A month with a difference...

What would the life be, if you were removed from your comfort zone and put in a completely different environment? An environment which you were part of several years earlier but you never envisaged being part of it again? What if I you can't adjust yourself to the uncomfort zone you are in now? What would it be, not to have all those people around, with whom you have spent almost 1/3 of your life? How would it be, to work all alone, almost all the time, with occasional calls from the team? How would it be to work from home, be at home almost entire day? loads of questions... all "W"'s were haunting me.


It all started with a casual discussion with one of the friends almost four months back. I was getting an opportunity to do something different, something that I had not done so far on the career side and that got me excited and interested. After much deliberation, lot of debates, going over the pros and cons, finally decided to take the plunge... Decided to move myself in the uncomfortable zone. Into a role, which calls for all the technical work, which I had been part of years earlier. Last few years with my last employer had been in a completely different area - project management, account management, customer relations. The role was challenging and I was enjoying it too. However, there were sudden bursts, which kept on popping up - what is it I would like to do 2 years from now, 5 years from now? (Thanks to some online influencers like Robin Sharma, Ramit Sethi, Seth Godin, Brad Feld and many more, of whom I am a regular reader of their blogs)


There are instances when you get some ideas, get excited about the new idea, you decide to do something about it later and you park it. Only to realize after a while that either you haven't built anything on that idea or someone has taken the actual step to build the product around the same idea. And then you go through the cycle of pain, frustration and what not. Happened with you? It did with me multiple times. And this, kind of forced me to start believing that if I need to work upon my own ideas, I need to dedicate time right away for that idea, otherwise, it won't happen. But in the services industry, that too, with 20 odd kilometers of driving one way (or should I say 120 mins on the road daily!!), it almost becomes impossible to spare some time for such ideas. The services industry definitely teaches you how to build a product, but not how to "own" a product. To be able to grow and do something about my own ideas, I wanted to be on the other side of the table... "Building" Vs "Owning". "Asking for confirmation on decision" Vs "Taking the decision and owning it". 


With this thought, I finalized to change the gears and get on to a very different track and join a startup firm in Pune which has been operational for about 18 months or so with couple of their own products. By the time, I was getting relieved from my earlier employer, things changed suddenly and I landed up with another startup with the same person, but into a very different domain - mobility with retail - exciting concept and with proper execution we'd be reaching the masses of this country.


So here I am.. working from home for five weeks. Only three-four meetings in the entire week. 3-4 status calls and rest of the time - all hand-on. Went back to the technology. Basics of Java/J2EE, did some hands-on exercises to refresh the knowledge. Basics of cloud, Some new concepts like NoSQL. Working with Amazon AWS. Completely immersed into getting myself up to the speed. Got bugged down with some stupid nuances of Java like CLASSPATH and Resource files etc. Started drawing flow-charts, write code on paper first and then do actual coding. Cursed myself for overlooking few obvious design issues in the beginning, but looks like I am getting into the groove... 


It is still a long way to go, feels like I am on right track... to discover myself, my capabilities.. to do something different, something that will touch millions around...


At the onset of the new year, with lot of hope in the mind, I wish you all a a very happy life, filled with prosperity and health. May this year bring some meaningful difference to each one of you. 

Happy New Year 2012!!

Mobile Number Portability - Revisited

A year back, I blogged about the "Mobile Number Portability" and its possible usage in India. 


While I was predicting that the customer would still be cribbing, albeit for the new provider, since every provider appears to be providing same quality of service. However, today's news made me aware that I had forgotten about a particular aspect completely. Willingness of the operators to let go of the existing customer - it seems to be playing a key role in making MNP not so widely used in India even after a year. As per the current statistics only about 2 percent subscribers have opted for MNP, whereas in other countries the percentage has been in the range of 4 to 16 percent. Even TRAI was expecting the usage of this facility by about 10% of the subscribers.


A quick search on MNP issues, landed me with this page, which is talking of the same issues which TRAI has pointed out in today's report. 


I wonder if this is cartel. All providers deciding to keep their own subscribers so that no one fears of loosing, albeit at the cost of possible upside... What do you think?


BTW, anyone from the readers, who has opted for MNP? If yes, what is your experience so far?

Boycott is not a way at all

Dear BJP,


With all due respect to the senior leaders and the partymen, it is unfair on people's part to boycott someone or the parliament session. If you have some proofs against some person, please hand them over to judiciary system, invoke pleas to remove that person from the seat. If you feel it is not right to have that person in the seat even until the judiciary system hears your plea, please start educating the people of India and have peaceful protests outside the parliament. If your claim has value, it will surely see the light of the day. People of India have proven their eagerness to fight against corruption and if you have strong case, people will support you as we. But YOU need to prove beyond doubt that you have a case.


By boycotting the person and thereby halting the working of parliament is sheer waste of time and money for the people of India and please understand this. These hours could be used in a far more productive ways in order to complete the agenda of the session and would be beneficial to the people of India.


Yours truly.


News links: 
BJP begins ‘boycott’, rest step back
Lok Sabha loses four hours, Rs 1 crore on day one

Facing hospitalization in family?

[Note: This is an old post I had started writing back in 2006, revising and publishing it only now]

God forbid, that should not happen with you, but we face this situation some or the other time in our life. It takes a lot of things to pass through this phase, and this collection of items would help you survive.

• Be on time

• When you tell the patient that someone will reach hospital at so-and-so time, make sure someone reaches at that time. The patient usually won't have clue why you are getting late.

• Keep cool

• It's easy to panic by various things during the hospitalization. It is utmost important not to let it reach the patient.

• Ensure some cash with the person accompanying the patient

• Many-a-times doctors ask you to get some medicines quickly and if you don't have enough money, then you waste time in arranging for the money and then getting the medicine.

• Take care of yourself

• Just because someone very close to you is hospitalized, doesn't give you any excuse not to look after yourself. If you can stay healthy, then only you can take care of the patient. Otherwise, you will need to get admitted and causing more worry to the patient and others in the family.
• Whenever time permits, fill your stomach with some nutritious stuff such as fruits/juices or some lumpsome meal. Idea is you might not get a chance even to look at the food for next 12 hours. So if you find time and if you are hungry, fill your stomach.

• Inform the close relatives as early as possible
• There is no point in hiding thing from your 'close' relatives. Sooner you inform them, better for them to get prepared and ready, in case travel is required.
• If you call up the closed ones late, suspicion. builds on the other side. The recipients may get jittery - are we getting all the information? Specially, if it wasn't serious, why were we not informed earlier? and things like that. 
• You could be right with your stand that there's no point in telling others if you yourself do not have clarity. However, persons sitting at the other end of the city or in different city, need some time to get ready for required travel and hence letting them know at the earliest helps.

• Be patient with the hospital staff
• Hospital is such a place that most of the people around are worried for some or the other things. The staff also gets irritated at times by staying in such environment. Keeping your patience only can help you get the required attention and service. No point in making noise at wrong place/people.

• Understand the rules of Hospital
• Specially in big hospitals, they have some set rules for visitor timings, number of persons that can accompany patients etc. Understand them and adhere to them as much as possible. By all chances the rules have been set considering the patients' health and fast recovery.

Tadoba - Part 10

Read earlier posts here - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9


After much debate, we decided not to take Ghugus Road for the worst experience we had earlier in the trip. There were two options in front of us. 

1. Moharli-Chandrapur-Warora-Jamb-Hinganghat - This would still have made us travel a comparatively bad road from Hinganghat onwards past Deoli. 
2. Moharli-Chandrapur-Nagpur-Amaravati-Akola - Good road condition from Nagpur to Akola was a major temptation. However, the distance was too much and the road from Hinganghat to Nagpur was again unknown. 

Finally decided to take Warora-Jamb road. 


View Larger Map  
And to our surprise, the road was beautiful!! However, this time we kept our fingers crossed almost until we reached Jamb.


We reached Jamb at around 2, which is just about two hours for 90Km!! It was time for lunch and we were looking for decent place. Unfortunately, we didn't see any good place, which was contradictory to whatever we had heard about the place. Everyone had advised us to have food at Jamb and we didn't see anything around at Jamb Junction. We took the road towards Hinganghat, which was NH7. As soon as we left NH7, we inquired about restaurant and everyone pointed us back to Jamb!!


Frustrated enough, we decided not to go back and test our luck on the road itself. And on one fine turn, just outside an industrial complex we saw Dhaba. Delighted. I stepped out of the car for quick inspection and inquiry. The uncle was pretty friendly and the place was clean. To top it, he had chapati and Dal-Jira too. मृण्मय की तो निकल पड़ी!! We had awesome Dal,  Alu-Gobi and tawa parathas!! Delicious!!


Now we were getting prepared for the bad road upto Pulgaon via Deoli. However for some reason, we didn't find the road that bad this time and always kept wondering whether we have taken the same road or some different road. However some landmarks were familiar (e.g. Cotton processing Unit, some warehouses etc) Finally we concluded that the Gugus road has made me a better driver for such roads ;)


The road from Pulgaon to Chandur Railway Station was at par anyways. By this time it was almost dark. The roads didn't have the lights and the signboards were scarce. However, there were not many diversions/alternate roads, so easily hit the Amaravati bypass pretty quickly. By our initial estimate, we were hoping to reach Akola by 11 in the night or so (12 hours journey - based on the earlier travel time.) But by taking that Jamb road, we seemed to have saved almost two hours. By sevenish, we were close to Amaravati Bypass. And by 8:30 or so, we reached Akola. Tired, but happy. I was saved of almost 90 mins of driving time :)


Total distance travelled: 360 Km.
Total Driving time: 9 hours.
Total Travel time: 10 hours.


Few lessons from this trip:

• Do some homework about the roads in the area that you plan to travel. Find out some local contacts and ask very direct questions. Prefer the advise from those folks who use those roads regularly.
• Ask. We benefited when we asked and were at disadvantage when we didn't. A very casual question at Pulgaon, helped us in finding a good place for Breakfast. But shyness or laziness at Jamb junction kept us hungry for long.
• Start early. Given the travel time during our journey to Tadoba, if we had started late by an hour or so, we might had reached late at the entry gate of the way to Tadoba, which closes at 7 PM. and we had reached there by 6/6:15 or so. This could be one off case, however, early start also reduces the night travel
• Carry some snacks apart from Biscuits :) Some fruits might be helpful as a quick snack. Near Ghugus, we had to purchase few bananas to fill our stomach, in the absence of any decent place to eat.
• Use Navigation system: We used Meghana's Galaxy S II very effectively. But remember the navigation system doesn't tell you how the road would be :)
• Do not rely completely on Google maps. The route shown by Google to reach Moharli was not feasible as Forrest department doesn't allow passengers to take that route. This misled us to certain extent until we called up our tour guide/operator.
• State Highway does not mean sub-par road and National Highway doesn't mean good road. NH-7 was a big flop show whereas most of the state highways were in much better condition. So do not base your calculations or plans solely based on whether to road is NH or SH.

This concludes the 10 part series on our trip to Tadoba. Unfortunately Meghana is still processing the photos and hence haven't included any yet. As soon as the photos are available, I am planning to put up a photo story :)

 

Tadoba - Part 9

Read earlier posts here - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8


While we were busy with Safaris mornings and afternoons, MTDC was acting as our base. After the 3-4 hours of bumpy ride, the room in the resort provided for the comfort much needed by the body. The room was spacious, lot of empty space, a balcony and a sit-out. All this was situated very next to the tiger reserve and we heard some stories of tiger slipping out of the Jungle boundaries and capturing some of the cattle from the village around.

The restaurant @ MTDC was a big "thumbs down" experience. There wasn't much choice available in the food items. The menu was more or less restricted to Panjabi items, which were prepared with pathetic raw material. On one of the meals, I just separated the pieces of Paneer as I couldn't eat them. Breakfast/snacks comprised of either Pohe, Bread Omlet or Bread Butter. After having "mirchi" pohe, we resorted to bread butter for the snacks and the bread was over for next two rounds!!. The only good part was the Chapatis and Dal Jira which were good and eatable. 

On the second day, I was so desperate to have something different, I actually thought of stepping out of the MTDC and have dinner at one of the other resorts nearby. This was vetoed by Mrunmay strictly saying we'd not go outside!! Even Ashish, our guide, kept of stating MTDC is best amongst the available choices.. I stopped imagining what would be happening at other resorts..

It was surprising for us to know that there are villages inside the tiger reserve. We could see some farming and some villagers during our regular safaris. Some folks were just walking down the road, some were on two wheelers and some were waiting for the S.T. Bus. Yes, one bus travels through the Jungle and helps people inside the reserve to connect with the world outside!!


One thing that was distinctly different from Bandipur - the co-operation amongst the Gypsies, the guides and the drivers. At Bandipur, the guides used to help each other a lot, specifically in terms of information exchange. However, here I saw that as a problem. Information was exchanged very reluctantly and one would always have a doubt if that is true or not. Probably this was because here the Gypsies were private and owners were different, whereas at Bandipur the Gypsies are supplied and governed by the Forrest Dept. But at the end of it, the tourists are at disadvantage, due to lack of information exchange.


On the whole, this trip left me dissatisfied on two fronts - No Tiger sighting and no good food. However, we had good fun along with Mrunmay during the Safari as well as during the stay at MTDC. One thing that we realized about Mrunmay - he was reserved with most of the folks, but opens up and becomes friendly with some select few and it leads to some interesting conversations :)


It was time to pack bags and start our journey back home. With the memories of Ghugus still haunting, we were desperate to try some other route. It was not an easy dilemma - would the other road be better than Chandrapur-Gugus road or it would be worse? We were slated to leave Moharli by noon, by considering the time it took us to reach Moharli, it would have been midnight before we reach Akola. That means night drive and if the road is bad, it would only add to the worries.


We decided to choose "Unknown God"...


Continued...

Mrunmay's first Karaoke

It was Ragini's Birthday earlier last week and I was not in town, so Meghana and I decided to take her out on last Friday after I returned back. As a practice, we try to visit newer places when we go out and this time it was "Puran-da-dhaba" located at Pride Hotel, Shivajinagar. 


Given that it was a Friday night, I thought there would be a rush and hence called them up and reserved the table for four. Fortunately, the place was not crowded at all. As we entered the place, the ambiance caught our eyes. The place was decorated to give the dhaba look and to a large extent it was successful. A "khaat", a bullock-cart, some posters. There were mehendiwali and chudiwalee and an astrologer too (this is something may not be part of actual dhaba.. but nonetheless it was there). 


As we climbed up the stairs, a more Dhaba-like look appeared. Around 12-15 tables. Few were unoccupied. The captain pointed us to a table reserved for us. The curious eyes were looking all around and Mrunmay and I both saw it almost instantly. There was a place for live singing - couple of chairs, a synth, set of speakers and mixer unit along with couple of mics. Mrunmay had to check out what all was that. As he climbed up the dias, I asked him if he wants to sing. As a habit he nodded his head negatively. I persuaded saying that it was his stage today. He sounded interested. After couple more attempts he said yes. My intention was just to keep him occupied and interested through the dinner. What followed was just amazing.


As he was exploring on the stage, he saw the mic. With instant reaction, he picked it up and started singing the song - "Twinkle Twinkle.." I was under the impression that since the singers are not around, the mic is turned off and the speakers would also be off. But both were on!! Mrunmay's voice was all over the place and everyone started looking at us not knowing what's happening. Incidentally the person who was playing the Synth was around and started playing the music in the same pace as Mrunmay was singing. This was followed by Baba Blacksheep, "Jangal Jhadeet waghoba lapale" and "Pussy Cat Pussy Cat"

What amazed us was his boldness and lack of fear of stage. He wasn't really concerned if the entire restaurant was listening to him or not. He just wanted to sing utilizing the new found prop - mic. He wanted to continue singing but the singers already had some songs lined up and we were also running out of time, so Mrunmay had to stop after those 3-4 songs. 


Ragini's comment - Best birthday gift ever!! :)