At some level I knew I was being paid to be productive but my conscious mind wanted nothing to do with it. I seriously considered retiring. After a fierce internal struggle and a lot of hemming and hawing, I agreed to do what was asked of me.

Now I gaze helplessly at the screen as the compiler objects to everything I write. I write and compile and gawk as my pretty code transforms into a seething mass of red, yellow and green lines. I struggle with "NullPointerException", "FileNotFoundException","JasperException" and "LeaveMeAloneIDontLikeYouAnyMoreException". My compiler and I are not on speaking terms at the moment.

My dreams are filled with EJB's, Struts, Beans, Servlets, JSP's and JDBC:ODBC drivers. I speak jargonese with my friends. I send and receive pointless forwards and do my best to avoid direct sunlight because I can’t take the heat anymore. I've installed an AC in my room. Now I find that on weekends I'd rather sit within the confines of my room than go out and get a social life. At home and public places, I stick my hand under the tap and wonder why the water does not gush out.

I have slowly come to realize that at the end of the day, you are here to work…and do lots of it. Having gotten over the initial fascination of all the luxuries an IT company can offer, I find that my happiness at the end of the day comes when my compiler and I both agree that the code is ok. I look to Google to guide me through the intricacies of programming and pray to Web Sphere Application Developer to put up with what I write.

God Forbid, I’ve actually started working.

I did something incredibly stupid this morning. I'm not going to go into the details of it....just that I feel really really bad about it.

I should be handling certain issues with grace and dignity and yet I'm throwing tantrums like a five year old child.

I know I'm acting this way because I'm hurt and something which means so much to me is gone. I'm trying to adjust to this new reality. I get along ok for a while and then suddenly I get really worked up and say and do things I would ordinarily never even dream of. Past injustices flare up and I have a new accusation to make everyday.

Am I confused? Yes.

Is my ego giving trouble? Yes.

Am I helping myself?No.

To accept that I'm powerless in certain matters is pretty hard. To let go and leave matters to fate not knowing if you'll ever get back what you had......words won't suffice to describe how painful that is.

The only option I have is to forgive and to forget. I just have to overcome whatever hungry need I feel and also tend to my bruised ego. How long that will take me, I dont know.

Its going to be a hard process but I know what lies on the other side is maturity, wisdom and better emotional control. and I'm bloody well going to get through it.

"New glasses Archa? " I asked.

"Yep, I lost the old ones".

"What happened?"

"I left them in my car."

"Ok....and?"

"My car was stolen."

Needless to say , I was taken aback.

Girl power has taken over my blog :-).

I must admit I never quite intended my blog to be a place where family and friends could interact. Still, I guess I have no real objections to it. Who wouldn't love to see 14 comments for a single post? :-).

And dear sister, the " I wont read your blog if you dont want me to" won't work out simply because you'll be twice as motivated if I said so.

Thank you very much for your wishes :-). I had a pretty good birthday. Recieved calls throughout the day.

We have a cake policy in my team. At the beginning of every month, every member of the team must contribute a certain sum of money so that funds are available to buy a nice big cake when a birthday comes along.We assemble at the conference room, sing and clap as the birthday boy/girl cuts the cake. Then most of the cake is smashed on their face. We then converge towards the remains of the cake like starving psychotic piranhas.I heartily approved of the practice till my own birthday came along.

Now I suffer the agony of a man who knows he forked out 150 bucks to have black forest cake applied to his face like make up. By the time I got the cream out of my glasses, the cake was gone.

I'm supposed to be treating the team next friday. The treats are horribly expensive affairs as we have about 23 people in the team. And we must eat at some place "decent". Decent directly translates to "Bring a credit card along...two wouldn't be such a bad idea actually". Sigh, I used to approve of the system, never thinking of the day I would become a victim of it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I must announce with mixed feelings that my sister has discovered my blog. While I have had no objections to complete strangers reading my blog, knowing my sister is reading it puts things in a whole new perspective. For this is a person who takes a personal interest in what I think and what I do. Perfectly natural.If my sister had a blog, I would read it to keep tabs on her.


Sigh. First I must dispel any ideas that you, dear sister might have gathered from reading my blog.

.I dont drink

.I dont smoke

.Try as I might, I can't convince attractive women that I'm boyfriend material. I am not seeing anyone. I am just another pavum software engineer leading a blameless life ;-).

There, I think I've got the fundemental things out of the way. But for this, I'm pretty much like any other guy out there. You are welcome to read my blog. You are not welcome to ask questions.

I'd prefer it if you kept what you read to yourself.

They say a lesson is repeated until it is learnt. I always assumed they meant lessons in life...vague philosophical stuff. I guess I never knew they never meant physical chemistry.

Physical chemistry? Why would an electrical engineer working as a software engineer want anything to do with it? Neither my under graduate education or my profession require intimate knowledge of the subject. Why then am I up at 4:30 in the morning trying to find the number of atoms in 4.5 grams of helium?

Answer: Mom.

My mother is a biology teacher. 17 years of it has made her a "Hardcore" biology teacher. No question in biology will ever faze her.


Now due a mild staff shortage, she's been asked to handle the first unit of
chemistry for the 9'th standard. I came home yesterday, mind numb from staring at the comp for 10 hours straight and found her in tears because she didnt understand what that bastard author of the chem textbook was saying. How was she supposed to teach something she didnt understand? The students would soon realise she didnt know what she was talking about. How could she face the class?

"You cant even help me!" she sobbed " I know how wonderfully you studied chemistry in the 9'th standard."

Aargh. The demons from the past have raised their ugly heads again. I thought chemistry was done with. I suffered with it from the 9th to the 12'th and caused plenty of heartache to my poor chemistry teachers. One of them even wanted my mother to have my thyroid levels checked.

But I couldn't let my mom walk into her class tommorow and falter when a student asked her a question. I would have to fight my revulsion for the subject,read it, understand it and somehow explain it to her.


So I sat down at the table and picked up the book. 5 minutes later I understood why I didn't understand chemistry in the 9'th standard. The textbook was crap.

There was no kind of logical flow. I didnt progress from page to page. I had to keep going back and forth between chapters before I could even make sense of what he was saying.

And consider this. He explains a concept for about a couple of lines and then immediately there's a problem to be solved. I work it out on a bit of paper and look at the answer. Its wrong.

Shit.

I look at what I've done. Its perfect. Just a matter of ratios. Why then is the textbook sniggering at me?

I look at the textbook again. Aah. Printing mistake.

I understood now why my mother was so distraught. You think you've understood something and then the text book tells you you are wrong.If its your first time with that dreaded book, you dont know what to believe in. The book or yourself ?

So now I've explained the first chapter to my mom. She can handle the theory. We have to sit with the problems over the weekend so that everything goes well on monday.


If this continues, I'll soon have to teach my my mom organic chemistry and calculus.Two subjects which made the last two years of my life in school miserable.God help me.

Its my father's Birthday today. He would have been 61.

We celebrated his 60'th birthday last year with a traditional ceremony called the "Sashtabyaburthi". Staunch traditionists are requested to forgive the spelling.

I had just finished college and the family had gone on a trip to Bangalore, Calcutta and Darjeeling. We came back and I gave the aptitude tests for company P and company Barry. I'd cleared both of them and was in a rather exultant mood on that particular day.

I wore a rather nice light blue checked shirt with a veshti . Not to mention, the traditional Iyengar "Sri Charanam", a vertical red line on the centre of the forehead. I revelled in my cultured brahmin look :-).

Every relative we had attended the function, either to bless or be blessed.
A small hall, packed with people and smoke from the traditional fire. I squeezed my way around, trying to play a gracious host. I must admit my cousin Prashant played a better host than I did.

My entire circle of friends attended. The only topic of discussion then was which companies were hiring, how the aptitude tests were and how the interviews were.My very orthodox friend Bharat took some out from the discussion to scowl at my forehead and comment " A Sri Charanam alone does not make you an Iyengar!"

"Poda Naye" I grinned back and stole a glance at the most beautiful girl in the hall. She looked stunning in her black Mangalagiri salwar.She smiled back and my heart leapt and burst with pride.

I couldnt sit down and talk to her though, my friends wouldnt stop pulling my leg each time I came close to her.

Life seemed perfect at that moment. I wish I could freeze it and live it everyday. We were so incredibly happy as a family then and I thought it would last forever.

Now I only have memories to relive. So much has changed in the last year. I've been buffetted by the winds of time and change.

Still, life goes on. I have a job in hand and a chance to have a great career. My sense of humour seems reasonably intact. I just have to be thankful for what I have now and move on.

Happy Birthday Appa.

While cleaning out my cupboard today, I discovered a folded, dirty and torn set of papers held together weakly by a single staple. I unfolded it, dusted it and squinted at the title:

"Diaper Dilemma"

Ah memories :-)

It was the first play I ever wrote, my first attempt at humour. I think I wrote it in the 11'th standard. It was about an Indian company unable to penentrate the diaper market due to heavy competition from Multinationals. How the management of the company attempt to promote their product formed the basis of the play.


While the jokes seem a little childish to me now, I remember how it made the audience roar with laughter. The six of us who enacted the play had zero acting experience. I for one had no directing experience. On the day of the play, we were yet to memorize our lines. Yet we pulled it off. I think it was one of the proudest moments of my life in school. I got a little more recognition after that. I was no longer DD, son of PD(My mom is a teacher in my school and a rather popular one) but a recognizable entity by myself.

So excuse me now while I go find a suitable file to hold my virgin attempt at humour .