New Place, New People, New Experience

I've joined a new team today in cheltenham as part of my second job in cheltenham, infact in UK. Gives a bad feeling that so soon so many new things happen and they all happen too fast.

Although, the previous team's memories still linger in my mind, I am more happy to be part of a smaller organization than being in a big organization. I get reminded of being in my second job in Bangalore while I spent my day here.

Although, the first day at work, it was as usuall casual, and I felt very very comfortable. The best part is the amount of technical knowledge learnt in small companies.

So, here I go, in a new place next to a runway(hearing the gliders and small planes taking off an d landing almost every 2 minutes) not trying to runaway with my coding!

The Indian Connection

There have been lots of events happening lately which remind me of India. The latest one was the ticket checking in the bus I travelled to my office this morning. I've never witnessed such an event before in UK. Ticket checking is so very common in buses in Bangalore and very rarely have no one been caught travelling without a valid ticket in buses in Bangalore. It also highlights the fact how agile or practical the processes in India are tailored.

Although many feel that we should be replicating the process followed in western part of the world to Indian way of life, I believe that is totally wrong. Imposing a process has historically proven to be a failure. The process that evolves slowly and steadily is the one that brings happiness to oneself. In that perspective, the process in India is quite agile and does definately cope up with the huge man power of India.

Another event that reminded me of India is an accident occured to my friend in Hyderabad. He is hospitalised due to knee injury while he was commuting on his mobike. I remember that it would be the 2nd aniversary of my near to death accident involving my mobike and a car, coming this September. That was a very dramatic event where in I had to completely change significant parts of my bike.

Uncle Sam! Yeh Akash ka jadoo hai!

I got reminded of a claim by my friend of nearly drowning him. The sequence of subconscious thoughts that led me to get reminded of that drowning event is quite nice.

The immediate thought is that of a lady walking across the corridor. She was wearing a skirt which looked like the beach wear in the beaches of Goa. And the reason to think of Goa beach and no other beach was I suppose the movie I watched on Saturday. It was the hindi movie "Dil Chahta Hai". I've recorded the movie in the Sky Box and now would be able to watch it as much as I can!

Talking about the drowning event, it happened a day or two after Sep 11, 2001. Rick and me went to Goa and it was Soham Pablo's idea of we joining him for visiting a beach in goa along with his classmates. The sea was calm and I encouraged Rick to get a bit deeper into the sea. Little did we realize that there was a tide rise. All of a sudden we realized we were being pushed by the waves. I managed to cling on to rough rock, while Rick almost drown himself. He shouted help in Bengali and at that moment his face was funny. And I could not resist laughing. I laughed partly because, Rick claimed that he knew how to swim I did not know how to swim. Despite that, he claims that I drowned him! Whew!

This day last Month...

I gave a good bye to the city of Hull and started my never ending adventure of living in the town of Cheltenham. It has been 1 month and Cheltenham has something special everyday in offer for me even till date.

There are loads of activities pending to be done while living in Cheltenham like visiting Snowdownian Mountains in Wales, Cotswold country side, Forest of Dean etc. I am not hurrying up with these things due to the fact that I am confident of staying in Cheltenham for more time surely.

Some disappointments have occurred like missing the Fairford RAF Air Tattoo, Cancel of the Walk upon the Cleeve Hill previous Sunday, Missing the International Music Festival. But, more will come for sure and atleast I hope not to have disappointments.

The Spa Town

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK is where I have relocated myself from Hull, East Yorkshire, UK. I had never expected such a nice welcome from this little expensive town of Cheltenham. And, I was in surprise to realize later that Cheltenham is not just the centre for Cotswolds but also very much central to all the major cities like Bath, Bristol, Birmingham, Swindon, London. I was in surprise although I was warned by my friend in Hull that Cheltenham is an expensive place to live in.

The first realization came with a £2.00 per week higher bus fare than Hull. The second one came in when I very narrowly escaped the tragedy of my colleague. My colleague came into the town in the evening and literally struggled to get an accommodation for that night. Luckily, with the impressive help of Tourist Information Centre of Cheltenham, I got an accommodation almost immediately.

A week later all the struggle sounded funny with the meeting of my friends at the Balti Fusion House (North Indian Specialty Restaurant), who were extremely helpful in arranging for a cheaper temporary accommodation and later a very impressive permanent accommodation.

Added to these sweep of luck, came the fact that the colleague who is also my housemate is a pure vegetarian who prepares awesome south Indian food. I don't remember eating non-south Indian food at home from the day I came into this new house. What more satisfaction than getting to eat south Indian food and living with a cordial person? The land lord is another person to mention who has been extremely good.

And it does not stop here... I get to play (or at least be a scorer) in the local Cheltenham Asians Cricket club home and away cricket matches. Also, get to join the family get together of some Indian Families (in particular, a Kannadiga, with whom I get to speak Kannada). And also join for the Badminton Games at the Indian Cultural Association every Tuesday and Thursday!

Well, it seems like most of my wishes I made in Hull is coming true. The coming Sunday, I am arranging to hike the Cleeve Hill in Cheltenham (7.6 miles walk only). And, this was the start I was expecting to have in regard to the trekking, walking side of my hobby.

Also, I learnt and played Poker with my colleagues, which has completely changed the idea of work and fun the British people enjoy. It feels good to have been welcomed so well by this little beautiful town.

Hoping more will follow...

Why Bangalore and not Udupi!

Well, for the uninitiated, Udupi is a town in the west coast of Karnataka, India famous for its temples and Bangalore is the capital city of Karnataka famous for what not!

I am feeling like I am currently in Udupi studying some course related to some proprietary technology in the IT industry and striving to get a job anywhere in Karnataka. There are tremendous obstacles to this exercise of mine. In the first place, Udupi is not connected to IT by any way. There are broadband internet facilities but no physical community to interact. The classmates are the only community around but unlike me they all have not yet stepped into the IT industry yet. So, I am left alone.

Since the entire IT industry is concentrated in Bangalore, priority is given to the Bangaloreans who can react fast and grab an opportunity. The company considering to give a job need not bother to think about arranging for an interview, the cost, the timings etc...etc...

Ok...what about the few temples who are IT savvy? There are a few of them. But, as you see, temples are generally supposed to be and are funded by public contribution. So, I would have to work as part-time software engineer earning the National Minimum Wage. Which is not bad at all. But, not many of such temples exist and not many invest in IT anyway.

Replace in the above sentences; Bangalore with London, Udupi with Hull (I am doing a favour to Hull infact), Temples with Manufacturing Industries. Thats the precise situation one should never get into.

Lessons: 1. Being in the right time, right place with right people is not usual and to loose such an opportunity in greed for more is simply the most foolish of decisions one can take.
2. To swim up the river, against the tide, one should either be a salmon fish or choose a tide that does not have waterfalls. A river without waterfalls? Possible in UK but not in India for sure.

So, the ultimate lesson is; to be a Salmon, to go against the tide. To be a salmon, lot of patience, slow and steady practice is necessary.

Just Do It, Karma yoga, Slow and steady, conquer ego etc..etc.. Sounds all familiar to me. How come I got into this mess? Because I am not a Salmon yet! So wait..keep waiting like Tom Hanks!

I know that I am not doing justice to the title of my blog with this post, but what the heck, It's my blog damn it!

Lecture in Rhyme

Ok. After a long continuous laughing lecture session, I am now stable to persist my experience over the internet.

The day was 11th March, 2005. Just after I came back from nearby Beverly, I was eager (as always) to attend to the lecture of RobMiles. The lecture started with Rob showing us the letter he recieved from Bill Gates. It had just one letter, a big L on it. He said that Bill will send the remaining 3 later (like his software...).

Then as Rob had promised in the website, he tasted cheese. It was followed with the much anticipated auction of microsoft software. That was hilarious with people auctioning Win XP for £1.00 which went upto £70. Great bargain and a resale in ebay will fetch huge profits for sure. Then a decent looking microsoft clock was auctioned which went for £4.00 to a lady. Immediately after that, Rob showed us a box full of these clocks and declared it to be picked from the exit for just £2.00 (poor lady). Actually, had the Microsoft Sales team been present for the event, they would have known the true value for the software they are selling. Microsoft Office for no more than £40.00. Halo for £35.00. And there were many more which were really good bargain.

We had Rob getting his hair dyed in Red color by Paul Chapman. Absolutely hilarious stuff it was.

The lecture as such was very funny. He had proper technical content Interspersed with pun. A poetic touch as he had promised. I hope he puts the slides in his website (as he has done with earlier ones) without sensor.

There was this last set of lecture slides which he explained by RAP music.

David was recording the whole event. He also hinted upon publishing it on the Internet some time. Hopefully he does. I shall update the link once that gets done.

To get an idea of what a lecture in rhyme is all about I went to www.robmiles.com and clicked on his previous lectures (eg. Java 1997). Reading the poem, I got reminded of this particular event.

Great stuff...enjoyed it. Quite unusual stuff to have a techie doing this and moreover being in Computer Science Department. :-)

WoW....It has snowed here! I love this stuff. Just returned from Scotland and thought I would miss the white beauty...but, it is still continuing. This snap is as I look outside my room window. I don't need anymore wallpapers or screen savers :) 

Mangalore in Hull!

Or, I could have titled it as "Kannada in Hull" to capture your attention. This post is all about my surprise in The University of Hull's Brynmor Jones Library's 7th floor's Computer Science Rack (Phew! I like to mention the number 7).

Ok. The surprise is the book I found lying under the intersecting rack of Mathematics and Computer Science. This book grabed my attention by having Kannada (a prominent south indian language) script in its cover page. I instantly borrowed it (not intending to read it but to just photograph it's cover page) and captured the cover page. This is the book.


"The Universal History of Numbers II" - Georges Ifrah

The kannada word (written with yellow brush) overlayed along the picture of the human palm reads "Mangalore" (Mangalooru, as read in Kannada) which is a city on the west coast of Karnataka.

Then I began to read it. The first chapter is "Indian Civilization: Cradle of Modern Numerals". In which the author lists the various theories that exist about the source of modern numerals and proves them all wrong. Points to various theories that prove India to be the source. Then he goes on to explain the various sources of the origin of modern numerals with reference to the different languages that have numerals built into them like Marathi figures, Punjabi figures, Nepalese figures, Tamil figures (did not have a representation for Zero), Kannara/Kannada/Karnata figures, Sinhalese figures etc..etc..

I've always wanted to know about the Tamil figures because I've never come across them before seing this book. I am very happy NOT to find them in vehicle registration boards in Tamil Nadu. When I learnt Kannada figures and Hindi figures, I remember asking my dad (who claims to be a tamil vidwan) about them. Infact he did not know or he told me in a manner I never remembered them. It was interesting to find that there are no separate symbols to represent figures. A slight variation of the character set is used to represent the tamil figures. Now, this is going to be a good read for me during the christmas holidays.

I've also found this author's other book "The Universal History of Numbers : From Prehistory to the invention of computers" (here)

ok. it's time for stagecoaching....

Back to Basics

Back to Basics

Wonderfull Interface

Wow, I must say! This blogger really rocks. Google has just proved that it can turn any kind of product look like it originated from google.

Google! you just rock!