50 gone, 500 to come

It is exactly 50 days since the blogspot - http://katteboyzbng.blogspot.com/ (the only other blog am an administrator of) has been in place and it’s been a totally interesting journey till now. I am leaving for the day in a while but do not want to miss writing today as this IS something that goes out there for all the folks expressing themselves more candidly than ever.

Number crunching:
Total members: 10
Start date: Oct 16th 2008
First 20 days: Hardly anything moved, the creator of the blogspot (Veteral blogger - Vidyashankar Harappanahalli - popularly known as VSS) was the contributor too
Next 30 days: 30 blogs! (A blog a day) - This is a quantum change considering the facts that:
Eight of the members were first timers - never blogged
All are pressed for time; most are married too
Non contributors: 0, only three of the members (I am one of them), have not authored blogs but they have had their witty comments. Am sure they have so much to write that they are still in process of choosing the “to-be” blockbuster)

I have been a steady observer (and a commentator too) of the blogspot and it’s worth noting the two most apparent actions which I believe have led to what it is today - full of life.

The right Connect - What is in it for me?
It was the creator of the blogspot who realized every available lead into an opportunity to conceptualize the blog. It is this VSS (who was in France sometime ago and still didn’t manage to meet me) who wired the connections. I reckon he did appraise the existence of a virtual free universe of expression to canalize thoughts into words on a webpage in the internet.

How is that?
A few words and a pat on the back made the difference. And yes, a word of caution, all this came naturally! No filmy melodrama in here. Well infact, if you were to go through the blogs, you’ll soon notice that melodrama is not the flavor of coffee this brotherhood savors. Due the fact that everyone appreciated everyone else in their own Being, at worse, nothing could go wrong!

I leave it up to you to tweak the above into today’s management gyan.

I am amazed by the versatility of the blogs. It’s every world out there - Fiction, Fact, Poetry, Literature, Engineering and much more to come.

All in all, to speak for all, kudos to the elite Gemeinde (I’ll let you wonder and wander for an online translator). Today is Friday and as always the tribe will be at the pinnacle of self realization, topped with extra spirits - and so will I.

And yes, all the reasons to cheer VSS and see him off to cloud nine - only for a while:-

hic-hic-hic

Hören sie musik?

Now that winter has kicked in and Christmas around the corner, more often I see dense, obtuse smoke out of the chimneys of many Homes. I reckon they are from the Fireplaces. I love to capture these magic moments but my camera is too good for such shots at night. Time to await my bonus to blow it up on a Nikon SLR.

The impact is seen almost everywhere, less folks in restaurants, office, streets and even swimming pools. Thanks to winter, I now have fewer accidents in the pool (But I used to rule in India, I remember days in December when there were only two - A Doctor who was a religious swimmer and I). Now, if you're guessing that I might have just missed Gold in Olympics....I wish you could be right:-( I am a humble, slow, lazy shark in water. Mine are 40-50 mins crawling with 2 breaks of 3 mins each (I shouldn't miss other colorful stuff you know). I know most of the staff and occasionally keep having a word with them.

It was on a Sunday that I saw this new lady staff who was starring at me every now and then. She bore an amalgamation of expressions - curiosity, perplexity, bewilderment, and what not. I had to ascertain the obvious. It was time soon and I cautiously got out of water when she was not around and headed towards the shower in swift pace - only to meet her right in front of the shower door. I smiled and said "hallo" and so did she. The immediate question she had was "hören sie musik warend schwimmen?"(close to this) which translates into "do you listen to music while swimming?" I took some seconds to let the question sink in and hesitantly said "Nein" (No). Next, she pointed to the thread across my chest and asked what it was. Well, it was the Janai that I put around my neck (while in action) which seemed to her as cords of a new swim slim, ultra light model of iPod which plays in water as well!!

With all the words I knew, I explained her what it means to me - the cords of general merit in India.

Fests beat Pests

It was 3AM in the morning that I returned Home after having been to the "Weinnachtsmarkt" (Christmas market). Of course, these markets close at about 10PM and I was playing Snooker till 2:30AM (And I won 4 games to 2)

I have been observing ever since am here in Germany that almost every month there is always one thing or the other happening at one place or the other (in the near vicinity). The term used is "Fest" which translates into "Festival" in English. Let me cite a few of them:

March - May: "Stadtfest" These are fests that "Rathaus" (Local Municipality) sponsors. A gathering where the entire village comes together. I was surprised to see that almost everyone in my village knows everyone else (I've to say it is not small either, has a population of about 13000). Happens in every town, an opportunity to walk to the Festplatz (Festival hall) and happily get drunk (you need not have to drive back anyways:-). It was in this fest that I heard to “Zap-Gang” a popular rock band in Germany and take it from me - they Rock!

The planning is such that not all StadtFests happen at the same time. They are spread so that you can still enzoy in the neighborhood village if you miss yours!

June - August: Peak Summertime. The time of the year when one can see everyone cycling. The “Freibad” (Open air swimming pools) are flocked and so are the Beer Gardens. Lot of open air music fests. I was more than privileged to have my colleague take me to one such music fest - “Das Fest” in Karlsruhe. The biggest gathering in the state here (Baden Wurttemberg), no entry fee but one rolls bottles till death. Good bands invited, both German and English. About 50000, full of life jam packed crowd. Not to mention the orsem food and many small attractions - from tattooing to body piercing. Very sensibly organized with a lot of toilets:-)
This is still, the only time; I have traveled by train in Germany. It was a 20 min train journey from my place to the Fest and I returned by the last train at 1AM - which reminded me of Mumbai local trains (am serious)

Sept - October: “Winzerfest”. This is how the Autumn is celebrated with new wine from the wine yards. It is called “Nuerwein” (New wine) which is sweet and served in .5 l glasses. Got to be careful as it starts fermenting once it is in your belly:-) the less you drink, more it becomes:- Even these are planned in advance and well spread across the region. Nothing to worry if you've missed to sip new wine at your place - It’ll be newer next week in the neighborhood

Not to mention the Beer fests in October - Though it is only the Munich fest which makes to papers, October beer fests is a commonality, I guess throughout EU. (I was in Belgium in the last week of October and I saw a poster titled October Beer Fest)

November - December: "Weinnachtsmarkt" - Christmas Night Market. Open all day but attracts crowd during evening and nights. Bummer on freezing temperature. Who cares?! You have "Gluhwein"! It is a wine that is zested with aromatic spices and many other liqueurs. Served hot, the best hot wine I've had. Imagine sipping hot wine at night amidst snow! Ofcourse, you could soon find yourself in no man's land if you abuse 'em

"SauerKraut": A typical German dish - fermented shredded cabbage and sausages, served with Wine. A delicacy in the Rheinland Pfalz (A state in south Germany). However, there is also a fest by this name in Autumn. It was in November first week at my village.

I’ll stop here. I reckon there a couple more like this but let me conclude.

I was said that the people here in Germany (rather Europeans) are more to themselves and do not have or enjoy much of social life. My friend says “reality is stranger than fiction” and so it is! Come what may, rain, snow, storm, scorching heat, folks just do not care. They just do it. They are right there with Jack Wolfskins, Umbrellas, Buggies, , - - - but they are. Nothing matters. They do come out and enjoy, do a lot of small talk (though there is nothing called as small talk for Germans. You ask “How is the weather today”, rest assured, you’ll get a weather report), greet everyone with all pleasure; beer’s on the floor, so are music and food

And these fests in fact act as a catalyst in keeping them alive. No doubts about it.

A striking fact is that we have festivals spread throughout the year in India too. Each one has its own timing and significance. Now, to look at the basic principle, we have invented festivals to come out of our couches, look around, network, socialize, appreciate life and rejuvenate. It is in this sense the festivals are to be lived.

Until next Fest,

Gulmohar.

Do we see the big picture?

Recently, two of my close friends were in deep depression - As always, I used my solid consoling skills and made them feel better over weeks. Both of them are housewives married to their loves, have children, totally committed to their families and are convinced of what they are doing for the family. They cook, raise children and look after their husbands well.

The first lady is bugged up of the same life everyday. In her own words, it is just the same stuff that she does everyday. No change at all. She is connected to a few people and at times she wishes that she were to be them or do things that they're doing. But she cannot because of the commitments and constraints. At times, she's too hard on kids for not listenening to her. So many things make her feel sad. I asked her what would make her happy and her reply was I do not know
The second is a young lady who has just stepped into motherhood. In her words, she understands her husband well and always working for the better of the family. But she's not getting what she wants in return. It is simple love and empathy that she expects from her husband which she thinks, is deprived of. She's good but the world is cruel to her.

I had to highlight in bold to both of them their brighter sides of life, give instances and cite opportunities on how they can get into a lot of excitement and eventually realise that life is simply beautiful (which I am still in process of assimilating and implementing for my own self).

Of course, they had different problems but I could see one tangible commonality in both of them:
They see only what they want to see in the world around - they have a terribly narrow vision on what they want to see in people. They see only that part which interests them and the rest is simply out of focus.
The chances are naturally high to stumble on framing a wrong opinion because they see only a part and not the whole. The big picture is completely lost! To cite an example, if I am fanatic about reading newspapers every morning (which I am definitely not:-) and the gentleman next door doesn't even subscribe them, for me he becomes a dull guy though he's a rocket scientist by profession. And all this happens in a split second - it is so fast and probably our neurons fire the same way everytime, the moment it sees a trend - just like antivirus routers.

Putting into the right words, our (allow me to extrapolate and make this generic) love towards our children, parents, friends and whomsoever connected is as I said - very narrow which has a defined scope and strict boundary - it is conditional. There are inumerable instances of this very same loophole in our everyday life. When I started interviewing people for my company, 3 years back, I initially used to probe candidates with stuff that interests me rather than getting to know the candidate's strengths and then relate them to our needs and organizational standards. It was not even 10 candidates for about a month, I started hating interviews and looked for excuses to avoid them. But shortly I realized that I am being very mean and unfair to the candidates to impose conditions and topics that I am a interested in - suddenly interviewing became a pleasure! Every interview was a great opportunity to know people and in fact I was recognized for being the most active participant in recruitment for that year having interviewed a whooping 98 candidates. This for me has always been a good reference and am happy that it has a documented evidence - my hours are booked in a system with date, candidate name and feedback too!

Next time we meet the guy next door/colleague/wife/children/husband - let's make a consious effort not to stereotype them.

Whatever goes around, comes around

It was last month that I finished reading a book on Yoga - "Iyengar - the Yoga master" and needless to say, I was thrilled by what people had to say about Yoga and the Master himself. One has to be terribly great to have his name added to the Oxford dictionary and to be named as one of Top 100 people by the Times magazine.

So, a week later, I decided to see if Iyengar Yoga can be my cup of tea as well and decided to search for some yogic practitioners in Germany. The results were simply too much for me to digest! I could find more than 50 certified teachers of BKS Iyengar method in Berlin alone (which is atleast 5 times more than the # of similar schools in entire state of Karnataka in India!). I could also find that the teachers are spread almost to the length and breadth of Germany - from Aachen in the West, Rostock in the North, to Freiburg in the South. Indian Yoga is unequivocally popular in the heart of EU and this made my raise my head and blow my trumpet in Office that whole week:-

While India is embracing the West and Rest , are the Rest and West reciprocating? I think days are not far when people from the West travel to India to hold seminars and workshops on Yoga! (or is this reality already?).

Call easy!

It is not more than an year ago that I was new in Europe and had just relocated. My Employer was kind enough to grant the first 20 days of accommodation for free and I was taken to a guest house - which was well furnished and maintained too. It had a WLAN, parking garage, furished kitchen, free laundry service etc. not to forget the Television - a replica of CP/M professional system released at the beginning of the 80's, powered by an Intel 8085 processor, 80x24 text resolution on a 12" built-in green phosphor monitor. Nevertheless, it had a brand new rocket age remote control - which was more colorful than then TV itself! I bet, the landlord would have paid more for the remote than the value of the TV then:-) It was torturous to look at it for the first 30 secs after switchin it On when the fluorescent green display turned into multicolor display:-

The landlord also gracefully pulled a contract the moment I stepped into the house and had it signed by me. It had all the restrictions under the Sun:
1. No watching TV b/w 2200 - 0800 hrs
2. No smokin
3. No littering
4. Wipin the shower glass after every shower (there was a free demo too
5. Being ultra careful with the keys - losing which invited a fine
6..
7..

And so there was a small note saying "the telephone would be charged on usage basis and the guest is required to clear the dues on the day of vacating the house"

As I had arrived on sunday and the city was literally dead (Europeans go in for Nirvana on sundays), I grabbed the telephone to catch up with my buddies back home. Somehow, my risk appetite stopped me from talkin for long and I guess I was on the phone for about 70 mins. So, days and weeks passed and I couldn't get the mobile phone as my Passport was submitted to the registration office for visa stamping - - not surprisingly, I used the Home phone a few more times but now, not more than 5 min in total.

And finally the day came or rather the landlord came to me with the bill which had a whooping 408 Euros! Which is good enough to:
1. buy swimming passes in an indoor pool for 4 continuous years
2. fly from Berlin to Zurich and return - 4 times - in Lufthansa (all inclusive and miles too, this data is as on today from Lufthansa website)
3. pay your electricity bills in Europe for a lil more than an year (If you're single, you would have to pay about 30+ Euros/month)
4. and yes, speak to say US for 45000 mins (24/7 - for a month) to any landphone/handphone over internet!! (This rate is from Europe to US at the rate of 1 cent/min - which is prevailing at this time)

One of the above or a 70 min telephone call - - unfortunately, I had to choose the latter ('coz, I like small numbers you know)

This runs down as the the most stupid thing I have done in my life till date. On the other side, its really amazing to look at the way technology is changing and affecting our lives pretty much personally and directly.

Days are not far when these calls would just become free to and from all over the world (of course we have this already if 2 people wishing to talk are on the same domain, Gtalk and Skype are good examples).
Days are not far when the conventional telephone companies just run out of business if they don't change
Days are not far when there's seamless connectivity between people - world will not only be flat but nearer too

On the other hand, its vulnerable too - atleast as of now, there are still ways to hack into your conversation, so, if your wife's a computer savvy, make sure to speak to your girlfriend over physical phones


Gulmohar.

Cloud computing - where is technology headed to?

Something cloudy? Not exactly.
I heard this new buzzword at my workplace some months back and its interesting to know how and where the technology is headed to.

Cloud computing is the highest degree of encapsulation to the user wherein she/he cannot see anything running behind his desktop as such. Rather on the other side, the users need not worry about the underlying infrastructure/applications enabling them to place a purchase order for his employer. But the question is - do these really work?! There are already instances of such realization. The best examples are Google/Yahoo/Amazon. We are in the verge of following the footsteps of outsourcing fever that started a few years ago. The mantra of outsourcing was "give away and earn more" and the same seems to be slowly applying to clouds as well

Some food for thought:

Pros:
1.
Effective usage of computing power - the greatest advantage is that we will be able to do efficient and effective computing with this model. We are definitely far below the ideal threshold usage of computing power with our pervasive and disparate computing capacities

2.
Easy regulatory compliance as the only record needed in most of the cases would be a SAS70 report. So, the company saves effort and some smart bucks too!

3.
Reduced IT budget. With the prices being attractive and on-demand, this appears to be the way to go! So, it could be time to fire some IT employees:-

The other side of the coin:

1.
Is the same level of security ensured as one would have on-premise? Ofcourse contractually the vendors are bound to maintain confidentiality. But have we reached an ideal world already?

2.
This will also open up a new world with a chain of vendors, say vendor X offering an application which in turn is hosted by the infrastructure provided by vendor Y. Who would be liable in case the customer loses his data integrity? Will this be just another law suite as many others that go on for years?

3.
Are the exit options safe? How can I make sure, there's no image left on the cloud after I discontinue to use the service?


Nevertheless, for me, it appears we are not there yet. Of course, not a bad start at all. I would use on-premise for my core business and any day use clouds for non-core businesses (anyways, does it matter?


Gulmohar.

Smokin kills?

Does it matter?! Well, that's what even I think when I have that burning tobacco between my fingers. But soon after am done with blowin them into flames, I think it does worse than killing..

A cigarette in my hand,
I feel like a Man, the flames moving up in the air,
listening to "waiting for the Sun" - Jim Morrison in the band
quitters are not winners, to think like this is just not fair:-(


Gulmohar.

First law of Thermodynamics

In my Engineering days, I religiously studied (and probably forgot to understand:-) the first law of Thermodynamics - "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, the sum total of the energy in an isolated system remains constant". What a memory! Call it the power of mug-up

Then it was not too much in the past, that I started wondering if the law would be true, how the hell can we produce enormous amount of nuclear energy with so little input power? Is this an issue of a lot of benefit with negligible cost? My deeper sence of consciousness yelled at me to figue out how this works. A bit of scratching my head resulted in the below:

All bogs down to the law of gravity. The law of gravitation is that every body attracts another in a manner directly proportional to their mass and inversly proportional to the square of the distance between them. Naturaly, the gravitational force between the consitutents of an atom is enormously large because of the distance between them is infinitely small. So in case, the Nucleus is split (which is in fact the case in nuclear power generation), the amount if energy that has to get released has to be obviously huge:-

And the 2nd point is that the first law of Thermodynamic also takes into consideration of the system attributes - - It says that the energy is constant in an isolated system. And our case has 2 independent isolated systems - so problem solved!

By the way, when I think about the law of gravitation, it was only after a couple of years of my school days that I got to realise the exact law. Until then I was wondering that if I were to stand at one of the Poles of our planet and drop a ball, the ball would be gone for ever in space (because, its opposite to what I do when I am away from the poles - to throw a ball upwards and it comes down) and it was hard for me to believe and to imagine too -
But then I came to know that the force acts towards the center of the Earth and in fact even in Poles, I can only throw it upwards:-!


Gulmohar.

Word of the day - - - KATTE

Literal translation of word "Katte" (Pronounced as "Cut"+"Tey") into English is "Bench". This english word is well known and used pervasively among the software engineers in India. Whenever people have not been staffed on any projects, it is to say that they are on Bench:-)

Now, Katte on its constructive sense is to use it to:
1. catch up with your comrades on an evening
2. have discussions that does and doesn't matter
3. have some tobacco butted
4. and kill time:-

What can a Katte be:
1. any meeting point (Treffpunkt for our Deutsche pals)
2. any smokin corner
3. any literal bench in a parkland

So, thats about it. Each one of you shall have some kind of a Katte - - think about it and post it. It shall be interesting to spread the variants and versatility of Katte


Gulmohar.

Saaz....the musical journey

It's movie and music time:-


People who have the minutest of interest in classical music will just rock on the songs in this movie. Watch it online for a price or grab yourself a DVD. The movie is directed by Padma Bhushan awardee Sai Pranjape - who is also the director of - "Chashme Baddoor" - must watch for Katte (Refer to my blog http://go-for-a-kill.blogspot.com/2008/07/word-of-day-katte.html) and all Bachelors) - a straight simple comedy movie starring none other than Farroq Shaik and Deepthi Naval.

Now, back to Saaz, the music is directed by Pt. Zakir Hussain, Bupen Hazarika and Rajkamal. Pt. Zakir Hussain has acted too.. The movie is a smooth storyline based on music and strong emotions. Listen to the classic on Youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FS39rjdSF2c - - Kavita Krishnamurthy
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vji36gxM9-g&feature=related - Suresh wadekar


Gulmohar.

What is goin for a kill?!

Hey Guest! Welcome to the "Does it matter" blogs!
Do soak up and just kill time - afterall, you wouldn't be doing this if were not to kill time:-)
Rest assured, you'll constructively kill time in here!!

More to come
Gulmohar.