TGIF!

My life had been uneventful for a long time since the last bullet ride to Kudremukh. As always, I had got myself busy with work and literally breaking my head, spending late-evenings over the non-working issues! A kinda stress, frustration had set in. I needed a break and it came as the part of fun filled event, TGIF(Thank God! It's Friday).

It all started with several colleague's idea to put up songs, skit  and a dance event. I was called upon Thursday morning to take part in the play as they needed to fit me in some role. I was more than happy :)

It was nice script done by the fellas to pull our senior(can also be called "old" :P) team members' legs. Characters like Himesh, Vilas, Ghanav, CP sir, Candy, Mona, Mori were really hilarious! I enjoyed it thoroughly. Kudos to guys and gals who wrote all those dialogues filled with pun. It was awesome fun to enact the role of Candy; Long time since school/college since I took part in some kind of play. I laughed out wholeheartedly during practice sessions in imitating the gestures and actions. Recording sessions went cool even though we were disturbing the neighboring conference rooms with our laughter. The final cut version of recording was done and I added some "special effects" :P and brought it for rehearsal. The new joinees were highly sportive and so were the mocked team members :D

Lots of people with gifted arts like singing, dancing, acting, mimicry, playing music, together with our well known shayar :), I would say that Alcatel-Lucent SRPG-IPD 7210 team rocks!!! in core technical as well as extra-curricular fields.

Operation Manyatha

I always say - "People should have at-least one craze for keeping themselves alive, not as in breathing-air-alive but something like happy-contented-motivated-energetic-alive" :)

Okay, here I go. On evening of this good Friday, I had this crazy idea to commute daily by cycling to office which is at Manyatha embassy tech park and that's the reason why I choose this deluxe title of the post!

To test the feasibility of the above and start this Operation as a successful one, I took the test ride starting from home straight to the office on Saturday evening at 4:00 pm. The cycle was in good shape even after my 80+ kms of pedal-a-thlon :P, a few months back. Inflating of the tires was all that the "food" that it needed this time.

Ears plugged with the I-pod touch speakers which was buzzing the top 25 songs played on it, I traveled in the hot sun which was shining so mercilessly even after mid-noon! As my heart raced (but below the limits :P) It pumped more blood to my brain and amplified my thoughts after a few kms of cycling! I looked back and asked myself..The very 1st question on your mind too by now ;)

What am I going to achieve by commuting on a Saturday evening, just to the gates of office and coming back for about 15 kms of round trip travel without a drop of water with me?

I don't know the reason - What! Why!, But I enjoyed giving a mocking smile at the petrol bunks in my OWN cycle(The first thing I bought from my salary!) where I usually get my bro's bike or my dad's car refueled.

I spread the awareness to use fuel free alternatives and it was like a solo-campaign to save the world from air pollution and depleting natural resources :'( Hope everyone implements it sooner before the D-day arrives.
Having said about pollution, I regret to say that I have found so many plastic bottles, covers and sachets thrown all around the beautiful mountain terrains while trekking.
I learnt from one of our guides during Kerala trip, a few years back, who himself picked up all plastic to put it in nearby dustbin while trekking. No doubt about the literacy rate there.
This reminds me of the quote - "We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children."

Coming back to the cycling, I took the service roads to escape the yamadhooth-like Leyland trucks and for safer journey. They was lot of rush and parking problem that people were facing near Lumbini gardens at Nagawara as it is a new place for holiday outing within the city limits. Dodging all the traffic I came to my office and It is more farther than I expected. Total round trip to-n-fro home costed about 15 kms of pedaling. It took a total of 45 mins and I was back at home by 4:45pm. It was pretty fast indeed!

I will make it a exercise/habit to take this seriously and continue my good deed :D Hope I will keep myself fit till next weekend to say whether "Operation Manyatha" was a success or failure ;)

Cheers,
Karthik Bharadwaj H

One Nite at the Customer Site

No, this is not a sequel of the Chetan Bhagat's novel :D
Let me not even mention the customer site name(of-course you can guess it).

At on-site place, the work is a lot more different than what it actually is @ my office. By different, I mean a lot more hectic with lots more work pressure. But I feel that work is made more fun when people around talk to you comfortably closer and expose some personal feelings of home/family even at work.

This happened to me one day(actually very late evening). One of my colleague(Let me call him, Mr.X) and myself had to wait for the daily release build to do basic sanity and also check the all different fixes called CR's integrated into it and make sure there are no regressions.. If you don't get the "bad long phrase" that I used just now, feel free to replace it with "testing" ;) Since the developers were busy with fixing issues all day long and integrators always take all the time in the evening to put all corrected CR's into the single build, we poor chaps had to wait for our turn till night! sob sob.. ;( However, I still call it "insanity" testing rather than sanity tests :P

Since I came to customer site later that afternoon, It was not boring yet, even if I was staying a little longer. Thanks to managers who look into that we are scheduled properly.

Moreover, It was a Saturday evening and I received a message from our Team lead which said "Thanks for coming on weekend" and soon I realized that he too had taken off for the day, leaving Mr.X and myself to attend to the further needy. You may not know how horrible the next day(Sunday) might be when you stay late evening during a weekend! Am I again supposed to say "pissed off"!? :P

But Mr.X, was so different in his attitude! as he had seen so many of such weekends before.. He was so positive that I couldn't believe my eyes!

First of all, Let me introduce Mr.X. This guy is an adorable family man who loves his wife sooo..much that he sacrifices everything for her(lucky her)! A very open, honest and helping guy.

We had been out for dinner that night (around 9:30pm for the build was yet to come) and I asked a few personal family questions(in general) which he didn't even hesitate to answer! Even after 5-6 years of marriage he is still so young - like a "teenage lover"- at heart. With my eyebrows raised, I asked how he could spend time with his wife in "ruined weekends"(like the one I was suffering now) even after staying so late at Saturday night? To which he replied that he would go out on Sundays with her getting up early in the morning as it's the only way he could be with her for more time. Man! Didn't I say he is choo-chweet :)

This lovely incident doesn't end here. Soon after we headed back to our workstations we received the patched binaries and testing was soon carried out and it was all over earlier than he expected. But, time was ticking very fast for only me. It was already 1:00am, the next morning! He had expected not less than 3:00am to reach home. He was so happy that it was all done and all set to leave, he noticed a bouquet of flowers in nearby cubicle and smoothly drew a Red rose from it and said He would surprise her wife today by going early! (I was dumbstruck with his lovely thought)

Even on the way back in the company cab to his place, we had little chat. He welcomed me home in that odd hours too.. for which I said of-course I will, but some-other time. Getting down from the cab at around 1:30am, he ran down the lane to reach his home with the red rose in his hand and a big smile on his face.

For that fleeting moment in my life I really felt that, Love was in the air for sure :)