H1BHoldingIndians

State of the Internet

2011-07-15T10:13:00.002-04:00

Created by: Online Schools

The Lean Startup, Part I (how to make your startup "ship" software that ...

2011-03-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

New Recipe - Skirt Steak - Indian Style

2010-09-09T20:18:00.001-04:00

This steak will be good enough to feed two people.

Ingredients

2 lbs of skirt steak
1.5 tbsp of olive oil
2 tbsp of black pepper
Juice of half a lime
1 tbsp of honey
3 tbsp of spicy mustard
1 tbsp of ground cumin powder
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of any popular steak sauce
salt to taste

How To Cook?

First thing first. Clean the meat well under flowing water.
Cut the steak into narrow strips along the grain of the skirt
Mix all the spices and then marinate the steak pieces
Refrigerate the whole mix for an hour or two
After an hour, cook the meat on medium to high heat till the steak color suits you.

How To Serve?

Serve with white rice! Enjoy.

Lamb stew - my style

2010-07-30T20:17:00.003-04:00

This stew will be good enough to feed a family of four.

Ingredients

2 lbs of lamb mix (not boneless just chopped up lamb meat)
1.5 lbs of long carrots (cut into small cubes)
4 idaho potatoes (cut into small-medium cubes)
4 tbsp of dry Thyme (preferably crushed)
2 red onions (finely chopped)
3 tbsp of crushed garlic
2 tbsp of crushed ginger
2 tbsp of black pepper
3 tbsp of crushed cayenne pepper
2 tbsp of turmeric (powder)
4 tbsp of tomato ketchup
salt to taste

How To Cook?

First thing first. Clean the lamb meat well under flowing water.
Put the lamb meat in a stew sauce pan and add cold water till the water level is 5 fingers above the level of the lamb. Add thyme.
Add the turmeric, salt and cayenne pepper
Heat the mixture till it starts boiling.
In a separate bowl, boil cubed carrots and potatoes with just enough water.
By the time, the meat starts to boil, add the vegetables in to the meat and continue boiling at low heat.
Add onion, ginger, garlic and black pepper to the boiling mixture and continue cooking.
Add the tomato ketchup.
Add appropriate amount of salt to taste.
Cook till the meat is well boiled (about 45 minutes)

How To Serve?

Serve with rice or bread. Enjoy!

i like this quote

2010-06-01T10:03:00.001-04:00

"Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take."

new prose-2

2010-05-25T22:44:00.002-04:00

accusations, allegations flying in the room
nimble tear drops kiss the cheeks
imagine life slowly melting away like the ice in the whiskey glass
tiring lonesome existence though there are two souls
amidst the wounded self esteems

new prose-1

2010-05-25T22:10:00.003-04:00

a broken frame, shattered mirror
neat crack on the drinking glass..
inside out...outside in..all in pieces..
tame my mind or my temper
alleviate my helplessness

entrepreneurship advice from HBR

2010-03-09T14:26:00.003-05:00

For the uninitiated, HBR provides compelling online articles for entrepreneurs. Of the few that I have read in last few months, here are the two which really stood out ...

Isenberg's Test to find out your inner spark

Isenberg's 2 minute Checklist for Product idea generation

Are you ready for her?

2010-01-06T13:18:00.008-05:00

Rani is our 4 month old Labrador puppy. She is awesomely cute and playful and friendly with people. She is a bundle of energy. We are trying to find a home for her for few days in the month of Jan/Feb (30th Jan to 19th Feb) as we have planned a trip during the same period where we cannot take her with us. We would provide her food, treats, toys etc to anyone who would be interested in taking care of her during these period along with a token cash of $250. We would prefer a home in NJ or NY area.

Rani is crate trained and she needs to go out for only few times in a day - 6 am, 11 am, 5pm and 10 pm. A 10 minute brisk walk/run and play during these times are good enough to make her day - in return she will be give you selfless love and lots of licks...

If you interested, please please let me know as soon as you read this...

RSVP et all

2009-12-27T08:51:00.005-05:00

Do you all know what RSVP means?
As per wiki it is "Répondez s'il vous plaît", a French phrase that translates to "please respond".

During the last few months, Anita (my wife) and I had the honor of hosting a couple of events and we send out invitations with instructions to do RSVP in advance. However, the responses have been plain simple unexpected. There were few (very few) who promptly RSVP ed with a Yay or a Nay..then there were others who had to be called up to find out about their intentions and then there were others (the most number) who didn't RSVP ed at all but did show up at the events - with additional guests. We thought may be we did it all wrong - may be instead of impersonal online tools as evites , pinggs, mypunchbowl and facebook-events we should have used personal paper-card invitation. We did the same for one event. 70 people RSVP ed and 54 showed up!!

May be RSVP is to French for our guests...after all French was the language of the high society in the 19th century in the United States. May be its time to pick up the phone and make a quick call to the guests and make sure of their attendance (or absence). We will keep you posted for the next event :)

Abused Words

2009-08-19T14:47:00.002-04:00

Watch out for the title

2009-08-17T11:08:00.004-04:00

Baignon ka Bhurta

2009-06-27T19:46:00.003-04:00

Total Time: 30 minutes / Serves: 3 to 4 people

Ingredients
1 large eggplant
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 finely chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons ginger, grated
1 teaspoon garlic, grated
1 teaspoon finely chopped green chillies,
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder (haldi)
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon ghee
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste

Garnish
2 tablespoons chopped coriander

How to Cook?

1. Grease the brinjal (eggplant) with olive oil, make small slits all over the surface and cook over an open flame till it is soft. You can microwave like I did for 10 minutes (dont just burn the hell out of it)

2. Cool and peel the skin. Mash the pulp thoroughly and keep aside.

3. Heat ghee and add the cumin seeds. When they crackle add the onions and sauté for a few minutes.

4. Add the ginger, garlic and green chillies and fry again for a few seconds.

5. Add turmeric powder and cook till the oil separates from the masala.

6. Add the mashed brinjal, garam masala and salt and mix well.

7. Serve hot garnished with the coriander.

How to serve?

Serve with Roti or hot rice and garnish with chopped coriander

Mike Cohn - Agile-Scrum Consulting

2009-06-02T14:55:00.004-04:00

Trends and point of views

2009-03-13T12:01:00.003-04:00

I have been amazed at the trends emerging over the last few months in different social and business domains. I'm listing out few here..any comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated

1. Oprah trying to gain more news bytes than she already has by exploiting Rihanna's current emotional state

2. Easiness of publishing your writing on Kindle -- the Amazon DTP platform has made publishing a child's play. What will happen to conventional publishing?

3. Google Voice release. Unified voice communication management.

4. People being thoroughly pissed with larger than life personalities duping them (think Madoff)

5. Sudden flood of manage-your-finances types books, blogs, articles etc.

Starbucks Milk Stealers

2009-02-01T20:10:00.003-05:00

Yes, US is deep into recession and NY is probably the most worst hit metropolis (as per Time magazine, NYC is leading the job cuts number compared to other US metropolises). And the event that I witnessed kind of reminded me how tough the conditions are out there this winter.

I'm at lunch with my colleague in the concourse of the Rockefeller center. An Asian woman in late 50s walks into the Starbucks near our table and quickly pours whole milk from one of the many canisters into a mini Poland Spring bottle and makes her way out using the escalator. I was stunned at the audacity of the event happening in mid-day Manhattan and in a prime location. It reminded me of the sudden increase in bank robberies and subway snatchings in Manhattan. Five minutes have not passed by...this time its another lady (may be east european)with a small roll-on bag at her tow and she empties out the milk from the other canister into a Gatorade bottle and disappears into the usual lunch crowd.

Worse times awaits us in the near future. Comments?

Time to write, et all

2009-01-28T07:58:00.003-05:00

Of late, writing has been pretty erratic--life in general has been pretty busy and erratic sometime too. Well that's expected if you live in greater NY area and work in the big apple.

Anyways, the overnight snowfall dumped about 3-4 inches of thick yet loose snow all over central Jersey. So I wake up to find the stairs to the parking lot covered in deep snow with no foot prints yet (and no shovel). After a couple of minutes of precarious balancing to avoid the shoes from getting wet (as much as possible), I had to spend another 5 minutes cleaning up the dense layer of snow from the car (now obviously the shoes get wet-duhh).

Mine was the 6th car on the road which usually has about 60 on a normal day and the speed at which everyone is driving is less than 10mph. The breaks are still not holding good at the lights and creating this grrrrkkkhhh sound to let you know that the tires are thoroughly soaked in snow and ice-dirt. Thanks to the AWD though, I managed to safely reach the train station (One amazing thing about NJ transit train service; it runs late in summer however run almost on schedule during such wintry days) ---way to work. Lets see what snowy mix is waiting there :)

True Indian Innovation

2008-12-06T22:37:00.002-05:00

Mobile Commerce - Indian innovation

This is the perfect example that India slowly but surely is becoming the innovation hub in Asia. The pace of change and adoption of new technology are definitely slower than other comparable economies but the potential (1 billion people and more!) is enormous.

Badge on Facebook

2008-09-21T20:05:00.000-04:00

Gut feeling vs Lean judgement

2008-09-04T01:37:00.001-04:00

The Malcolm Gladwell bestseller "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" advocates the use of gut feeling or gut check as a critical factor in human decision making; Do I want that burger? Do I believe what I see as discount on that price tag? Is that car the right one for me? Every decision making is suddenly impulsive and cognitive psychologists are having a field day describing human behavior based on such heuristics..suddenly gut reaction have become the next big thing for decision making. CEOs to soccer mom - everyone is apparently doing gut check.

In this effort to do gut check for everything, we keep on forgetting about inherent traits as cognitive biases (where our judgment is based on stuff we know and want to believe against stuff that we do not know or do not want to know)..sample this ..bias to mimimize personal ego loss in a conflict can direct decision making to be something that is suitable to the personal ego and not for resolution of the conflict (think initial conflicts between board and union members of Walmart where each group was motivated to avoid big loss and didn't concentrate on mutual gain).

It is suggested by experts to follow the lean principles of decision making

(a) don't decide and execute till the last reasonable time for decision making

(b) verify all bits of information (may be rationalization sometimes is better)-- e.g. unicorns do not exist even if you see them after being drunk and

Last but foremost is definitely trust your gut but don't leave a chance to question and verify it.

Made In India-1 More Time

2008-08-02T12:09:00.002-04:00

photo courtesy:AM_iphone

Better Place

2008-06-30T21:25:00.004-04:00

Project Better Place. It seems that Israel got it right this time (and this is not about the Gaza strip)! This company will make Israel completely gasoline independant in next 10-12 years. And how will they do it? electric cars...why cannot the US congress have a look into this company?

Start with may be small cities as pilot projects and then move key cities completely of the gasoline map...can you think of NYC with a near zero carbon footprint? Instead of offshore drilling with trillions of borrowed dollars and polluting the environment, why don't spend some money on pilot projects and make this happen?
Why doesn't Obama or McCain speak about this?
Click on the following links for more details

http://www.projectbetterplace.com/

http://shaiagassi.typepad.com/the_long_tailpipe/2008/06/the-better-stor.html

Scary Horoscopes

2008-06-27T09:00:00.002-04:00

Some horoscopes are so scaringly true representation of your inner mind...
"You have the intensity of fire in your eyes now and the strength of your conviction can actually be scary to someone close to you. Although you don't necessarily feel angry, it's apparent that you will fight for what you want. If others seem confused by your intentions, assure them that you mean no harm and that you are just very passionate about what you know. Then, take a deep breath and tell your story. " ---my horoscope for today from Tarot.com
...............they forgot to add this 1 liner..the problem of the story is not the story itself but the acceptance of the audience listening...

BB vs Iphone?

2008-06-16T12:38:00.000-04:00

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/photos/blackberry-9000-in-the-wild-1/
Those are the alleged snaps of the new Blackberry to hit the market soon. So may be people who don't want to be tied to Apple have a true alternative, and a better one too, given that BB comes with real keyboard and real keys not with virtual keyboard (iPhone) that can only be used by nimble fingers...

MOVERS (& SHAKERS)

2008-05-14T14:08:00.001-04:00

In last 2 weeks, coincidentally I had 3 emails asking for advice on relocation and selection of movers. Every 1 seems to be dissatisfied with their current location. Anyways, some key pointers on how to select a mover

1. How big are the movers? Credibility can be checked online usually. Check for insurance, registration, feedback from other customers.
2. Are they flexible with you packing stuff or they will pack stuff? (if they pack then anything breaks their responsibility, you pack its your responsibility)
3. Total expense (no hidden fees like NY charge, Chicago charge, charge for special trucks etc)
4. Committment to dates and times (should not be more than a day delay)
5. Registration with BBB (Better Business Bureau) or other trade bodies.
6. Since you have only few stuff, how will they xfer the stuff? Wil they use a 18 wheeler or a small truck? if they use a 18 wheeler, then they will not travel still they have enough materials from other customers so thats its cost effective for them to move your stuff from Boston to SF....this might mean delay, extra charges etc.
7. How much will your employer pay and how much you have to pay from pocket might also help to determine which movers you can afford and who are beyond reach?
8. Can you and your partner use a UHaul instead of hiring movers? if Yes, then do it. Don't get a mover.

ABCD et all

2008-04-26T13:53:00.003-04:00

When will they learn to be "lean"?
Lean means not being "wasteful", to have "in-built quality process", appreciation of "pull/need based work flow" and ability to look at the "bigger picture" than just any sub component.
Why in "Namesake", Gogol's dad had to die before he realize his roots and "listen" to his true call?

Now at ThoughtWorks

2008-03-27T11:27:00.005-04:00

The Name, The Brand, The Company. And now, I'm with ThoughtWorks.
Have read about TW in countless blogs and websites, how the processes (agile.scrum.consulting.2.0) work, the thoughtleaders, facts and myths about immersion, case studies, clientele, the set up, the social experimentation with geeks, the growth...etc.(that was all pre interview research :))...and now I'm IN (their NY payroll after 4 rounds of interviews and 2 written screenings).

Going over to "Immersion" in India for 2 weeks.

Will keep this updated (for interested people only)!

Down with Friendster

2008-02-28T10:46:00.003-05:00

When you are active on the internet, you create your personal and business profile in god knows how many social networking sites...tab.com, friendster.com, meetin.org, myspace.com, meetup.com, facebook.com, orkut, yelp.com, yaari..the list is bigger than you can think. After sometime, you end up only using a popular and trendy few forgetting about the others (except the occassional emails they send out to let you know how they are changing to compete w/ the best sites).

My serious concern for all you out there, who are dating or newly married specially, is to make sure that all your profiles are up to date in all such sites or get rid of profiles on sites you are not using. You can run into trouble and this time its not your boss at work or Uncle Sam. Its your current heartthrob. She might phish you (she has few scrupulous, not-at-work friends too) on one of these unused sites as "single" and also find that you accessed them say within last few months and didn't update the profile. If she is of the jealous kind (most women are, even if they don't accept) or the typical suspicious, insecure female....then everything will be lost the moment she finds out something like this. Her possible ignorance about the behavior of such sites and the mental remnants of the last argument you had with her will all resurface with a dark vengeance to end it all. She will not care whats your status and profile on the ones you actually use, but this un-used one will become the focus of severance.

This is true. This has been my experience.

NOTE: Also, if you can explain yourself well and give some time, the disbelief can be eliminated. Thats my experience too.

Sloppy Service

2008-02-16T16:11:00.002-05:00

Sloppiness in service sector seems to be on the increase in USA while developing countries are improving on them. And this is not just limited to public/ government offices. Check some events over last week.

NJ Motor Vehicles Dept. Change of address on driving license. The agent verifes 6 points of Id and then issues you a new license (all 20 minutes of work), with the same old address (you need to be there to believe it). She then uses the F* word in frustration and issues another license card with the new address after another 20 minutes.

COMCAST Cable Unable to get proper resources to install a digital television cable connection to my condo for last 2 months.
Correction: Comcast was able to set up the service. A couple of really good helpful supervisors and engineers got this working around 20th.

Graceful Spa in NYC. Lost all their Valentine's Day week appointments due to computer crash. No back up available so all appointments are messed up. First come first serve. Can you believe this is New York?

Home-made Indian fare

2008-02-13T11:40:00.005-05:00

I cannot believe this. More than a year in mid-town Manhattan and still didn't know of this hole-in-the-wall Indian food joint at 6th Ave and West 38th before last afternoon.
No menus. Just plain veggie dishes to be ordered.
6 dollars flat. White or yellow Indian rice, Saag-daall, Okhra-squash sabji curries, 4 rotis heated with traces of ghee, a lentil soup with sambar, Mango-chilli pickle, and a gulab jamun to end it all.

Try it out! Its a good break from Kati rolls and other Indian buffet fares. If you get bored with the veggie fare (the side dishes are different every day), then try the next enclave of Spanish non-veg food.

Broadway Show in NYC

2008-02-12T10:18:00.003-05:00

Broadway Show: Chicago Venue: Ambassador Theater. New York City.
Tickets are worth 112 dollars each and then you get seats with the smallest leg space you do not even want to experience in your nightmares. Even in Mumbai, which has higher real estate prices compared to mid-town Manhattan (source Time.com), I have had better seats to watch movies than in this theater. By the time the show is over, you develop serious knee cramps. The whole experience of watching and enjoying a diabolical and historical broadway show got marred by the weird alignment of seats. And believe me I was not alone in that theater with the problem. Indians and Chinese are "smaller" compared to Caucasians and most people around me were trying to "fit" in their seats or stretching their feet out to the next seat (in case it was empty).

The show was marvellous-the orchestra, the choreography, the costume and the light arrangements. Totally commendable. However for the seats...may be they need to find a new theater.

Appreciate What You Got

2008-02-01T14:29:00.001-05:00

Time to write

2008-01-31T09:22:00.000-05:00

During the last month, I attended a couple of church sessions and was really amazed with the following
1. use of technology to deliver sermons

Use of technology to spread religious thoughts is kind of controversial ....however I think its one of the key things that any progressive religion should adhere to in order to get the message across to the tech savvy generation X. Today people in general are more aware of technology than they were even 5 years back and so the use of sophisticated presentation software, big screens, full wall blowup of pslams, displaying actual lyrics of the gospels on the screen during chorus music help the pastor address the diverse crowd much more eloquently and effectively. The audience is no longer distracted with a mundane speech, they do not feel guilty of not being able to spot the right page for a gospel in the Bible (you can read it on the projection on the wall !!).
Organized religion is here to stay.

Usage

2008-01-10T07:51:00.000-05:00

Bucknor: (n) (adj)
1. Temporary blindness leading to missing out on the obvious.
2. To be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
3. Situations leading to grave judgmental errors.

Usage: I feel bucknored by my boss. Life often throws a bucknor at you.

Couldn't help but copy this piece of information from my friend Kali in India...anybody who follows cricket will hopefully know what this is all about!

Porque?

2008-01-09T20:13:00.000-05:00

Why? Why do we fall in love? Why do we fall in love very well knowing that it is a bottomless pit of suffering? Why do we trust when we know that they don't? Why do we take trouble for other person when we know that the other person might not do so when required? Why do we feel lonely w/o the other person when we know they are running "errands"? Why love cannot be a little more patient, comforting and selfless? Why do we have expectations? Why? Porque?

Penn Station, NYC, 18th Dec. 7.30am

2007-12-20T18:47:00.000-05:00

Lots of people.
People coming out of the station as waves in a sea, relentless...wrapped up in long coats, jackets, scarves, gloves and what not, stepping on each other...impatient to catch the next red traffic light to cross the roads; the Salvation Army Santas ringing bell for donations; Scarlett Johanssen on Macy's bright, colorful, digital billboard doing her jig for holiday perfume; the sanitation department people cleaning of the streets; free newspapers and pamphlets being distributed by punters; two cops sipping hot coffee in the comfort of their white-blue sedan.
And then you see a couple of odd seagulls elegantly finding their way in the myriad of skyscrapers and hoardings towards the Hudson.

Good Morning New York! I'm ready for work.

All Things Considered!

2007-12-01T11:19:00.000-05:00

All things considered, I'm going to start an article on emergent relationships....human relationships....I used to write quite a few during the hey days of my blogging however have not been so pronounced from the time I moved to NY/NJ. Why? May be people in NY/NJ people whom I'm acquainted with are not relationship-emotional oriented.....they are more profit motivated...I mean material profits, career targets, real estate dreams. May be because I'm the right person at the wrong time (super narcissism)....may be because of the whole subprime meltdown (blame it on Merrill and Citi)..hahaha...it can be for a 1001 reasons and again for no 1 good reason...its for me and others to figure out.

BTW, what is a emergent relationship? well its something of a sort of flower bud..trying to bloom against all odds of fluctuating and inconducive climatic conditions. So putting it into human perspective these climatic conditions can be

busy schedule to find time for togetherness, or
defensive and cautious approach to the whole subject of committment and relationship (because of past experiences!)
just being overly practical and analytical (read anal :-)) about the other person
lack of communication between 2 persons with respect to expectations (I lost my blackberry couple of days back and that provided me some downtime to update my blog...)

However, perseverance is the key. The bud can bloom to a flower only by perseverance against these adverse conditions. So all of you out there (believe me I know so many of you now), keep your patience, keep working at it....and be convinced in what you are doing..........you waver from this conviction and a strong wind will pull down your potential bud into ground....

Let me know how you are doing....

Things I want this Christmas

2007-11-09T16:51:00.000-05:00

Wicked remote controlled airplane (to feel the speed whenever I get a chance)
Illuminated globe (to see how far I'm away from home)
Meerkat slippers
A freaking BMW
Cheap and easily available white wines
A smart dining table
TUMI Backpack
Perfect Pushup Handles

The Middle Way

2007-10-18T09:10:00.000-04:00

I always thought of justifying this 'The Middle Way' .....Buddha pioneered the Middle way long back, the path to enlightenment (what's that) by avoiding the extremes of sensory self-indulgence and self-mortification. The whole idea revolves around the theme of 'moderation'....sounds kind of antagonistic in the fast paced NY life. NY is all about taller sky scrapers, higher ambitions, bigger paychecks, lofty apartments and so on..all things material, all things capital. Moderation is an unknown word in the vocab of the people in and around NY, whether they are struggling actors or established bankers or successful doctors and lawyers.

Life is so hurried here that people don't have actual time to communicate with their near and dear ones....most stuff gets done in phone calls, SMS, chats, blogs, emails....what happened to the habit of just sitting down together for a quiet lunch or a plain walk or just playing a simple board game? We still do all such stuff to provide 'face' time to our 'clients', why cannot we do it in personal life? Why such simple stuff has to always wait for the weekends and not happen suddenly (prize factor) out of a whim? The answers to those questions are obvious; lack of time from work and all. Well adapt the middle path....nothing is more important than doing things (including your work) in moderation specially when you strive for an enlightened personal life. Professional life and work are as much of a calling as the personal goals...and the correct work-life balance can be achieved through some degrees of moderation (the middle way)...what do you think?

inspired by the pace of life in NY

Indian doctors in USA

2007-10-01T17:06:00.000-04:00

The other day a Turkish cab driver in NYC asked me "What is w/ Indians? Are all of you Doctors or something?" and then I realized how true is he..with most of the other white collar jobs being outsourced to India, most NRI families have been getting their kids to focus more and more in medicine related professions.

In the US, Indians and Indian-Americans make up the largest non-white cluster of the medical community (they account for one in every 20 practicing doctors). The presence has come more to forefront in recent times with more charitable activities, more political lobbying, less high paying jobs in other sectors of the economies, increase of outsourcing of radiology reports and abundance of health tourism (where an american would go to india to get a knee replacement surgery than paying almost twice here).

I mean most of us know that we Indians have a history in medical stuff (Indian Atreya and Susrata established medical schools around 600 BC before people knew about Hippocrates or his oath :-) ) however statistics as "Indians make up roughly 20 percent of the International Medical Graduates - or foreign-trained doctors - operating in the U.S" are kind of social triggers that convince more and more Indian parents settled in US to infuse their kids with the thoughts that they gotta become a doctor. This sense of choosing a profession based on job security and monetary returns is a 3rd world phenemenon however it seems that most Indian parents in USA have not yet been able to curb their inner insecurities for money and stability over years.

Why cannot the Indian Americans be something else in life? I mean how many Indian Americans are good script writers or artists or painters or musicians or social activists or comedians (I can only recall Manoj 'Night' Shyamalan and Russell Peters)? Why most Indian Americans are doctors? I know a few Indian Americans who are doctors because they love being doctors, however what about the rest? Why do they still want to run the rat race?

Corporate America

2007-09-20T14:47:00.000-04:00

After watching this, you can gauge how the american corporate world works...groups of like minded people trying to bully another different group to earn their daily living..till they are kicked in the ass by their competitors or some unknown entity cropping out of nowhere...

Who's Next?!!

2007-09-02T12:11:00.000-04:00

Tom DeLay
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Bob Ney
Rick Renzi
John Doolittle
Don Young
Sen. Ted Stevens
Mark Foley
David Vitter
Sen. Larry Craig

Golf and I

2007-08-26T20:01:00.001-04:00

It's an interesting encounter of sorts....still now I'm on the losing side.

My experiments with golf initiated a year back..however I had to terminate it prematurely after 2 of my first swings broke a window (I used to live in an apartment complex surrounding a 9 hole golf course) and hurt a cat. Now again with renewed vigor and passion, I have started taking golf lessons, visiting the range; also got inspired enough to buy a brand new set from PineMeadow.

You would think that golf is all about "knocking a small ball into a series of small holes in as little strokes as possible while avoiding the hazards"..however it's definitely not that easy. I'm still trying just to get the right swing (http://www.abc-of-golf.com/playing-golf/full-golf-swing.asp) with a success rate of 10% i.e. 5 tee shots are going correct in terms of height, direction and distance out of a possible 50 shots that I hit at the range.

The battle is still on...

Teo And Tea

2007-08-12T13:06:00.000-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eTa6U7pP6w

Plain updates-Ver 2

2007-08-06T22:13:00.000-04:00

NY Bar Live Music Feedback
Had an awesome time with the band Breaking Laces at the Cutting Room in NYC. The lyrics are strong, the stage presence is commendable and the crowd was loving it thoroughly. The cover charge of 10 bucks was worth the music and the free CDs and the crowd..
Princeton Piano Concert
If Breaking Laces was all about raw energy and drums, meet Alexander Gavrylyuk, the pianist-prodigy from Ukraine (currently based in Moscow). The winner of all major piano masters competitions across the world, this 24 year old enthralled a diverse and appreciative audience by his rendition of Bach, Schubert, Mozart, Filippenko and Rachmaninov in a solo performance session lasting for 2 hours. Standing ovation was only but due to him.
Corporate America
Have you heard this joke " I wish I were African American when in a club but a Caucasian when dealing with Corporate America" ...I thought this is a joke till last week when one of my professionally trained and accredited friend got replaced as a frontline Project Manager for a major project he was handling as the client wanted someone 'senior' (say Executive Director or CTO) to lead the project..was it a modest way of telling that we don't want to deal with a smart Indian guy with a not so bad accent...I found this interesting article to confirm my assumptions.

New York Ice breakers

2007-07-26T09:06:00.001-04:00

Few ice breakers to kick off the next party you are in

Biggest fashion crime committed on the streets of NYC
Most favorite cartoon show
Jay Leno or Letterman or Conan OBrian
MoW (Man on Woman) or WoM (Woman on Man)
Black, Brown or White (please don't ask me what)
How to greet your ex? hugs with kisses or plain hello
Buttery nipples or Slippery nipples (for the perverts, they are names of shot drinks)
Finance or IT
Cheers or Salud

Inspired by Fox news and NYC night life

FI and H1

2007-07-15T06:53:00.000-04:00

The F1 visa-holding students are seriously disturbed by the existence of the H1b holders and vice-versa.

The former class thinks that the H1b visa holders are living a privileged life as they are getting paid higher salaries for working in multi-national firms without 'much serious' effort. The H1b holders on the other hand have the perception that the F1 crowd is the snooty intelligentsia who just likes to study and have fun filled sorority/ fraternity bashes (lot of booze and chicks-American Pie). Well both of the facts are half truths.

F1 students do have to work very hard to support themselves; with the small grants and scholarships its very difficult for them to live the American dream...and study and score near-perfect GPAs at the same time. They are under constant pressure to match up to the other foreign students as well as American students and ABCDs; also the mental pressure of being an immigrant is always on them...no wonder they yearn to complete their degrees and earn the coveted H1b status. They feel the pinch of money throughout their course time (if they are not sponsored by their wealthy uncles and relatives) so for them getting a H1b is almost the first step to the American dream.

On the other side, the H1b guys have a different plethora of problems; but somewhere the crisis of both these communities match. Most H1Bs make a decent salary from the corporations they are working with. However the identity issue (or the lack of it), the constant pressure to prove yourself and grow vertically up the corporate food chain, the desire to live the American dream are all the same. The hard work that they put in to the job to prove their mettle and excellence is seriously commendable.
So personally I believe, in general, F1 guys get to experience different sort of hardships than H1b holders. However, it is not right to discard the H1b holders as being privileged. What matters at the end of the day is how an individual can handle her own finances, control her support systems, adjust and adapt to friends and colleagues and peers in a foreign country...totally alone and away from the motherland and parents. And this has nothing to do with the visa types but more with the nature of independence of the person involved and her past experience of living and making it alone in this busy bad world.

Do you agree??

Crossroads II: Run for life

2007-07-06T22:35:00.000-04:00

Crossroads I: Walk
More than a year has passed by before I could write the sequel to Part I (I actually never planned on writing the sequel)..fell-in-and-out of apparently TRUE love once during this period. Life taught precious unpleasant lessons which might have been better not experienced. Now I'm again on crossroads. And this time I'm in NYC...the big city. Here, you can bump into a mini celebrity, or go ga-ga over expensive cocktails and broadway show tickets, get dazzled by the real estate prices, or feel one with the cosmopolitan vibe of the city, meet successfull bankers and not-so-successful actors.... yet this city can often make you feel lonely if you are not well connected with the correct 'crowd'. I am hoping that some one from this crowd will give me a sense of direction at this crossroad. Hope I do not have to make another sequel.

Anonymous me

2007-06-16T17:33:00.000-04:00

I love those anonymous comments to my musings....they remind me of the modern day essential dilemma of privacy and transparency.
We want everything that happens somewhere (in the government, in big public enterprises etc) or sometime (say facts of assasination of JFK) or someone famous (say Jennifer Aniston's new boyfriend) to be transparent yet when it comes to 'us' we value privacy more than anything.

Being an Indian and specifically a Bengali, my sense of privacy have always been vandalised by the in-borne 'para' culture............(for the uninitiated, para/chawl/potti are colloquial terms used in India for residential communities); people in the community kind of always knew what the other families were up to (which movies they watched last week, what type of fish they are cooking today etc). Thinking that now, its kind of hilariously scary that rarely there were any deep secrets between various families in a community.

Things changed over time, and people have become conscious of privacy so much that they are up against online search engines for storing apparently innocuous data. And people now don't bother to know anything about the neighbors, whether in condos in a high rise or sprawling single home communities. We all now have suddenly become hi-strung on the privacy topic as the government and federal agencies are collecting more information about each of us than we could possibly imagine. One way or other, our privacy rights are getting compromised everytime we do a transaction with any agencies on or off the web.

We can label this para feeling as tribal in one way where people were closely tied together for various reasons. The melting-pot culture of metro cities delineated the tribal principles over time. This change in trajectory in human cohesivenes definitely would be a good topic for anthropological research. More highways, more airlines, more social networking websites, more viral marketing appears to me as means to get back to that old primal tribal being. So why atleast NOT post anonymous comments to my blog entries?

I would love to know all of you. Peace.

Isn't It Ironic?

2007-06-11T22:29:00.000-04:00

I always wondered, how much trust my parents have in each other that they have a stable relationship of more than 35 years now.....and then I wonder, how much trust worthy can I be for my partner.

Particularly in USA, the word Trust between partners assume a dimension of mammoth proportions as kids, teens (specially of broken parents) are getting alarmingly used to break-ups and move-ons so early on in life.....before you are 14 you have 3 and 1/2 breakups (half for the one you are breaking up with currently)...consequently trust in later life becomes a serious challenge ...

Most of the times, my unambiguous, undivided trust have been trampled by my partner; My partner negotiated my trust for easiness of life, traded my trust by inflicting immense insults and all these in the name of religion, culture, skin color or family background. And I had to find consolation in the fact that the trust-bridge collapsed long before the traffic started on it (well it happened now, thats better than happening later).
Yet I want to find someone again whom I can trust. Isn't it ironic?!

Title inspired by Alanis Morissette's hit single Ironic

Questions They Ask To Decide

2007-06-07T19:22:00.000-04:00

You have already read about the Questions to Ask Before You Decide ...now once you are ready prepare for the questions they will ask for them to decide...some samples are given for the prep..

What are you most proud/ashamed of in your career?
What would your team say about you as a leader/colleague?
In what kind of working environment do you experience the most success?
How would you handle an angry boss and flippant client?
If you had the chance to go back and change something that you did in your current (or past) job, what would you do differently and why?
What do you do to bring balance into your life?
What is your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness, on the job?
How much do you know of 'our' company and work we do? Do you have any questions/comments around our operations?

Plain updates

2007-06-03T21:25:00.000-04:00

Just plain updates ...trying to do a lot of things to keep my mind from wandering...

Attended the awesome jazz and blues fest at Red Bank, NJ over the weekend..
Trying to get my arms around PMI courses..
Listening a whole lot to the likes of Carly Simon (you can find her top hit here)..
Had a get together of few people last week --self cooked (+ stuff by a good friend) food with good wine from down-under and NZ..
watched a couple of good films including 'Sex, Lies and Videotape', and 'Parzania'
life is good being single ...(well thats a consolation when the mind wanders)..

Take It Easy--everyone says that

2007-05-18T12:08:00.001-04:00

Are you happy? or lets say are you doing good with your life? Whom do you confide your deepest fears? Who do you share your ecstatic wins? Whom do you like to be in next 5 years? Who do you love?Do you want know about unconditional love? Do you believe in compromises and adjustments? Do you believe in priorities?What do you want to have, if anything were possible? Do you have someone you would say everything to? Are you mad? What are your thoughts on this?
Simple questions....tough answers...

Life Management Institute

2007-05-02T21:43:00.001-04:00

Wish there was a place called the "Life Management Institute" akin to the more popular PMI or Project Management Institute.
Wish LMI have had principles and standards that could be learned, imbibed and practiced to put together a great project called life; the output would have been a 'happy successful life'.
Wish LMI documented proven methodologies to 'execute' and 'monitor and control' different phases of the project life...so that all the risk elements in the form of sudden emotional crisis, loneliness, mental blockades, adhoc adrenaline rushes could be prevented, mitigated or at the least lessened. Wish LMI came with statistical tools, mathematical models and predictive comparison analysis to solve all the puzzles about making 'right selection' in terms of various inputs to the project life.

Verse

2007-04-24T20:46:00.000-04:00

Her eyes
bright with hope
Her smile
ooze perennial confidence
Her hair
shadows the moonlight
Her gaze
across the horizon
Her lips
silent in thoughts

She broke my heart...

Get back to the basics

2007-04-18T22:11:00.000-04:00

Sanjaya Malakar (he has bengali roots... I'm rooting for him still now)
Virginia Tech shootings
Citibank layoffs
Gov. Jon Corzine
India's early and disgraceful exit from World cup cricket (its called world cup because 16 countries play for the title, not like World Series played only in America)
Murder of Bob Woolmer by alleged betting racketeers
Not-so-smart confessions by Angelina Jolie, after all, she is a UN ambassador
Iran's (I is pronounced as in ink) uranium enrichment rhetoric
Warren Buffet's immoral support for Darfur genocide
Real estate melt down

We are surely living in very troubled times....so its a request to all my readers to get back to basics-----in your own little ways and do something good every day to make your life better...

300 Only!!!

2007-03-21T23:07:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I had the chance of watching the latest blockbuster movie called 300. Its a story of how 300 smart and courageous Spartan fighters fought and died valiantly against the powerful, ruthless hordes of Persion army lead by Xerxes. They inspired 10000 more Spartans to fight.
The movie is outstanding for rivetting photography, art direction and music. And also for eyecatching 'spartan' physique (Gerard Butler looks awesome with his 6 packs and beard). The director took tremendous help of imagination and special effects in portraying and packaging a 5th century historical event to a saleable movie . I see a video game in the offing with the same name soon.
However to me the release of this movie at this time seems to be an irony..........USA is fighting a 5 year old war at Iraq and President Bush is asking more funds and solidiers to fight the 'evil'; this is so akin to the movie where the king goes to war with the best 300 soldiers and his wife is making a presentation at the state council for more forces and funds. She also kills the person who resist the proposal ( more like Bush vetoing any Congress sanctions!). What is however different between the movie and the present war is that the latter was almost unilaterally initiated and pursued by US while the movie depicts the war as an act of defense (and not offense), as an effort to preserve independance. Hope the people watching this movie doesn't get too motivated by the glorification of war/battle :-)

SDLC and PMLC

2007-02-22T21:53:00.000-05:00

The recent spurt of Fortune employers scouting for IT Project Managers with PMP certification has taken me by surprise. I started wondering that why these employers would need PMPs to do Software Project Management when they can 'sustain' with SDLC experts or is it just another certification fad!!

Project management as a discipline can be used to handle situations in almost any domain - from building houses, to planning your holidays, and obviously developing software. So Project Management is valuable to focus as an established mechanism (a science??) for getting work done. It has processes (Rita Mulcahy) and should be used for continuous improvement of PM processes and for capturing knowledge to improve the performance of the Project Team. Concern of project management include project planning, risk assessment and management, issue management, schedule management, status assessment and reporting, calculating costs etc.
SDLC is another specific discipline used only for the development of software. Concerns of SDLC involves requirements gathering, business modeling, systems architecture and design, development, integration, release, maintenance, etc.
The processes involved in SDLC definitely needs to be managed and data from these processes need to be collected for future improvement and client satisfaction.

The similarities are many in both of these methodologies; PM methodology recommends breaking down tasks into chunks of activities to be completed in definite or overlapping phases. SDLC prescribes the phases as Analysis, Design, Code and Test, Deploy . However its important to understand the differences;each of them has independant sets of metrics, and SDLC is much more specific than PMM. RUP, Agile and other software development methodologies has Project Management as a separate thread to address this unique overlap. RUP even also has no prescription for contract/vendor management.

At the end of day, it makes more sense to mix the PM and SDLC methodologies based on cumulative experiences, company culture and and come up with blended ( or chai latte) approaches (continuous improvement) that handles "who", "how", "when", "why" of "what" needs to be done in the context of IT Project Management. Also with most of the companies now agressively being involved in ourtsourcing and offshoring and multi-vendor contract development, software Project Management demands a new level of acuity and ingenuity than earlier. Again, SDLC supports only development of software systems, a project usually involves lot more than just developing software; customer interaction, business process reengineering, marketing a new product/service etc. Knowledge of generic PMLC helps to coordinate all these other activities.
So having a Project Management certification along with RUP or Six Sigma is not bad at all for your next career move!!

One more trip to India

2007-01-08T19:08:00.000-05:00

I successfully returned to US last week from one more annual trip to India.
As usual, I amassed tons of invaluable experiences during this visit.....not only because I took a 'american gori' with me to 'amar kolkata' but also due the airlines I chose to travel with.

To start with, Air India delayed us by 30 hours and made us poorer by 500 dollars even before we could see the sunrays glimmering on wasteland-grass blades around the Kolkata airport. Air India and Indian Airlines made sure that the dollars saved by buying relatively cheap Air India tickets (during prime holiday season) ultimately got spend in purchasing alternate tickets..some kind of poetic justice...ehh.
On our way back Air India and United Airlines goofed up a checked in luggage at the Chicago airport and still there is no trace of it (heard from the mouth of a coughing call center agent based in New Delhi that the black luggage made it to other distant airports in the US during this time).
No more Air India I think in the days to come.

The american gori coupled me garnered more stares from passersby in Kolkata, Delhi and Agra than the number of girls I have stared at during my entire college life. Just think of it. When will our colonial hangover ultimately disappear??? And to top it all, most tourist sites in India make unprecedented discrimination based on skin colors....white people pay $15 and get to wear their shoes with a shoe-cover inside the Taj while brown skinned masses like I have to walk barefoot!! Who says color doesn't matter?

Bite the Apple

2006-12-02T22:49:00.000-05:00

I'm now in Big Apple.
The move from Houston, TX to NY happened very fast over the last few weeks. Obviously the reasons of the move can be summed up in one single quintessential word: professional-->I joined a new company hence a new assignment and hence a new location (the fact of the matter is presently I have 2 offices, the office of my employer and the office of my client)----the true portrait of a H1b holding consultant.
Life here at NY/NJ is much more hectic, chaotic, demanding than what I have experienced in my last few years in USA; the initial weeks went by just to absorb the turnaround and fit into the mould of this randomness.
Hope I will be able to keep this blog more updated now that I'm a bit more settled.

Group 'Smart'

2006-10-23T23:04:00.000-04:00

Groupsmart--I believe sooner or later this new phrase is going to be included in the dictionaries available. And believe me its way different from being streetsmart or booksmart. As per research, the average IQ of any professional group doesnt matter much as long there is a smart person in the group with a high IQ. The effectiveness of a group can be foretold if you know the IQ of the smartest person in the room.
Wow. Thats mind boggling. Does that mean having a smart kid amongst a bunch of not-so-smarts will make the entire group perform well??? May be Yes. Apparently, the answer depends on the difference in the degree of 'sharpness' between the smart one and the 'others' in a group or team. Too much of difference in smartness between the team members may actually result in ruining of the team spirit and hence the expected results due to internal rivalries, lack of appreciation and motivation (e.g. smartness not getting recognized).
So smartness in a group is antithesis to social skills in a group. As per the research again, it helps if every one in a group has some degree of social skills rather than one person being the eager-beaver as he/she might not be the smartest person in the group to take over the activities of the team. Makes sense!

Then why do we need a group?? Why cannot a genuis get it done all?? Well because the nature and volume of the work involved to complete any decent project (creating a picket fence or making a military anti-missile system) requires a variety of skillsets and not just a smart brain. However those teams will definitely have more chances to success that has atleast one very smart person. It is the person with the highest IQ who helps the group succeed.
Can we safely conclude thus that though individual brilliance (the substance of writers like Ayn Rand) is not dead, yet it pays to blend in smartness with social skills so that balanced teams can complete projects in less time with less defects??!!

Questions To Ask Before You Decide

2006-10-03T10:48:00.002-04:00

Ask yourself all these before you are ready to pack up and go....

Are you unhappy with your current job, or are you seriously concerned for your (company's) future?? This is keeping in mind that you have successfully aligned your future with that of the present company.
Have you hit the 'plateau' in the company and the next 'hill' is faraway? (You have evolved so fast that you need new gene pool for getting mutated or you will be a fossil gene soon)
Are you looking forward to Monday? Or it makes you sick to be underutilized or go un-noticed??
Is your current resume attracting more attention from recruiters for more meaningful role and position? ?
Is the work culture at your company making you feel 'happy' or 'crappy'? ?
Are you getting what you deserve or you are overpaid?? (In either case, change may be necessary for justifying your poor soul)
Are you ready to give the old job a chance ? (Give 1 more try)

inspired by an email from my friend Kripal

AMEX sucks

2006-09-11T12:45:00.000-04:00

AMEX SUCKS big time.
After 3 years of continuous use of AMEX, I was really amazed at the way they handled a 'change of address and phonenumber' issue; by putting all my credit cards to hold on financial review. Apparently they got ticked of as I was purchasing too many airline tickets including one to go to India....I didn't understand the issue as all the cards was paid up-to-date and the travel was mainly professional.I did what I could do. I paid off the debts and cancelled both the cards....thats my way of saying NO to the nuisance that's AMEX.

Lets Vote!!

2006-09-03T18:01:00.000-04:00

What's better or What's bitter??
Working in a good company under a bad boss or Working in a bad company with a good boss.

This has been a question which I think have plagued all professionals at one point or the other during their tenure at any particular gig.
GE's Jack Welch think its always prudent to work for a good company with a bad boss as the company by virtue of being good will weed out the bad boss....well is it always true in the corporate world??

Waiting for the replies.....

The Ethanol Myth

2006-08-20T19:06:00.000-04:00

Ethanol is a clean-burning (reduces CO2 emissions), renewable, fuel mix made from fermented agricultural products such as corn.It does not even require alteration of your car engine. And since it is not derived from fossil fuel it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eventually reduce America's dependence on Middle Eastern gas reserves (hence no warfares) . So ethanol is the choice for tomorrow. However it seems that few important facts are being purposefully missed here in the craze for eaze fuel.

Fact #1 It takes fuel to convert corn to ethanol. An acre of U.S. corn can be processed into about 328 gallons of ethanol. However planting, growing and harvesting so much of corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre (as per Stanford University research) and then there is the energy expense for distallation cycles to make it ready to be mixed with fossil fuel (http://pangea.stanford.edu/ESYS/Energy%20seminars/patzek_ethanol.pdf#search=%22corn%20and%20ethanol%22).

Fact#2 The drive to produce food-based biofuels is anachronistic; even if all US corn and soybeans were used, it would meet only 11 percent of gasoline demand and about 9 percent of diesel demand. So in order to satisfy few million motorists, the grocery bill will go up for all of America. .

Fact#3 Believing that corn is the answer to the great American craving for food and speedier cars and bikes unsurprisingly can spell economic disaster when the food export volumes would go down too. And more and more land would be devoted to corn rather than other crops which eventually might need to be imported resulting in a agricultural trade deficit.

Hope the scientists/industrialists will soon find something so that the choice never boils down to food vs fuel.

New planets beyond the horizon

2006-08-17T23:28:00.000-04:00

Q: How many planets are there in our solar system?
Ans: 9
Q: Which is the smallest planet in our solar system?
Ans: Pluto
Both the above answers can get you negative marking in your IQ tests soon; 2500 active member of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) from 75 different countries are meeting at Prague to plausibly update both these time tested answers. They are also supposed to redefine the word 'Planet'.
According to most members, cold ice wrapped Pluto is not a planet because of it miniscule size. However they want Pluto to be a planet just because its known as a planet for so long. And they want to increase the number of planets in the solar system to 12 (including an asteroid called 'Ceres', pluto's moon called 'Charon' and a newly discovered object 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena). As soon as these amedments will be voted by IAU members, textbooks and charts in thousands of classrooms will go out of date.
Beside this 12, there are at least 12 more solar system objects waiting in the wings to be invited in the planethood; according to new definition a planet is that an object massive enough to create gravity which has transformed it into a sphere and that it circles a star and not some other planet.

The new order listed in order of their proximity to the sun would be Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Charon and the provisionally named 2003 UB313.

Fair or Tanned??

2006-07-16T19:03:00.000-04:00

Indian womens' obsession with fair and lovely still continues and so does the attachment of Western (white) women to tanning beds and lotions.
Increasing public criticism over years has definitely fostered change in cultural attitudes towards whitening of skin in India, a country where the fairness industry accounts for 60% of skincare sales, about $140 million a year (2003 estimates). However the Indian matrimonial ads still reflect the 'inner desire' ; the "grooms" and "brides wanted" sections for arranged marriages highlight the country's obsession with appropriate religion, caste, professional qualifications, and more frequently, skin color.On the contrary, if you ask the Indian urban men, more often than all they would still like to go for a Kajol or Halle Berry who definitely are not fair.
This obsession of the Indian women tribe can be very well compared with the desire of the Western women to get tanned. Their quest for the golden brown hue has given rise to uncountable number of indoor tanning solutions. Check out what these tanning beds can do to your skin.
Weather and climate conditions the skin color than anything else but it seems no one is satisified with what has been provided by nature.The attempt to use fairness lotion or a tanning bed, both of which can be harmful to the skin in the long term continues unabated.

ATM,SIM and TV

2006-07-04T20:10:00.000-04:00

Its been more than a month now...hence there is a lot to catch up.....office work sucked most of the usable time during this interval with UAT being underway. Also proposals are being worked around new prospective clients in the pipeline (spending toomuch time with sales guys??) and I am actively working on them too.
Other glaring news were the disappearance of my ATM card in to the hungry belly of the Teller machine located in-situ at the office; sudden blanking out of the Cingular SIM card in my cell phone leaving me in utter desperation as I could not make or receive any calls; and watching the World Cup Soccer on my new Toshiba 34" LCD flat screen, wall hanging Television receiver.

The ATM card just disappeared into the teller machines card slot without any warning messages and First National Bank of Fort Smith returned it over normal USPS mail (boos to the security) only after 4 days without any explanation and 2 follow up calls from me. I am seriously considering terminating the account there asap.
The Cingular SIM card suddenly ran out of juice on a Sunday evening. And I had to get the card replaced from the dealer next day early morning (free of cost, thats good service though the blanking out was unexplained)
And the TV just takes up so much of my time now in the evening, that I am planning to put it off hook so that I can concentrate on reading/writing more. Back to basics.

Prius and iPod

2006-05-16T21:16:00.000-04:00

Prius and iPod--the two latest technology icons thats reshaping our daily life; and believe it or not I have both. However the problem started when I thought of hooking them together in an unceremonial knot. They just don't believe in peaceful coexistence.

The AM/FM 6-disc in-dash CD-changer (with nine speakers in seven locations) in Prius 2005 doesn't come with an auxiliary audio jack or MP3/WMA playback capability and that triggers the exploration to find tools/devices that can hook up the ubiquitous iPod to this hybrid car. The options are more than one (check them out) however as per the pundits the best is yet to come. So I believe the options now are to either a. wait and watch for the best or b. spend some good dough to keep these two in the same place.

Eazee Indian Cooking in USA: Chapter 3

2006-05-16T20:48:00.001-04:00

Based on requests, we are going to cook some Daal. Before we embark on this great journey, let us understand what is daal. Daal is a kind of lentil and the soup made of this lentils/spilt pulsesis also called Daal in India. There are numerous types of Daals, you can find their variety at here. However, if you want to buy it, get it from an Indian grocery like this.

Chapter 3: Masoor Daal

Ingredients:
2 tea cup full of yellow Masoor Daal
1 Red Onion - finely chopped
2 spoons salt.
1 spoon turmeric, ground cumin
1 spoon of finely chopped garlic and green chilli
2 spoons garam masala
2 spoons ground coriander
2 spoons of tomato puree
1 big spoon of butter
2 large spoon fulls of any cooking oil (my preference Olive oil)
6 cups of water (approximate)
Process:
Wash the lentil seed (from now on daal) in fresh water and slow boil them in a deep pot (wok)
Add enough water to cover the daal. Boil the stuff till its mushy.
Fry all the spices with onions in olive oil in a deep skillet.
Add the fried and spiced onions and chillies to the mushy daal
Add some more water and slow boil the stuff with intermittent stirring.
Boil it till you a get a medium thick consistency ( lentils are soft and tender). Add the butter and boil it some more.
How to Serve and Eat:
Eat this daal with basmati rice.
Ahh!

Eazee Indian Cooking in USA: Chapter 2

2006-05-10T12:35:00.001-04:00

Since the last one was Non-veg I thought of making this chapter vegetarian; I am just being lazee so the recipe stays the same as Chapter 1, where you replace the chicken with corn (frozen corn is available at Walmart) to make Alu-Chana Corn Mix.

The rest remains the same as Chapter 1.

Sorry if I disappointed you; I would make it up soon with chapter 3.
Happy cooking.

Eazee Indian Cooking in USA: Chapter 1

2006-05-05T20:23:00.001-04:00

Indian cooking can be so easy if you know what to use and how to use; so I have taken upon myself the responsbility of satiating the appetite of young, single Indians (H1b holders or otherwise). The first item in our mission is Non Vegetarian (approx cooking time 25 minutes); however you can always avoide using the Chicken (that will save your cooking time too :)). And all the stuff is available at Walmart or at your big local grocery store.

Chapter 1: Alu-Chana Chicken Mix

Ingredients:
1 can of Diced Potato (Alu)
1 packet of fully cooked frozen Diced Chicken (you can use fresh chicken if you have time)
1 can of Chick Peas (Chana)
1 large Red onion (No white onions: they are not for Desis)
1 Green chilli
4 large spoon fulls of any cooking oil (my preference Olive oil)
2 large slices of tomato, 2 spoons of tomato puree, 1 spoon of minced garlic, 1 and half spoons of ginger paste.
Plus 1 spoon each of red chilli powder, garam/curry masala, turmeric powder,cumin seeds;
salt to taste.
Coriander leaves (for garnishing)
Process:
Cut the onions fine.Cut the green chilli into small pieces.
Fry the onions over red heat in a medium deep non stick skillet with olive oil (3 mins)
Add the cumin seeds and fry some more (2 mins)
Add the garlic, ginger and tomato puree.(1 min)
Add the diced potato. Add green chillies.(1 min)
Add turmeric powder, red chilli powder, pinch of salt (1 min)
Add tomato slices (1 min)
Fry on low heat with the chicken pieces (5 mins)
Add all the Chick peas with the juice in the can slowly (2 mins)
Add a small cup of water if you need gravy (optional)
Add Garam Masala/ Curry Masala and cook thoroughly (6 mins)
How to Serve and Eat:
Serve medium hot in a elongated bowl with some coriander leaves for garnish.
Eat with Tortillas or Pita bread.

Let me know your feedback. Bon Appetit

Being 'Cool'

2006-05-02T16:38:00.000-04:00

If being cool means having innovative desktops, then I am quite good at that. Below are few samples on my Windows XP desktop. So is this cool??

Technically E-Motional

2006-04-22T18:21:00.000-04:00

This is the problem with my technical blog articles. No review comments on my last article. However if I write something about life, love, hate, women and other catchy topics the comments flow like confettis in parade. Are all my friends and foes technically challenged? Or may be they don't think me to be worth of writing any technical piece?! :(......anyways I think I am little bit okay with technology or atleast that whats my linkedin profile says. So guys before I write some more about rock climbing trips, or drink parties or office culture, please take time to write comments on my technical articles (technology pays for my bills.... )

Microsoft Motion Framework

2006-04-20T17:25:00.000-04:00

Microsoft Motion Modeling Methodology (M*4) or Microsoft Motion Framework is a newest, coolest but patented knowledge released by Microsoft for its hi-value consulting arm (MCS). Check out this awesome 30 minutes presentation with the director of this program, Ric Merrifield. It is still in the incubation phase, but once you preview it you will know why Iam bullish about its popularity. Supply Chain Management. Customer Relationship Management. Financial Management all rolled into this one, a stunning methodology for building business solutions that can be more easily described, takes better advantage of existing investments in infrastructure, and use service-orientation. Way to Go.

Life and YOU

2006-04-02T15:23:00.000-04:00

I took this great online quiz.....after a detailed questionnaire it spits out a more or less detail analysis of the salient points of your life....i scored average of 6.8 with very high percentage in body and finances, but unsurprisingly low on friends/family. H1B holders like me, who are away from their immediate family and have only colleagues to be called as friends, this is inevitable.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	6.8
Mind:	6.3
Body:	7.3
Spirit:	5.8
Friends/Family:	2.6
Love:	6.9
Finance:	7.7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

They also have statistical data break up of your score. This data enables one to infer some interesting conclusions on our modern consumerist society. You can identify your strengths and weaknesses, and build on the strengths while trying to improve on the weak spots.

'Going' Wireless

2006-03-12T16:20:00.000-05:00

Wireless is a method of communication that uses low-powered radio waves to transmit data between devices. The term refers to communication without cables or cords, chiefly using radio frequency and infrared waves. Present buzz in the media is about the future of wireless communication when anyone can communicate with anyone across the globe seamlessly without worrying about wires and connectivities. Nowadays there are softwares that let you access the Internet and send e-mail and instant messages with the omnipresent cell phones (or any device that supports wireless protocols). Jagadish C Bose and Marconi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless), the first successful scientists who transmitted radio waves wirelessly never would have dreamt of such an upsurge. However we are in for more wireless surprizes.
Surprize #1 MIT Media Lab students Jackie Lee and Hyemin Chung have designed wireless-enabled wine glasses (actually, big tumblers) so couples can imbibe "together," even when they're geographically apart. When either person picks up a glass, red LEDs on their partner's glass glow gently. And when either puts the glass to their lips, sensors make white LEDs on the rim of the other glass glow brightly, so you can tell when your other half takes a sip (Read the details).
Surprize #2 The government of the world's most 'internet connected' country (if you dont know it, South Korea) is setting its goal to do the same with WiBro--wireless broadband--what it did with wired broadband in just 2 years. They are going the commercial high-speed wireless route in 2006 and hopefully it will fuel the fire in the belly for the most connected nation.
Surprize #3 And then there are companies who give the word wireless a literal perspective .....and force us to change the way we think about 'going' wireless...

India Vs Bharat

2006-02-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

The Asian Tiger, India awakening...are few of the phrases I have read so many times in national and international business magazines and heard on prominent news channels . How many times I have listened to discussions on India's strengths of high-quality, low-cost human capital and her greatest constraints — a serious infrastructure deficiency and lagging foreign direct investment. Since the reforms of the early 1990s, India has progessed like anything on the macro-economic front and while India still suffers by comparison with China, it is in better shape with respect to its banking system, active capital markets, and a new generation of indigenous world-class companies and english speaking entrepreneurs and employees.
However what puzzles me is our complete ignorance of the concept of greater Bharat where everything is still the way it was. Illiteracy, poverty, starvation, malnutrition, lack of edible water are some of the lows that still persists amongst the highs of being a nuclear power nation with vast reserves of foreign currency. Dowry system, wife beating, killing of female foetus are signs of the fact that economic development and progress have failed to tame the feudal mentality of a greater chunk of the population; that IT and IT enabled services, that biogenetics and hi end research, that nukes and stealth submarines have not yet produced the dream country. We are 60 years into our independence, and theres definitely a long way to go to make Bharat happening.

Life @ Fort Smith Ver 2.0

2006-02-19T11:36:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I completed one year of my job assignment at this god-forsaken place called Fort Smith; survived successfully the 'real' american apprehensiveness for brown skin and outsourcing which are characteristic features of most 'red' states of southern USA. However all is not bad; learned a lot on the job about handling people and processes, met a few people over the year who are actually progessive thinkers inspite of owning gass guzzling trucks, swearing by Walmart and their love for country music and boots, came in touch with women from different strata of the society (read very poor to aristrocratic) working at casinoes, malls, offices, insurance agencies, hospitals, car dealerships, bars and no-where (many of them share the same bliss of being 'single' for similar reasons: lack of exposure to outside world or overdose of exposure leading to adultery or the inherent southern spirit of not being able to reason to simple compromises in life). All these people, experiences made me more attuned to the truth behind the veil of so called american way of life (in small cities) and appreciate more the values that matter.
The lives of people here at Fort Smith or for that matter any small city in mid south west is so different from the lives of people at NYC, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, Sanfransisco, Dallas, Seattle. Lack of economic opportunities, absence of quality education, delayed exposure to world economy, excessive adherence to easy life.....all slow down the growth of such cities where most young kids look up only to the US army or the Walmart for the next job. Its a pity that corporate America is not coming up with new ventures to get this young, bright minds into action. This reminds me that we Indians, inspite of being from a third world country with very limited resources have actually come a long way within 60 years of our independence, taking advantage of the globalization of the economy. I think the middle class value-based bringing up, the hunger for doing something more than just surviving the daily rigmarole, and openmindedness enabled us where we are today. And I believe that only a few young educated people from these small US cities, who have the guts to be different and ability to adapt to changing demands of the economy can brighten the name of their hometowns sometime in the future.

'Desi' Home Run; lingo explained

2006-01-14T12:46:00.001-05:00

Here is a collection of cool 'desi' definitions for the uninitiated American, who have not yet been 'blessed' with the Indian philosophy :-). Let me know if this helps.
____________________________________________________________
Desi:A colloquial name for South Asians, people who trace their ancestry to South Asia, especially India, Bangaldesh, Pakistan. Pronounced "THEY-see," it is the Hindi word for "from my country" (from the word 'desh' or country). In an article about the South Asian party scene in the Big Apple, New York Times reporter Somini Sengupta described the word as a "Hindi version of homeboy or homegirl" (NYT, 6/30/96: "To Be Young, Indian and Hip"). That's a pretty good definition.
ABCD "American Born Confused Desi" : A slightly derogatory name used to describe desi children who were born and brought up in America and are "confused" about their South Asian background. Read Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri for insights.
Non-resident Indian or NRI: A term coined by bureaucrats in New Delhi to define Indians who live outside India. Indian tax law includes three categories: resident and ordinarily resident; resident and not-ordinarily resident, and non-resident. The first is one who lives in India all the time; the second, one who lives at least 180 days in India, and the third, who lives less than 180 days in India. Also stands for Not-required Indians or Non-reliable Indians.
Asian, Asian American: Be careful of this usage when talking about those of Asian origin (like me). The key is to know is your reference really about all Asians or only about East Asians and/or Southeast Asians!! For example, an American reporter might write about the 'Chinese New Year being important to Asians in the U.S.' South Asians are a part of the Asian American community, and they don't care about Chinese New Year.
Diaspora:The British colonial legacy and large-scale immigration resulted in large number of pockets of people of South Asian origin scattered around the world (besides South Asia, of course). The government of India puts the size of the diaspora at more than 20 million. There are more than 2 million South Asians in the United States, a lot of them married to americans.Is there any statistics of the successes of these marriages?
Bengal, Bengali, Bangali, Bangla: During partition of India, the Indian state of Bengal was divided into two: the mostly hindu state of West Bengal, which went to India, and the mostly muslim country of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. However, political borders are not necessarily cultural borders. Both Bangladeshis and West Bengalis speak the same language of Bengali, though with slightly different accents, and call themselves "Bengalis" or "Bangalis" (never Bangalees.) I am a Bengali Hindu from West Bengal in India: ooh what a legacy.
Hindu, Hinduism: One of the oldest (older than Christianity and Islam) religion practiced by about 80 percent of the population of India. The values and beliefs of Hinduism are not derived from a single text, institution or pontiff but have evolved over several thousand years in the subcontinent into a set of theological and social values embedded in a range of ritual observances, mystical contemplation and ascetic practices by its followers. Although Hinduism is often portrayed to be polytheistic, many scholars consider Hinduism to be henotheistic or monotheistic, the gods and goddesses worshipped by Hindus representing manifestations of One Supreme Being. Among the many sacred scriptures and texts of Hinduism are the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita (a segment of the epic Mahabharata). Do not confuse Hindu (the religion) with Hindi (a language).
Hindi: The primary language of about 30% of India's people, and one of almost two dozen major languages spoken around the country. It is derived primarily from Sanskrit, using the Devanagari script
Urdu: One of the official languages of Pakistan; also spoken in many parts of India, especially in the North. Also the language used in ballads known as ghazals. Urdu romantic shairis are the life blood of any good desi crowd.
Sanskrit: Indo-Aryan language in which many ancient Indian texts are written (Vedas); also used by Hindu clergy for recitation of most prayers.
qawaali or qawwali: (not capitalized) Devotional songs of the Sufi tradition of Islam. In the style popularized by the late singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, this old tradition has been sped up and blended with Western instruments.
Bhangra: Dance and music style originating in the Indian state of Punjab. Now often refers to a blend of western pop and traditional Punjabi music when performed in the West.Check out LA for regular Bhangra sessions.balle balle.
Mehndi: The traditional Indian and diaspora art of intricate hand and body decoration using dyes from the henna plant. Used mainly by brides during marriage ceremonies, it is now becoming popular as an exotic decoration and a non-permanent "tattoo." In recent years, mehndi has gained attention in the West as a result of its use by Madonna and Gwen Stefani. They have also popularized the 'Bindi', a hindi name for the decoration worn on the forehead by many women of South Asian origin.Contrary to popular perception, the bindi does not necessarily indicate the marital status of a woman. It can be applied as a turmeric-based powder or a quick-drying liquid, but many contemporary women prefer to use "stick-on" bindis that have a weak adhesive on the back.
Chai: Hot/Iced/Frozen tea served with milk, spices and sweeteners. Most of coffee shops in USA think that the trendiest beverage is neither espresso nor cappuccino, but chai. Rooted in the tea-drinking traditions of India, chai is suddenly the hottest sip in America.Note: The "ch" is pronounced as in "check." The vowel rhymes with "eye."
Cashmere: Fine wool from the undercoat of the Kashmir/cashmere goat. While mistakenly applied to all kinds of soft wool, only the wool from this goat is true cashmere. The wool, known as pashmina, is popular for its use in beautiful shawls and other handmade items produced in the Indian state of Kashmir (now China does too).
Diwali, Deepavali: One of the most festive holidays observed by Hindus, its overall theme is celebration of the triumph of good and truth over evil, symbolized by the lighting of fireworks and clay lamps at night. Diwali occurs during late autumn (late October/early November) and is celebrated in different ways in different parts of India to signify different local customs and religious traditions. Although it is celebrated among many north Indians and the diaspora as the start of the new year, Diwali should not be referred to as the 'South Asian new year', 'Indian new year', or the 'Hindu new year'. No such event exists.

Fancy Flights

2005-12-25T18:48:00.000-05:00

Visited India once more. There's no point ranting experiences for fellow readers..you just have to DO IT to know it. However I can enlighten you on the diversity of the airlines/aircrafts that could be afforded on my economy budget.
It all started with boarding a CR7 American Eagle at XNA to reach Chicago.This is one of the smallest, no frills plane one may fly; its too narrow with two seats on one side and one on the other.I fitted in my butt into the single seater and fell asleep to avoid the torture of being shaken like a cocktail drink during take-off.
The next flight was a gigantic leap from CR7. It was a Boeing 777-200; direct flight from Chicago to New Delhi. Mine was the first such non stop flight operated by AA.
They had special parties and guests to launch this event and the airport lounge was crowded lot. We were given special souvenirs and I hoped the in flight food would be special too (you cannot trust AA with good food).
However, the plane is super magnanimous. Just check out this blue print to gauge the enormosity of this beast.

The flight crew was happy to go to 'mystical' India for the first time. To my utter discomfort, I learned that AA doesn't serve free drinks (read alcohol) even on international flights;I don't know how they expect people to survive for 15 hours, in a closed airplane, in coach class, in the company of grey haired 40+ air hostesses without some liquor. I was fortnuate enough, when I could talk an air hostess to get me a free bottle of scotch. I could manage some sleep after that. The food was not alarmingly bad but also not superb. The limited variety of the food, keeping in mind it is an international flight also surprised me. You get better food on Indian domestic air routes. Read further.
Once in Delhi, I had to wait overnight to catch my next flight from New Delhi to Calcutta (Jet Airways). Believe me or not they use a Boeing 737, which is way bigger and spacious than the American Eagle stuff. The food is also sumptuous and plenty. http://www.airlinemeals.net/meals/JetAirways.html This is way much better than what I ate on the 15 hour flight. This feels like home. Good food. Indian hospitality. Prospering service industry of international standards.Mera Bharat Mahan.
The way back to USA from India it was Boeing 737 (Kolkata-Delhi), followed by Boeing 777-200(New Delhi-Chicago). After Chicago,I was to get NorthWest to fly back to Fort Smith via Dallas. Chicago to Dallas was good in a big Airbus. But the one from Dallas to Fort Smith took my wits away. It was one of those SR (short range) aircrafts with propellers driven by GE jet engines. The last seat looked actually like a couch where 5 people were jostling for space.I was seating on a single seat, luckily.That take-off scared me so much that I fell asleep once the plane was in air.The aged air hostess didn't even bother to ask for any beverage. It feels good to be back in USA where you have best of all facilities but the quality of air travel in USA is really not worth mentioning compared to SE Asia.
Let me know your feedback.

Bad Feminism

2005-10-20T19:24:00.000-05:00

Myth :Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. Most men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just take the rotten apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy... The apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they're amazing. They just have to wait for the right man to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.
Now Men...Men are like a fine wine. They begin as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

Truth: No apples & No grapes & No Generalization. There are both types in either sexes. There are women who are good at throwing guys of the tall trees inspite of all their valiant attempts and there are men who like being stomped before rejecting her for being muddy.

If you read my last post's comments you will know who have been made into liquor (aka stong bitter beer)....and how the imbecile thinks of Karma (without knowing what it means) as the biggest excuse in life to stomp upon good people..how women need to push good prospects down to make themselves taller and feel high and take 'revenge' for past bad experiences.

Indian Guy and American Gal

2005-10-13T18:51:00.000-05:00

According to Monica Bellucci from Chicago, most american (born in usa not immigrants) gals would be very pleased with smart people of my type on a first meeting. And she is right. However I will successfully freak the chick out by giving too much attention and care. I will scare her if I call up the next day. I will make her apprehensive if I speak of relationships even if she is spending the time with me. I will make her feel vulnerable by asking her out even if she is telling me that she likes me. She will think that I'm all excited about nothin and not goal oriented and not for real. And she is right again. This has been my experience with most of the american gals I have hung out with in near past.
However what I have doubts I my mind is that why these gals are shying of care and attention? The obvious melodramatic answers you can expect from chicks will be "I don't know you that much...""..you might be a psycho"..."you must not be for real..I never handled so good guys.." "Iam not used to this, I need my space.." "I'm all by myself..wouldn't a relationship ruin my independance" "you are coming in too strong..".
Well babes, how many psychos or serial killers reported so far in USA were from India and how many of them were IT professionals??? And is life all about having test tube babies (single moms) or is it about having families?? Is love and care and attention wrong?? Is being a little demanding going to brush your ego on the wrong side??Or you read somewhere that cute successful guys can never take care of you and make you feel inferior? Or you have a brain crisis?
And what about appreciating the fact that the guy is a transplant to your country and living an isolated, lonely existence and require true honest someone to spend some good time. That his life may not be as filled up with friends as yours is (you have been born here not me) because there is not much outside work life to look forward to.

Damn the bureaucracy

2005-10-06T23:54:00.000-05:00

The wait for the magic Green Card just got longer.
Just check out the details at http://us.rediff.com/money/2005/oct/07visa.htm?q=tp&file=.htm
H1b holding professionals of the highest quality, and tax payers contributing to the US are forced to live in a state of constant flux due to poor adhoc decision making techniques adopted by US law makers.
Please do raise your concern.

You and me babe, how about it?

2005-10-05T17:50:00.000-05:00

Wish I could write something like this...this expresses the eternal story of romeo so well
_________________________________________________
A lovestruck Romeo sings the streets a serenade
Laying everybody low with a love song that he made
Finds a streetlight steps out of the shade
Says something like "You and me babe, how about it?"
Juliet says "hey, it's Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack"
He's underneath the window
She's singing "hey la my boyfriend's back
You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that"

Anyway what you gonna do about it?

Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start
And I bet that you exploded into my heart
And I forget I forget the movie song
When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?
Juliet
Come up on different streets, they both were streets of shame
Both dirty, both mean, yes and the dream was just the same
And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real
How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?

When you can fall for chains of silver
You can fall for chains of gold
You can fall for pretty strangers
And the promises they hold
You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin, yeah
Now you just say "oh Romeo, yeah, you know I used to have a scene with him"

Juliet,
When we made love you used to cry
You said "I love you like the stars above, I'll love you till I die"
There's a place for us you know the movie song
When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong?
Juliet
I can't do the talk so like the talk on the TV
And I can't do a love song like the way it's meant to be
I can't do everything, but I'll do anything for you
I can't do anything except be in love with you
And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be
All I do is keep the beat and the bad company
Now all I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme

Juliet,I'd do the stars with you any time
Juliet

A lovestruk Romeo sings the streets a serenade
Laying everybody low with a lovesong that he made
Finds a convenience streetlight, steps out of the shade
Says something like "You and me babe, how about it?"
"You and me babe, how about it?"
________________________________________________

Life @ Fort Smith

2005-09-18T23:17:00.000-05:00

Day 1 @ Fort Smith: Pensive mood

After 6 months: W/ my colleagues

Relationships and Maturity

2005-09-15T20:13:00.001-05:00

Eh! Bad topic. First deal with maturity. Hope that would inevitably land into something to do with relationships (keeping in mind my overworked grey cells) ;-~
Hope we all agree that maturity is something elusive that comes with age, education, exposure to different cultures, interaction with multiple communities and has nothing do with CMM (Capability Maturity Model) practices led down by Carnegie Mellon University for improving the maturity of any process(industrial, techno-commercial). Wish they had a model for improving maturity of a person or a relationship for that matter.

Univ of Wisconsin tells that "When a person can live with her past without being bogged down by it, she remains adaptable, capable of continued change, then she is mature."
The mature individual can accept her own shortcomings, realise her faults and is usually much mellowed about life. The mature person knows that she has to go on choosing alternatives, that each alternative costs something, and there are things she will never be able to do and experience, but then maturity is about giving up a lot and realizing how much to give up. She also knows that there are things she will never be able to do again, that she can never recapture the youth or relive her first encounters with certain experiences. She will give up all temptations for a cause that has long time effect. She knows that her integrity would be continually threatened by practical demands, by seductive temptations, by concessions, by conflicting values, and can only be preserved at the cost strong resolve, love for life and faith in mankind. A matured person would take that extra step (often interpreted by immatures as sacrifice or compromise) to make things happen, to keep falling pieces together, to caress a lonely heart. She would make that effort to survive a relationship that is going through a bad patch or may not have blossomed completely.
I don't see too many trendy and smart youth (both guys and gals) doing such things for their relationships; they are all about move-ons, break-ups, divorces. They are afraid to take that risk as it challenges their ego, dreams, sense of freedom and pride. They are all about take-it- easy.Definitely they are good, attractive, smart people who have a lot going for themselves but they are just afraid to settle. So most beautiful men and women have the most confused and most hazy souls. They think settling down will make them like the other 'schmucks'.

Believe me. Trust me. Having one to relate to, talk to, share your life is something so sublime and special; it makes life so easy to live and enjoy. Extend your hand for the person waiting. Your relationship deserves your maturity not whims. Amen!

Crossroads:Walk carefully

2005-09-07T22:00:00.000-05:00

Life has put me in a terrible mess. A cracked ring finger on the lefthand is not the only thing thats going wrong. After a long time, I realized that my personal life is also in a mess, and Iam 28 going on 29. I have been looking for that special one (after the first breakoff) and whenever I thought I met one (@bar, @train,@concerts etc), I realize thereafter that I have been wrong. That I will not be able tolive my life with the 'one'.
I, as an Indian, believe in only one marriage for one life, and so there have been multiple times, when I had to refuse women because I knew things would not work out. Women on the other hand think Iam cute,intelligent, have a good job and make good money, cultured, friendly,caring, a-keeper and so the vicious cycle repeats on. Lets be friends or Iam confused with my life right now has been the excuses that I used..And when I think I can find whom I need, whom I have been looking for, hope God will be good enough not to make me taste my own medicine. I, the born athiest, and spiritual is ready to pray to any God to make this work. Just pray for me and my life. This is important to me. Amen!

Bold Topic

2005-09-04T21:29:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a bold topic to deal with.
How much time should you give yourself before you sleep with your date?

Iam sincerely asking for opinions and hope this one would draw some good opinions. Remember, this is true for both guys and gals who wants to love life and are based in US.

Friendly Chat

2005-08-26T00:42:00.000-05:00

The status bar on the 17" screen of my Dell Inspiron tells the time as 12.43 am Friday. I came back to my apartment about 30 minutes back after having a "hearty" chat with my friend. He does not know that Iam summarizing our discussions in this blog, so I will not introduce him; however he has been my ex colleague and now he is working with me again.
After a long day at work, we started discussing about Indian music and culture and food (while trying chips and mexican salsa) at his apartment before conveniently digressing the topic to our career goals (me, a technical manager and he a techno commercial sales guy in next 5 years) and work. How we have come up where we are, how we need to evolve more to fit into the ever changings scheme of things, how the company should evolve, about old-school typecast colleagues, about confused colleagues, about jobs in us in the next decade, how small work place differences could snowball into issues, how quality of work life changes across companies (both of us are ex-ibmers) are few of the eclectic subject we debated. And then came the topic that we were hiding, love in our life.
How love hurts, how women are more mature in handling love than men like us, how life in USA changed everything for us, how we (both of us are from Kolkata) have never been taught to deal with the kind of isolated existence that we have in a foreign land ....during our discussion these issues remained no longer just topics but passionate subjects to ponder on; an unbiased perspective on on crushes, infatuations, relationships followed soon. We compared the pain of removal of band-aid from a wound with that of a break off; its less painfull to pull it of fast than to procastrinate. How time is a double edged sword for all relationships; more time to know each other brings two people near only to know more shortcomings and have a painfull breakoff. How we conveniently use blinkers to hide our wounds. How we still long for our first love. And life moves on.
I wish everyone who is reading this takes some time of to have a heart-to-heart chit chat with someone in order to unwind the tensions build within; quest for perfect life is bumpy at best so its good to have a hindsight view of things. Living alone in US then may become a little more easy than it has been. May be girls are so strong emotionally because they talk so much!!!!Nice joke!!!

Hate Miandad

2005-07-22T13:59:00.000-05:00

Javed Miandad has always been a pain in the rear for India. Both on and off the cricket field. And now he is getting his son, Junaid, married to the Mahrukh, daughter of Dawood Ibrahim--the most wanted criminal in India, on 23rd of July at Dubai. He seems to be one of those Pakis who loves to hate India for all the wrong reasons and do stuff to antagonise India. The former cricketer is the son-in-law of a leading business family of Pakistan in whose businesses Dawood is believed to have invested heavily; besides ever since Dawood got involved in match-fixing over a decade ago, many Pakistan cricket players were on his rolls. Miandad, in particular, was considered close to him (http://www.rantburg.com/popThug.php?ID=11527&T=Dawood%20Ibrahim).
True unholy nexus.
Invitations for the ceremony has been sent to former Indian cricket captains Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Ravi Shastri and Dilip Vengsarkar, and to Asian Cricket Council chief Jagmohan Dalmiya as well as veteran film star Dilip Kumar and Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. Hope none of them attend this wedding as the security watch dogs are hawkish.

Taxes and more Taxes!!!

2005-07-10T13:12:00.000-05:00

Sometime it's really bewildering to find out how much of your money is sucked by the federal government as part of your taxes. Its so full of inconsistencies for H1Bholders like myself.
Your residency status for tax purposes is completely unaligned from your immigration status. You might qualify as a resident for tax purposes while remaining a non-immigrant alien for immigration purposes. And you end up paying all the taxes of a resident without enjoying any privileges of being one.
A non-resident files a special tax form, pays tax only on U.S. source income, and subject to special rates;conversely, if you are a resident for U.S. tax purposes, you are under the same rules and file the same forms as a U.S. citizen. That means you pay tax on your worldwide income rather than just U.S. source income. More fun is with the Social Security tax.
SS tax cannot be refunded, you can only claim SS benefits if you qualify. Basic qualification is reaching retirement age AND having contributed to SS taxes for 10 years. So a H1Bholder with an ambition of returning back to work in India will have no chances of ever getting back all these SS taxes; they will be enjoyed by the american baby boomers!!!! In today's scenario, the H1B worker gets the same SS benefits as an American worker who stops working in the US before 10 years, which is zero! Isn't that interesting?

Camp Postcards

2005-07-05T22:42:00.000-05:00

the tent (Camp Tilden,Cyclone,MO)

the kayaking pirate (big sugar creek)

Take me where I belong

2005-07-05T22:13:00.000-05:00

How do you know that you have not been online for a long time just for plain surfing? When you forget your blog id's password. And when your IE address bar cache looses the blogspot address. Or may be both. Or may be lack of any comments on my writings took away the incentives from me for writing anything meaningful about my life. Anyway, the long hibernation from writing what-i-like has been very well spent doing other 'meaningful' things.
Most of the time was invested in establishing the credentials at job (client site) however also managed some time for doing many first time stuff in USA, like attending an american (read catholic) wedding, smooches in the back seat of my car (accidental), go-karting (Hot Springs), camping by a creek and kayaking (Camp Tilden). All of them were fun to a certain moment of time before they become boresome. In normal american weddings, they keep you really underfed (compared to a full blown indian wedding). Lack of space at the back seat can be frustrating sometimes. Go-Karting is good if you can go on forever and have your own race tracks..where you dont have to pay for. Camping is marvellous still you have to pack it up all and clear up the space. Kayaking is good till you get tired of being grounded in shallow water and sunburned.
Dont think me of a damned cynic. Its just that all good things must come to an end. Why?! Dont know. They just end. All types of flights (paperplanes, airplanes, birds, bees, kites etc) ultimately end on ground. Iam on ground now. Just a way of thinking may be. Ciao.

The New Copernicus

2005-04-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

No more of Hybrids. It now all about Albert Einstein and the not so recent controversies around him. I was in Princeton few months back as a tourist and walked across the place where he lived and died. And my interests in him got renewed.
He has been referred as the New Copernicus by the famous German Physician Max Planck. However its alleged what we know of him is because of the fact that two executors of Einstein's estate meticulously went through all his letters and documents and destroyed any that could posthumously tarnish his image. We now know of him as the Times Man of the Last Century; the master physicist who came out with the theory of general relativity, quantam theory; a leftist Jew and a radical thinker.

It is being pointed out by various interest groups that Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his Quantam theory and not for Relativity as everybody knew that he plagiarised the works of his talented, older and submissive wife Mileva Einstein-Marity and claimed the paper to be his solo effort. Check out the following sites for more details on what I am referring about.
http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/mileva.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric
http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/classroom/lesson2.htm

Besides, investigation into Einstein's life has uncovered vibrant details of an active love life and unknown facets of his personality;Einstein divorced twice on unfriendly terms, he allowed his first daughter (probably affected by Down's Syndrome), born before his first marraige to Mileva to die or adopted due to his career pressures; and his sons accused him of not being a good father. He was a man of versatile personality and his popularity among the masses is influenced a lot by his persona and his typical outspokenness on international politics and culture of his time rather than his mathematical genius.
(http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/einstein02.html)
The lousy haircut, the cartoonish look, the enigma, the philosopher, the scientist; He Is All; and yet we should not forget that he was a human being with his own shortcomings.

Killer Apps

2005-04-14T20:03:00.000-05:00

Sabeer Bhatia is on the roll again. There is this new cool product that bears the name of this Indian technopreneur. Check out this on http://www.instacoll.com
Its a collaboration tool that allows you to share and work with your existing documents seamlessly over the internet (it claims even over low bandwidth). With outsourcing and off-shoring kicking off faster than ever, this product could turn to be the next killer application in this domain; it facilitates sharing presentations and documents, real time.
One another killer app and a great competitor to Mapquest will be the Google maps.
http://maps.google.com/

Check them out!!!

Hybrid cars and Horses

2005-04-12T22:30:00.001-05:00

It seems hybrid cars are the new rage. People are maintaining blogs on them. Newspapers are always reporting about them. And there are more of them on the road today than a week before.
I read up some interesting news, where used hybrids are fetching more prices than the new ones, due to the abnormal waiting period (http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-04-11-prius-usat_x.htm). I was lucky to have my Prius 2005 within 12 hours. Some one preordered it and then got undecided on the color. And I ended up with that one. I have driven already abt 2500 miles on this one and this is really a cool mean machine.

Once that I have updated you abt hybrid, I will post here a picture of my horse ride.

Name of the Horse: Flash
Type: 3 year old gelding; Quarter Horse
Owner: Kendra Gilmore of Beverly
Ranch:4 Winds Ranch, Alma, AR

Kendra taught us (me and one of my colleague) the basics of horse riding in 10 minutes, and it wasn't difficult at all to try this as Flash is very obedient and smart. He knew that Iam a novice, so he didnt nudge a bit at start till I got him moving kicking with my heels. It was an interesting spring noon, where I learned how not to be afraid of horses and how not to get them afraid of me; how to get up on one and how to get down; how to extend your heels and test your balance; how to bend a little bit to give signals to the horse etc....

Updates!!

2005-03-30T22:58:00.000-05:00

My work is taking up toomuch of my 'alive' time. Besides there is the usual rigmarole of cooking,cleaning, laundry, ironing, reading and the list goes on. Life is getting more and more routineed and hence boring except for a couple of happenings. One is the job itself. Something new or the other is happening everyday to keep me at the edge. Another is the comments to my blog scripts. Some Anonymous person is writing venomous comments to my articles without letting me know his/her identity. This is interesting, as the person knows me definitely but wants to hide him/her self behind a virtual veil. It would be great if he/she let me know the name atleast.

2005-03-24T16:42:00.000-05:00

Ms Salsa Juicy

The Nomad In Me

2005-03-24T16:35:00.000-05:00

I am updating my blog after a long time. I was busy grabbing and digesting my new responsibilities at my new workplace for the last one month. So a lot of updates are here all of your way.
I bought a new Toyota Prius 2005 just before changing over to the new office. I will write sometime about how I got hold of THE Car in just 12 hours when there is actually a wait of 3 to 6 months for this mind boggling 4 wheeler. Amazed!!
I drove it all the way from Chicago to down south Fort Smith in Arkansas. More amazing that I left Chicago for the new job I talked about in my last update and drove down to Fort Smith with my friend. It was long and tiring 9 hour drive and we took it; canceling all previous airline and hotel bookings as I wanted to 'run' the car a bit.
I will attach some pictures of Fort Smith's azure blue sky and my Prius. I named her and the navigation system inside as Ms Salsa Juicy. Well not much creativity here; the color of the car is called Red Salsa by Toyota and the car is juicy enough; it holds on to gas for long time say 45 miles per gallon.