The Run, The Kid and Life!

7:20 on my watch and I’m still at home. The bus halts at the stop at 7:24 , not a moment late. Sigh! This was one of those days when I wonder how the driver manages to be right on time everyday. Thanks to my fast paced walk, I almost made it to the crossroads. Had to run behind it for about half a kilometer.. but still Spiky made it!

Sweating and Panting, I occupy seat 24 and by sheer instinct open the window. The bus jerks along and a few minutes later it happens to take one of the flyovers. Still staring out of the window and worried about certification and all that crap I keep gaping in open space.

Well, I’m not alone in my thoughts. The Oxford International school bus seems to be moving at almost the same pace parallely and there’s this cute kid for some reason crying silently. For no apparent reason I get back to my senses and give her a fake smile. She manages to reciprocate that and even before I do anything else, her bus overtakes mine. She turns back and keeps looking at my bus wide mouthed.

At the next crossroads we happen to come face to face again and this time she takes the initiative of smiling and then waves her hand. I wave back in a kiddo fashion :-)  .This makes her more ecstatic. She beckons her friends and says something. All of them then turn towards me, then gape at each other and giggle like nuts.

Boy! Wish I could capture that Kodak moment.There’s a lot that we tend to forget in this mad race called life. We happen to miss out on those subtle nuances , things that could make a world of a difference to you and more so, people around you if experienced in the real spirit. But then who cares of nuances? Everyone’s behind making himself a part of the bigger picture. A picture called Success, Promotion, Recognition and oh yes! that mirage which they call LIFE. Pathetic!

Ah! So what about my certification? It’s gone with the kid!

Have you smiled today?

Spiky! The moon’s setting…

The 1.5 hr travel back home in the traffic is taking its toll. It was fine for the first one month, but of late I’ve realized there’s nothing much productive that I’m able to do once I’m back and whatever little I can force myself to, isn’t really helping me.

This month seems to be a bit demanding. I’ve got to pick up on .Net , complete an internal certification and oh yes, there’s the french certification exam too. Besides, I’ve got to avoid sacrificing  my personal time come what may. After all , that’s one thing that keeps me motivated .

From yesterday, I’ve started tuning my body clock.  I get back home by around 9:00 pm , have my dinner by 9:30pm and hit the bed by 10:30.  Morning by around 3:30am I’m all fresh to get up and get things started. And thanks to my motion sensitive grey cells I also get to have a 1hr catnap on the way to office! With no much disturbances that early, my work gets done quickly. Things are working just great and hope it continues .

Hydventura!

A day to remember!

We officially launched the Hyderabad Adventure Group - Hydventura today in the Infy Campus . This is something that was ‘In the pipeline’ for quite some time and now after some dilly dallying the group is finally out! We’re 70 + now and will soon have our first outing sometime Feb-end or early march. We’re planning to expand once we get a foothold in organising outdoor events.

Activities not constrained to Trekking, outdoor survival, Biking, site explorations, Rafting , Rock climbing, Para-sailing would soon be planned. Hydventura would try to do it’s little bit in bringing out the importance of outdoor recreational activities and at the same time spread awareness in the public the necessity to keep a check on exploitation of nature.

P.S: Hydventura is a club started by a group of Infoscions in their own interest. The company is no way related to the activities here-in and all activities would more or less be Dutch outings!

Idea star singer

Before you read any further, on a frontal note, this post is in no way related to the participants in the show or the show as such.

I rarely watch TV shows. But of late, I’ve been following this particular show called ‘The Idea star singer’ which is screened on Asianet at around 9 pm IST . That’s mainly because, people in my house are hooked on to it and I rarely get to shift channels while having dinner. Initially all that interested me in it was the way various participants portrayed themselves in creative outfits and the various dance steps they choreographed. But of late as the show comes to it’s end, you really get to learn a lot from it.

Elimination is a very jittery aspect in any performance show. Even worse, when things come to the fag end and wherein competition is amongst the equals. The way a show evolves  more or less depends on how the emotions of the participants are handled collectively by the anchor and the judges. I remember watching a show quite sometime back where things turned the other way round. The judge happened to go overboard with his comments and the contestant just couldn’t handle it. Supporters of the contestant grew wild and it took the organisers quite some time to get the situation back under control.

The same scenario when related to real life, throws light on how critical saying the right words at the right time is. As I see it , Communication is 25 percent of knowledge and 75 percent of skillset! All that matters is how efficiently you can portray your thoughts in a given time span.

Do have a glimpse of the show when you’re free. Even if you don’t understand Malayalam, do watch it for the way Usha Uthup and the other Judges handle a juicy situation. There’s quite something that can be learnt from them!

With the power vested in me…

Just a couple of moments together and all those memories strike you like a wild torrent from no where. It makes me wonder at times why it always happens this way. You never even bother to think about them when you have all the time in the world but when they’re right in front of you, you want those moments to just get back to you.

I’d been to Chennai with a few of my friends from Hyderabad for my convocation last weekend. Though we’d applied for the In-Absentia mode, we thought this was one event we just couldn’t miss. Machi, Adi, Abi and I left on friday evening by the Egmore Exp. MV, Kittu and his cousin Hari joined us at the station. Kranthi and Thopz were supposed to meet us but then had to drop their plans as they’d got their visa for their Masters at Hertfordshire university and had to fly the next day. The train journey was as such pretty boring. We reached Arrakonam at about five in the morning. People started pouring in by around 6:30 am. We managed to get a room in one of the lodges and left for the University at around 11:00 am.

The convocation was to begin at around 3:00pm and registrations were supposed to be done with by 1:00 pm. As we’d applied for the In-Absentia mode, we were relative free. Our time was best spent in the classrooms and the hostel rooms. The moment you’re in the hostel, you’ve got people all over the place calling you ‘Anna’ It was in fact wonderful to get back to those ‘Senior’ days! People keep asking you advices , career prospects or just for the heck of it pull your leg, very well knowing that you’re just a year wiser than them. But still even that matters

The main event was as somber as it can get. The regular lecturing stuff, nothing really motivating. The person is called on to the stage , a moment for which he’s been paying shit loads of money for the past four years and finally when that moment comes he gets to be there only for a second. I wonder how convocations in Foreign Universities are! Here it’s more of a formality than a bonding between the university and the alumni. Moments after the ceremony got over, I had to rush to the Admin to get my certificate . They’d told me that the certificate wouldn’t be handed to me on the stage as I’d not registered prior to the convocation. Anyways, looking at how things went in the ceremony, I’m more than happy I got to be away from it and enjoy the fun from far . It at least gave me some time to catch up with people whom I’m not sure whether or not I would meet later.

We decided to stay back at Pavan’s place in Adyar that night. We left at about 9:30 pm and reached his house at around 00:30 am. I was tired as a pig and believe me, I’ve never slept that well for quite a few days ! Next day morning at around 8:00am we walked down to the Besant nagar beach. This was just about a km from where Pavan stayed. To be frank, I never knew Chennai could be this beautiful! In contrast to The marina, The Besant nagar beach was pretty clean and the ambience was definitely breath taking. It was a wonderful sight to see the fishermen catching fish with magnanimous nets that early in the morning. This is something that you simply don’t get to see in a place like Hyderabad Vairavan joined us a few minutes later and we had a great time together. The Horse ride on the beach shore gave a silver lining to the beach episode .

The rest of the day was spent in Burma bazar with Abi and Adi scouting for Movie and Game CD’s . This is one place that they just don’t miss out when they go to Chennai! . We could manage to have a brief stop by at Spencer Plaza where Rohit met us and even before we realised, it was 4:00pm. Our return train was at about 4:45 pm so we had to rush to the Station. Reached Hyderabad today morning and everything is back to square one now. Nevertheless, Two days of travelling, a few hours in the scenic beach and recollecting those innumerable wonderful memories have rejuvenated my mind .

The Hyderabad Journal

It’s been a week since this idea conceived in my brain and this weekend I figured out some time to work on it. I’ve launched another blog in wordpress. But for a change this is something serious. The central idea is to develop an Ad free, simple interface site which could be a one stop site for all the latest happenings in Hyderabad and also serve as a travel guide in the city. I call it the Hyderabad Simplified Online Project (HSOP)

You may want to check it out HERE

Browsers et al

Of late, browsers are behaving weird on my PC. I’ve got Firefox and Safari on the system.

Firefox is just not able to handle WordPress and Safari, in all it’s might is trying to remove all the paragraph formatting! The best part is that I’m using a pretty stable version of firefox ( The 2.0.0.11 version). Any leads on what the problem could be? Could it be an issue conflict with a recently installed plugin ?

Anyways, Shall get back to it tomorrow. It’s high time I hit bed and leave you contemplating. (That’s if at all you are!  )

Futurescaping!

It’s about 1:00 am now. I hit the bed and for no reason start looking back in the past reasoning out my future. Just couldn’t keep myself thinking so thought I’d better keep a record of it !

The year 2008 seems to be quite promising! It’s not been even a month, and I’ve managed to junk my otherwise boring lyf right by the groins! Some things turned out as planned and most propped up just out of the blue all culminating to one reasonable goal. At times, this reminds me of ‘Zahir’. Not that I particularly liked the book , but a few fundas that Coelho talks seem to be fall right in place.

There’s nothing remarkable that has happened. But still it’s those small victories that gives you the satisfaction and that is what, I believe , is really important.

Para-Gliding: I’d been thinking of learning to para-glide by this year end. This Jan 15th , during Sankaranthi, instead of flying kites I flew myself ! I’d been to Hoskote for Para-sailing. Para-sailing is in no way a preparatoy step towards Para-gliding, but when you realise you are inching towards something that you’d aimed to accomplish, that’s the best moral support you can have.

French: French was a language I was always passionate about. Thankfully, I got an oppurtunity to learn spoken french right in the campus. What else could I have asked for? Positively, by this Feb end, I’d have a reasonable command over the language. It’s gonna take quite some time for me to get a hang of it but still the first and the main step is taken!

Dancing: I’ve never danced on stage. But wait , that was till today evening. I just happened to participate in an inter IBU dance competition. The event Mythri - 08 was held by the IVS IBU and am actually thankful to them. But for them , I never would have realised how logically easy dancing was. I’ve no inhibitions in jumping on a DJ floor, I’ve done it several times before, but then a performance before a massive crowd is something which I wouldn’t even have dreamt of doing. This was my first ever stage performance. It wasn’t all that fabulous but believe me it’s given me the confidence of taking part in any other dance event! Besides, it’s also taught me that the real happiness is not in winning but realising that you’ve made that initiative to win. Sooner or later, you’d be able to make a mark!

Action points!

Guitar: It’s been a while that I’ve practised on the Guitar. I’ve realised attending classes alone is not helping me much. So once the french classes are done, this is something I really want to get back to!Swimming: Swimming is the only sport that I’m interested in and something to which I can manage to give full dedication. It’s high time I use my potential and scale up. Gotta participate in competitions and get the clock ticking.

Adventure: My latest passion! I’d be participating in the National level Adventure race, Enduro3 taking place this feb in Pune. To be frank, I’m participating, not to win. It’s more about the exposure that I’m looking forward to. From what I understand, this is not a place where any Tom , Dick or Harry is gonna groove in. People practise for weeks with diligence to make it up there and it’s only being amidst them will I really understand what it takes to be there! May cost me a bit in terms of both physical and monetory exertion, but then you need to make a choice.

Adventura-Hyd: I plan to start an Adventure group based from Hyderabad in lines with AdVentura- Bangalore. It’s just about twining the loose threads now. A few days of late nights after my french thingy and things should fall in place. This has to be done!

Certifications: Besides finishing my internal certifications at the earliest, I plan to do a couple of certifications in Open Source. In technology, if there’s something that really interests me, its only UNIX and Open Source. I’ve not yet got into the nitty gritty of things. But that’s soon going to happen!

This is all that is looming in my grey cells for now. Got a Republic day Marathon in the Campus tomorrow. Something which I simply do not want to miss.

So Bonne nuit!