ceasersvault

Is it fair to be critical of the situation in India?

2008-10-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Every time two Indians meet up, at some point in their conversation the discussion ends up in the state of affairs in India. Sometimes it ends up in an optimistic beat. But more often it ends up with a sigh of disgust of how corrupt, unfair and desperate the state of affairs are. So the question I am trying to ponder today is, is it fair for us to be critical and, for lack of better words, bitch about the state of the nation?

The greatest argument that comes up in my mind and I am sure I have heard from many quarters is why the person who is so vocal in his or her disapproval of the way things are doesn't even raise a finger to act to do anything about it. Since I am one of those mentioned above I guess it becomes of ever greater interest to me to ponder over this.

In school we were taught to be be constructive critics, which meant that when you criticize the way something is, you should also suggest what would have been the appropriate act that would have remedied the situation. The classic example always quoted is the democratic house of representatives, which in India is the parliament at the national level and the state legislature at the state level. Most days proceedings get disrupted or come to a premature end as a result of the opposition crying out endless arguments and many a times abuses criticizing the ruling party for inefficiency and inadequacy. The irony here is that almost all these allegations get repeated by the current ruling party the next time they became an opposition.

So the question is, is it natural human tendency to be critical of the other. I guess it is so. The curse of self righteousness is ingrained in all of us, and it takes great effort and discipline to break out of the shell and learn to appreciate the point of view and the thought process of another person especially when the other person subscribes to a different school of thoughts. So coming back to my original question, is it natural and normal for persons to be critical of the state of the nation even when they have shown no interest in involving in any actions to do anything about it. The answer would be yes, its normal.

So let me venture to ponder over the more complex question. Is it fair or is it morally right for a person to do so? The answer sounds straight forward enough, its wrong to do so. I guess a simple litmus test for this would be to answer the question what does these discussions often result in. Does it help improve anything? Does it hold anyone accountable to make improvements? In most instances if not all the answer is no. so what does it lead to then? A lower national pride among Indians, an even lesser engaged group of citizens who have lost belief in the opportunities that nationhood and concerted efforts can bring. It mars the hope of change and spreads the sickening feeling and evil of disappointment and disenfranchisement. The most outrageous part of all this is these are people who do this consider themselves extremely patriotic and feel they do great good talking about all this.

So what should one do about this? Well to answer this question I would go back to the answer to the first question where I talked about. One should come out of their aura of self righteous egos and try to think in the shoes of the players who they are criticizing. Many a times its true that individuals in the system deserve to be blamed and condemned, but if your individual condemnation in your living room wouldn't make an iota difference in the state of affairs I would guess you are doing more harm that good by discussing this. The other aspect to think is our nature to generalize based on a few bad apples, or may be a few baskets of bad apples. But the good news is that a bunch a really good apples still happen to exist even in the midst of all these bad apples and still continue to be untarnished by all the infection around them. I believe this is what each one of us should concentrate on. The act of concentrating on the good boosts our morale, makes each of us feel good, makes us feel like emulating some of them, reaffirms our belief in all the good in the world and inspires the spirit of nationhood and patriotism that is probably at the lowest in all of us. And if sufficient momentum is attains in this movement, who knows the bad apples might realize they are starting to get ignored and might decide to follow the the bandwagon and make amendments to their attitudes and actions. Good events have as much a tendency to snowball itself as bad events do.

Information technology in India

2007-11-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

Its a popular joke that when you walk on any Indian street every other person you meet would be an IT professional. With globalization and open market economy introduced into India in 1992 by a visionary finance minister who is the current prime minister of India, the country has in a short period of 15 years established for itself a complete monopoly in the industry of IT.

Its interesting and perhaps quite alarming the way every Indian youth today aspires to be an IT professional. Its as though all of a sudden all the Indian youth seems to be good at is just one thing, writing software code! I wonder if the very people who take up the profession realize they are doing this mostly out of peer pressure than real interest. Evidence for this is on the rise as more IT professionals in India confess to be victims of stress and mental turbulence, even a whole new trend of suicides and attempted suicides!

So what led to this dangerous state of affairs? If you are someone who is not familiar with the economy and social setup in India I should start by saying that about 95% of people living in most Indian cities belong to the middle class, a majority of whom struggled all their way to the life they have today. For these individuals, all their memories till date are filled with events in life where they struggled to make ends meet with their meager 4 digit salaries they earned even after years of service. Money, or rather shortage of money has been a pivotal point around which their life has revolved, and they knowingly or not passed on most of the same stigma to their kids. So it shouldn't be surprising when the same kids when faced with the prospect of earning 5 and 6 digit salaries find themselves carried away from any aspirations or dreams they carried.(If at all they bothered to find out where their heart lay at all. )

So is this a good thing or a bad thing? Probably I just did a major disservice to the industry that has earned me whatever I possess today, even though that is an extremely modest much. But we should not try to ignore that fact that we might be losing out a lot of talent in our young and booming country to a profession that, to remain honest to my word, I should profess doesn't need much of brains to be a part of. Probably our present day Ramanujans and CV Ramans and wasting away writing java and .net code for Walmart and JC Penny!

When I write this article I look upon myself and call me the greatest hypocrite to be born on earth. I ask myself what stopped me in choosing something of my liking, something where my heart lies. Well I can tell you the answer is simple. I didn't know where my heart lied, still cant name one thing that I feel I should have chased to the end of my passion. And having asked this question to almost every friend of mine who is a part of IT I know each and every one of them feels just the same.

So do I feel miserable being here? Definitely not. I feel like this was where I was always destined to be. I feel I couldn't have done better anywhere else than here. So to be frank I really have no regrets of being here at all. But would I advise my sister or my kids(some day when I have them) to aspire to enter the IT industry? HELL NO!!! I cant let this happen to another one of my kin!

Making of a genius

2007-11-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

They say there is a genius in all of us. All humans are supposed to be born with similar abilities. Its the environment and experiences that his life goes through that defines where he/she reaches in life. At least so goes philosophy.

I had the fortune of doing my bachelors in the most sought after department in the most sort after Engineering college in my state. So for my part I have seen quite a few geniuses in the making. One thing I could pride myself with is my sense of observation of people around me and their habits, and I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot in common among these individuals.

That being said, going by the converse theory if all geniuses had similar habits, would developing the very same habits make one a genius? Probably not, but it would definitely give you the same edge these genius have besides the blessed brainpower they possess.
So what are these traits that I am talking about?

Confidence

Each one of them knew themselves that they were exceptionally good at what they did. This gave them an enormous sense of confidence. If I took one example from the many individuals I am talking about that would be a friend by the name Srinath. He was a mathematic freak to say the least. When a problem of the most challenging nature was thrown at the whole class many of us approached it with the stigma of an unattainable goal. But not only was he blessed with one of the best mathematical acumen, he never ever had any second thoughts about weather he would be able to solve the puzzle. I believe that freed up his mind from all qualms and made a huge impact in the results he produced.

Passion

All genius that I have come to know have had a passion for the subject they excelled in. They might stay up night after night obsessed with a project once they get started with one. I remember this friend of mine who is a computer nerd. I remember the first years in college when none of us had a PC at home and only access to computers was the labs we had at college. There was one point at which they had expanded the facilities but for some reason new chairs hadn't been added yet. This was the state of affairs for some time. So we had a few precious PCs that could not be used because there were no chairs! This friend of mine, RG, used to work on these PCs, even the entire day at times standing, or on his knees. It seemed even more awkward because he was 6'2” and he had to stoop like an arc to do this, but he never seemed to mind. He had so much passion in what he did that he was always far ahead of even perhaps most of the lecturers in the department in his knowledge of computers. He got selected from campus to Lucent Techologies, but then went to work for Texas Instruments and now moved on to Microsoft.
If there is one trait each and every one of the genius-in-the-works I have come across, it was passion for what they did. A passion that could make them stay up nights, forget pains or strains, give up all other pleasures for the one passion they believed in.

Know where your heart lies

One unique quality about any genius I saw was how early in life they knew what they were good at.
When I look at the facts through a dissection microscope I see these men and women started what they did at a very early age in their life. So in effect they focused all their efforts and honed their skills over a long period of time in this particular field of theirs. Well, considering the amount of time they consciously and unconsciously put in towards improving their skills in one particular subject it might not be as surprising after all what they have become at the end.

The right connections

It is said the birds of the same feather flock together. I see this very much true with the people we are talking about. Each one of them tend to get along with only those people with acute interest in the field of their liking. As a result they end up talking about their subject all the time. This I see goes in a big way in building their skills. This is a classic example of what synergy and group work can do to people.

Hard work/ Long hours

This is probably a repetition of what I said in the previous paragraphs. Each one of these individuals spent long hours, well basically most of their waking hours (if not all) learning, practicing and improving their skills, thus getting even better at them. The best part is they enjoy ever second of it to its fullest. A classic example of the saying “Find a job you love and you wouldn't have to work a single minute in your life!”

Well there has been other traits I have seen in these people such as ambition, huge personal ego that drove them ahead, lesser sociability skills which freed up more time to let them pursue their interests, an inquisitive mind that makes sure they completely comprehend what they observe and study. But then I believe these aren't as consistent or pervasive as the above said traits I described.

As the human race comes to conclusion a millionth time that the power of the human mind is beyond comprehensions, these observations helps explain to me in a big way what makes some people geniuses .

Why should I build a datawarehouse? Why do I need to invest on BI?

2007-10-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well, lets start with basics. Every time you had to recruit a new resource to share the increasing load on your staff, what is the picture you have in mind? An exact clone of the perfect efficient guy X you have with you, who understood the way the company works and feels the direction in which the business went. We know that its not possible as of today to clone people, but what if there was a way the same X you have had a way to do the work he did today in half the time he did today so that in effect he had the time to do twice the work he did today. What if all the associates in your company could do their work in half the time they took today. With rising HR cost today and the huge crisis in getting and retaining brilliant employees this would sound like directly from heaven for CEOs around the world, and has over the past few years which led companies to invest hugely in better and more efficient tools for their employees. Now who among your staff is highest paid most critical of all resources. Its definitely the higher management and analysts who are empowered with the responsibility of making decisions in which the company goes each step. And its these same decisions that make or break the future of a company. For the same reason there are no other employees in your company who need the most intelligent, smart, robust and reliable tools as these people do. This argument alone gives you more that enough reason for any company to pull their act together and building a BI & DWH establishment for themselves. Considering your competition reaching there ahead you and fighting you with a weapon much advanced to your arsenal is a inescapable impetus.

Posts for a change

2007-10-21T18:35:00.000-07:00

After a long break i come back to this page and take a look at all that crap i had been writing in the past and i say to myself; did i really expect someone to be visiting my page and reading the stuff i write? What the hell am i doing wasting my time putting up all this crap out here anyway.

At least going forward i don't think i am going to write the kind of no-brainer stuff i wrote. I hope i am going to write things that make sense to me when i get back and read all that i wrote in the past. So i think that resolve calls for a new start. So, so much for nothing!

Informatica PowerConnect for Webservices

2007-08-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

I started working with Informatica powerconnect for webservices with Informatica version 8. I was mighty disappointed to see that the infromatica manual said very little about how to use the transformations. The web wasn’t of much help either. Lots of trial and error, figuring around and hours of calls with Informatica support finally got our mappings working the way it had to. More because the webservice we were calling were rather complex, but even with a far simpler webservice it still is a herculian task getting the thing to work without help.

This article is written with the assumption that the reader has gone through the Informatica manual related to power connect for web services.

We can use powerconnect as a source, target or consumer transformation. The chance that you use as a consumer transformation being the highest I will talk mostly about that.

You start with using a WSDL file that the webservice provider has given you. Most probably this would have been provided this on their website. The wsdl file is like a dictionary that has all the information of the operations that the webservice provides the URL to the soap requests and so on.

In Informatica if you select consumer transformation it takes you to a import WSDL pane. Browse to the point where you have the WSDL.

There is on tricky option here that turned to be of great importance in my experience. The webservice that I was calling was returning images in binary format. The werbservice was failing with base64binary conversion error. Eventually it turned out this was because I had to set the field lengths of ports very high since the data stream was very long.

Click on advanced options to override field lengths if you are expecting long strings of data.

Select the operation you need to use in the next window.

After you have done this step you are presented with a window which gives you an option to use entity relationship or hierarchy relationship for your xml view of the webservice transformation.

This is another area I found tricky. Heirarchy relationship gives issues unless you are using every group of input ports. I found using entity relationships better when you don’t plan to use all input groups.

You are now presented with the consumer transformation in its xml view in the mapping. You can see there are different groups of input ports. Each group has its own primary key. Make sure you provide a sequence generator to the primary keys in each of the group you are using.

Each group is related to another with foreign keys. So make sure you connect the sequence generator output of the groups primary-key to the other groups foreign-key.

Eg:

If you have two groups, envelope and body.

Envelope has primary_key

Pk_envolope

Body has a primary-key pk_body and a foreign-key fk_body_envolope.

Connect a sequence generator output to pk_envolope of group envelope. Connect the same sequence generator to fk_body_envolope in group body.

Connect a different sequence generator output to pk_body in group body.

Once you have connected all input and out fields as required you are all set as far as mapping development goes.

When you configure session for webservice, create a “Application connection” with username and password as the webservice provider expects.

Its likely the webservice fails (mine got me working on it for 3 days before it started giving me outputs the way I wanted) the first time you run it. The easy way to analyze errors is to set the override tracing in session to verbose data. This way the soap request and soap response is visible in xml format. There would be a fault message embedded in the SOAP response that tells you what the issue is.

Above all this Informatica Support turned out to be quite helpful in resolving our issue.

Nostalgic - Thats how i feel!

2006-04-14T08:35:00.000-07:00

Have been thinking about the concept of nostalgia. Its amazing that everyone feels the same way about their past. “Those were the days! Gone are those days!” Two statements you keep hearing all the time. It struck me as an interesting phenomenon more because I found myself saying the same more and more in recent days. I realized there should be some simple explanation to this amazing phenomenon. On thinking further something else struck me further interesting. You find all periods of your past particularly pleasant even though you might have drudged through the time with pain and agony.

So what’s this concept of Nostalgia and what makes it such a nice feeling? The explanation is simple enough. When you look towards the past there are basically two reasons that make the feeling pleasant. The first reason being that, of a million events that happened in the past you would remember only the relevant and pleasant ones. The second reason which is even more significant is that they are just memories now and you don’t have to face them anymore. It’s like daydreaming of things where you don’t have to go through the pain of the matter, and can just concentrate on the pleasant part.

But all said an done, nostalgia is one of the greatest gift to mankind and I wonder if there is anything that gives one as much pleasure as it does.

Feynman - The curious character

2006-03-25T18:13:00.000-08:00

Completed the second book on Feynman "What do you care what other people think"., the first one being "Surely you must be joking Mr,Feynman". Its a matter surprise that so many people have heard of Stephen Hawking and not heard of Prof. Feynman. Its yet another proof that people are carried away by drama, emotions and sympathy than hard core "stuff". As I read through his stories the strong feeling kept building in me how similar in character Richard Branson of Virgin was with Feynman. Wise men said "Life is not measured by the breaths you take but rather by the moments that take your breath away." These are people are/were living embodiments of the principle.

Another aspect that struck me peculiar in his books was his ideas about education and how much he differed from the present day conventional concepts of education. I was thrilled to realize that for some unknown reasons the ideas that he propounded were thought that had been haunting me for a long time now. His statement that many a times he met a person who knew the theory in and out but never understood what they implied in the real world is something I felt about the Indian education system. I wouldn’t say Indian educations system is an exception here, its pretty much similar across the globe but American system by comparison is far more liberal in freedom of thoughts and expression. Creativity is not nailed down with iron fists at the early ages as it is done in India. There are quite a few things we could learn from all these.

Feynman books not only tells you he was a genius in all aspects with an abundant knowledge in diverse fields, it also instills in you the confidence that with a minimal effort and determination anyone could look upto these standards. The books are a real eye opener to how one can reach zeniths of success after living through horrendous failures and depressions in life. All in all the books are a must read for ignited minds.

Dhanya in US

2006-03-13T16:39:00.000-08:00

Posting some photos when my wife Dhanya reached here

Politics in India

2006-03-13T05:11:00.000-08:00

I am not sure what made me think of politics and history of the recent political developments in India. But then when I started thinking of it and ponder over it for quite a while I got the feeling its quite a big story out there even if you considered just the last one decade or two.

Well that reminds the trigger that pushed me to start pondering over all this, some news that came over CNN about a story that a senator had swindled with the state treasury reserves. The first thing that struck me watching the news was the Bofors issue that every Indian has grown up with. I have been hearing about the Bofors issue since the earliest of my memories. I remember having read in Kuswant Singh’s autobiography “Truth, Love and a little Malice” the good words he had for Rajiv Gandhi. He explains how Rajiv’s political career was smeared in a big way by the issue that covered the arms deals with the Italian middlemen in picture. Kuswant seemed to think that Rajiv, more of a philanthropist and person with strong moral inclinations, wouldn’t have volunteered into such a deal unless he had tremendous pressure from his Italian wife Sonia Gandhi. He went on to say that it was Sonia who had introduced the industrialist him Quotrocci who had been in India for quite a while and made quite a dough for himself with his clout in the Gandhi family before the Bofors itself. I would assume Bofors was his last and bitter deal he had in India after which he seems to have left India for good presumably fearing interrogation and persecution.

It wasn’t much of a surprise that shortly after the congress came to power this time, for the first time with the support of a coalition (Congress was the single largest party that ruled India for the major part of the first 40 years after freedom), that the government went out of its way to break all legal provisions to defreeze Quodrocci’s accounts that had been frozen when Interpol raised a case on him on the request of CBI from India. An open warrant from CBI still exist on the name of Quodrocci and extradition efforts are at least officially still in place. It was a dastardly move on the part of the government to send the foreign secretary of the country in person to UK to oversee the unfreezing the accounts of a person charge sheeted by the highest investigative body of the country. The public outcry and media response to the move was more than encouraging. The opposition out for blood of the ruling coalition and even a part of the ruling coalition went public with their disapproval of the move from the government. It was amazing and horrifying to watch how the highest political powers were reigning in all their bureaucratic powers to push the blame on to the law enforcers; so much so that CBI director had to come up with a press conference that it was the CBI that had completely doctored the move. The legal system cranked to place and placed an order on the government to refreeze the accounts barring which they would face dishonor of the court. But the damage was already done and the masterminds who had planned the whole game knew it well. The government gave a quick statement explaining their helplessness and lack of authority to do such a thing.

The media carried the stories for nearly two weeks after which the noise started fading and then just vanished!!! No one seemed to care anymore!!! But then it shouldn’t be a matter of surprise at all because that’s how the Indian people have always been. Always forgetting and forgiving whatever heinous crimes have been committed to them, or perhaps that’s the nature of a larger community that has had a long history of atrocities committed on them. India has perhaps the longest history of invasions, plundering and looting by foreign forces since time immemorial. For long have they proved their peace loving nature and all encompassing compassionateness towards foreigners who have been embraced and adopted as one of them.

Looking back there has been Tehelka report, the fodder scam, the body bag scam, you name it, there has been a scam on every thinkable commodity and perhaps that has by now been accepted as a part of politics itself. But there is one particular pattern in all these patterns that strikes one when you observe them. The scam creates a big hue and cry when they are discovered and the media, political parties and all thinkable NGOs and other agencies jump on them as if they would eat the culprits alive. Two weeks pass by with heated activities that gives you the feeling the perpetrators have had it for their lives and then the miracle happens!! Another 1 week, and something else comes up to take its place and the past one is completely and conveniently forgotten. Perhaps that’s the beauty of it all, there is always some new issue that comes up to take place of the old all the time. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the politicians have long identified this pattern and have done their best to get the most out of it. Crimes of worst proportions are committed with the complete cognizance that the media as well as the public alike would soon forget them. So what’s the solution to all this one may ask? To be frank even I have been pondering over that for quite a while and my creative and intuitive mind hasn’t struck gold yet!! Hope someone else get luckier at it soon.

interlude

2006-03-05T05:24:00.000-08:00

for someone who reads this blog, if you are surprised what prompted me to name this blog this way the reason is simple. i sarted this blog as a tool for introspection to jot down my personal stuff just like he old fashioned personal diary business. Ceaser is one person in histpory around whom perhaps the highest amount of mystory hangs around. So Ceasers vault sounded the safest place on earth to hide my darkes secrets. Well then i realised with a lot of pain an agony that i really didnt have any secrets to claim of, my life is what they call an open book or call what you may. the name still sticks because i think it simply a cute name.

i am glad that i hae got back into the habit of updating the blog. Today is another of those lazy sundays where you sit around and push time and at the end of the day cry that time is gone and the week end is over. its funny how we start craving for the weekend right from Monday onwards as if you ae going on an African expedition on the coming weekend. I bet any personality improvement book would tell you to consider each of your day as the most wonderful day in your life. Its true that if you look at all you really want in life and wish to do in life is something you really plan to achieve you are allready out of time and you better get rushing. Well this is an attempt to prod myself about all this as well.

milwaukee snaps

2006-02-28T09:45:00.000-08:00

Milwaukee is a real beautiful county and the beauty is compounded a 100 times when it snows with the while sleet of ice that gives an impresion of a never ending blanket laid over the whole wide plains. Posted below are few snaps taken near my appartment and nearby places. Hope you would enjoy them.

Bush in India

2006-02-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

embarked upon next of Crichton's novel, State of Fear, but i amnot going to talk of Crichton again here. I happened to be passing by the wall mounted TV by the corridor and wa reminded that Bush is visiting India today. As expected Pakistan is a oart of his tour as well. I never understood why US doesnt respect the capability of nations to overcome their disputes bilaterally, but hten hte blame could be squarely put on Pakistan that has been crying for a third party intermediation in the talks since Day 1. A word of appreciation needs to be conferred on the US Administration for recognising the potential threat that exist in the subcontinent posed by the control of Nuclear warheads by hte Pak Army and the intervention of US in terms of imposing sanctions and maintaining countinued pressure on them. The war on terror had laid doubts in the minds of the most nations on US intentions to revamp their cold war allies and enter another covert operation which might lead to another mess as Al Quaida, which in fact was a CIA brain child.

Things are looking up today with the US administration's firm stand on the necessity for Pakistan to return to democratic governancy, relinquish covert support to all terrorist outfits and respect LOC with India. One of my friends recently brought to my attention the article in Rediff which stated that India was one country that was offered maximum number of US Visas in 2005 which was 30% of total visas issues in all. To add to that the number of visas issued in 2006 till date have allready crossed the 2005 year numbers. Things sure seems to be looking up for Indo-US ties.

Crichton's Prey

2006-02-27T12:32:00.000-08:00

spent the weekend pouring over a paperback novel. God I hope dad doesnt hear that, he has allways been concerned i am more inclined towards reading garbage than anything else. All said and done I however feel Micheal Crichton novels have a powerful way of updating the laymen of latest scintific revolutions and the implications it might have, often in an intimidating way. Often have i wondered if he is not endangering teh growth of research in the fields he writes on by giving them an ominous touch, but one thing i swear is that at the end of the day if u need a real thriller u need to look upto crichton.

The amount of research he does on each of hte subjects he writes makes u wonder if he is a reasearch student or a science fiction author. The bibliography for each of his novels often runs to 3 or 4 pages!!! I really do admire the perseverence shown by an author to bring out quality work agains all odds. I expected Crichton to be a young person and hte feeling was further rooted by hte pictures that i saw at the end of each of his books. Yesterday i took the effort to read through the author description to note with wonder that he is a person of 56 years!! Well some may consider that a young age though.

Prey, the novel i read was about nano particles, distributed intelligence, networking and the related stuff. I wondered if a supposedly techie nerd as me could not compleletly comprehend all the stuff in there, what would a layman make of hte whole thing. But somehow it seemed to be just clicking.

post from US

2006-02-26T06:06:00.000-08:00

it makes me feel awkward to pen my post from US actually 17days aftercoming here. better late that never, so they say.

i am here at waukesha in wisconsin. i wouldnt be surprised if no one back home havent heard of waukesha since most of my friends couldnt recollect having heard of a state called wisconsin. milwaukee is the nearest city from here and the fact chicago is below a 100 miles should be a solace.

A beautiful county with nice and entle people is what waukesha is. They say the europeans leaft all their ways of life back here when they left here. I was consufed and shocked the first time i landed here. I could never digest the concept of smiling at a stranger and wishing him which is hte way of life here. People greet each other irrespective of hte fact you are a stranger or acqaintance, havent seen them show a difference in the respect. Winters are pretty long an harsh in this part of hte world, starting in October the snow doesnt recede till its March end and somehow i seem to have decided to land here in hte middle of it all.

The GE Healthcare office is as new as i am to this place, which meant to say that the first operational day of the office and my first business day in US seemed to coincide. I would consider that auspicious and a sign of a long standing relationship i might have with this place and the people out here. Another fact i good here is the work culture they stuck to and hte flexibility they exercised in balancing their time between work and family ensuring the delicate balance isnt affected.

Waukesha Public library, one of hte first official building i ever visited in Waukesha was a breath taking experience. I felt a storm of relief to see one of my dreams were coming true here and a pand of pain that none of the indians had such a previlege back in India. I resolved solemnly that some day I would build a library back in India where students and all people who loved to read could come and collect all their favourites. Perhaps that could be one of my post retirement plans I am setting at this early age. I beleiove its this abode of knowledge that ensure people in waukesha doesnt feel the pinch of the virtual house arrest they are forced into by the harsh winter.

I have been reading a book by Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretaries of state during Cinton's regime. He was the person in charge of diplomatic ties with India and pakistan and held the herculian task of convincing both nations into join the NPT philosophy. The book talks about the meetings he had with Jaswant singh, who initially was the forriegn affairs secretary and the most trusted aide of Vajpayee. Jaswant singh later was promoted to the minister of external affiars in the midst of stiff opposition from many parts of the NDA for the reason for he was a moderate in all respects among men who were considered religious fanatics. I never knew Jaswant was a Major in the Indian Army at one point of time untill i read this book. I used to wonder what ran through his mind when he uttered those incorrigible sentences littered with most complicated verbatim in all his interviews. The book, a must read for all Indians gives and unbiased story of the freedom struggle of indian, independence, paritiand and diplomatic policies since then, politics of India and struggles and sacrifices Indian elite polititians took up for hte cause of hte nation.

It would be next wednesday till visit the library anothe time, let me make good of time by reading anotehr of hte thrillers from crichton, the author of jurassic park.

some strategies to remember

2006-01-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

the last time i posted the blog i had decided to take up this activity as religiously as writing down a diary of mine.. but then here i am after almost a month realizing i have done nothing more than lip service to that aspiration of mine.. well to do some justice to the idea i am posting some stratgeies that i arrived upon for my previous project to gift them before i leave the project..

so here they go .. i hope this comes to some benefit sometime when i turn back the pages..

Some best practice shared:

Weekly KT session where each person takes up one functionality and explains to rest of team. The same should be documented so that they can be used as a training material for new entrants.

This should be followed by session where code walkthrough of the same modules are done

Business knowledge sharing session done by each application owner, done once a week would help all teams in support to develop overall knowledge of GE Energy business which would help them enhance their support activities. This would also help in planning backups for people from members in other teams

Half an hour should be spent daily for a team meeting where following activities are covered:

Set goals for the coming week
Each team member’s activities are tracked and progress appraised.
Ensure all activities are on schedule.
Brainstorming for arriving upon optimal solution for major issues.

Such meetings would bridge communication gaps the team, keep the team focused, improve productivity, give better vision of goals and pitfalls, and identify areas of improvement.

POBs, Appreciation awards, Visa processing, and similar attempts to improve the morale of the team members are essential to keep them in top of spirits.

A meeting of all Bucket in RTS can be conducted each moth or once in a quarter where appreciation awards can be awarded. This would go a long way in improving the enthusiasm among teams. This would as well reduce communication gaps among support teams thus improving and enhancing support activities where dependency on other teams exist.

Rotation of associates between activities (such as development and support) would remove the monotony, improve associate skillets, and increase energy levels of associates.

Reporting managers should regularly discuss with associates regarding their career aspirations and any other concerns they have and ensure all concerns are addressed and redressed so that all associates feel a sense of being cared and in turn develop a sense of belonging. Never ever make a promise which cannot be fulfilled and if one is made, ensure its take care of. Such a healthy feeling would help us get new aspirants with good skill sets.

Regular training sessions should be planned from within the bucket and with external faculty to enhance the skill sets of associates. This would help them in turn their career growth.

For applications in RTS whose development teams are in Satyam, frequent interaction between support team and development team would help evolve a symbiotic environment.

introspect 1

2005-12-25T22:13:00.000-08:00

i know not what i intend to acheve by this write up i am doing.. i am even more sue that i am gonna delete this or even worse not even save this piece of junk that i am putting my few minute(atleast) of energy on... well one thing i have been reminding myself all the time and something i have allways heard learned people say is that its perfectly fine to imitate and imbibe, in more refined words inspire from ideas and works of other. the thought accured me when i went through the blog of a friend of mine. its my beleif that there is no person without a flaw, and hence it is fine to be a man of flaws. what is importanct for you to realize the flaws in your lie and work towards getting out of it and more thatn that one shouldnt be surprised and upset when after a 50 years of efforts to overcome their flaws they find they are left with more flaws than they started with. think what would have happened hadnt yo utaken up hte exercise.
i allways took a hisitent and apprehensive step towards planning my life because rarely have nething happened as per my plans. but now when i look at it from an analytic stand point i realize things wouldnt have been worse that what it were hadnt i did that little amount of planning in life.

someone recently showed me a list of things he would want to do in his life, which made me ask what the hell i am doing with my life!! For gods sake look at me and what i have done to myself, i am an overwieght by over a 20 kilos, leading what the physicians call a suicidal life style, spending 90% of my life in the office, that too realizing a high BP and cholesterol backed with a family history of heart ailments is all set to suck the health out of me. which again leads me to the feeiling.. are these negetives thought doing me any good.. well aint this what they call introspection. well so be it. i am done with the part of introspection and now let me think what i am gonna do about all this.
let me too look at things i want out of like, ofcourse this list of things would change, should chang with my epereinces in life, but i would like to see more things added to this list that be deleted

1. at this point for some reason all my ambitions seemd to be linked with making the best of money i could and that too in hte minimum time i could.

2. when i look ahead i see my dads loans to repay, my sister marriage coming up in another 5 years, moeny is definitely my priority.

3. i have allways wonder how well i am spoiling my career. I come a long way, unfortunately down from where i started. people i start off with are atleast making a good 4 to 5 times what i am making today, well if that is a way to judge your growth. i ned to find out a way to get out of that.

4. management seems to be the most attractive career path ahead of me in terms of lucrative behaviour as well as job requirements. ISB has been in my mind for a while, but then someoneesplained me the stupidity in hte investment. need to do a more religious research on the options.

5. well i dont seem to have the time to even plan things.. here i go to attend to another of my daily chores.. or is this just an excuse.. let me doscuss that once i am back.