Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi ...

The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian

2008-12-15T19:23:00.001-05:00

This book is a great choice if you are not in a mood to know more about things flattening the world (The world is flat), communism (Animal farm), investing (Rich dad poor dad), racism (How to kill a mockingbird), history (India - The definitive images), self-help (Eat that frog, How to win friends and influence people)…Well maybe I gave you my excuse for picking this one. Regardless of what your excuse is, this is an incredibly fun book to read.

Also since it had the word “Indian” in its title it caught my attention. (I enjoy reading novels or stories with Indian characters). But after browsing through it I figured out that it was a (fictional) diary of a ‘native’ or ‘red’ Indian boy –Arnold Spirit Jr.

Arnold hails from a (red) Indian reservation (he refers to it as ‘rez’) in WA. His life is in a mess and he is so frustrated at God that he wants to ‘kill’ him. He is not particularly attractive, has suffered from a serious brain damage as kid and at a tender age of 14, has attended 42 funerals. His dad is an alcoholic, mom does not have a steady job and sister is a hopeless romantic who has run away to fulfill her fantasies. So he decides to break free from the rez and moves to a ‘all whites’ school in a nearby town.

This move also not very well received by Arnold’s community and he is accused for being a ‘white-lover’. His best friend Rowdy is mad at him for ‘betraying’ the tribe which supposedly has ‘cursed’ the tribe leading to a couple of deaths in his family. He is also having a tough time getting settled in new school which is in town where even cops are so racist that (native) Indian drivers are getting a ticket for DWI (Driving While Indian)!

In such hopeless situation, drawing cartoons is Arnold’s way to vent frustration.

Native Indians were nomadic but now most of them have settled into reservations created by the government. But Arnold Spirit is turning a nomadic again in search of a better life and greener pastures.

The book is really witty and filled with really nice cartoons which accompany the story as seen here.

Great read and Sherman Alexie totally deserves the slew of awards that were bestowed upon him for this book. Recommended!

How to win friends and influence people!

2008-12-08T20:32:00.004-05:00

If you’re one of those who hate self-help books (maybe because you think perfection ko improve karna mushkil hota hai) then you can stop reading here. No donut for you :P

While growing up, this is probably the first book in this genre that I had heard of. Since it is written half century ago I was skeptical whether its advice is still relevant. I already had got myself burnt by reading ‘Eat that frog’. I guess only because I could get hands on its audio version we decided to give it a try during our road trip to Southern California during Thanksgiving. Both of us loved it and finished (listening to) it in two days flat!

The book is replete with great and easy-to-follow advice .All the “techniques” (Btw it would be really ironic if you realize that you need to learn/master a something as fundamental as “Smile!”) are explained with the help of witty anecdotes. This is unusual given that most of the books in self-help genre are such that you immediately figure out that their authors are the ones who need help the most :)

I’m so impressed that I’ve put its summary in my office. Highly recommended!

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan Live In Concert!

2008-12-08T15:18:00.000-05:00

I love Sufi music! So when we learnt that Rahat Fateh Ali Khan was going to perform in Bay area how could we let this opportunity go! Even though the show was poorly organized Rahat mesmerized the audience and created magic through his voice! He sung most of his immensely popular bollywood songs which stand out from the noise just because of his voice. The best part was that he also sung a lot of Qawaalis that are made immortal by his uncle, Shahenshah-e-Qawwali Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Here are some of the songs that he sung. (Invested an entire Sunday morning to find nice videos of Nusrat and Rahat in action.Don't forget to have a look!)

On a side note people were literally throwing money on him which we thought was really inappropriate. But after looking at this youtube video it seems it's a tradition in the country Rahat belongs to! So never mind :)

Eat that frog!

2008-12-07T03:51:00.000-05:00

If you eat a frog every morning then that will probably be the worst thing you’ll do that day and you are rest assured that nothing worse will happen to you. That’s the (only!) point this (rather forgettable) book is trying to make.

It (repeatedly!) reminds the reader of the 80/20 principle and suggests various techniques (using lists, ABCDE method etc.) to identify tasks which will have a positive impact on life and suggests to tackle them first.

There is nothing new and even though this book is just about 100 pages; in my honest opinion that too is overkill. Maybe I am spoiled due to abundance of useful information available on the internet in a concise form (blogs, articles etc.) that I feel that if the author were to write this book in 2008 he would happily settle for a blog entry instead of writing a book. I had high expectations from this book maybe because a sane friend suggested it :) Even though it is evident that I did not like it I will not say that it was completely a waste of time. But again, if you ask me glass is always half full!

Rich Dad Poor Dad and Rich Dad’s Prophecy

2008-12-07T03:23:00.000-05:00

Does this book need any introduction? I don’t know why I did not read it for so long. Better late than never!

Pretty much everyone I deal with in day to day life knows how to earn money; there are a few who know how to manage it and then there are a precious few who know how to manage it effectively! The people in the last category are commonly known as ‘RICH’!People usually take all matters related to their careers seriously, work really hard to get a promotion or a salary increment yet are completely ignorant and are at the mercy of someone else when it comes to taxes, investment and long term decisions related to financial matters. After going through these two books I have realized the importance of having a good financial IQ and how to work towards improving it.

In Rich dad poor dad Robert Kiyosaki touches upon following principles.

The rich don’t work for money
The importance of financial literacy
Minding Your own business
Taxes and corporations
The rich invent money
The need to work to learn and not to work for money

Even though the book is a pleasure to read and does not take infinitely long to finish here’s a summary for the fast-food generation.

In ‘Rich dad’s prophecy’ he predicts a stock market crash in near future (2016) and also discusses 401K and other retirement plans along the way. Even there is not even a remote connection between his predictions about the stock market crash and the current economic recession it gave me a good insight into things I was looking around for an advice.

As a side note this was the first time that I tried audio books and I am completely mesmerized by this phenomenon! This is perfect for someone like me who cannot get enough of reading and is always trying to get more done in the available time. I finished these two books in less than a week and that too while doing activities like driving and washing dishes :) I am hungry for more and will encourage you to try out one!

India The definitive images

2008-12-07T01:46:00.001-05:00

It’s quite funny to “read” a book containing photographs (along with some commentary) and then write a review about it. But believe me this book is worth it.

After staying in US where people call half century old stuff “historic”, I desperately want to read up some book about India’s magnificent past (Any suggestions?). So I grabbed this one when it came in my way. Even though it does not quench my knowledge thirst in any way ; after investing about a couple of hours into it I touched upon some epoch- making events in Indian History and also came to know about origins of some of the most famous photographs.

Apart from an introduction from Khushwant Singh it contains timeless images from some of the most celebrated photographers such as Raghu Rai, Steve McCurry , Raghubir Singh and others. Recommended!

8 things...

2008-11-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

8 TV Shows I Love to Watch:

Friends
The Office
Malgudi days
Top Chef
I dream of Jeanie
Lonely Planet
Tom and Jerry
Sex and the City

8 Favorite Places to Eat:

Vaishali (South Indian place) on FC Road in Pune
Badshahi (typical Maharashtian cuisine) in Pune
P F Chang's
Sarvana Bhavan at Lexington Ave in NYC
College Town Bagels in Ithaca
Bella Luna Restaurante Italliano, Palo Alto‎
Subway sandwiches
California Pizza Kitchen

8 Things That Happened Yesterday:

Maharashtrian lunch at Nitin’s place
Collected atleast 15 samples of exotic perfumes
Was very nostalgic and by chance I had the Swades CD playing in the car..so heard ‘yeh jo des hain tera’ song 5 times!
Had free champagne at Nordstrom
Had the worst dinner at P F Chang's…after complaining to the Manager, thankfully didn’t have to pay for it
Watered the plants after a week!
Excitedly went for shopping only to know that the mall gets closed really early on Sundays
Had tasty rasagullas

8 Things I Look Forward To:

Tushar
Hawaii trip – First wedding Anniversary
Drive to Big Sur
Meet my mom
Hair length reaching down the hip
Visiting Cornell during snowfall
Jogging on the road with my favorite music plugged into my ears
Learn Swimming

8 Things I Love About Winter:

Garam chai ki pyali
Colorful Sweaters
Vapor coming out of mouth (Can pretend to smoke in the morning)
Dewdrops on leaves
Winter sales
Christmas lighting and decoration
Shekoti (born fires)
Roasted bhutta (Sweet Corn)

8 Things on my Wish List:

I-phone
26-inch waistline
Develop reading habit
Start my own company/business
Backpack trip to Europe
Teaching at school (childhood dream)
Oh speaking of childhood dreams…I always wished I could fly…
Ballroom dance with Tushar

8 Things I’m Passionate About:

Tushar
Eating
Sleeping
Watching movies
Watching planes and choppers flying in the sky
New clothes
Mom
younger brother

8 Words or Phrases I Use Often:

Really?
Chalo
Hmmmm
You know…
I mean…
Kuch bhi
Itna Ghatiya
OK

8 Things I Have Learned From My Past:

No shortcut for hard work
If you want something the entire universe conspires help you achieve it!
You need to take initiative to be in contact with old buddies
Listen more speak less
Laugh your heart loud whenever you get a chance
Just do it, jo hoga dekha jayega
Believe in yourself
Time flies

8 Places I Would Love to Go or See or Visit:

Hawaii
Egypt for Pyramids
Norway and Sweden to see 6 months days and 6 months night
Amazon Rain Forest
Kenya Jungle Safari
Himalayas
Fatehpur Sikri near Agra
Alaska

8 Things I Currently Need or Want:

Regular exercise
Nice pair of specs
Visit to a spa for herbal body massage
Colorful bed sheets
A trendy purse
Breakfast ideas
Good cell phone handset
Try new cuisine in San Francisco

P.S. Tagging Tushar,Parag and AG!

The VMware experience

2008-11-17T21:29:00.004-05:00

I am Tushar Thole and I approve this message :)

VMware put my VMware endorsement on its campus recruitment brochure as seen above. I did not know about it till Bhuwan saw this @ Columbia university career fair:)
So if you're interested "Learn more and apply online at www.vmware.com/campus"

The crime of reason

2008-10-23T19:38:00.000-05:00

Prof. Robert B. Laughlin, Stanford University gets his name in history books (again!) for being the first Nobel Laureate that I have ever seen in flesh! Just kidding…He shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect.

The occasion being the talk he gave at PARC – ‘The crime of reason’

Here’s the abstract of the talk in his words -

“There is increasing talk about the disappearance of technical knowledge from the public domain, both because it is a security danger and because it is economically valuable. I argue that this development is not anomalous at all but a great historic trend tied to our transition to the information age. We are in the process of losing a human right that all of us thought we had but actually didn't - the right to learn things as we can and better ourselves economically from what we learn. Increasingly, figuring out important things (as opposed to unimportant ones) for yourself will become theft and terrorism. Increasingly, reason itself will become a crime.”

I twitter!

2008-10-01T20:31:00.003-05:00

Why should (do) I twitter?

Most important reason is I am lazy! There is so much going on in my head all the time that it is not really possible to put all these (mostly incoherent) ideas into a (meaningful) blog post. Just off the top of my head things that I would like to blog about are …trip to Kanha national park in may06, Konkan trip with my family in jan08, thoughts after my India trip, my parents’ visit to US, recent Vegas trip, Camping in Big trees state park, Rafting at American river…so on and so forth…The main motivation to start my blog was to keep track of interesting things that I was/am doing (For e.g. rants are not particularly interesting to a general audience but a hiking trip?…maybe). So twitter serves as a temporary relief that I have kept a note of this “thing” for now and it is fine even if I don’t find time to blog about it.

Secondly, many times I get many (weird) ideas while say driving or just while living my life. Not all of them are worthy a blog post. In these cases twitter works the best! That’s what ‘micro-blogging’ is all about!

Just to make it clear I don’t think that the world needs to know “what I am doing right now”. That is why stayed away from it till now but for reasons stated above I thought I should twitter too! IMO it’s a nice way to snapshot your mind a few times a day!

Potential risks?

Some of the folks are taking twitter’s message (“what are you doing right now?”) too seriously and update their status a little too often with (mostly useless?) information such as “I just made dinner… I am eating it now...wow it is so good and yummy...I am sleeping now…I am asleep and dreaming about XXX (I meant fill in the blanks btw!) right now…” Ok. I made up the last one but you get the point -Potentially people are giving out too much personal information. But that is true with blogging or with pretty much with all other web 2.0 features (social networking websites etc.) too. Just be careful about what you write about and you will be fine. Lets say you are an insanely beautiful female (these days this applies to guys too!) and has a bunch of stalkers then it will be a really bad idea to update the world on where you are and what you are doing all the time!

How do I twitter?

Currently I am looking for some cool tool/Firefox extension etc as I hate going to twitter.com every time to check (others’) and update (my) status. If you know something that I can use do shout back!

Find more about twitter here.

P.S Click on the twitter image to see my tweets:)

Unforgettable tour concert!

2008-09-28T10:11:00.005-05:00

(Review of Unforgettable tour concert near San Francisco on July 27^th,08)

It all started with a month long contemplation of whether to go or not. There are concerts taking place in bay area every now and then but then we thought what can be bigger than Mr. AB, jr. AB, Ash, Madhuri, Preity all on one stage. I follow Amitabh’s blog religiously and read updates about the concert preparations on it which excited me even more to attend this concert. I had never seen a celebrity in my life so this was gonna be my first time!

We got the tickets online from Sulekha.com. Someone told me that it’s better to go early since there are chances of getting stuck in the traffic and not finding a parking spot near the Arena. The show was at 7pm and we reached the venue at 5:45. We had packed Tiffin and carried cameras, binoculars and camcorder. After reaching the entrance we saw a looong queue waiting for the doors to open and heard announcements telling the viewers to not carry any electronics and food items insideL. So we had to leave everything in the car.It was cold and breezy that evening and we waited for more than an hour in the queue freezing! Everyone was dressed up as if they were to attend a wedding! When the doors finally opened the crowd went helter-skelter, queues were broken and a huge mass tried to squeeze through narrow doors. It reminded me of the chaotic situation outside Indian temples.

Oracle Arena is a huge Auditorium accommodating nearly 10,000 people. The stage was very well placed and big screens were put up for close views of the stage. Soon the show started with a performance of bay area Bhangara group. Following that started the solo performances of the stars. First came Ritesh Deshmukh, he danced really well and connected with the audience wonderfully. His energy level was great and his dance choreography was the best amongst all. Then followed Preity, performing on the signature song attached to her image, yes it was Pretty Woman! The most impressive part of her performance was the total dress change that she did in less than 10 seconds. Then Abhishek made a ‘dhansu’ entry from the audience. Ash’s solo performance was just mediocre because it started with ‘Crazy kiya re’ western number which doesn’t suit her image. She looks best in Indian outfits and shouldn’t have started with a western style song. Jaya Bachchan gave a short speech about global warming with a straight face.

As expected, Amitabh was legendry on stage. He sang multiple old songs in an unshakeable voice which made us think whether it was all prerecorded. He performed a sentimental scene from Deewar which was beyond words. He had tears in his eyes at the end of the scene to make it realistic.Among ladies, Madhuri absolutely stole the show! From ‘Ek-Do-Teen’,‘Dhak Dhak’, ‘Dil toh pagal hain’ to ‘Aaja Nachle’; every piece was classy. ‘Dola re’ by Ash and Madhuri was beautiful.

The show went on for more than 4 hours and surpassed all our expectations. The props used during all performances were really creative and side dancers from Shiamak Dawar’s academy were outstanding.

Here are a few pics clicked during the show by one of my colleagues (Officially it wasn’t allowed. But the heck, we’re desis:D)

It truly was an unforgettable experience…

Why do we do this?

2008-09-12T16:09:00.000-05:00

Came across a nice advt. Makes sense except the yes/no part in the end:)

Interpreter of maladies and Unaccustomed earth

2008-09-05T18:43:00.002-05:00

Jhumpa Lahiri is phenomenal as an author!

'Interpreter of Maladies' totally deserves the Pulitzer Prize which it received in 2000. Stories in both books deal with 'an immigrant experience' something which I'm personally going through. Characters in her stories are mostly (Bengali) Indian immigrants and are torn due to cultural differences between their native land and US. After reading Wikipedia entry on her, I realized that protagonist in her stories is mostly inspired by her personal life. Jhumpa's parents moved to US when she was three. Her family kept visiting Calcutta every summer. She changed her name from Nilanajana to Jhumpa as she thought it was too embarrassing (?).Remember Gogol Ganguly from her novel ‘The namesake’?

It is often said that Jhumpa portrays lives of Indian immigrants as dull. After reading her book I can say that this accusation holds water.But even though her characters are not leading a very colorful life a reader can easily relate with them.For me, transition to US(the country and its culture) came naturally but when my parents paid me a visit a couple of months back I was trying really hard to keep them engaged in something or the other so that they would not feel bored or more importantly “out of the place”. I had made a plan for every weekend and successfully executed it as well. In hindsight such a scheme will work for a couple of months or even for a year. But what if they have to move here permanently leaving their motherland or karma bhoomi behind? Will that transition be easy for them? May be since I had these thoughts running in my head while reading these books I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Highly recommended!

English August

2008-09-05T18:30:00.001-05:00

One of my friends suggested that this book might be a good read as the movie based on it was hilarious.

This book is written by an IAS officer himself so maybe I was expecting too much.The plot looked promising as well...A rookie IAS officer moves to a small town called Madna and experiences the corruption, bureaucracy, difficulties in running an administration first hand. (I am simply fascinated by Indian Administrative Services. At some point I wanted to become a part of it. Given that I am 25 I still have 3 more years to take the plunge if my current profession gets too boring!)

It is a known fact that bureaucracy can lead to pretty hilarious situations...Yes Minister or The office lovers please stand up! But instead this book gave me an impression an IAS officer who is no less than a king in a small town completely ignores the welfare of people and drinks whiskey,smokes marijuana during daytime to compensate the cultural shock of suddenly moving to a small town from a big city...Maybe after first 150 pages(that's when I stopped reading it) the rookie gets out of his depression and every page in this book is filled with witty remarks and funny situations but I could not stand it...

Not recommended.

Shanti Bhushan

2008-08-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

On 28th July,08 Dad was felicitated with 'Shanti Bhushan' award by Bhartiya Jain Sangathana for his social work.

A proud day for Thole family:)

C.R.A.Z.Y.

2008-07-20T22:29:00.004-05:00

Yes, we did it! Three movies back to back in a theater!

My mom was watching an English movie in a theater for the first time and she made her “debut” really memorable with a hat trick!

Obviously it was impromptu. First one we watched was Wall-e. Frankly I don’t get what the hype is about. My friends called it extra-ordinar-e. I agree that it’s a brave attempt on Pixer’s part to produce a movie

- which has a story that is difficult to understand for kids when compared to Ratatoullie,The Incredibles and Finding Nemo

- most of the frames are really dull

- merchandise opportunities are none.

But I didn’t like it .I’ve seen better ones.

Next one was Hancock. I think Will Smith (hero as well as the producer of the movie) should have spent a little more time/money to rewrite the story to make it more appealing. Even though a super hero story line has become a cliche’ recently, I thought it’ll be a fun movie after watching trailers. But after the first half an hour, the movie lost its grip. Will Smith should get an Oscar for keeping a straight face for the entire movie. I have no clue why on earth a talented actress like Charlize Theron would spoil her reputation by accepting such a lousy role.

Fortunately to wipe out these bad memories came the icing on the cake – Dark knight. What a movie! Awesome! Brilliant! People were lined up outside the screen well in advance to get a better spot and some of them were even dressed up as Joker. As I am writing this it is enjoying its numero uno position on IMDB for the best movie of all times. I never read any comics when I was a kid and this was my first Batman movie ever so I wasn’t too excited about this movie. It has a great story and every actor has given his/her 200% .The one who stands out the most is Heath Ledger. His joker is one of the best of villains ever on silver screen. It’s so sad that he is no more :( Minu was probably bored by this time hence wasn’t paying much attention and mom was trying her best to understand whatever was going on the screen so I had to update them from time to time about the storyline. After a while an irritated lady sitting in the front row started giving me glances so I had to stop my commentary :) The crowd enjoyed the movie so much that everybody clapped in the end.

We emerged out of the theater after almost six and half hours. I’ll have to try really hard next time to break or even match this feat :) What a fun day!

Knuth almighty!

2008-07-03T16:34:00.005-05:00

Flashback -
When I was pursuing undergrad in Computer Engineering in Pune, one of my friends bought the book series "The art of computer programming" by Donald Knuth. Those were the days when we used to study only during PLs (preparation leaves) so when everybody found out about this we started calling him "Knuth" just to ridicule him. We still call him by the same name!

Current -
While browsing through SCPD's website I came to know that Donald Knuth is going to talk about "fun with Binary Decision Diagrams" and I jumped at the opportunity! Not that I am interested in listening anything about binary decision diagrams I just wanted to see him. He's one of the icons of computer science who has shaped the way people think while designing an algorithm.When it comes to computer science, Knuth is no different than a GOD. He is almost 70 years old and he seemed too passionate about his work.He is currently working on the 4th volume of the book series. It's the same content look that I see in my grandpa's eyes when he is with his grandchildren. For Knuth bits and bytes are his family and he seems to really enjoy their company.

Managing humans under thousand splendid suns...

2008-07-03T15:50:00.002-05:00

Ever since parents have taken the charge of the kitchen me and Minu are relieved from the cooking duty. The free time is well spent in reading!I have been thinking for a while now about using public transportation to commute to work so that I can read a little more. Lets see how that goes.

Here's a short review of books that I've read in past two months -

Managing Humans - **1/2
I am a big fan of Michael Lopp's (Rands) blog.Most of the times he writes about things that are really useful to survive/perform better in a corporate environment. But then he also writes about a lot of useless stuff and moreover all the chapters are derived from blog posts. So I will suggest you saving some money and reading blog posts online. It's definitely NOT "the best book on management out there" as Joel Spolsky says.
Here are some of my favorite posts

Ninety days -I finished first 90 days at my job a couple of weeks back!
Avoiding the Fez - In first 90 days at work I have seen an example of a Fez diminishing into nothingness in front of my eyes. Believe me it is scary.Silicon valley is all about "The survival of the fittest!"
A Glimpse and a hook.

Thousand Splendid Suns - **
This book is such a disappointment! I tend not to read two books of an author back to back so I waited for a long time after reading Kite Runner.But the characters in this book are portrayed poorly and it seems like a listening to a documentary on Afghanistan. It got so depressing that I had to stop reading it when I was almost 90% done. Sometimes even though I am not enjoying a book I keep reading it in a hope that it will get better. When I gave up on this one the protagonist in the novel - Mariam had become 40 years old (the novel started with she being 5 yrs old or something) and I cannot recollect anything pleasant happening to her even once! That's too depressing! Minu and I had a hearty laugh when I narrated the story to her and she was wondering why I kept reading it in the first place:)

luka chipi...

2008-05-12T13:49:00.000-05:00

Every time I listen to this song I get really emotional.

“Kya bataoon maa kahan hoon main
Yahan udney ko mere khula aasmaan hai
Tere kisson jaisa bhola salona
jahan hain yahan sapno vala
Meri patang ho befikar udd rahi hai maa
Dor koi loote nahin beech se kaate na

kaise tujhko dikhaun yahaan hai kya
Maine jharne se paani maa tod ke piya hai
Guchcha guchcha kai khwabon ka uchal ke chuwa hai
Chaaya liya bhali dhoop yahaan hai
Naya naya sa hai roop yahan
Yahaan sab kuch hai maa phir bhi
lage bin tere mujhko akela”

Happy 50^th birthday mom!

P.S. Was supposed to post this on May 9th.

Match Point

2008-04-21T16:04:00.003-05:00

These days I drive to work which takes half an hour in each direction.Here's an interesting thought which originated during the commute.

Life is unfair. Opportunities you get are analogous to waiting times at a traffic signal. Everything depends on the timing! Sometimes you might have to wait for a long time till the queue built up in front of you clears up and there will be times when you are the first one to pass through. Relating this to the professional life, I see people with 6 years of experience who don't even have a US degree, managing a team working on cutting edge technologies. At the same time there are people with 10+ years of experience with a graduate degree from Stanford working under them. (I am not suggesting that becoming a manager is the nirvana of a software engineer. Replace the label "manager" with whatever you want to become or achieve in professional life.) You'll argue that a person's promotion (as an engineering manager in this discussion) does not solely depend on his/her technical skills or background. It is also a function of his people management skills (soft skills) and his desire to manage a team (there are people who want do a technical job forever). True. Agreed. Given all that I am trying to figure out what are the reasons behind a meteoric rise of an individual. Exclude "startup superstars" for now.Just as an exercise compare your manager with your director. Both of them might have almost similar profile/background/professional experiences . Both of them possess people management skills.In a place like silicon valley where every other person is technically sound (lets not argue about that. It's just a hypothesis) I think becoming successful very heavily depends on being at the right place at the right time!

I'd seen an excellent movie based on this idea called Match point directed by Woody Allen.Highly recommended.

Freebase

2008-04-18T17:12:00.002-05:00

Attended a lecture by John Giannandrea, CTO of Metaweb Technologies on "Freebase: An Open Database of the World's Information" at PARC which happens to be just across the street from VMware office.

ABSTRACT

Freebase -- an open database of the world's information -- is built by a global community and is free for anyone to query, contribute to, and build applications on. Drawing from large open data sets like Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and the SEC, Freebase is curated by a passionate global community of users and contains structured information on millions of topics such as music, food ingredients, rocket engines, stock indices, historical events, and more.

This was arranged as a part of 'Going Beyond Web 2.0' lecture series.Online archive of previous lectures can be found here.

Notes to self

Revisit - DB normalization, Transaction processing.
Know more! - URI,onotologies, semantic web, RDF,Powersets,Schema "last" or schema "later"
Look at - Google maps API, Freebase API

Windfall

2008-04-07T14:03:00.003-05:00

I vaguely remembered reading about Once, an Academy/Grammy award winning Irish musical, so thought of giving it a try. We*’re not especially fans of musicals and when we read the movie description on Netflix DVD cover we were really disappointed. Being a strong believer in Collection Fusion (yet another Info retrieval buzzword), I usually dissect the movie before watching it by reading IMDB reviews…as there is nothing more painful in life than watching a crappy movie on a lovely weekend! Also we are past the stage where we would like to watch the first day first show of any movie so it’s better to play it safe by knowing in advance whether it is worth the time. Though usually I am very meticulous I somehow forgot to do this ritual for Once and it turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. It made our weekend musical and magical! I can still hear those words lingering in my head…Falling slowly, Say it to me now, When your mind is made up …Superb music, awesome lyrics…I cannot (and don’t want to either) get those beautiful songs out of my head. More about the movie here.

Go grab a DVD now! Believe me you’ll love it!

*Usage "we" is a side effect of marriage and refers to me and my better half Minu:)

Upsilon Pi Epsilon

2008-03-31T13:31:00.002-05:00

I got inducted into UPE!

“Upsilon Pi Epsilon (ΥΠΕ): International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines is the first and only existing one of its kind.

UPE is endorsed by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society (IEEE-CS), the two largest computer organizations in the world. Aside from conferring honor on computer science and computer engineering students, it has a large involvement with the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Membership in UPE, like many other honor societies, is lifetime; however student members inducted get a free year of ACM membership as well. Additionally, UPE gives out a number of scholarships for its members and ACM members.” – Wikipedia.

Apart from the lifetime membership I will receive a recognition pin, certificate and honor cord to wear at my graduation in May.

A link to JHU chapter is here.

It’s a great honor and what an awesome start to the week!

Encyclopaydia

2008-03-20T13:02:00.000-05:00

R. Jacob Vogelstein, One of the professors @ Hopkins, has started a new website called “Encyclopaydia” to keep a database of salary information of Hopkins alumni. This is a great tool as it gives a good idea about what to expect in terms of salary when you graduate and provides a basis to negotiate the salary with a potential employer.

There might be better websites of this kind out there but this is the first one that I came across. Do have a look!

Here comes another bubble!

2008-02-27T13:02:00.002-05:00

Even I am moving to Palo Alto :D

False idle time

2008-02-24T03:04:00.003-05:00

In storage jargon false idle time refers to the idle CPU time when all active processes wait for I/O. I think it is best suited to my current situation as I wait for the green signal from USCIS to start working for VMware.

Yes I am missing my better half a lot and people are annoying me by asking same irritating questions everyday such as “आला का OPT?” (Did you get OPT?), “कधी जाणार US ला?”(When are you going to US?). As if I want to keep it a secret! One of my neighbors had assumed that I am no longer going back to US and looking for a job in India! But other than that there is nothing else to complain about.

I wonder whether I can buy this much free time in near future when it is simply fine to not log onto Internet for a week straight. You have no idea what it means to someone like me who spent past 15 months of my masters program treating my laptop as one of my body parts. This reminds me of my meeting with Dr. Yair Amir on my last day at Hopkins. He congratulated me for my decision to take a 50 days long break before joining VMware. He was fortunate to get A DAY long break after his PhD in Israel before moving to US! Now every year when he goes to Israel for a couple of weeks for a vacation he does not even carry his laptop. It is an extreme step for someone like him who is running a company and reminds me of a factory, given the rate at which he is churning out publications in the field of distributed systems. Shouldn’t I consider myself lucky that I don’t have to resort to such extreme measures to spend time with my family?

To avoid my empty mind from being devil’s workshop I started doing what I do the best. Read. So far I have read 5 Marathi books in a fortnight. One fine day will start blogging in Marathi too. Although I don’t mind reading English fiction (loved Kite runner which I read during summer, 07), I prefer nonfiction any day. I was searching for a good book about India as I feel that I am getting detached with my motherland. It may be due to lack of reading Indian newspapers or watching Indian news channels (most of which are after sheer yellow journalism with an exception of NDTV). Have started reading ‘India unbound’ by Gurucharan Das and will keep you posted on how it goes.

A while back Indian stock market was a gold mine. India was rated as one of the top 3 countries for investors. Even after the recent dip it still is a better place to invest than US.Gone are the days when stock trading was considered as gambling. Today an average Indian looks at stock market for a serious investment. I have tried taming the bull in the past and was pretty successful too. Compared a lot of options to trade online such as ICICI-direct, sharekhan, religare etc and I guess I will go for IndiaInfoLine. Here is a good guide if you are new to investing.

As mentioned earlier I am also going to D.Y.Patil College to guide MSc students for campus placements.

Blame it on my marriage but collection of my photographs is growing by 200 a day! Minu is yelling at me for not uploading wedding pics to our wedding website but I get demoralized just by the sheer volume of pics. Thanks to my awesome camcorder, making movies is the next best thing! I recently went to Stud farm too to shoot videos. I wish I could keep the camcorder ON all the time to capture new tricks that Mahi is learning day by day! I am yet to learn movie editing though.

Hearty chats with the family members, evening walks with Swapnil, simply lazing around at home…activities like these are refueling me with enthusiasm which I hope lasts till my next visit to India. But I must confess it does worry me that I am not working at the moment. I laughed at myself when I came across a blog from one of Blogger developers who is quitting Google to explore other interests for a while! I guess this guilt feeling ain’t my fault. This is the way we Indians are brought up. Anyways I sincerely wish

"चिठ्ठी आयेगी आयेगी...चिठ्ठी आयेगी!” Amen.

Playing “Big brother”

2008-02-20T14:38:00.001-05:00

Well, the title has nothing to do with the reality show which was in news recently due to racist remarks against our very own Shilpa Shetty who eventually emerged as a winner.

Currently I am on an extended vacation in India thanks to USCIS who is taking its sweet time to grant me the OPT status. As there is nothing concrete on my TO-DO list I am simply looking for something to keep my spirits up. As usual Sweety, my younger sister, who is pursuing masters program in Computer Science under University of Pune, is my favorite target.

Once I found her resume lying on the table and I asked her what it was for. She told me that campus placements are about to start in her college. Her curriculum also requires her to do an internship in the last semester which is kinda neat. I started bombarding her with questions such as what preparation she is doing for interviews, which companies she is aiming for, which domain (applications/systems) she is interested in working. Sweety soon declared that it was the time to go to college just to get rid of my annoying questions. To her dismay I dint let go of the topic and kept pestering her for a couple of days questioning her career plans. After digging more I found out that no initiative was being taken by her College (D.Y. Patil, Pimpri) so I decided to meet her Head of the Department. When I discussed this topic with her HOD he suggested me to take up a session for MSc students on career planning and how to approach campus placements.

This sounded like a good project to keep myself engaged for a couple of days so I agreed to take up a session on how to prepare a resume and a cover letter, how to apply to companies, how to prepare for interviews and last but not the least importance of networking! It’ll be just like your elder brother telling you what to expect when you approach a potential employer. Reading articles like this and this while surfing internet is surely not just a waste of time! Hope these students get some food for thought out of this whole thing.

If you have knowledge then let others light their candles in it!

स्वप्न

2008-02-18T10:37:00.004-05:00

More about the theme of this blog in आमची मराठी !

"भग्न स्वप्नांच्या तुकड्यांना कवटाळुन बसण्यासाठी मनुष्य जन्माला आलेला नाही. मानवाचे मन केवळ भूतकाळाच्या साखळदंडांनी करकचून बांधून ठेवता येत नाही, त्याला भविष्याच्या गरुडपंखाचे वरदान लाभले आहे. एखादे स्वप्न पहाणं, ते फुलवणं, ते सत्यस्रूष्टीत उतरावं म्हणून धडपडणं, त्या धडपडीतला आनंद लुटणं आणि दुर्दैवाने ते भंग पावलं तरी त्याच्या तुकड्यांवरून रक्ताळलेल्या पायांनी दुसऱ्या स्वप्नांमागे धावणे हा मानवी मनाचा धर्म आहे...मानवी जीवनाला अर्थ येतो तो याचमुळे! "
-- वि. स. खांडेकर (अमृतवेल)

P.S. Used an awesome software called Baraha to write this blog. If you have trouble viewing this blog then read instructions to install Marathi font here.

With every great love comes a great story!

2008-02-13T16:24:00.001-05:00

Yet another year...Valentine's day is at the corner.
If you are one of those who're away from their valentines( just like me :( ) and wondering what to do then watch 'The notebook'. It's the most romantic movie I have seen so far...It's even better if you've seen it with your special someone before:)

Happy valentine's day!

Ain't no sunshine...

2008-02-12T01:45:00.002-05:00

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
And she's always gone too long anytime she goes away.

Hey, I ought to leave the young thing alone,
But ain't no sunshine when she's gone, only darkness everyday.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
And this house just ain't no home anytime she goes away.

What's more apt than this Bill Withers' song to capture my current state of mind!
Now you know the reason in case you are wondering why Pune is getting colder these days:)

Shubmangal Saavadhan!

2008-02-12T01:16:00.001-05:00

I have stopped dreaming and have started living my dreams!

It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting!
When you want to achieve something the entire universe conspires and helps you achieve it...

So true!

Back to ‘real’ world!

2007-10-01T16:06:00.000-05:00

It has been almost a month that I am back from the center of the virtual universe and things look very promising.

Don’t think I’ve mentioned here before that I am working for VMware as a part time intern this semester. Though Hopkins was ready to approve working part time for an off campus employer (on a CPT) there were a lot of complications involved. I am a part time student this semester at Hopkins as I need only 2 courses to graduate. At Hopkins if you have less than 3 courses in a semester you are a part time student (This is a Hopkins specific term and every international student on F1 status is legally always a full time student.) and you pay per course fees instead of the full semester tuition.. When I applied for a part time CPT, I had to register for an extra course and Hopkins was going to charge me $3600 for the same! Since this was ridiculous I talked to the dean and ended up getting $1800 waived off as ‘Dean’s tuition support’ :) and VMware had already agreed to pay the rest.

As almost every desi in the CS dept is graduating in Dec and has fewer courses this semester, first few weeks into the semester were pure fun! Fooseball, late night pool, movies, parties…things like these didn’t use to happen at Hopkins! I actually achieved some of my long cherished dreams such as watching Friday night English movies arranged by HOP(Ocean’s 13, Mr. Brooks) or Saturday evening movies (Chak de India!) arranged by Tarang :P

People have become so innovative that now we have a Google calendar shared among all desis called ‘Crisis buster calendar’. It contains an entry for every event on the campus where there is a slightest chance of getting free food! This scheme is working great so far :) In addition to that there were events like WSE fall picnic, Fall fest too.

The entire desi junta also went to a night tour of Washington DC arranged for FREE (If you want to know how much power this word can have join a grad school!) It was the first occasion that we were all together for a picnic. The trip was arranged for the international students and we had a gala time singing Hindi, English, Tamil songs in the bus :) We visited Washington Monument, Lincoln memorial, Vietnam war memorial and Capitol hill. Boy, it was fun!

Then there was the fresher’s night. I will quote a mail on JHU yahoo group regarding the event. “This was one of the best fresher's night ever. You guys surpassed all expectations with your enthusiasm and by the quality of the performances. The Bhangra, the dance, the solo performances, the 'quack-quack' skit (was it a hen or was it a duck) were all amazing. Three cheers to the DJ, the sound guys, organizers and the food committee!”

Now there is a reason to look forward to the Diwali party.

As the semester is taking speed I have realized that I have started missing India a lot. Maybe it is because I will be flying to my sweet home in Dec. Also all the weirdos who started the graduate school last Fall with me have become good friends. I will definitely miss these golden days…Man! I have started becoming nostalgic already!

Career night

2007-09-30T22:05:00.000-05:00

On September 19^th, I attended a career night organized by Alumni association of Whiting school of engineering at JHU. It was a nice opportunity to get tips from alumni having a variety of experiences ranging from building weapons of mass destruction to managing multi billion dollar finance firms. In the end of their presentation they had students to send resumes for review so that newbies will get to know weaknesses in their resume before they start flooding mailboxes of recruiters all over the place :)

I sent mine and was surprised to get a call one fine day that the alumni who reviewed mine wanted to meet me in person. He was going to do a presentation at Hopkins as a part of “Conversations with leaders” lecture series. He personally invited me to attend his talk on ‘Building and selling a software product company’. He was Neil Kleinberg, president of ‘Vertical Falls software’.

After the talk we had a chat for 20 minutes about my short time and long term goals and what my plans are to achieve them. I also asked about whether I should go for a MBA as I think that’s a good way to get VC funding whenever I decide to take the plunge and start on my own. (Believe me it is going to happen!) Though this is a very long term plan it doesn't hurt to start early. He was very nice and supportive and we exchanged good byes with his comment “In the worst case you will do exceptionally well!”

Independent study finale

2007-09-22T10:58:00.000-05:00

I had written a blog before regarding my independent study in I/O virtualization so thought of adding a finale.

To give you a background, I was talking to Prof. Randal Burns regarding doing some research in I/O virtualization in the beginning of Spring semester. Randal told me that I can work on any idea that I find interesting. By then I had already accepted VMware’s offer for the summer internship so I decided to talk to them to see if they had anything research-y that I could work on. My VMware manager and mentor were very approachable and as per their suggestion I decided to work on ‘Storage I/O load balancing algorithms’ as my independent study topic. Randal was fine with this idea. Till the end of spring semester I was still in the reading phase to figure out the depth and breadth of the problem. At JHU, if you start an independent study in Spring then you can extend it till the end of Oct if your adviser is fine with that. Till I joined VMware, I had no idea whether I will be working on the same stuff. Fortunately it turned out that it is going to be my summer internship project. I won’t go into details of what we achieved due to Intellectual Property issues but to sum up my experience I will say my internship was “any systems programmer’s dream job”. My talk at VMware on the same topic was also very well received.

After coming back to Hopkins I went to Randal to give him an update about my independent study work. I thought I will have to do some more work before writing the report. But I was surprised to see the outcome of the meeting!

R: “It must be a busy summer!”

R: “So did you work on $$$$$$ worth storage arrays?”

R: “So how do you plan to use this work?
Me: (worried)What do you mean?
R: “Do you want to use this as a masters thesis or a project?”
Me: (couldn't believe my ears!)“Do you think I can use this as a thesis?”
R: “Sure…(with some improvements,suggestions)”

R: "...As far as an independent study is concerned just submit the report and you're good to go..."

R: “If I were to review this paper for FAST…”

:)

In the words of my mentor, “Good to see that your independent study bird fell with this stone! “

So officially I just need two more courses to graduate!

My Website:)

2007-09-21T17:37:00.000-05:00

I uploaded my website yesterday.

It took longer than expected (I spent significant amount of time for two days) and basically taught me the importance of having the right tools! With a little bit of googling I found a nice CSS on oswd.org. (Mine is created by Arcsin. Good job dude! ) Since I had already decided what stuff to put on the website the pages were already in place. So far so good… My laptop's Adobe dreamweaver trial version had expired and MS office 2003 did not have FrontPage. Those were the only two visual editors for HTML that I knew. Since I needed an alternative I tried Nvu, CoffeeCup editor and HTML Kit. Nvu is at least tolerable. In the end I had to copy my stuff to one of the lab machines in JHU to use FrontPage to fix some annoying image linking issues.

Initially I was planning to add a separate page to upload problem statements and design/performance documents for my academic course projects.Given that it will be a pain to keep the page up to date I decided to drop the idea.

Anyways I am pretty happy with its look and feel. Do let me know your comments.

VMware IPO

2007-08-14T12:47:00.000-05:00

I got to work today at 6am to join another 1000 VMware employees for the IPO gathering. The event was a wonderful opportunity to see VMware ring the opening bell at the NYSE, the very first trade of "VMW", a very sumptuous hot breakfast, a bevy of espresso drinks, a toast to VMware's future!

As I was guessing earlier the IPO was a no-brainer! VMware stock was launched at $51.06 which was 76% higher than the list price! According to Bloomberg ,‘The initial public offering was the largest technology sale since Google Inc.'s three years ago.’ Read a live diary describing the exciting events that took place during the first hour of trading.

People have already started talking in terms of the "next VMware" instead of the "next Google".While talking about IPO of Classmates.com IPO, the columnist says, "So can Classmates be the next Google (GOOG), or for that matter, the next VMWare (VMW), the storage software maker that surged nearly 80 percent out of the gate in its market debut Tuesday?"

Proud to be a part of VMware! Cheers!

Expect the unexpected!

2007-08-13T16:11:00.000-05:00

I had thought that the weekend will be a little boring (definitely not exciting!) as Minu and Gud boy had decided to hone their driving skills on a rented car and I was supposed to help them. So I imagined myself sitting in the car yawning for the whole weekend when these guys will make countless rounds of some random parking lot. There was also a plan to look at used cars. We exchanged a few emails during the week discussing the “strategy” and decided that on Saturday afternoon we(our team:)) will practice driving in Oracle and VMware parking lot and in the evening we will visit various dealers for used cars. (We had heard (which turned out to be true!) that if you buy a used car from a dealer then even though you get a warranty and stuff you will end up paying something close to 10K and in our opinion it was too much to pay for an old car! So a visit to the dealer was meant to be an exercise to find out what are the options available if we buy a car from the dealer). Entire Sunday was devoted to meet various sellers (whose info was gathered from craigslist) and a little bit of driving practice.

So if you have read carefully you can see there was not even a remote intention of buying a “new” car.

Till Saturday evening everything was going as per the plan. We practiced a little in the Oracle parking lot, visited Minu’s swanky office at Oracle HQ (it's awesome!) and visited a couple of dealers of used cars. The turning point came when while passing by we noticed a sign for used cars at a Toyota showroom and rushed inside. The salesman mentioned that you can get a new Toyota Yaris in the same cost as that of a decent old car. We took a test drive and were kinda convinced that we can think about buying a new car instead of taking a risk of buying a used one.

On Sunday morning though had we gathered a huge list of sellers from craigslist, instead of calling anybody we decided to visit Ford and Honda showrooms to see if there was anything that could have fit in our budget. Ford focus was really within the budget. Good gas mileage, decent looks and a brand new car within the same price as that of an old one! But we wanted to visit Honda showroom before making the final decision.

We were interested in taking the quotes for Honda Civic as it is ‘the’ car that every desi new college grad imagines as his/her first! Since it was a high demand car Honda had added 2K more on the price of a new Civic. So now a civic was at the same cost as that of an Accord….interesting! So why not go for an Accord than a Civic? Gud boy was fine with that and rumor has it that it was Minu’s childhood fantasy to own a Honda Accord :) Once both the ‘parties’ gave the green signal and negotiations began.

You can imagine 3 novices negotiating

- whose highest purchase in US so far has been a laptop (In Gud boy’s case a ticket to India maybe)

- who had driven a car less than 10 times in US

- who could not tell what a comprehensive car insurance includes, how a burglar alarm system in the car is different than the centralized locking system

- who did not know what would be the best base price of the car that they have just decided that they would buy

- who had no idea from where they can get the car finance at the lowest APR

- who were unaware of Honda Policy that the buyer should have a permanent California license

But in the end it didn’t matter :)

As my dad always says, all you need is a common sense! For everything that we were not sure of we called numerous friends for advice and after negotiating for 7 hours emerged outside the Honda showroom with two (identical;))brand new 2007 Honda Accord at a price less than a Civic !

One weekend…three people…two new cars! That’s exciting!

Minu and Amit: Congrats :)

Publicity

2007-07-26T16:39:00.000-05:00

It's a pleasant surprise to find that AID India has put a link to my blog on the Indian Ocean concert on their web page to describe "How did you like the concert?"!

:)

Heavenly Monterey!

2007-07-24T13:51:00.000-05:00

A meek attempt to capture the fun that we had in a day trip to Monterey and Santa Cruz beach!

Santa Cruz beach is usually pretty crowded. As it is just an hour's drive from the bay area it is a preferred weekend get away for most of the folks. Unlike Indian shores nobody enters into the sea water as the pacific waters are too cold! People were just chilling out having a sun bath or playing beach volleyball.

Santa Cruz beach has a lot of joy rides and this is the best way to spend time if you are not in a mood to relax. I took a joy ride called 'double shot' (as seen in the above pic) and it was too good! It takes you up like a rocket and you can view the entire beach. Good fun though Minu will disagree:)

After having lunch at Santa Cruz beach we left for Monterey. The road to Monterey goes through the fields. You'll be surprised but it's a rare sight here. I have traveled quite a bit in US by road and haven't seen much of the fields. I always used to wonder where do these Americans grow their vegetables!

This is the first view of Monterey beach! Isn't that heavenly? The horizon looks like a painting in splendid shades of blue.

We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium which when compared to National Aquarium of Baltimore is mediocre. It has otters, penguins and the usual stuff. But the coolest thing there was the jelly fish! There were about 15 exhibits of different varieties of jelly fish. Have a look at the pic above and you wouldn't disagree:)

After the aquarium we went to the 17 mile drive and the pebble beach. The pic above was taken when we had just started. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pics of the drive. By far it was the best part of the day! Nothing could have served better as a grand finale to the memorable trip!

Slow dance

2007-07-17T15:20:00.000-05:00

To mark the 100th post here is a beautiful poem by David L. Weatherford .
--

Have you ever watched kids
on a merry-go-round
Or listened to the rain
slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

Do you run through each day
on the fly
When you ask "How are you?"
do you hear the reply?

When the day is done,
do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
running through your head?

You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow
And in your haste,
not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
'Cause you never had time
to call and say "Hi"?

You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast
Time is short
The music won't last

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift....
Thrown away...

Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

Indian Ocean : Live in concert!

2007-07-16T18:05:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Parag that I learned about this awesome Indian Fusion band - Indian Ocean. Back when I was in Calsoft Parag had told me about one of their songs called "bandeh.." during our usual coffee break (I miss that man!). I didn't bother much about it till I listened to their truly amazing song 'Kandisa' after coming to Hopkins. Thanks to Minu for that! After watching Black Friday I became their devotee. So I jumped at the opportunity when I heard about their concert in Hayward on Sat (7/14) organized by AID to raise funds for Right to Information (RTI) movement.

Their performance was truly memorable and they played most of their popular songs such as ma rewa, kandisa, bandeh... Their lyrics are from different (mostly obscure!) Indian languages most of which are based on folklore. Add a touch of Indian classical and percussion (tabla) to catchy lyrics with a lot of acoustic and bass guitar and drumming and you get a fantastic Indian fusion song!

Read the description of the band members on their website. It's really hilarious!

Off Topic:
After the concert on my way back I listened to almost all of their albums that I had in my iPod. It was the best way to spend time in a 4 hr long one way journey! For the record I have traveled in almost all possible public transports here such as VTA,Caltrain,Samtrans,AC transit bay and BART! I can tell from experience that you need a car right from the first month of your stay in the bay area!

SF giants ball game

2007-07-14T02:34:00.000-05:00

VMware had taken all the interns to a (base) ball game between SF giants (the local team of San Francisco) and LA dodgers. Even though the match was kinda dull and Barry Bonds didn't break the record, the view from the stadium was awesome!

Nevertheless me and Gud boy reverse engineered the rules of base ball:) Now I know why Americans are so crazy about ball games. No matter how the match goes is but hanging out in the stadium is fun!

wah Taj!

2007-07-09T22:15:00.000-05:00

Now it's also one of the world's new 7 wonders!
(It's the 8th wonder that I came to know about the news before it became too stale!)

Did you vote for it? I did!

No brainer!

2007-07-09T17:52:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer - I don't understand stock market fundas very well.

After reading this news simple demand supply logic (Demand goes up as the supply becomes scarce) tells me that VMware employees will most probably make big bucks!

It will be interesting to see what actually happens when the IPO comes out.

update: 7/27

Following Intel Cisco also jumps in!

US Independence day

2007-07-06T01:27:00.000-05:00

On US Independence Day I was lazing around at home watching Spanglish when Rajat called up and within no time I was on my way to San Francisco. We did not visit any fancy places but they were no less than spectacular and it’s the company that matters and not the place, isn’t it?

San Andreas Lake –
This lake no better than Panshet/Khadakwasla I must say:) It was after this historic lake that the fault is named – San Andreas Fault. “The San Andreas Fault is a geological fault that marks a sliding boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate.” (Courtesy - wikipedia)

Thornton beach – It's small point in Daly city. The view of the pacific was spectacular! Even though it was a rather hot day in the bay the temperature dropped down by around 20 degrees F at this point and it was windy too.

Sutro Baths –

Once upon a time this beach was famous for the world’s largest swimming pool establishment. This structure was destroyed in fire in 1966 and now one can see the ruins. Nothing spectacular about the baths in particular but the beach is at a nice location! In the evening the place looks beautiful. Golden Gate bridge is also visible at a distance.

After a whirlwind tour of all these places I was really tired but in the end it was worth the pain when we saw the fireworks on the bay from Ghirardelli square.

Have a look at the videos of the fireworks here.

careful...everyone is watching!

2007-06-29T20:13:00.000-05:00

Read a nice article by Thomas Friedman in Palo Alto times -

"We do not live in glass houses(houses have walls); we live on glass microscope slides...visible and exposed to all. So whether you are selling cars or newspapers (or just buying one at the newsstand), get your hows right- how you build trust,how you collaborate,how you lead and how you say you're sorry. More people than ever will know about it when you do - or don't."

P.S That reminds me that I am yet to read "The world is flat". Btw I've recently started reading 'Freakonomics' and it's good!

the end and NOT the beginning

2007-06-25T17:57:00.000-05:00

Mayur Bhaiya (one of my many dear cousins) tied the knot on 25th June:) I wish life time of happiness to the married couple...
This is the first important family function that I have missed so far apart from the Diwali gathering. I hope this is NOT the beginning!

Amen

all excited!

2007-06-15T16:55:00.000-05:00

It’s very exciting to know that the stuff that you are working on is of interest to a large audience. Mails about my intern project are floating around on the IO resource management, Profiling and SAN practices mailing lists in VMware. Staff engineers (to the best of my knowledge – a position in VMware equivalent to a software architect) of VMFS (File system for the virtualized environment) , Storage stack of ESX server, Storage VMotion and Performance team have shown interest in my work!

The very reason that I am blogging at work is I cannot hide my excitement!

Back to work!

2007-06-06T20:42:00.000-05:00

It has been just 3 days that I have joined VMware, Inc. as an R & D intern in the storage management group. I know so many people here that it is kind of homecoming for me:)

Almost everybody from Calsoft (my previous employer in India) who is working these days in US is in VMware. Many seniors from Apte Junior college are also VMware employees. I sit besides my undergrad classmate from VIT and one of my Calsoft colleagues. Apart from the exciting work it is fun to hang out with my old friends at my new company. The atmosphere in the company is dynamic, people are passionate about their work and learning opportunities are abundant.There are many fun events arranged for interns and as it seems it is going to be a great summer!

VMware trivia which I came to know during the new hire orientation: VMware is the fastest growing company in the history!

Traveling from San Jose to Palo Alto is a pain and I will have to search for my permanent accommodation soon! The toughest part so far is getting up early in the morning! Interestingly office timings are exactly opposite to the usual timings of any grad student and I will take some time to get used to work during the day time:)

I have become a total movie buff...I even took Netflix subscription and have watched Babel, City of God, Thank you for smoking and The prestige ever since I came to bay area on 29th May. The Indian grocery store owner in Milpitas gave me two Hindi movies to watch (Traffic Signal, Dor) for free:) Finished watching all the episodes of Scrubs that I had on my laptop. Watched a lot of TV (mostly That 70's show) and it has reaffirmed my belief that it is a waste of time! All the stuff that you would like to watch is available online and it is without annoying commercials!

I visited a Jain Mandir in Milpitas a day before my first day at work. After all every dollar bill also says 'In God we trust!'

Life at Hopkins - Part II

2007-05-16T15:19:00.000-05:00

Time is surely flying and I am two semesters old at Hopkins.

During the early January I was on 'mass apply' spree for a suitable job during the summer as I was kinda apprehensive about getting interview calls. It worked out really well and I was overwhelmed by the response.The feeling that everyone wants you is really nice for anyone and I am no exception. Learnt to deal with aggressive managers, talked to people who thought that they deserved a standing appalause as they were working for a specific company, dealt with people who tried all tactics to get me to work for them. Work experience does teach you people management skills, helps you figure out what you want to do and what it will take to achieve your goals.

All spring courses had only programming assignments and lots of projects which I feel is the best way to learn a concept.Worked on projects dealing with kernel space / user space C programming, perl/bash scripting, functional programming in OCaml, SQL queries and stored procedures. Started exploring wonderful world of Virtualization for the independent study and fortunately got VMware to guide me in it. It was the first time I took a course in Information retrieval and I am fascinated by it.I would have liked to explore it even more but really good systems courses are being offered next sem which I would like to take such as Storage systems, Microkernel architecture, Network embedded systems and sensor networks.

Hopkins offers so many facilities to students but I didn't get time to explore any during the spring sem. I guess that is the price you pay for being a grad student especially in computer science.

Wish list for the next sem is
- join a salsa class
- learn to do kayaking
- master fooseball / table tennis
- go on at least one outing arranged by outdoor pursuits club
- watch a lacrosse game in the Homewood field
...

F as in Freedom!

2007-05-14T19:32:00.001-05:00

It's officially over! I am just one sem away from graduating and I still cannot believe it!
We hosted a potluck dinner on Friday to celebrate our 'freedom' and quite a few people turned up. Me and my roomies cooked food for almost 20 people and got a few compliments too.

I was bored like hell on Saturday as I didn't understand what to do!
Sometimes I feel that the grad school is turning us into robots turning in one assignment after the other, we eat when we are told to (at the happy hour), all our timetables are governed by homeworks and projects.It's like having an external force driving your life and treating you like a slave.The month of April and first couple of weeks of May seem to have vanished into a blackhole and I don't remember doing anything else but work. Though the past experience(Fall semester) did teach me to have fun whenever you get a chance and I tried to pamper myself after every homework by watching a movie at the expense of less sleep. I still remember it was sometime during the first week of May when me and Wyatt were working on our IR project and we got bored with spending every minute of our lousy boring life in the lab. So we thought of hanging out for half an hour doing something else. It turned out to be a bigger problem! We could not figure out what to do with half an hour of free time so we went to Barnes and Nobles bookstore and ended up reading books! It's like if you set a bird free which has lived in a cage for all its life it doesn't know what to do! During past couple of weeks I learnt to play fooseball though. It's fun and as Swaroop says it counts towards the masters degree requirements:)

Coming back to the point, I was dead bored on Saturday so got a LOT of movies from Sandeep to have a movie marathon.On the weekend I did not even leave my bed and watched 7 movies one after the other such as Before sunrise(good one),Dude where's my car? (average),Deja vu(Didn't get it!),Kabul Express(The director of this movie must be a sadist!),Khosla ka Ghosla(Hilarious),The girl next door(average),Little miss sunshine(too good!). The next on the list are 8 mile,Before sunset,The good shephard, Runaway bride and Happy feet. Had some catching up to do for Lost:) Started watching Scrubs too.It's good but 'Friends' still rules!

Climate is extremely nice and am thinking of clicking the pictures of the campus. It's becoming a ritual to click the pictures of the univ campus every season and it does look entirely different.
Got Interpreter of Maladies (Follow the link to read it online) and have started reading it but it is too early to comment. Planning to watch The namesake some time this week. Apart from all this 'important' stuff will also code for food at JHSPH:) Have to talk to Randal too about the plan of action for the independent study before I leave for the Bay area.

That's my plan for this week. What about you?

CPT

2007-05-04T16:30:00.000-05:00

Got the approval for CPT (Curriculum Practicum Training)!

Due the cautious approach of JHU regarding Intellectual Property rights of the work that students will do during the course of the summer internship it is turning out to be harder to get a CPT approval than getting the actual job!

International office which issues the new i20 for students wants to see a clause on the offer letter that the rights of the work done by the student belongs to the student. That also means that the student should not sign the Non Disclosure Agreement with the company as it means they cannot use the results of the 'research' that they will do during the internship while writing their thesis.

This has forced almost everybody to get a new letter from their employer clarifying the company's stand on IP issues.

I did not face any such problems as I am already working with VMware on my independent study and thanks to my dad who taught me that you not only need to be intelligent but also smart to get things done:)

Care package!

2007-05-02T10:59:00.000-05:00

Today morning I was surprised to receive a package. It was from VMware.

It contained brownie,Easy Mac original cheese sauce mix,pretzel poppers,peanut butter,instant breakfast,Oatmeal to go,famous amos cookies with a little note inside which read _
"We thought it might help you get through finals and finish the semester - or at least give you some extra energy."

:)

Joel, be ready for the competition!

2007-04-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

From Scott Adams.

Good old days!

2007-04-26T03:07:00.000-05:00

Found this while surfing on the net. What a pleasant surprise:) I didn't expect VIT to be so tech-savvy!

‘Free’ as in free speech not as in free beer!

2007-04-19T22:12:00.000-05:00

You guessed it right! Richard Stallman or RMS as he is better known to the world was at Hopkins today to deliver a seminar on ‘Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks’.

I have seen him many times in documentaries and no book on Linux will be complete without the mention of his name. His work in GCC, GDB, Emacs etc is truly extraordinary. I was standing outside the lecture hall before the lecture started and he just walked in with no air of superiority. His speech was as usual impressive and he narrated how the entertainment companies such as Sony,Disney as trying to exploit the copyright laws through various measures such as ‘Mickey Mouse’ Act and the DRM technologies.

He mentioned about 4 degrees of freedom –

Degree 0 – Freedom to run the program

Degree 1 – Freedom to modify the source code

Degree 2 – Freedom to send your modified code to another user

Degree 3 – Freedom to send your modified code to the community

Seems to me that the student community is a true believer in the freedom of degree 0 , 1 and 2 even before RMS coined these terms;)

The last lap

2007-04-17T16:27:00.000-05:00

Even though the semester is almost in the last lap and the workload is not much this week it is just about the time that the roller coaster ride will begin! OS project and IR Web robot homework are due next week and one more painful PL hw will be out soon. Every PL hw so far has been a battle! Maybe since I am not able to see where all the concepts that I am learning in this course fit in the grand scheme of things I am not able to appreciate the time and hard work that I am putting in this subject. Ever since Prof.Yarowky gave examples of how several course projects resulted into startups me and Wyatt hope to come with some cool topic for the final project for IR course and make a few bucks :P

Independent study in IO virtualization is taking shape nicely. VMware has been kind enough to suggest me a good project idea and provide the technical guidence. It is an honour to work with the most knowlegeble people in the virtualization domain!

Ever since I have come here I have been really lousy in managing the money matters. I forgot to pay my rent twice and had to pay the late fees! After paying around 450$ in tax since the start of this year I Figured out that I should have submitted W2 form again to get the tax exemption as the fiscal year in US does NOT start on April 1st. Filed the tax returns a couple of days before the deadline. Thankfully I never had to 'try' to make money and still have a few bucks to spare after all these blunders:) I should be careful in future to not screw up my credit history.

Has the spring arrived?

2007-04-17T15:41:00.000-05:00

During the spring break (Mar 10-19)the temperature had gone up to 26 degrees C and the entire campus had turned very beautiful as seen in the pic. But then it snowed again ruining the blossom.Annul spring fair was organized by Hopkins last weekend but it was washed away by the impromptu rains. I could not even get a glimpse of it.
After a few days of sun and snow it is raining these days and the campus has turned green reminding me of Pune after the first rain!
I even walked to/from lab a couple of times by CHOICE:). The weather here looks really confused about what to do next!I hope the sunny days will be back soon... Amen!

Sakura!

2007-04-12T19:03:00.000-05:00

It was my status message on gtalk for a while and many people asked me about the meaning so here it is!

The 2007 National Cherry Blossom Festival marks the 95th celebration of the original gift of the 3,000 cherry trees from the city of Tokyo to the people of Washington, DC in 1912. It was Swaroop who mentioned that to me for the first time and I was really excited about it. Wyatt and I decided to go to Washington DC to see the cherry blossom on Friday.

DC is amazing! During my first visit during the winter break I fell in love with this city. There are so many places to hang out. It is just an hour away from Baltimore and is easily accessible by public transports as well which makes it even more attractive.

All the cherry trees are lined up besides the lake which is an awesome sight.Though ideally I should have visited the blossom a couple of days before during the peak period the view was no less than spectacular! We found a couple of trees which had magically survived the cold weather and had retained their bloom.

We visited the Georgetown area in DC for the dinner. Unfortunately didn’t make it to the Georgetown University campus which Wyatt says is really nice. It being a Friday night the streets were filled with people and it was a nice break from the hectic week.

Customer service?

2007-04-02T13:06:00.000-05:00

I thought it would be really cool to send a video iPod to my sister in India. Fortunately one of my dad's friends was going to India in next 3 to 4 days so I placed an order with dbuys.com and gave his address for delivery.To make sure that he gets it in time I paid around 20$ for expedited shipping. It should have worked! There was absolutely no problem...

But it didn't!

A day before the order should have been delivered to his place I got an email saying that your order is canceled for one of the 5 reasons and they had mentioned all the 5 possible scenarios. They dint even tell me what the reason is!
By that time it was too late to place an order with somebody else:(
On the top of that this company charged my card for 250$.. I still have not got my money back.
I tried calling them on Sat and got a reply that the customer service dept operates only on weekdays. I thought 'It's my fault. I should call them on Monday'. I did call them today to get the same reply that they are closed and operate only on weekdays!
I tried all the combinations to reach a customer care executive but got the same reply.
Eventually one the combinations worked and I got hold of one the customer service guys and told him about my problem.
He arrogantly told me that you will get your money back in 10 business days. I said, 'fine. At least tell me the reason for canceling the order'.
His reply was ridiculous! 'Whichever of the 5 reasons that we have mentioned in the email makes you happy is our excuse for canceling the order!'

To dbuys.com-
Folks it is time that you outsource your customer service to India! Read Joel's post on 'seven steps to a remarkable customer service'. You have got to learn a LOT from that!

Spring break balance sheet

2007-03-29T02:35:00.000-05:00

Spring break is gone and probably it is too late to post about it but since it might end up being my only (official) spring break (as I will graduate by the end of this year) it's special:)

Joined on my new on campus job as a database programmer at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health(JHSPH). For the sake of job I need to travel to the JHMI campus which is at a 15 min drive from the Homewood campus. It's kinda cool coz I like to travel and ever since I have come here I was kinda trapped in one mile radius. JHMI shuttle runs frequently and it almost touches the downtown on its way to JHSPH. It is nice to see Baltimore city and most importantly its people! You don't get to see many people if you sit in the lab day and night so even this factor makes the journey exciting.
Trivia: In case you don't know Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is ranked 1 in the world.

Coming back to where I started - So I joined my new job which is the coolest job one can ask for! I am past the stage where having an office and a laptop are considered to be exciting...there are few things which are really cool about this job_ I have not worked in database domain before So I am learning A LOT on the job. Though it is not something that I want to do from career point of view it is nice to know something from fields related to your primary interest. During the break I worked for 3 days, revised the concepts related to stored procedures, views, SQL etc. Met a lot of new people in the office and it is nice to know that they want you!. Instead of sitting in the office working we (me and my boss) work in one of the cafes in JHSPH. It is so much fun! There is so much energy in the atmosphere. I like it there. Since the school of public health doesn't have a separate campus they have structured the building in such a way that it creates a notion of a lot of open space. I will post its pics sometime soon.

Met Atul Bhaiya at Mt. Washington campus who took me to his place for lunch. We had dalbati (The best among marwari dishes IMHO) watching the opening match of the cricket world cup!

Read a lot of blogs...slept quite a lot though you never get enough of it do you?

Finished watching one and half seasons of LOST...it's too addictive:)

Unfortunately could not go for skydiving...will see if I can make it in the summer.

Worked a little bit on my homeworks and read a few papers related to Virtualization.

And most importantly I became an uncle!

So spring break balance sheet looks much like the balance sheet of Indian Railways...huge profits which you'd never expected:D

22hrs and standing...

2007-03-29T02:20:00.000-05:00

Spent 22 hrs at a stretch working mostly on my Info Retrieval Search Engine assignment... Had a submission of OS project( Linux kernel module for hacking keyboard driver) as well on the same day. As usual the next PL homework is out and it is due in a couple of days...

Got Hackers delight, Hackers and Painters, The pragmatic programmer and Founders at work from the library...unfortunately at the same time! As I know that given my schedule I will have to return a few of them back unread.

I can't wait to read Founders at work!

With or without you...

2007-03-29T01:55:00.000-05:00

by U2...
The first song played on my iPod:)
An interesting entry about the song on Wikipedia is here.

One fine day!

2007-03-24T21:58:00.000-05:00

brisk 15 min journey in the Collegetown shuttle
a walk in the Towson mall. (First time in past three months!)
a slice of delicious pizza
300 (what a movie! I have no words!! 'The future of cinema' - Time)
cheese cake (by Cheesecake factory )
Starbucks coffee
...... Just like heaven!

Bundle of joy!

2007-03-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

Storks had a field day today:)
My sis Tina gave birth to a cute baby girl:)
I can't wait to see my niece!
Sumit pointed out correctly "Is chote se baby ne tere ko "mamu" bana diya":P

Auctioning summer internship on eBay!

2007-03-11T16:19:00.000-05:00

Stuff like this actually happens! Read on...

Spring break woo..hooo!

2007-03-10T18:35:00.000-05:00

Spring break has officially begun today. Temperature has shot up to 17 degrees C! What else would have been a better way to welcome the break other than watching “The untouchables” and singing songs in chorus as Girish and company played guitar!

Not getting much done since past three days but who cares as it’s spring break!…Woo..hoo! (Those who watch Friends know what this means better!)

Here is my spring break wish list (it’s different than the TODO list! Always!!)

- sleep

Cant stress how important this is:)

- Reading novels, reading anything!

Hari gave me links to some amazing blogs (mostly techi) all of which turned out to be really good. I came across one Marathi blog today and it’s brilliant! I guess it's time that I should start using technorati!

I wanted to get a couple of books from the library but since there were unavailable I got Harry Potter and half blood prince instead:). Siddharth gave me “The curious incident of the dog in the night time”…

- watching Lost

Believe me this serial rocks! I started watching it at the start of the Spring semester and people warned me that it is too addictive. Yeah that’s true. Since I dint wanna waste even a minute to think about what will happen in the next episode I stopped watching it for the good. This break might be a good idea to start watching it again!

- Blogging

This wish is easy to fulfill though!

- Watching movies

Have started well on this one by watching a movie a day before the break officially began!

- Skydiving

JHU folks are making plans to go for sky diving some where in Baltimore County. Hope I can make it!

- … (This covers the rest :) )

Virtualization and I/O : milestone 0

2007-03-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

Talked to Randal and looks like I am gonna an independent study in Virtualization and I/O…Well…at least the topic is fixed!

Will read a few papers before preparing a proposal on which problem I want to attack.

Here is one of the most famous papers on virtualization. All comments regarding the selection of the topic are welcome:)

A year ago

2007-03-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

Today is the day when I'd got my first admit to the grad school for the Masters in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems:)

Virtualization is (the | my) future!

2007-03-07T11:27:00.000-05:00

C ya @ Palo Alto,CA during the summer!

Cornucopia

2007-03-06T01:09:00.000-05:00

Yeah! That’s the word!

Hopkins is a cornucopia (of assignments!)

It is just yesterday that I finished (actually stopped working would be more appropriate) my OS slab allocator project and my plate is full again!

TODO list for next couple of weeks looks somewhat like this…

- To write a D language interpreter (Programming languages)

- Hacking the keyboard driver for QEMU using kprobes ( Operating Systems)

- To write a vector IR model based Search Engine (Info retrieval)

- To start reading some papers for the independent study (I hope that it actually happens!)

And the best part is I am not complaining!

There comes a point when you start enjoying the hard work that you are doing and I guess that is the first step towards turning geek :P

Taking things for granted??

2007-03-06T00:13:00.000-05:00

It was 930 at night and it was freezing out side. I wanted to get to Varun’s place to have yet another potluck(where we ended up having a great time watching Black Friday and chit chatting) so I called for an escort van (which is a free shuttle service provided by Hopkins to its students)

The van showed up on time. I got in and told the driver where I was going. He looked at me and said “Do you have polio? (Can’t you walk?)”

It took me while to register what he was saying. I was so used to the usual ‘Thank you’, ‘Have a good day’ talk that I was taking US people for granted for being nice and friendly. And tonight I was asking for something which was my right as a Hopkins student.

Do I need to tell that the driver got the ‘right’ answer:)

Lesson learnt: Don’t take things for granted. Coz as per Murphy’s law if anything can go wrong then it will!

Epilogue :

Reply from the director of the escort service at JHU...

"We regret that you had an unpleasant experience with the Escort Van Service. We appreciate your feedback and encourage you to continue to use the Escort Van Service for your transportation needs to and from campus, within our one-mile radius service area.

I was able to discuss your complaint with the Escort Van Driver who you claimed was rude and unprofessional. The driver was apologetic and said that he wouldn't let it happen again."

Tuning and optimizations…

2007-02-28T02:51:00.000-05:00

Do you think that tuning and optimizations are useful only while writing solid and efficient code?

-You daily spend at least 10 hours in the lab apart from 3 to 4 hours of classes and practically you don’t find time to talk on phone with your dear ones. You realize that one way walk to the university takes 20 minutes and you cannot study during that time. Ideally you can but then your life officially sucks. So you use that time to make calls. Everybody is happy. You are using your time effectively.

On weekends you set aside an hour or two to make calls to most of your friends and that is the best way to remain sane.

- Indian Graduate Student Association arranges a fun evening with games, dinner and screening of the movie Sholey. The idea sounds really great and you wanna go but you have a Programming Languages homework due so you show up only for dinner.

- Indian movie club at Hopkins ‘Tarang’ screens a movie every Saturday night. It has been 4 weeks now and you have managed to watch only one movie for an hour.

- You _have_ to stock up foods for at least a fortnight as it is difficult to find an hour to go to the grocery store.

- Even though you get a lot of fresh vegetables from the grocery store and you know that it is harmful to eat ready to cook stuff regularly due to its high sodium contents you end up having maggi or likes for the dinner coz you don’t have time to cook as you have to rush to the lab as early as possible.

- You don’t mind spending the night in the lab. Sleeping on two chairs is not really fun but once you get used to it it’s not bad either.

- You figure out that there are dishes in the grad lounge apart from free coffee and the kitchen the grad lounge is cleaner than the one at your place. In short you can live there. So you carry the fork so that you can eat food there sipping (harmful) cold drinks and reading (free)(mostly techi) magazines (though you would have preferred to read any movie gossip magazine as that is the only way you will discover (mostly a month or two later) that Oscars got over or Abhishek and Aishwarya got engaged )

- You figure out that the OS project is due on Sunday and you have four days to go so tonight might be the optimal choice for writing a blog else you know that you never will.

Welcome to grad life my friend!

Love(snow) is in the air…

2007-02-14T19:44:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine’s day to one and all!

Flashback:

When I was a kid I used to collect cartoon strips of a series called Love is… by Kim Casali. I still have a note book full of these strips in some corner of my room back in India. It was one of my prized possessions. I was delighted to see that those strips are now available as a book…a must have!

What did I do last year on the V’day ? :

Bought a book by (Robert) Love :P…So geeky!

What did I do today?:

Slept for the whole day at home… Snow storm warning were issued yesterday night. I left for the lab at 8pm and decided to stay there at night. In the morning when I was about to go for my classes I came to know that JHU is closed due to heavy snowfall! On my way back I could see it was snow every where. It was so beautiful. Had planned to go back and click the pics of JHU campus today but slept for the whole day instead. Seems a large portion of east coast is hit by snow storm. Minu sent some amazing pics. Have a look!

Fortune 100

2007-02-05T12:42:00.000-05:00

Check out '100 best companies to work for 2007' !
Interesting to see that even though Google tops the list there are only around 10 'pure' software companies in the list. By 'pure' I mean excluding the financial companies which happen to have pretty big software divisions.

Choose the one you wanna work for!....TODAY!!
Doesn't that sound like a crappy TV commercial:) ?

Life is good…

2007-02-04T14:01:00.000-05:00

It is Sunday and I am sitting in my office working on my stuff(It is not really as boring at it sounds!). Had called mom and jiji to get the update of what’s happening back home. Had been to a wonderful get together last night at Varun’s place. I had asked him to arrange some sort of gathering and around 20 desis turned up for the potluck. We had a helluva time from 830pm to 2am (That is when I left the party went on even further) watching ‘Darwaza Band Rakho’, having delicious food, playing antakashari, playfully ragging the Indian newcomers to Hopkins and dancing to the tunes of catchy hindi songs…Will cherish those memories till the spring break as we may not get an opportunity to arrange another one before that coz it’s Hopkins baby! It wont give you time to breathe once the semester begins.

In the spring semester I am taking Operating Systems, Information retrieval and Web agents, Programming Languages and auditing Transaction processing systems. Will also do an independent study with Randal on a topic in storage or file systems. Havent given much to thought to it till now.

Operating systems-

Unfortunately Shap is on sabbatical now and his PhD students are taking the course. I am enjoying it a lot coz it will be really heavy on implementation of concepts. My RA work is really paying me off now.

Information retrieval and Web agents-

David Yarowsky is good at what he does and this course is really good to learn about the vast field of natural language processing, info retrieval, machine learning, info extraction…I am happy that I wont graduate without taking a spoonful of knowledge in this exciting field.

Programming languages-

This is the second time I am taking a class under Scott. The course is really good and teaches the type system of programming languages. Scott’s website is really informative and his course is really well structured. I had enjoyed taking the course in my undergrad and hope to learn more this time.

Transaction processing systems-

Randal simply rocks! The course teaches how to go about implementing a transaction processing system including paging, locking etc and also deals with advanced database concepts such as query optimization etc. Randal’s lectures are very informative and he touches variety of topics while teaching. I will be auditing this one so that I can concentrate more on my research work this semester.

There is plenty to learn this sem and I am really looking forward to it.

Some really exciting things are gonna take place in Feb and watch out this space for more…

Jim Gray

2007-01-30T22:56:00.000-05:00

It is the night of 1/29 and Minu sends me an email containing website of Jim Gray @ Microsoft. We talk about his excellent work in area of databases and transaction processing, his ongoing projects at JHU and Cornell, his Turing prize etc. During our discussion I mention that my advisor @ Hopkins Prof. Randal Burns is doing some work with Jim. Interestingly enough one of my lab mates at HSSL works with Jim in one of the database projects. Minu tells me that she is taking a class @ Cornell with Johannes Gehrke who is working with Jim.

It is the afternoon of 1/30. Two minutes to go before my Transaction processing systems class which is taught by Randal starts. Minu calls me up to inform that Jim Gray is missing! Gehrke gave the news in the class. I enter the class and Randal does the same announcement…what an unfortunate coincidence!

History in making- part 2

2007-01-28T19:38:00.000-05:00

I landed in US with lots of hopes and also a burden of expectations that my dear ones have from me on 15^th Aug, 06. Yeah, that’s the Indian Independence Day.

Well…time has flied and I have magically survived the loneliness, home sickness and tremendous pressure that Hopkins courses put on you. I am happy to see that I have got better! I am better prepared to face the challenges with a positive attitude towards life.

It is 26^th Jan, 07 and something ‘overwhelmingly positive’ has happened in my life. Yeah that’s Indian Republic day.

These things tell me that no matter how far I am from my dear ones and my dear country there always is a special bond which connects me to my people.

This reaffirms my strong belief in the saying from The Alchemist _ “When you want to achieve something the entire universe conspires and helps you achieve it!”

news...:)

2006-10-17T10:48:00.000-05:00

"सकाळ इंडिया फाउंडेशन'तर्फे १८ विद्यार्थ्यांना बिनव्याजी शिष्यवृत्ती

पुणे, ता. १६ - "सकाळ इंडिया फाउंडेशन'तर्फे उच्च शिक्षणासाठी यंदा १८ विद्यार्थ्यांना चाळीस हजार रुपयांपर्यंत बिनव्याजी कर्जाऊ शिष्यवृत्ती देण्यात आली आहे. .......
या शिष्यवृत्तीचे मानकरी आणि त्यांचा परिचय पुढीलप्रमाणे -
वृषसेन पुरुषोत्तम पवार (वय २९) - श्री. पवार हे डॉ. बाबासाहेब आंबेडकर मराठवाडा विद्यापीठातून "संगणकशास्त्र' विषयात "एमएस्सी' पदवी उत्तीर्ण झाले आहेत. याच विद्यापीठातून "संगणक व माहिती तंत्रज्ञान' या विषयात पीएच.डी. करण्यासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. कराटे व कबड्डीमध्ये त्यांनी बक्षिसे मिळविली आहेत.
जकी इम्तियाझ मुल्ला (वय २३) - श्री. मुल्ला यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून संगणक विषयात "बीई' पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "युनिव्हर्सिटी ऑफ फ्लोरिडा' येथून "कॉम्प्युटर इंजिनिअरिंग' या विषयात "एमएस' करण्यासाठी प्रवेश व शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. कविता करण्याचीही त्यांना विशेष आवड आहे.
निरंजन दीपक पेडणेकर (वय २४) - श्री. पेडणेकर यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून रसायन विषयात "बीई' केले आहे. अमेरिकेतील "ल्यूझियाना टेक्‍निकल युनिव्हर्सिटी'त "रसायनशास्त्र' विषयात "एमएस' करण्यासाठी प्रवेश आणि शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. त्यांनी क्रिकेट आणि फुटबॉल स्पर्धेत विशेष पारितोषिके पटकविली आहेत.
तुषार नंदकुमार ठोले (वय २३) - श्री. ठोले यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून संगणक अभियांत्रिकी विषयात "बीई' पदवी मिळविली आहे. या विषयात "एमएस' करण्यासाठी अमेरिकेतील "जॉन्स हॉपकिन्स युनिव्हर्सिटी'मध्ये प्रवेश व शिष्यवृत्ती त्यांना मिळाली आहे. व्हॉलीबॉल खेळात त्यांनी विशेष प्रावीण्य संपादन केले आहे.
पुष्कर संतोष छाजेड (वय २२) - पुणे विद्यापीठातून श्री. छाजेड यांनी "बीई'ची (सिव्हिल) पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "जॉर्जिया इन्स्टिट्यूट ऑफ टेक्‍नॉलॉजी'मधून "एमएस' करण्यासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. पुरुषोत्तम करंडक आणि फिरोदिया करंडकात त्यांनी भाग घेतला होता.
विपुल सुहास पदमन (वय २३) - श्री. पदमन यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून "बीई'ची (पॉलिमर) पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "युनिव्हर्सिटी ऑफ सदर्न मेसिसीपी'मधून "पॉलिमर केमिस्ट्री' या विषयात "एमएस' करण्यासाठी शिष्यवृत्तीसह त्यांना प्रवेश मिळाला आहे. बॅडमिंटन आणि क्रिकेट हे त्यांचे आवडीचे खेळ आहेत.
मानसी नरेंद्र पिंगळे (वय २२) - मानसी पिंगळे पुणे विद्यापीठातून "बीकॉम' परीक्षा उत्तीर्ण झाल्या आहेत. फ्रान्समधील "ईएससी रेनीज स्कूल ऑफ बिझनेस' येथून "स्पोर्ट मॅनेजमेंट' या विषयातील उच्च शिक्षणासाठी त्यांना प्रवेश व शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. बास्केटबॉल आणि क्रिकेट या खेळांची त्यांना विशेष आवड आहे.
नेहा अजित अरोरा (वय २४) - नेहा अरोरा मध्य प्रदेशातील "इन्स्टिट्यूट ऑफ टेक्‍नॉलॉजी अँड सायन्स, इंदुर' येथून "इन्फर्मेशन टेक्‍नॉलॉजी' या विषयात "बीई' उत्तीर्ण झाल्या आहेत. अमेरिकेतील "ओरेगॉन स्टेट युनिव्हर्सिटी'कडून "कॉम्प्युटर सायन्स'मधील उच्च शिक्षणासाठी प्रवेश व शिष्यवृत्ती त्यांना मिळाली आहे. नृत्य आणि चित्रकलेची त्यांना आवड आहे.
अमी प्रफुल्ल पारेख (वय २२) - अमी पारेख यांनी मुंबई विद्यापीठातून "कॉम्प्युटर इंजिनिअरिंग' या विषयातील पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "कॉर्नेल युनिव्हर्सिटी'तून "इंडस्ट्रियल अँड लेबर रिलेशन' या विषयातील उच्च शिक्षणासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. नाट्य आणि संगीत या कलांची त्यांना विशेष रुची आहे.
कल्याणी महादेव येळे (वय २२) - कल्याणी येळे यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून "भौतिकशास्त्र' विषयातील पदवी मिळविली आहे. नाशिक येथील "इन्स्टिट्यूट ऑफ एरोनॉटिकल इंजिनिअरिंग अँड टेक्‍नॉलॉजी' येथे पुढील शिक्षणासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे.
रश्‍मी चंद्रशेखर बोरोले (वय २२) - रश्‍मी बोरोले यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून "इलेक्‍ट्रॉनिक्‍स अँड टेलिकम्युनिकेशन' या विषयातील पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "मास्टर ऑफ फाईन आर्टस इन कॉम्प्युटर ऍनिमेशन' येथे उच्च शिक्षणासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. त्यांना चित्रकलेची विशेष आवड आहे.
दीप्ती मिलिंद केळकर (वय २१) - दीप्ती केळकर यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून "मायक्रोबायोलॉजी' या विषयात "बीएस्सी' पदवी मिळविली आहे. जर्मनीतील "युनिव्हर्सिटी ऑफ ब्रेमेन' या विद्यापीठातून उच्च शिक्षण घेण्यासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्तीसह प्रवेश मिळाला आहे. दोरीचा मल्लखांब आणि कराटेतही त्यांनी प्रावीण्य मिळविले आहे.
नीलिमा रमेश परांजपे (वय २३) - नीलिमा परांजपे यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून "इंडस्ट्रिअल सायकॉलॉजी' या विषयातील पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "इलिनॉय इन्स्टिट्यूट ऑफ टेक्‍नॉलॉजी'मधून उच्च शिक्षणासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. गायन आणि चित्रकला या विषयातील परीक्षाही त्या उत्तीर्ण झाल्या आहेत.
स्वाती भालचंद्र वर्तक (वय २२) - स्वाती वर्तक यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून रसायनशास्त्र विषयातील पदवी मिळविली आहे. कॅनडातील "युनिव्हर्सिटी ऑफ कॅलगरी'मधून पीएच.डी. करण्यासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. जपानी भाषेतील डिप्लोमाही त्यांनी मिळविला आहे.
वनश्री श्रीपती नरगुंद (वय २४) - वनश्री नरगुंद यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून एमएस्सी (प्राणिशास्त्र) आणि बीएड या पदव्या मिळविल्या आहेत. अमेरिकेतील "इंडियाना युनिव्हर्सिटी, ब्लुमिंग्टन' येथे उच्च शिक्षणासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. त्यांना वक्तृत्व आणि पोहण्याची आवड आहे.
अपूर्वा अभय राजगुरू (वय २२) - अपूर्वा राजगुरू यांनी संगणक अभियांत्रिकी विषयातील पदवी पुणे विद्यापीठातून मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "न्यूयॉर्क स्टेट युनिव्हर्सिटी'मधून उच्च शिक्षण घेण्यासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. "ह्यूमन मशिन इंटरफेस'विषयी आंतरराष्ट्रीय परिषदेत त्यांनी भारताचे प्रतिनिधित्व केले आहे.
सजल विजय रायकर (वय २४) - सजल रायकर यांनी पुणे विद्यापीठातून "बीई' पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "युनिव्हर्सिटी ऑफ ऍकरॉन' येथून "बायोमेडिकल इंजिनिअरिंग' या विषयातील उच्च शिक्षणासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. चित्रकलेची त्यांना विशेष आवड आहे.
नाजनीन नौशीर इरानी (वय २१) - नाजनीन इरानी यांनी मुंबई विद्यापीठातून "इन्फर्मेशन टेक्‍नॉलॉजी' विषयात "बीई' पदवी मिळविली आहे. अमेरिकेतील "पेनसिल्व्हेनिया स्टेट युनिव्हर्सिटी'मधून उच्च शिक्षण घेण्यासाठी त्यांना शिष्यवृत्ती मिळाली आहे. टेबल टेनिस खेळातही त्यांनी प्रावीण्य मिळविले आहे.

Friday the thirteenth!

2006-10-13T23:23:00.000-05:00

Today is Friday the thirteenth... and I was sitting for 3 hrs on 13th floor on a building in room #1303 with my project partner Wyatt discussing Distributed Systems project...what a coincidence!

P.S. Techincally posted a day later but who is gonna notice that:P

One month!

2006-09-16T23:47:00.000-05:00

"Tushar This is one mth we missed you but to gain some thing you hv to give some thing Try to be happy and go ahead God bless you Good luck"

This is from a mail from my dad. It had slipped from my mind that it has been a month that I am away from home. Actually I have stopped looking at the calender these days. It doesnt matter what day it is as long as u know the day when ur assignment is due.

Dad's mail made me realize that back home people miss me and I should live upto their expectations.

Dad, I will try my best to make u feel proud ...I promise.

Waqt

2006-09-14T11:29:00.000-05:00

Life has become 'a race against time'!

While sitting in the class today I casually calculated what is gonna be my schedule like for a typical week .Btw this is just some hypothetical schedule based on the best case scenario that there are no assignments due! When that element is added to the picture then only one word fits the bill – HELL.

Given that a week has 168hrs:

Classes (4 courses)- 12hrs

Sleep(6*7)- 42 hrs (Given that I have to walk a lot I DESERVE more sleep!)

Time pass (3*7)- 21hrs (mails/chat/watching 'friends'/eating and cooking dinner)

Job-24 hrs (max 20 hr/week allowed by law+ transportation time)

Some research work for my own- 5hrs

So total time for self study per week- ~60hrs

that is 8 to 9 hrs a day!

still I sure that...
I WILL SURVIVE...I AM GONNA MAKE IT THROUGH:)

Cornell

2006-09-08T19:14:00.000-05:00

I attended my first ever lecture in US at Cornell University.

Had been there for the labour day weekend and I simply followed Minu in the class :) I attended lectures by Ken Birman and Johannes Gehrke. Their books on Distributed Systems and Database Systems are used widely as a reference for any masters program worldwide. It was inspiring to listen to the fundas from the horse’s mouth.

Cornell is a great place! It is located on a hill at Ithaca, NY which is a university town and it is safe to roam there even at an odd hour at night. Moreover the place is just like heaven. There are multiple gorges which are almost 50 ft deep and host huge and beautiful waterfalls. The entire place looks like a painting. Check out the pictures here.

Life at Hopkins…

2006-09-08T18:53:00.000-05:00

It has been more than three weeks that I am here and there are many new, positive and exciting things are happening in my life.

Yeah I got my luggage back.

British Airways sent it back 4 days after I landed here. I had sent them an email asking for compensation and I forgot about it. It was a pleasant surprise that 2 days back I got an email from British Airways doing follow-up of the matter. I might get some compensation from them some day.

Finally I moved into my own apartment. It is located on the 14^th floor on the building called Carlyle. It is a really nice apartment and the view from my balcony is awesome. Some of the pics of the same can be found here.

Getting a decent place to live turned out to be a Herculean effort!

In US everything depends on how good/bad your credit history is and as I am a ‘new’ international student I was at their mercy. The housing authority simple refused to believe any docs that Indian students were showing them (Carlyle is sort of ‘India house’ as most of the people staying here are Indian students). We had to pay a fat amount as a security deposit to get the house.

For the record, I earned my first dollar on 5th sept,06. Ofcourse through on-campus jobs. I had multiple opportunities out of which I had to choose. (Not that my profile great but getting an on-campus job at Hopkins is a child’s play!)I will start working on coming Sunday. Back in India I was really worried about covering my living expenses and it feels great that I will be a position to save a significant amount every month.

Classes started from yesterday (9/7 – date is US style :)). For first two weeks I am gonna attend lectures for all the subjects that I find interesting. I will take 4 courses out of following 6_ distributed systems, algorithms, internet protocols or network security, computer vision or object oriented software engineering.

Profs here are amazing! Since it is just the second day of classes I am finding it difficult to stay awake in class:) but the quality of discussion in the class room is great. I feel really great that I actually understand the stuff being taught in the class (that was not the case in my undergrad years:)) and ask at least one question during each lecture. (There are some marks for the class participation but believe me it has nothing to do with me asking questions :))

People here are extremely friendly and I’ve made some good friends among Indians here.

Indians are everywhere! You cannot escape them anywhere in US.

I cook almost daily and am quite good at it. It is fun! Those who are reading this and don’t know how to cook should grab the first opportunity to learn ‘the art of cooking’.

I did not face food problems even though I am a pure vegetarian. Actually in US being a vegetarian is a ‘cool’ thing :)

I do feel lonely at times even though I am mostly surrounded by my ‘new’ friends.

Whenever I listen to the song ‘luka chipi’ from Rang De Basanti, golden voice of Lata Mangeshkar reminds me my sweet mom and my eyes invariably get wet :( It is hard to stay away from your family, friends and your ‘own’ country! You realize this once you get here…

Life is full of new challenges and I am really glad that I am back to school.

History in making!

2006-08-19T18:42:00.000-05:00

I left home on 14th evening on a very sad note. All my relatives had gathered at my place to give me a farewell. Given a choice I would have chose to stay in India.

Car journey till the Mumbai Airport was boring. We were stuck in the traffic for 3 hours and somehow reached the airport at 1030pm. Due to tight security checks I had go inside 3 hours before the flight and had to bid good bye to my loving family:( I cannot handle goodbyes. It is very difficult to leave your family behind. I cried even on the airport. Who cares man! I love my family and I was unhappy to part ways.

I took a British Airways flight till London. The first-time-flight experience was not bad. I was one of the few unlucky people whose TV was not working but since we started at night I did not feel much bad. I had a window seat and could see Mumbai City shimmering with lights as we took off. We reached London after 10 hrs.

Hearthrow airport at London is huge and I had to travel from one terminal to other. I was there for just a couple of hours and I spent time talking to other Indian students and window shopping in duty free shops. Our flight from London to JFK, New York was delayed by an hour and we were sitting in the plane during that time. An old British couple was sitting besides me. They were really friendly and they even showed me a few landmarks in London from the window. London did not impress me at all!

I watched ‘Over the hedge’ movie in the plane which I wanted to watch back in India. The journey lasts for around 8 hrs and I watched ‘V for vendetta’ and ‘Friends’ as well. Asian veg food served on BA flights was great. I stuffed myself as I was unsure of when I will get to eat quality Indian food again! I reached JFK at 130 where as I was supposed to reach there at 1130.
I had no idea what was in store for me from there…

After the customs and immigration I waited to collect my luggage. After a good 45 min wait I could not find one of my bags. I went to BA luggage counter inquire and I came to know that that bag was still in London! I registered a complaint with them and they told me that the bag will be sent on my US address by FedEx.
This business took longer than expected and I rushed to terminal 9 from terminal 7. JFK is one of the biggest airports of America and I understood that in a hard way!

How will u expect someone to travel between terminal 7 and terminal 9 on the same airport?
Well I crossed a street, climbed three levels up, took an air train which runs between two terminals, climbed three levels down, again crossed a busy street, climbed three levels up to reach a HUGE dome which was my destination_ terminal 9… believe me doing all this when u have luggage close to 95kgs is NOT easy!

I reached there at 3 pm and my plane was 4. I was standing in a line to collect the boarding pass and thought I will make it comfortably. I dint advance much in half an hour and I started loosing patience. At 330 I asked an official what are my odds to make it to the plane. She said ‘u are not gonna make it!’ I lost my wits. I was dead tired coz of carrying all luggage on my own and I was feeling sleepy, hungry and thirsty at the same time. There were no shops around and I could not leave my luggage unattended. I was in a fix. I had no idea what I am gonna do if I miss the plane…

When my turn came it was 4 and plane was gone. She asked me whether I know anybody here in NYC where I can stay for the night as there are only two flights per day from JFK to BWI (my destination_ Baltimore Washington International Airport) and I had missed both of them. I din’t know anybody in NYC but still I asked her to put me on another plane for the next day as I was ready to spend the night on the airport. She looked at the computer screen for some time and said ‘Sorry sir there is no place in tomorrow’s flights as well’! She asked me to go to ‘La Guardia Airport’ in NYC and take a flight which goes to Washington Reagan Airport in Washington DC.
I was so frustrated but I had no choice.

This luggage blunder by BA had changed my entire itinerary!
I wanted to go to JFK (NYC) to BWI (Baltimore) but I had no other option but to choose the flight between La Guardia (NYC) to Washington Reagan Airport (Washington DC).I made a call to my senior who was going to pick me up explaining the entire situation. He asked me not worry and be calm. I said to myself that there is no way that I can escape from this so why not enjoy the journey!

I came out of the airport to take a cab from JFK to La Guardia. An Indian came running and asked me ‘Bengali ho? 45$ lagenge’ What a way to meet the first Indian in US! The actual fare was 30$ and he was trying to trick me! I got myself a cab for 30$ (whose driver was also Indian) and reached La Guardia an hour before my flight. I was damn sleepy by this time and chose to sleep till I landed in flight.

The regional jet plane that I took for this domestic flight was miniscule as compared to 747 Boeing Jet I had taken during my international flights.
I could barely keep my eyes open for 5 min when the plane flew over NYC and got a glimpse of ‘Empire state’ building which as a child I had known to be the tallest bldg in the world:)

After an hour long journey I reached DC.I waited at the airport for an hour but my senior did not turn up. My senior was busy with something and he asked me to take a shuttle and come to BWI. Shuttle took an hour to reach BWI and I saw ‘war memorial’ and ‘the white house’ in the capital:)

It was 10pm when I reached BWI. I was supposed to reach here at 520pm and my journey was supposed to be luxurious!

I had lost a bag, missed a plane, visited Washington DC for no reason, hadn’t had food for 9 hrs straight but I was not unhappy.

I had visited three biggest cities of America _ NYC, Washington DC and Baltimore. I learnt to make calls from a telephone booth, saw US currency coins for the first time, spent my first dollar to buy a Coca-Cola, took a cab ride NYC and Washington DC, saw ‘The white house’! It was a hectic journey but it was fun!

I landed in US which is gonna be my second home on Indian Independence day that is 15th Aug 06 and this surely is history in making:)

Leaving on a jet plane

2006-08-12T06:23:00.000-05:00

Feeling really weird since past few days. I don't feel like leaving my loving family and dear friends behind...But life goes on!

Here is the song which suits my current mood the best!

----------------------------------------

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye

But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn
The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go

'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go

I'm ...

There's so many times I've let you down
So many times I've played around
I'll tell you now, they don't mean a thing

Every place I go, I think of you
Every song I sing, I sing for you
When I come back I'll wear your wedding ring

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go

'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go

Now the time has come to leave you
One more time, oh, let me kiss you
And close your eyes and I'll be on my way

Dream about the days to come
When I won't have to leave alone
About the times that I won't have to say ...

Oh, kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go

'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go

And I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go...

- John Denver

The real friendship day pledge

2006-08-07T02:27:00.000-05:00

Tired of all those sissy, mushy "friendship" poems that always sound good but never actually come close to reality? Here's a series of promises that really speaks to true friendship!

1. When you are sad . . . I'll get you drunk (or gorge on chocolate) & help you plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.

2. When you are blue . . . I'll try to dislodge whatever is choking you.

3. When you smile . . . I'll know you finally got laid.

4. When you are scared . . . I will rag you about it every chance I get.

5. When you are worried . . . I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be and to quit whining.

6. When you are confused . . . I will use little words to explain.

7. When you are sick . . . stay away from me until you're well again. I don't want whatever you have.

8. When you fall . . . I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.

This is my oath . . . I pledge till the end. ...why? Because you're my true friend :)
Happy Friendship Day!

Thanks to Debu for the content:)

adios!

2006-06-02T07:20:00.000-05:00

Today is my last day at work. Below is the mail which I sent to 'all@calsoftinc.com'.
--

Dear all,

Today is my last day here...

I started my professional career from Calsoft which was like a second home to me. In the two year long stint, I learned a lot on the technical as well as professional front. Here I met a few people for whom 'action speaks louder than words' and a few for whom 'attitude is everything!' I made friends for the life time with whom I went for trekking, played football in the balcony, watched movies in office, converted the conference room into a TT hall, played rang panchami in office and did a lot of such crazy things together. It is good to see the wonderful rapport Calsoftians share with each other irrespective of whether one is from HR dept, sysadmin dept or a member of technical staff. Keep it up guys!

If you want to know the true meaning of the word 'camaraderie' then have a look at the Panasas team! You guys rock!

As it is said that change is the only thing constant in life and fortunately in my case the life is changing for the good. I will be joining Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA as a graduate student in Computer Science.

A special vote of thanks goes to Minu, Rameshwar, Riyaz, Ankur and Parag.
You people are really close to my heart.

Thanks to Asheesh: You have been very supportive.

Thanks to one and all. My best wishes for your future.

Keep in touch.

Best,
~Tushar

Rang panchami in office!

2006-05-31T03:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday it rained heavily in Pune and all the balconies on the second floor of our office were flooded with water. The water entered into the work area and we had to put the disaster management principles to use:)… Quickly we shut down all the machines and had a rocking time playing ‘rang pachami’ in office!

Rajesh, Ganesh, Swati and Riyaz enjoying the shower!

Isn't this profession better than the software job!

Riyaz hit by a tsumani wave:)

Disaster management team(Adhish, Aditya and Dinesh) inspecting the damage done by the flood

Rain water harvesting!

Poor office boys burning the midnight oil to clean the mess.

wachel to wachel!

2006-05-16T05:00:00.000-05:00

I love reading! Everyday I make it a point to read something let it be a novel or newspaper at least for half an hour no matter how tired I am. For past one and half months I have been reading this_

#Wise and otherwise by Sudha Murthy
It contains real life anecdotes described by Sudha Murthy, chairman of Infosys Foundation, who is working on a large scale towards reducing the social and economic imbalance in the society. All the stories are mostly about mundane topics but what I like the most is the message that Mrs. Murthy gives. Good read but I somehow found the language too simplistic.

#Who says elephants can’t dance? By Louis Gerstener
I’d never thought I’ll enjoy reading books about strategies, processes, project planning etc. but Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, proved me wrong! More about this whenever I finish it:)

#Marathi books by Va. Pu. Kale
When I was in school I used to read books like crazy. I’d joined two libraries and I used to read at the pace of a book in two days. Many times I used to go the library at 4 pm to return the book that I’d taken in the morning. The library staff used to wonder whether I’d actually read the book! I could not pursue marathi literature after 10th maybe because I got too busy with studies or got too engrossed in the sea of English literature. A month back when I realized that once I land in US it won’t be possible to get Marathi books to satiate my desire even when I am ready to spend big bucks then without wasting time I joined the same Marathi library which I used to go to in my school days. To my surprise even the staff was the same (and so were the books unfortunately!) and they were happy to see me. I had this rather bad habit of writing the name of the book on the back cover and when I issued the same books now I was elated to see my handwriting after years! It was an emotional trip down the memory lane!
I never read Va. Pu’s books at that time but when I listened to his ‘kathakathan’ I liked his style of narrating stories immensely. In the last few days I read almost 5 of his books and more than 10 marathi books. It feels so good to read something sometimes just because it is written in Marathi. I am surely gonna miss this…

P.S. BTW the name of the post is a proverb in Marathi which means one who reads will survive!

Project Aardvark.

2006-05-11T09:01:00.000-05:00

Ever since I am back from an amazing trip from Kanha (gotta blog about that before memories fade away!) I am hooked to the net reading blogs, technical stuff, websites of various grad students and it has been tremendously exciting!

All of my friends who are pursuing masters’ degree in US are about to start summer internships that are quite uncommon in India. While reading JoelOnSoftware (I had never read this site before and I regret it!) I came across project Aardvark.

In project Aardvark, four interns shipped a full-fledged product in 10 weeks. Three of them were into technical aspects of the product and one of them was into marketing. This whole thing was made into a documentary called project Aardvark! I liked their website too!

Inspiring!

Romancing the Wall Street

2006-04-20T10:19:00.002-05:00

Yesterday when we were having evening snacks in the company one of my colleagues mentioned about the reliance IPO. He had applied for 1000 shares and was going to take 1000 more for his bro. One of my colleagues’ mom had also invested in the same. I discussed this matter on phone with one of my friends and she said that she has already invested in it. I called up my tenant who deals with shares quite a lot to inquire what is the fuss about. He said he is going to buy shares of 99,000! Aaaaaaah… it seemed like a part of some dreaded conspiracy that everyone knows about and I was the only one who was ignorant about it. I called up my dad and asked him whether I should also take the plunge. He gave the green signal and I applied for 1000 shares of Reliance Petroleum:)…Wall street beware! Another Warren Buffet in making:P

Let me put in technical terms about my first ever shares' deal:
I have applied for 1000 equity shares of reliance petroleum. The face value of the share is Rs 10 and the floor price is 5.7 times of the face value and the cap price is 6.2 times that of the face value. The price band of the shares is 57 to 62 Rs.
Souds really geek! Isn't it!

If you don’t understand the terms in bold letters then you are not bitten by the Wall Street bug.

Have bought ‘Rich dad and poor dad’ a few days back and hope that enlightens me even more!

Brokeback Mountain

2006-04-20T07:10:00.000-05:00

Yesterday night I had gone to watch this movie in the open-air theatre at BEG (Bombay Sappers), Khadki. The open-air theatre, named Gazni, is extremely nice and you can feel the freshness of the air you breath! Every Wednesday they screen an English movie and it was the second time* we blessed this place with our presence.

Brokeback Mountain is an Ang Lee masterpiece, which is “Based on the E. Annie Proulx story about a forbidden and secretive relationship between two cowboys and their lives over the years.” [Thanks to imdb for the plot outline] The movie deals with a very delicate topic and something that is considered as a taboo in the society. The plight of those two ‘men in love’ couldn’t have been portrayed better. I particularly enjoyed the scenic locations, serene lakes! Great movie! Check out this to know more!

This movie was considered as a hot favorite at Oscars but couldn’t match the expectations. Still it won 3 academy awards. I had decided to watch as many Oscars nominated movies as I can and glad that I am making it happen.

*Last time we’d watched ‘The myth’ starring dream girl Mallika sherawat:) and Jacki chan at his worst. The movie sucked but we had a gala time cracking jokes every now and then!

Hazaro khwahishe aisi….

2006-04-05T04:15:00.002-05:00

These days I have come across many wish lists on the web… Here goes mine… this is strictly for non-technical things!

The order holds no significance.

# To learn Warli painting.
One of the main reason why I would like to purse this is I am always fascinated by the art of painting and I am no good at it. I consider it as a very powerful tool to ‘express yourself!’ I have come across a workshop that is conducted at India Art Gallery in Pune where Warli tribal people themselves teach this art. This is really exciting! Lets see how it goes.

# TT / Ping Pong
These days I have started playing table tennis (or Ping Pong ! Now that’s a funny name!) in office in the free time. I am still learning the tricks of the game and I am enjoying it a lot. I was interested in this game since my school days just that volleyball took precedence over it. I hope to become as good as Forest Gump at it:)

# Pool / snooker
We have a pool table in office since ages and I have touched it just once! Now this sucks! Learning to play this game is on the high priority list!

That’s enough for wishlist.v1

hotels in Pune - I

2006-04-03T07:13:00.000-05:00

Documenting all eating joints in Pune I have been to and have liked…Maybe it can help some soul in need :P…This is the first post in the series.

Disclaimer: I am not a gourmet but I love to experiment and believe in the saying ‘Variety is the spice of the life!’[No pun intended!]

Lets go area wise.

JM Road

New Yorker
Nice ambi, good variety, one of the few places on JM where you can actually hear the other person talking!

Pizza hut
Needs no introduction!

Shivsagar
I usually avoid this place due to the crowd. I cannot enjoy my food if somebody is staring at me all the time expecting me to vacate my chair.
Great variety though.

Macdonalds
Nice meeting joint for your gang.

Mathura
It is very recently that I came to know that this place existed on JM. Amazingly well made Maharashtrian food. If you wanna try all flavors of Maharashtrian cuisine then a must visit place.

Naturals
I love the ice-cream@ this place!

FC Road

Radhika
The best place to chill on FC. I have spent hours sitting at this place.

Vaishali
Needs no introduction!

Yana
Great sizzlers. I tasted ‘wok’ too and liked it.

Koyla
I absolutely love this place for the ambience, great background music [Listening to Jagjit Singh invariably reminds me of this place.] and great food.

Corn club
I love anything that is made of corn and that explains all.
.
Horn OK please
Good place, good food, innovative ambi!

China garden
Great chinese food.

Aundh

Kobe
Good ambience and great sizzlers

Pizza hut
Needs no introduction!

Shivsagar
Good place to be when you haven’t decided what to eat…great variety

Deepek Sweets
Nobody makes better panipuri than this!

Rajwada
Even though this place mostly offers great variety for non-veggies it is a great place to spend an evening. Great ambience.

Polka Dots
Don’t know why people like this! Had tasted some weird Thai dish with one of my friends and I had stopped eating mushrooms for a long time:(

SB Road / University circle

Aloha – SB road
Nice ambiance , nice variety

University Choupati
Good Chinese and Maharashtrian food if you don’t think about the hygiene factor for some time.

That's enough for you to digest for today !
More to follow...

a brand in making...

2006-03-27T07:09:00.000-05:00

Go through the following conversation between me and one of my friends named Person_A below for the sake of anonymity.

(17:29:20) Tushar: m going thru ur blog
(17:30:49) Person_A: Person_B has started his own blog and is asking me to promote it :D ... he's standing over my shoulder asking me to do it ... :P ... so pls see this link ... http://Person_B.blogspot.com/
(17:31:00) Tushar: oh:P
(17:31:01) Tushar: sure
(17:31:10) Tushar: ask him to go thru my link too:D
(17:31:16) Tushar: tit for tat:|
(17:31:17) Person_A: ok done deal
(17:31:35) Person_A: man ... i feel like a dalal
(17:31:53) Tushar: =))

This is what you call brand promotion!! Do you _really_ need a degree from IIMs:)

makes sense?

2006-03-22T04:18:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the journey is more interesting than the destination...Realized this today morning!

Murphy's laws...

2006-03-20T10:58:00.000-05:00

As I write this I am refreshing my mailbox to check whether some good news has come...It has been the same since past few days. I am a bit surprised myself with this 'unwanted' change... I know I am going to make it and that too with a bang still my skeptic mind sometimes reminds me of those dreaded Murphy's laws...

Judgement day

2006-03-16T03:47:00.000-05:00

On Monday I had gone to my alma mater VIT as a judge for the final year project exhibition. I had ‘been there and done that’ last year as well. This time I had gone there with my colleague Batman and my delivery head who was the chief guest of the ceremony.

We reached there in time and were seated in the HOD’s cabin with my principal and my professors. One of my profs who is very talkative by nature mentioned about my ‘best outgoing student’ title then my boss patted on my back and said to my profs that he is lucky to have me in his team! It made me humble.

Projects IMHO were mediocre. I judged 6 projects and out which very few had some innovation. Most of them had no idea why they've worked on an idea that was implemented years back. In some cases even the source code is available on the net. Those who had a neat project idea had not-so-good-understanding of technological alternatives available. They were working on that idea just because their guide told them to.

Batman judged 12 projects in a day and it is a record in itself! Had a lunch with my profs and colleagues in the college canteen and everybody recalled their college days. We talked about MIT to BITS pilani. The conversation gave some ‘food’ for thought:)

VIT is going to become an autonomous institution in the next year. I wish I can give back to my alma mater in the way IITians do that is donating generously. Hope that won’t take long! There is a very famous marathi poem by Mangesh Padgaonkar…

‘Denaryane det jave
Ghenyarane ghet jave

Gheta gheta ghenyarane
Denyaryache haat ghyave!’

Amen!