On an auspicious day of Independence of my beloved country I woke up little earlier in the noon to the phone call of my mom, who yelled at me for my laziness even on the holy day of “Independence day”, I was hesitant accept it as holy day or what ever equivalent it can be labelled with. Blame on my ignorance or even call me non-patriotic(I deserve a bash) but so does million other adults like me spread over the country who have same way celebrating their Country’s independence. They are either unaware of the importance of the day or fed up with the system. I belong to latter group of fed up pies(I’m sure there’s huge Que).

One such pie(happens to be my buddy) shared his hatred on his FB wall, with attracted tens of likes and comments from like minds, ensuring our fed up pie numbers at large. That whole conversation left me wondering why we all have problem with the system and few even claimed that extended British Raj would have escalated us to greater heights(Nothing wrong in the point). 

At the end of the day, does that mean struggle for independence by our great predecessors went vain. I’m scared that few people may agree with it, in that case souls of those great people may never pardon us all. 

We all are reasons for our gross or net failure as a Nation as whole..

My friend quoted “I am sorry today about our country, but there is still hope for us. As we have had for past sixty six years. A hope that the real independence is actual reality to us than just a mere celebration which we forget tomorrow. It’s high time we introspect about our system, which has not provided social security, equality, lawfulness and real freedom”. 

what does real independence day mean, what was 1947 then and 1991(which many businessmen claim real independence).. 

I think we celebrated our Independence 40 long yrs without doing much to the country.

Right after the independence, Indian leaders not only romanced and celebrated the moment but fell in love with it like newly wed adults with indefinite honeymoon. It was an antipathy moment for Indian leaders to favor protectionism and closed policies making it impossible for any country to do business with India. The socialist mindset created the License Raj and corruption simply became a fact of life. While many other countries continued to be a post-industrial society India’s growth stalled. Things got really bad. In 1991 Manmohan Singh(i’ve heard this name somewhere else too) opened up the economic policy that attracted foreign direct investment and the nation started to see the growth that it never saw post-independence. What happened in India in the last twenty years should have happened soon after its independence. till early nineties we were no different from the ones we were in late 40’s. I assume with liberated trade and economic policy, sudden inflow of capital made the so called leaders to grab the big fish in the name of corruption. There started India’s biggest obstacle of the day.

This corruption is the script writer in the aftermaths whatever have happened till now and to all the things gonna happen in the future. As Nandan Nilekani puts it in his book Imagining India, India got its real independence in 1991. This is when India’s journey from socialism to capitalism started to shape up. India’s foreign cash reserve, which was $1B in 1991 grew to today’s amount of $286B.  This growth(with increased corruption at ends to meet)accelerated even more between 2004 and 2008 with GDP growing close to a double digit rate. India became an unstoppable force and yet again, one more time, the country fell in love with that moment instead of working hard on making crucial policy decisions to sustain that growth.

What I personally see is significant untapped potential and uncanny enthusiasm amongst the Indians. I am excited about the future. It’s easy to latch on to that “moment” India saw in the last few years, but the key is not to take anything for granted and continuously challenge the government for policy reforms and motivate individuals to surge ahead despite of obvious challenges that the country faces.

At last, i’d say we all are culprits and reasons for the reason why we are today in the one or the other way. We should start the change or transition i would like to say has to start from inner self, it will be reflected on the whole. Personally, Hope to see the change by waking up early for the next independence day, not really, as i hope to do more than that.

JAI HIND!!!

With all due credits to all the quotes, individuals i have referred in this blog… Thank you,,,

Few weeks back one of my friend Dr Arjun BT(@drarjunbt), Who is very tech savvy Doc and hyperactive guy on social media tweeted “Top question to ask yourself before starting a blog – Does the world need another?”. he was trolling on the number of bloggers and he was right too. Any person with little knowledge about current affairs and access to internet will make him a blogger. blame on the free time he is provided with or the number of platforms encouraging people to bloggers.There are huge list of blogging sites with almost same functionality and intended towards jobless jacks. 

Tumblr is the latest one to join that list,

Not too long ago, I discovered the world of Tumblr. I’d been aware of it for a while, but had written it off as the domain of teenage hipsters looking to assert their identities through the endless lazy re-blogging of stuff made by other people.

(For the record, I still sort of think that’s what Tumblr is about…but now that I’m a part of it too, I’ve had to reconfigure my judgement into something more positive.)

Out of curiosity finally i finished signing up on the microblogging platform Tumblr for my next scribbling. If you’re interested in social media and blogging then you may find this interesting!  it’s not terribly long…

For people uninitiated to the world of Tumblr, a simple explanation is that Tumblr is a microblogging site used to promote the creation, curation, mashed and sharing of mixed-media content across a social network. This process is made easy for Tumblr users by means of a simple “dashboard” interface, which allows for users to add content to their “tumbleblogs”, or share content from other user’s blogs, with one click. Tumblr, unlike its dominant social media counterparts, Facebook and Twitter, allows for seamless, streamlined multi-media content creation, curation and sharing while retaining the ability for users to connect with their fellow users on an interpersonal level, even though Tumblr is not first-and-foremost a social platform.

                                                                                                           Tumblr has streamlined and reinvented both social networking as well content sharing. Taking cues from many of its social media predecessors and adapting them to the immediate and ever-changing nature of today’s Internet, Tumblr has utterly simplified for its users the process of generating and sharing content with other like-minded internet dwellers.

It is perhaps Tumblr’s overwhelming sense of community that has come to spearhead its resounding staying power in the social media landscape. As opposed to a user feeling like a cog in a seemingly boundless machine (as might the users of Facebook and Tweet), Tumblr users are enabled to create their own sense of identity and community internally and find, with great ease, other users with whom they can share content, ideas, and relatable human experience/sentiment that is simply not possible when dealing with the mainstream powerhouse social media platforms.

Happy bugging others, Oopss i meant blogging……

Good were the days with my old Nokia phone, a phone that only allowed calling, messaging and limited browsing with its damn slow browser that came with guarantee of no worry of battery for next 24 hours at least. A friend of mine used to troll around my phone and used to ask “have you ever heard a thing called ‘Apps’? With this phone in your hand chances are very less”. He was right actually i hardly knew about apps as i haven’t needed them on my phone.Also I was lil reluctant to switch from a phone of 3 years.  Later switched to a Smartphone and got to know ABC’s (still trying to know many) of Apps.

It is believed that this phenomenon called apps were literally got push from Apple inc especially on web using applications to prevent people from using Google server in turn minimizing Google’s Control over WWW(This part I’m not bothered about as it’s quite huge to be part of time pass blog).

In recent times Smartphone’s are gaining ground. It has become trend to flaunt a Smartphone, and even cooler to try out various applications and talk/discuss about them. There will always be someone around you to suggest few apps or someone will be asking for advice about new application or apps as we call it to try.

There was a time when an application just meant a form you filled and submitted in a bank, post office or any other office just few hours before the deadline.

Gone are the good old days when an application meant a means of siphoning off money from parents legally. “Mom, I have to submit an application for IIT, AIEEE or All India Pre-Medical Pre-Dental Pre-Engineering, Pre-Ayurvedic cum Pre Unani exam tomorrow, give me Rs 500.”

It’s entirely different now, “Have you tried that app yet?” I was asked.

 “App? What’s that?”

 “So, you don’t know apps? What phone do you use?”

 “I use Nokia.”

“WTF? Still you use a Nokia and haven’t tried a single app? That’s criminal…..if Steve Jobs knew he would have flown down to Bangalore himself to flog you (it was in the year 2009, when I was a trainee doing a project for HDFC banking software).”

“What is an app? And what’s Steve Jobs have to do with my phone?” I remember insisting.

“Well…an app is an app yaar. I can’t explain. Try it yourself.”

That’s when I went about trying Smartphone apps (or applications; however you call them ).

As days passed there are some really weird apps out there and few are really interesting ones which keeps me hooked to my phone till phone reaches the temperature of an instant electric Stove.

As my friend said” Today, literally there are apps for anything like vacuum cleaner washing machine et al”

I have written a blog on app of nearly 500 words yet I don’t know how to define an app literally.

Use it to know what app is………

Friends are of two types – the Jewelry Type and the Clothes Type.

The Clothes Type friends lose color, fade away, grow small etc with time. While the Jewelry type friends remain inert…they don’t react…don’t age. They don’t lose color, fade…in short you don’t out grow them.

Fortunately, till now all of my friends whom I believe are part of my warm circle have been jewels. This weekend unexpectedly I met my friends in Mysore. It was a roller coaster, bike journey in the midnight and unexpected bike breakdown of the bike in the extreme interiors of the jungle Near Nanjangud.  Having homemade Chicken in the midnight along with military Scotch is an exotic and Royale any day.

When we meet friends the adult inside us becomes infant, thorough professional who sits inside a cubicle becomes wild.  Things we speak may sound logic less at times but are most enjoyed conversations. These Conversations may be food, career, apparels, gadgets, vehicles and most common thing “LOVE”. In a group of my friends who are committed and loyal to their loves I’m the odd one out. I always find it “Not my kinda thing”. Yet, we spoke about it for most part of the time we spent together.

I had read somewhere which goes like this

“Love is: finding her pimples adorable, her mistakes pardonable, her nagging tolerable, her bills affordable and her love immeasurable”.

Is love that blind?

Or is it just another topic like eternity and creation that humans will never grasp the concept cause of its depth.

I never liked the word as I had witnessed all the dramatic aftermaths it can bring in very early age,

Never believed it possible and doubted true thing exists,

Matter of fact, it pissed me off when I saw a couple holding hands (Not out of frustration or also not for not having my own),

Or a romantic movie with a happy ending,

Because the truth is “happy ending” and “love” doesn’t go hand in hand, because you rarely find love and happy endings, you either find one of the two but rarely both together.

I see people that fall in love as actors that get into character and come right out soon as something happens.

Not me……..Not now…..maybe. When I was younger and I didn’t understand the difference between love and infatuation, when I used to get lost in the fantasy of boy meets girl, they fall in love, Get married n blah blah blah….or when I thought there was someone for everyone and when you found that right person you’ll know …..Maybe just maybe I could have believed in love if It was that simple, but it aint because even if you searched and find that right person, chances are if the person isn’t taken, feelings won’t be mutual.

People spend most of their lives searching for love, some never find it, some pretend to, others just settle for the lesser things like comfort, security, stability, trust, money…Etc

Some do find love but are too scared to believe in it, cause of past experiences or what they  heard, some don’t search, it finds them, but since they never wanted it to start with, they don’t know what to do with it, so they discard it, some just think it won’t work, since they tried it a million times and failed, so it’s not worth searching for, so they settle for one of the lesser things, get lost in it and believe at a point that it’s love.

So forgive me if I don’t believe in love anymore, I’m simply tired of the never ending search for perfection, even when we know it isn’t possible to find

My heart has been broken so many times and mended so many times(as I have huge list of crushes Charlize theron, Scarlett Johnson, Megan Fox, Mila Kunis and few other girls), that another might leave a hole in me, a hole that could finish me.

Humans are known for their imperfection but I met one that was the closest thing to perfection for me.

One that made me doubt my belief

One whose smile made the sun looks brighter. One I couldn’t get out of my head, one whose picture was permanently at the back of my eyelids, One who I loved talking to even if the only way I could sometimes was thru an argument…this is a strange feeling, I don’t understand it

And my friends don’t seem to either.

Is this how all those couples that held hands felt, was this the same feeling those people in the movies felt…….or was I just getting into character…would my feelings change the minute someone said CUT or will this change the minute we have something ,are the feelings mutual or is this just me

It’s confusing when you don’t have the answers to these questions and it’s even more confusing when the other person doesn’t

Can I do this?

Could this be love?

This could either make or break me.

I guess I’ll never find out

If I don’t try……. NEVER ENDING STORY………

I have tried and self challenged many times to not to touch my phone next 5 hrs at least but i have failed again and again, i thought it’s a kind of addiction i’m struggling to come out of. I assume there are many people out there with similar disorder (at least i’ll call so).  I was searching for reasons behind this addiction. Later somewhere i read something called ‘FOMO’, it stands for fear of missing out.

Do you know FOMO? That’s not some fancy latte — it’s Fear Of Missing Out, and something that’s become a recognized thing by many social media users these days.

You’re probably familiar with the concept, if not the name. Here’s an example: It’s been a long workweek and you really just want to spend Friday night at home watching a movie. But then that old familiar urge hits, and you can’t resist grabbing your smartphone for a jolty fix of quick-burst information.Twitter posts of current affairs and  mentions from people you’ve known. On Facebook, to check someones DM, someones status update, someones comments on your status or someone else put up photos of a raging party.

Suddenly, your mellow evening feels entirely inadequate and you wonder what else you’re missing out on. You put the phone down, only to pick it up again and again because you can’t shake the feeling that you’re missing out on finding out just how much you’re missing out on. The vicious cycle continues.

But don’t get too down — you’re not alone with your FOMO. There are other people out there just like you, and they’ve gone public with their problem.

When i finalized this blog it was 3AM in the early morning(or 2 past midnight), Nothing surprising in my late nights as I’ve had much last few weeks.

Even in my extreme of my dreams I never thought Ill reach this point in my life, which off late which has become a laughing for me.  Flexible office timings (many days I opened my eyes in front of my cubicle). Late nights and early morning logins can worsens one’s life and along with routinely tempo tantrums can ruin further.  I was a guy who used to laugh at people when someone said Techies lose their personal life with increase in work intensity.  As a result, more usage of F words at workplaces, avoiding meeting people and I was trying to corner myself with all this shit. Suddenly realized I’m disturbing someone by raining texts and pinging on FB from last few days, which was going on even without my attention (I have promised myself I won’t do it from today).  I would like to ask her sorry for everything I did.

I stopped enjoying my work and life. There were certainly times when I enjoyed myself, but most of those times were when my computer talents were still developing. Once I stopped learning new things on the job, I would become fidgety and want to move on to something else. It started to reflect on my personal life.

Being techie is like double headed sword, you enjoy it as long as you are new to it after certain extent things get worst.  For e.g., Situations like this one were common for me or many techies of my generation. I’ve had eavesdropping strangers approach me with questions about their computer while I was eating in a restaurant. I’ve had oblivious coworkers step in front of me in a buffet line to tell me about their computer problems while I was serving myself food. I’ve had neighbors who spotted me from their window rush outside to coax me into working on their home computer while I was walking to the corner market. My knack for solving people’s computer problems had become so well-known among my neighborhood that these circumstances were near impossible to avoid.

Life was getting alienated; the fact that the computer guy never gets a moment’s peace can also practically force him to withdraw into solitude.  Struggling to sort out an unlikely offer that I got, a chance to move out of the shore. But I chose not to.

“That’s why the IT guy eats lunch alone with his door closed, or goes out to eat every day — not because he’s unfriendly, but because he needs to escape the incessant interruptions”- Myself.

Having read these reasons, you may believe that I’m complaining. It’s true that I was upset with many aspects of my life as the computer guy, but I’m past the point of complaining.

I took a good hard look at my existence and realized that things were not likely to change in the line of work I had chosen. Instead of just complaining, I took action and began making positive changes in my life.

Working in the computer industry isn’t for everybody. It wasn’t for me. I’ve compiled my reasons for putting it behind me and placed them here, so that anyone who is unsatisfied with their life working in computers might recognize it’s not for them either.

And yeah my friends nothing is bad at my end, a bottle of Bacardi will do (which I was planning to leave once for all). A small rehabilitation may do wonders.

All is Well 

Only for Android phone users who are like me are Sick of watching the battery icon seemingly go as fast as a stoplight from green to yellow to red? It could well be all the apps you have installed — even the ones you aren’t using.

Ironically, like they ask for cars “kitna deti hain??” these days people are asking battery kitna der tak chalta hain?

!

Of course UI, which consume much of the battery. but screen doesn’t eat everything on it’s own. 

There is a bug in Android OS, which doesn’t turn off processor usage, GPS and Camera after it’s usage, it seems to be the major blow to the battery. As we all know, Unlike Computers our Smart phones try to whenever possible to be in a “sleep” mode to save precious battery life but this “no sleep bug” or unlock thread bug seems to be spoiling the bug. 

Few may argue that Data usage does the damage to the battery life but they are only partly right. as i have noticed Google Map, native mail program, Android back up service(if you have 3rd party back up service too you are gone) and biggest comedy is Power Saver or Manager which is supposed to save battery usage over uses battery itself by being over active all the time. Most common one is  Pre installed Facebook App, which notorious to be very slow, consumes battery more.

Another reason  for the battery consumption is many users don’t even know when multiple apps or programs are running, thus draining their phones.

You can find out fairly easily. From the home screen on an Android phone (or tablet), click the menu button, then Settings. From the menu, tap Applications, then Manage Applications. And finally, tap the Running button at the top of the screen. You’ll see what’s running, and what you probably don’t need. You can kill an app by tapping on it and then selecting Force Stop.

But do it quick, before your battery dies!

I had my appraisals a few months back, for which I was able to maintain my cool. As a result, I didn`t put in my papers the same day. Surprising isn`t it, the books,newspapers or any expert never write on how to deal with good appraisals. But then, do good appraisals exist? Or are they like the UFOs?

“Vijay, I’m impressed with your work,You are a great resource and you should go far,” my boss initiated the dialogue. I was happy. Not all bosses know to break the ice with such simplicity. “That`s nice to hear sir.” “Thanks.

The sooner you go far, the better,”He said staring at the computer. Being an honest, chaste man has its drawbacks. When somebody is pulling you down, scolding you or making fun of your ability, you don`t realize. I didn`t realize and continued:

“So what is the hike I am getting?” “Hike? I don`t think you will need one….you have set yourself low standards and have consistently failed to achieve them.” “But why would I not need a hike?” Even as I persisted, I saw my boss rating me as ‘Excellent` against the ‘Perseverance` parameter.

He was trying to read my motives, future plans before trying to say something good.

“In your last appraisal I had rated you as ‘Doesn`t meet expectations`. Remember?” I wondered why he was bringing in the past. Wasn`t an associate`s career path all about the future? “Yes,” I snorted. “Since my last report, you have reached rock bottom. In the next two days you would start to dig.” “So what if I dig?”

I have always known my boss as somebody quick to the gun and this time too he didn`t disappoint. he said, “If you dig, you would soon reach oil…and think of how rich you could be.”

Honest(strange huh) and chaste men like me can only be pushed to a certain extent. There is a limit beyond which the i can take insults. I wanted to fight back. “But I worked hard the last one year,” I replied. “Yes you did…but only under constant supervision. To put it bluntly, you worked hard when cornered like a rat in a trap.”

If only I hadn`t lent my gun to Pravin Mahajan. Even as I was giving it to Pravin, I remember my mother had said: “Lend books…but never lend your gun…you might have to go to the prison to collect it.” But I said, Sir I’ve done my part and have exceeded expectations in higher tone. He smiled back and said dude, you’ve got a great whip.

He told few observations too,
1. I’d like to see you in formals at office(which likely to remain observation next time too).
2. Log in timing, need to maintain.
3. No round collared T’s(again it’ll continue though).