Enlightened ... There are no special effects.

After almost 8 years we went to Mumbai and Pune. Both the cities are still attractive in patches. After all, I lived in those cities for a few years and can't just hate them. What's new More fly-overs, more air-conditioned cars were common for Mumbai and Pune. Mumbai as usual, exhibits poverty and wealth that strike you on the face. One big positive is the highway between Mumbai and Pune. It is truly world class in quality and maintenance. From Dehu Road to Aundh, for every hundred feet that is one new construction. The advertisements promise silicon valleys and such western paradises right along the slopes of Western ghats. Pune, for its part has its traffic increased a hundred fold. In spite of fly-overs and automatic signals, traffic was bad from Aundh to Cantonment area. Everyone was on the edge and city looked so different with rude drivers. Pune city now has many multiplexes and shopping malls. I didn't have enough time to visit any of them. We managed so...

If you have boarded a flight from Chennai's Anna International Airport and you can read Tamil, you might have noticed a sign " மெய்ப்புல அறைகூவலர் ". Ever wondered what it could be? If you can read English, then you can make sense of what this means - yes - it is " Physically Challenged ". I can't imagine who can come with such a dumb translation - that too from English to Tamil in Tamil Nadu. A physically challenged person who knows only Tamil has no use of such a sign board in Tamil.

I thought it was a joke when I saw the link with the text "Start a New Life with SecondShaadi.com". I thought one of the NRIs with a good sense of humor wrote a blog, making fun of Indian "match-making" aka dating sites. I continued to believe that this is a joke when I saw the Copyright note as "Pahwa KBS. All rights reserved." I thought the author is smart enough to coin a last name - first name combination that sounds like "bhakwas" - or rubbish in Hindi. After careful analysis, it dawned upon me that this could be serious business. The CEO is from some management institute, must have done his due diligence before starting a venture. Who knows, there must be venture capitalists who might have done their due diligence before funding it. It could be a simple number game. They must have thought - "About 10 million Indians get married every year. Of this, if 5% are remarriages, we have a business of 500K people who are looking for a ...

I read this article by Rajeev Srinivasan on Rediff - A whiff of the Manchurian Candidate. Rajeev suggests a few names for the President of India. Here is my serious recommendation: Rajini Kant - And here are the reasons. 1. Hardworking: Against all odds, he worked his way through to be the highest paid actor. (What's wrong in being an actor?) Even at the age of 57, he works to make money for the people who invested in him. 2. Integrity: The man is known for speaking his mind. Read his interview with Balakumaran some 30 years ago. He doesn't try to be some who he is not. 3. Simplicity: Ask anyone who has met him. 4. Hindu Values: Not the Bajrang Dal kind of Hindu values, but the ones like his respect for the land, values and beliefs. 5. Wealth: He is rich. Another reason in addition to the above for communists to hate him. That's also a qualification as per Rajeev. 6. Intellect: He knows at least 5 Indian languages. 7. A symbol of national integration: - a...

Where there is so much hype about Sivaji, The boss, Deepak Amin comes to our mind. Deepak's story started like Sivaji's. He returned to India after being a Technical  Lead with Microsoft for about 6 years. He returned sometime in late 90s and setup a software company called 'Indicus' in Mumbai. The web has many documents about the energetic CEO of the companies - Indicus and vJungle - both non-existent now. But I know Deepak as a boss and a great human being. He too tried to work with the biggies of Mumbai and Gujarat to do something to help the poor. The systems and the people running it believed in maintaining the status quo of corruption and exploitation. Read more of it in his article that inspired hundreds to return to India. By the time I began working for him, he had settled to a small business called Indicus and stayed away from the bad guys.  But even then, occasional hafta collectors and Ganesh Chaturti organizers would show up at office to collect ...

For the sake of quick reference, I post this much read article in my blog.  The person who wrote this was Deepak Amin - by boss at vJungle and Indicus.  It was written sometime before 1998 - that was when I decided to return to India and contacted him. "A quick background: I went to the US many moons ago (1987 to be precise) seeking the proverbial American Experience trudging the standard route of undergrad in IIT, postgrad in the US, summer job,H1, job in software co., Mexico for visa, etc. You know the schpiel. Worked at Microsoft for 6 years and decided to return to Bharatland in late 1995. Set up www.indicus.com and started churning out code from Mumbai. Been at it for about a year now. Returning to India: Having come back and ensconced myself very comfortably into India, and having met several others who have tried this, some successfully and some others not so successfully, I'd like to aver that there is one and only one thing that you need to have to pack your bags and ...

I got a link from Ram on his most recent blog; I began reading it and skipped a few paragraphs here and there. After I posted a comment to his article and re-read his blog, I realized I had missed some key information from his post earlier. Because of that my comment didn't sound right. I do not know how to edit a comment, so I left it as it is. This brings me to the topic of the day - what is the best size for a blog article? Most of my blogs fit within one page of the monitor with a resolution of 1024X768. My blog has links to the right of the article and a lot of blank space around. So, I'm a man of few words. Does it mean that my blogs are more of summaries of my views that details? Is it good to have long, multi-page blog? I don't know. I lose patience with online articles and emails that are more than a page long. It either means that the author uses too many words to explain something simple or that there is a lot of information which is irrelevant to me. Wh...

US techies 10-times more productive than Indian If the above link didn't work, here is the gist: Wipro's earnings is $50K per employee while top US IT companies make close to a million dollars per employee. First some questions: What is the ratio of expenses vs income per employee in the US and India? There may not be such a big difference in this criteria. When talking about IBM, Dell etc., does the statistics include their operations in India and other countries or not? Does the statistics include the contract workers or consultants for US companies? Would American companies have the same efficiency if the cost of outsourcing increases? I am fine with Indian companies generating less revenue per employee as Indian companies contribute a lot toward employment and overall spread of wealth.

Giving up on Microsoft Like Jeff and Mike, I started programming with MSC 6 and used almost every version of developer tools from MS, including MFC, ATL and a console based editor called PWB for Programmer Work Bench (I would like to call it a People's Work Bench for its simplicity and utility). At times, I strayed into Open source for more practical solutions. For our organization, we chose Linux based server apps like Samba domain controller, Postfix / Sendmail mail servers and portals based on Liferay. We had time to play around with these and weren't willing spend money on Windows and Exchange servers. I chose Lucene on .NET over full text search as we needed search to work remotely. And Lucene seemed to be a lot more fun to develop than FTS. But I would always choose the developer tools from MS over Open Source tools. Even if Eclipse offers a plug-in for C#, I would consider the express editions of C#/ASP.NET a lot easier to use if cost is a factor. If I have the l...

I have always tried to get as much as 8. hours of sleep for I know the subtle side effects of sleep deprivation. These subtle effects cause huge damages. Sleep deprivation is the reason behind most accidents between midnight and 4 AM. For those with less awareness and didn't know about this, here are some symptoms of sleep deprivation. 1. Lack of coordination between the brain and the organs. This manifests as biting of tongue when eating, tripping while walking etc. 2. Increased frequency of déjà vu . Déjà vu is nothing more than minor malfunction of the brain. With sleep deprivation the frequency of déjà vu experience increases. If you felt like a psychic, get over it. It is just an effect of less sleep. 3. Black outs. As an event happens, the brain switches off for a fraction of a second to process inputs from sensory organs. This results in an experience like watching a movie from a scratched DVD. 4. Signs of OCD - obsessive compulsive disorders like doubting if you ...

I installed Google Desktop in every machine I use. I love the Ctrl+Ctrl to reach any document or email in the fastest way possible. There was a third party plugin for Outlook some time back. I used it for some time and then realized it was hanging Outlook and the system. So, I uninstalled the plugin. But the recent version of Google Desktop comes with an add-on for Outlook. I guess this comes from Google itself. Of late, I began experiencing problem opening an appointment from the Calendar. I do not know if Google tries to sync-up with Google Calendar as we use Google apps for domains for our emails and domains in our organization. I can see the contents of a meeting request in the preview pane, I can accept the request, the alert would show at the right time. But when I try to open the item, Outlook would report "Cannot open this item for reminder. Operation failed." After googling for sometime, I bumped into a solution that suggest to switch off a plug-in. The pro...

There was this program on Showtime - Penn & Teller's BS on Hating Walmart. The theme was, it is fashionable and nonsense to hate Walmart when Walmart is doing so much for the community in terms of low cost goods and employment for unskilled. Can this be extended to India? Are Reliance and such big shops good for the communities? The answer is no. Walmart opens shops in every place where there is scope for selling cheap goods. They probably won't open shops in glitzy malls. On the other hand, the big chain of grocery stores in India open in clearly upper middle class area. In Chennai, I see them in places like Anna Nagar, Egmore, Adyar and TTK Road. Even within these places, they stay away from lower income group areas. So, their aim is not to offer low cost products to needy community. The number of jobs they create is far few as compared to multiple small sized grocery shops catering to same number of customers. Every time such a big shiny shop opens, they th...

Joel's Jobs In India had just two job postings since it was announced a week ago. Joel says there is a good set of visitors from India for his blogs. Still, two postings in one week doesn't sound good. The reasons on why Joel's blogs get so many readers and the postings are so few: 1. The readers are usually middle management in large organizations and top management in small organizations. The middle managers of large companies have no say in where the organizations should look for candidates. The top managers of small companies do not post jobs in portals, instead they look for resumes in portals and call them. 2. Large organizations do not care much for the software skills of the candidates. For a fresher, they look for candidate with over 75% in engineering in any branch. For 2-3 year experienced, they look for the basic criteria plus the candidate should have worked for 2-3 years (not necessarily software development). For middle and senior management, ther...

Mukundhan commented about Udit Narayan's voice and pronunciation here . I thought Udit Narayan's voice was a good fit to Prabhu Deva in Kaathalan. After that, I can't think of any other song where there was such a good fit. Remember paruvayillai in Run! I do not understand why north Indian singers who aren't pronouncing well should sing in Tamil. This includes Sukhvinder Singh, Sadhana Sargam (best of the lot) and Adnan Sami (well, he is not an Indian first, but that's not the point). SPB mentioned it in an interview that he introduced Sukhvinder Singh in Telugu, and later in some other movies he didn't think that the singer did well with pronunciation. It is possible that most new male singers in Tamil and Telugu are highly influenced by SPB, Yesudoss and TMS. This probably forces music directors to look out for fresher voice. That explains why Udit Narayan and Sukhvinder Singh sing in Tamil. For the same reason, SPB and Yesudoss were used in some Hindi...

Since I love Google Analytics and I was curious on how many visitors I had to my blog, I set up a GA account for my blog. The results I see assure that I am not Joel Spolsky. I noticed that a fresh grad working with me gets a higher traffic to her blog. That's what a link on her blog on how much the content is worth. The results on GA indicated an interesting information. If you blog about a current affair (like song release of Sivaji- the movie), there is a chance that your blog may get some new visitors. I got just one. On other days, I get the usual co-workers and ex-coworkers visiting my blog. It is essential that the blog must be current. I blogged about the dark matter after reading about it on Slash Dot and Time magazine. My blog was about this article and Rig Veda. I had a surprise visitor who used the keywords for which my blog appears 3rd in the results. Well, I do not write for eye-balls. I write because it is one way scratching my brain itch. After I wri...

It is probably not legal. But sites like oosai.com have the songs from the movie in streaming format. I don't expect Rahman's music to be catchy in the first listening. You hear it again and again and start liking it. Of the six songs (seven if you count the two versions of 'Sahara Pookkal Poothatho'), just two stay in memory. 'Sahara Pookkal Poothatho' by Udit Narayan, Chinmayee and Vijay Yesudoss, Gomathi Sree is probably the best of the lot. The song is not great, but is at least good enough that the tune stays in memory after the song is over. 'Vaaji Vaaji...' by Hariharan and Madhusri is slightly fast paced, catchy and could be a hit. Madhusri's voice reminds me of Lata Mangeshkar's current voice. Nothing more to write about it. The song 'Kaaveri Aarum...' by SPB appears to be the usual Rajini's opening song. My father would comment as - ' தெவச மந்திரம் மாதிரி இருக்கு' . On hearing the songs, I feel A R Rahman is...

Another cold day, here at Farmington Hills, MI. It looks like it might rain. I am stuck in my hotel room on this Saturday too. I have no car as I my US driving license expired a few years ago and I do not have an Indian driving license. The place is a typical suburbia with little public transportation facility. My co-workers staying in the same hotel want to go out for lunch. I think it is fine as I'm getting sick of my own cooking and reheating of frozen food. For every decision after that, you need an extra information, called weather. Should I wear the thermals, should I wear just a sweater or do I need a jacket? Can we go by taxi or just walk the distance? You need to know the weather before you venture out, be it by car or by any other mode of transportation. In tropical countries like India, there is not much to decide. At best, you may have to carry an umbrella if think you need it. So, you need to know the weather. What is the best way to know the weather? I ...

After a meeting today, I shot off the minutes of the meeting as an email. The content was limited to the attendees, decisions made and subsequent tasks. I noticed my project manager creates the MoM as a Word document, places it in a folder for the project in a file server. I wonder what is the right approach. Mine ensures that the notes are visible with no extra effort. The recipients can always search for it in their emails; Google Desktop would index it and the purpose of the minutes is served. Everyone is informed, and the information is available whenever needed. What about the project manager's approach? The information is always there, but do people read it and comment about it? I doubt. This is probably the CMM/ISO kind of quality. Not my kind!

The task is simple. Make changes to an existing activity diagram created in Visio. The changes small, remove a few activities and related connectors. Add a decision and connectors to existing activities. Sounds very simple, easy to understand etc., When it comes to resizing, I don't know why it gets so complex. I agree I didn't read the bloody user manual. But GUI is supposed to make it easy that you don't need a user manual. All I'm trying is to position a few text by the side of connectors and decision objects and resize the objects so that they look similar to the ones that exist already in the diagram. To move a text, I need to click on the object first. Did that and no complaints on that. To select the text block, I need to click on text tool in the tool-bar. Why don't the right click menu or the UML diagram tool has any link to this? To resize the object, I removed all the protections Still it resizes proportionally. I do not know how to change thi...

Now I'm in the US, my evenings are spent in front of TV like most Americans. I try to limit my interest to couple of re-re-...-re-runs of Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. Occasionally I channel surf during commercial breaks. In one such surfing I bumped into a game-show / quiz program - Are you smarter than a fifth grader? My initial reaction was, it is another program for stereo-typing. One participant was an African American woman who thought US is in the Eastern Hemisphere. Another was a blond who didn't know how to get the radius from diameter. As there was no defined political correctness or incorrectness about jokes on blonds, there were jokes on blond dumbness. The anchor person didn't get such a freedom with the African American woman. The aim of participant selection looked as if, it is make fun of them. May be that's what guarantees viewership! On to more serious thoughts. I compared the questions with the curriculum I'm familiar with - that of CBSE ...

My comments to What is happening with IT I used to think that our attitude toward white man is the reason, for stretching our work-times for client calls. But I came to realize that we are a service oriented country and that’s the way we are. I had been on the other side of the outsourcing line where I outsourced a project to a vendor. The vendor worked just like any other software company; the developer showed up over weekends to finish project etc., There is nothing about white man or black man. I do agree with you that our youngsters have no concept of fun outside of work. This worries me. I worked with a developer who felt very sad when the organization announced 5 day weeks for 2 and and 4th week every month. He had nothing to do on a Saturday. At some point all the consulting companies encouraged these people to virtually live in office without realizing the negative effects of it. We all will come out of it. As far as comparing Microsoft and Infy, I do not think Infy is a los...

BPO Wants the real you This is ironic. There is a section of BPO that lives by impersonation. The tele-sales or customer support done from India does accent training and changes the names to suit the market. If a corporation can fake a superficial identity of an individual, it is business strategy or tactic. If the same is done by an individual, it is a crime.

Out there is an article on "stuff" that is out there, but not perceived. I could have been an physicist with my B.S in Physics (cleared Properties of Matter in the third attempt). But I am not even an arm-chair physicist as I just do not have the required number of connections in my brain to comprehend papers like that. But this is an interesting one. Bhagawan once said, "The manifested is knowable and the unmanifested is unknowable." I'm sure the scientists mentioned in the article would agree. But what is this unmanifested? Rig Veda says - (from Sacred Texts web-site ). 1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water? 2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever. ...

I had four international relocations between India and US in a span of some seven years. Tasks in almost all these relocations had a line item - "Sell off stuff that you can't carry". This line item gave me a lot of experience and insight into the mind of the bargaining customers. It was the last big relocation that gave all the interesting experiences. Selling my household items in the US was a bigger task simply because there were more items to sell. I went through the normal grind of posting ads in Indian grocery stores and Microsoft's intranet through a friend. The probable buyers came from the usual ethnicities - Indian, American and Chinese. I would consider the Americans as the most reasonable customers. When the price I quoted didn't meet their offer, they just moved on. They probably had more important things to do than extract a bargain. Successful transactions were completed in less than 5 minutes. One executive from Microsoft even gifted me co...

Your code OOP or POO Since I started with functional languages and programmed in Pascal and C in my first couple of years of experience, I didn't get too carried away with OOP ... for extended periods. The obsession usually lasted for a month or so before I got practical. The other day, I interviewed a guy who has been a business analyst. He had all the technical jargons of the past 10 years in his resume. If he could show some UML, I would have considered him for an analyst role. If he could write code, I would have considered him for a tech lead role. If he could do both, I would have him take my job. The person threw bull and jargons at me at an alarming frequency. Every sentence had stake holders or components or some such shit that are candidates for stop words in a management meeting. Since he started talking about a requirement for logging, I asked him to design a logging system. If he could just copy Log4J, I would have been happy. If he could write a simple functi...

தருமி: 55. நான் ஏன் மதம் மாறினேன்...? 3 An interesting blog. Good writing by all participants. Since questioning is not often encouraged in Christianity and Islam, I guess Dharumi's "thought process" is more interesting than a Hindu questioning. In the realm of mind, all questions will be there. Allow them as they exist only in the realm of mind. When questions can't be answered by books or introspection, the mind gives up and enlightenment happens. You become free from all bindings. Then, there is a rebel mode that happens when the bindings are gone. But slowly and surely one sees these bindings as something within the mind and He stays more conscious. One can even play with these bindings and see the mind deriving little pleasures. This is the active state of being. The Gita talks about the active state with enlightenment where the sthita-prgna performs his duties without attachment to the effects of it. When enlightenment happens, in the passive state, it...

Scott Rosenberg: What Makes Software So Hard The hardest part is not making software but explaining to Managers on why software development is hard. Recently, I took over maintenance and enhancement of a piece of software from a junior developer who left the organization. He had made less than reasonable decisions on where to store some options. His decision was based partly on the business Manager's input and partly on lack of experience and guidance. The business guy had wanted a page in which he would be able to enter gifts that we recommend for various occasions. The developer chose to keep the occasion information at page level and have corresponding numbers attached to the product set at the database level. This is not the best decision, but considering the time crunch and the push from the Manager, the developer went with this decision. Over the next few weeks, the requirements got more complex - there are occasions where you need to get the age of the person involved,...