What makes you think that you are qualified to offer advice?

I was out of action with respect to blogging for almost 3 years. I used to write only when something hit me really hard and I wanted to keep a note of it. And the blogs help me keep a track of what makes me angrier or happier. Over the last three years, I became more and more insensitive and emotionless. That was one of the reasons which held me from blogging. Hope I will continue to blog more frequently in the future.

So, coming back to this blog, I wanted to capture the thoughts about random people, people around us either in our work or family coming and offering us a piece of their mind. Well, I just wanted to write down what is getting louder in my head every time I hear such wisdom and what I think of such people. I am not blaming everyone who offered / offers me advise, there some people who really knew things they spoke about. I am only talking about those who offer advise without really having any real authority to offer advice, because they were nowhere qualified be it by knowledge or by maturity to offer another any sort of help. Also, their own life was shitty to begin with and you can clearly see that any of the wisdom they offer you were never used by them in their own life.

In general, the free wisdom that is on offer is around how to lead a life, how to set financial goals, how to set career goals and so on. But in general, all of that can be summed up into two categories

1. What we should pursue as a dream
2. What we should strive to become.

Well, when someone comes and offers me advise about pursuing a career or taking up a specific course or learning something, which is already a part of your academics. when I was in school or college, I couldn’t have possibly understood the lack of wisdom in the wisdom that people offered. For example, when some with an Arts degree offered me which was the best Engineering discipline to take up and why that is the best discipline to pursue a career, I myself had no idea what that discipline was all about and wouldn’t have really validated the inputs that has been offered to me. But then after I graduated, I understood that those who offered me advise about the discipline to pick had no real idea about what that discipline was all about.

That is when my realization begun, by the end of my college life I developed asking lot of questions to those who offer advice, I started asking a lot of WHYs and WHATs. If someone says that is the best discipline to pursue a career, I asked why is it the best discipline? What is offered in that discipline? And so on. If the wizard who is offering you the wisdom is a phony, he will blabber for such questions. And then you can start to ignore the wisdom that were offered. But then you need to do it for each piece of mind that is being offered. Or to say if someone is shit with one topic doesn’t make them shitty in all the topics. So always listen to what people say and validate it and take it if you think you need it or ignore it if you think it is useless. You don’t have to prove that the other person who is offering you advise is a fool in that topic or in any topic, you just need to learn to understand which inputs are invalid and you should learn to ignore.

Then there comes lot of other wisdom like, how important it is to plan life and save money and make financial plans. When I hear such things, I wonder why these people with so much wisdom failed to use that in their own life. Why they are losers themselves with such information? Well most of the time people try to tell you to do what they couldn’t do. It is like your parents making you to pursue a dream which they failed to do themselves. It is a simple act of dumping one’s failures onto others and telling them to succeed in those failed quests, so that these people can feel solace in their hearts. Their hearts are filled with peace, since they helped someone achieve what they couldn’t achieve, but they don’t give a shit if you really want that in the first place or will it help you in anyway. All they care about is their shit. There was a certain someone [ No he is not a family member and I am not using name, because that person doesn’t even deserve having a name, he is like an object that I came across in my life, like a chair or a table or a car. He is an object because his brain is of the same size of the brain of any object that you can think off. In case you thought of an object with brain, remember objects are brainless and that my friend is a fact], who used to tell me that you need to plan your life, take life insurance so that you will get the policies mature in another 5 years and buy a home before you turn 30 and blah blah and more blah. But then when I processed his plan for his life, I can clearly see that, there were no signs of any plans for life in his life. Not even as he was advising me, he thought that he should have his own plan first.

Or there is this person, who comes and offers me financial planning and he himself is a pauper himself because he didn’t plan his finances at all. It is like a failed student giving advice to another junior student on how to score centum on that subject. I can stack the examples on and on and give more references and scenarios and what I felt and what I told but then that is not the point I am trying to make here.

All I am trying to say is, that Not all the advice that you get to hear are useless and at the same time all the advice that you get are not useful either. But then before you offer someone advise, see if you have really used that in your life and it is a proven stuff so that you can offer it to the other guy. And before that just see if the you are above the other guy in the topic in which you are offering the advice. Sometimes when people offer advise it is like explaining gravity to Newton or telling what is relativity all about to Einstein. Just because you are older than me doesn’t make you more knowledgeable, age is just a number, so is marks and salary. So, if you have more marks than me or draw a salary which is fatter than mine or have an age which is double of mine, doesn’t make you wiser than me.

Especially when you clearly didn’t know about the real shades of your employer for whom you worked all your life, don’t come and offer me advice how to deal with my employer when you don’t even know about him. When you clearly don’t have enough savings to pay your daughter’s school fees / college fees, don’t come and offer me financial advice. More specifically, when you borrowed money from me, you are in no position to offer me financial advice. And if you still think you, I will fail without your advice. Yeah, I might fail without your valuable piece of shit but remember I will not fail as badly as you did or cry over it as much as you did or ran around begging people for help like you did. I might fail, not because I am foolish but because I am still a human and imperfect. But when I fail, I will not sit and weep, nor seek someone to offer me a helping hand. I will be stand up on my own feet, because that is what I am all about. Not just me, every single one of us have that ability to pull ourselves up and on our own.

So, save the shit of you need to do this, you need to plan this and this is what life is all about. What you learnt, know or understood is what you have seen and experienced and how much of it you could make sense out of the things that happened to you. I could understand more than what you could have and When put in the same situations I might handle them better than you could have even dreamed off and further, I might not run into such crisis because I might have a plan of action ready and which might be better than what you could ever come up with. Even if you had million lives spent entirely to come up with this plan.

Every one of us have a life and all of us have only one lives for ourselves to live. So instead of dumping on the untested, useless wisdom shit onto me. And wasting precious time by offering advice, make use of the time to make your own life better. And most important thing to take out this post is always remember you are no way qualified to give advice to any one and give your piece of mind only when someone walks up to you and asks for it.

What is that makes you who “YOU” are…

I should say I have been kind of lost, I could understand that I was no more the same person whom I was many years back or to the least few years back. Time has done the damage, but deep within the older person is still living and waiting to come out to action. I have been trying to do new things, talking to new people and visiting new places to keep my mind active.

There is a trip that we did to Mekedhathu, couple of weeks back and that is all together a story on itself and I should write a blog on it.

There was our college Alumni Association Bangalore chapter meet scheduled on 14/09/2014. From the day the invitation mail was sent, people were kind of acting weird. One guy does a reply all to the invitation and says,

“Hi all,
Gud to hear this.sry I can’t attend the function. I am traveling to Saudi Arabia on Saturday 13 th for project wrk.i wish this event to be a grand success and to be happen on future also.”

I don’t understand the point some people or trying to make, the invitation is dropped to you as a curtsey so that you too can attend. We are not in those olden days that, only rich people travel abroad and you are not going there on an adventurous trip or anything. Boss remember one thing, you are going to do the same shit job that you are doing in your office in the current city and that too in company’s expense. WTF do you think so big about going there and who cares if you are not going to make it to the function and if you really felt for missing it you do reply to the convener. Why the hell do a reply all and spam everyone. Well that’s where it all starts, people thing so high of themselves and act like shitheads but they fail to understand that they are shitheads no matter how they behave.

And there is another character who registers their name every time the mail was sent and he too was doing reply all. And the reminder of the meet was again the same mail sent multiple times. And to my surprise that person who registered like infinitely never turned up for the meet.

I was looking forward to it to see many of the people and spend sometime with my seniors and super seniors. On that scheduled date as planned as on the scheduled time I was there as planned. It was a great feel to spend time with Super seniors who you have looked up in your college life. Spending time with those who showed you what it is to be a friend. Those who helped me become who I am today. And also people remembering you by name, lecturers of other departments who never even came to my class for a single hour remembering me by my name. I sure have left a legacy to be remembered.

Then came the feedback session, where everyone was saying do that, do this and improve and this is not perfect that is not perfect. Many of those haven’t visited college after they graduated, just because we have job doesn’t mean that we can keep pointing fingers at our school or college. What we are today are what we learnt in school and college, so we should have a healthy respect towards both those institutions. I have been a regular visitor to my school and college, even if I am not there on an invitation for a guest lecture or a leader’s talk. I have seen that there are changes happening on a constant basis and the standards have improved a lot from the time we graduated. It’s easy to make opinions and pass comments but it is very difficult to implement the same.

Only a person who has changed will be able to understand and appreciate change. To get one should be ready to give. And what you get is directly proportional to what you give. When my turn came to deliver the feedback, I walked across and skipped myself from using a mike; I never had to use a mike to address crowd in the order of 500 plus. And when one speaks from heart it doesn’t need artificial amplification. I spoke saying that College will give make you eligible to get a job but it will never be able to give you a job. And those who said in front of me that college needs to improve haven’t visited college after graduating. There has been loads of improvements in leaps and bounds, there has been steady progress made towards betterment. Also there is a huge schedule to stick to like syllabus, number of working days, tests, labs and records. Change won’t happen overnight and also it requires group effort. All those who want change should also be ready to be a part of it.

Sitting outside the system and asking everyone else to work towards the change you want to see, that is kind of bull shit isn’t it? And that’s the kind of change everyone talks about. Well I don’t want to get into the specifics but then where you end up is entirely dependent on your ability and really circumstances and situations doesn’t really have an impact on where you end up. Your life is totally what you make out of it and people fail to understand this simple fact.

Two days after the meet, I get the following mail in my inbox,

“Hi bro….i m ur junior YEAR passed out. Im XYZ.
I need to speak to u bro. During college days my aproach towards life was awsum. But after graduation the decisions which I took in my career had bad effects. Still every morning I wake up troubled, not having any motive or aim. I even thought of suicide sometimes but I passified myself that I will fight harder.
I need to get focus in what I am doing. Both prefessional and personal life. I want to be a better son to my parents.
Pls help me. Im in need of ur counsel and guidance.”

I saw this mail only on 18^th and called up that person immediately. I don’t even know that person. He has seen me in college many times and as he is my immediate junior. My attitude and approach towards life was radiating all around me or so I felt. I always had this aura and charisma of positivity around me all the time. So this person could possibly see all that and choose to talk to me I thought. I called him up immediately.

He had no big problems; he was a great person with an amazing attitude towards life. He chose to dump his UST global offer that he got in college days. He wanted to work in a field which he studied during his college days. Not many people have such ambitions, when many people with engineering degree ending up in BPOs and marketing, this guy had the attitude to choose a career for him instead of the career that was offered to him. He is currently working in one of the core companies in Hosur. Like it happens with everyone, he started off with the so called Beginners luck and ran out of it. After 4 years of working he was getting 4 LPA. So he started to doubt himself and his decisions. He was a person who is doing his work passionately and loves going to work everyday. I told him those things and reiterated that money doesn’t measure one’s success and marks are not a measure of ones knowledge.

This is what happens with everyone, when we start our life out of college we all know what we are made up of and constantly move towards a better future. Suddenly, somewhere in-between we start doubting our own decisions and become uncertain of the beauty of the future that lies right before us. Then there are other set of people, who are total losers and everyone including them but those fools do things so surely.

when I take into all the events and think about it, life is very simple. We just need to listen to our heart and listen to it. Do what it says is right. When I look back at my life, its not the decisions I made which took me where I am today. It is the confidence with which I backed my decisions and my constant analysis of my own self.

I am not a beautiful peacock, which takes so much pride in its beauty and is passionate. Chasing after dreams is important but that dreams should have a purpose. There is no point proving yourself to anyone. You should be more worried about living your life the way you want it.

I am not a parrot either, which comfortably lives in its cage and does things which it can do within it and always depends on its masters for its food. It will do circus inside its cage to please its master but it would never know what it means to fly or be free. All it would do in its life is survive and it would never live.

But I am neither a parrot nor a peacock or other birds, I am an Eagle. I live only by my attitude. I make hard decisions in my life and go through tough times not to survive but to live. I either live high or die high. I don’t survive.

I might not feature on magazines or news papers, I might not get interviewed. I might not show up on TVs but I have a legacy.

I have touched people’s life and have inspired them directly and indirectly too. People have looked up to me and have tried catching up to me. People come to me for decisions, opinions and even for naming their kids. I lived a life useful to others and will continue to do so. That is my legacy and that is my legend.

I never complained about my circumstances or situations, I never waited for opportunities. I never waited for a better day. I had given my all every single time, I tried and tried and tried till I achieved. I never gave up in between nor doubted by decisions in between. I have done a self analysis of my decisions but never doubted that is the secret of success.

So never forget what makes you what YOU are, because that is what is very important attitude to have.

Let me tell you something that you don’t know …

All My life I have given everything possible to everyone around me at every possible time, But people are still unhappy. I have been introspecting for a while and have found few things.

1. We tend to lower our standards to help a lending hand, but people think that we are of the same standard as them. If I need to hold my standard and I need to be friends with only those who are of my standard or has higher standard than mine? I might learn and grow in leaps and bounds but one should remember that life is limited but learning is endless. One’s life is not measured by what they achieved, how much useful they were to their family and friends. I prefer living a life which is useful to others that is why I Help people.

2. Just because we keep helping people, they think that we are created in this world only to help them. They fail to understand that we offer help to them because we want to help them and it is not like we are expecting anything in return. We have struggled our way and offering help is only a gesture of making life easier for someone else. Just because I have struggled, letting another one struggle when I can offer them help is like sadistic and inhumane.

3. Well people keep saying that they want to GROW in their life. Well everyone wants to GROW in life and No idiot wants to decompose themselves. And they say they want go GROW in their life as though someone is stopping them from GROWING? and remember that you have grown this much because of other people’s help too. So before you insult someone or act smart, do a simple MATH as how much that person has helped you and what you have given to them in return.

4. Taking people’s TIME for granted. When someone gives you their TIME, it doesn’t mean that they have nothing to do in life and gave you their TIME. It is because they value your Relationship more than TIME. You wouldn’t know, how much time that person had to spend EXTRA in office to finish their daily tasks because they invested their precious TIME to help you out and they put their brains to its limits for cracking YOUR problem.

5. Though one has helped you with only intention of helping you and not expecting anything in return, you should see the other person is getting benefited at least a little by being friends with you.

6. Also remember how many times you have run to that person for your problem and How many times that person has run to you with their problem. In order to receive you need to give first. And when you want to draw a circle and don’t let anyone inside it, Its totally fine. Everyone needs their own private circle but remember that one is not going to judge you by what has happened. Just because someone was betrayed your trust doesn’t mean that you treat everyone around like a betrayer.

7. When the other person has taken only your GOOD things into consideration and are friends with you only considering that. Especially when you don’t want to trust them with your secrets, because you are afraid they will judge you on that. First you should understand people, before you point fingers at them. What has happened in the past is a mere history, it means nothing. And People are not who they were in the past, so we all know that so there is no point in keeping it hidden.

8. If you think you DESERVE better, just put yourself in their shoes who you think didn’t treat you properly and think for a moment. Was there a chance that they might have also thought, I THINK I DESERVE BETTER.

9. Just because someone treats you like a PRINCE / PRINCESS, doesn’t mean that you can go ahead and keep making comments on their actions or behavior. Especially when you comment on someone’s character, make sure you have given the other person the privilege of doing what you are doing to them. If you haven’t given them that Luxury then you don’t have it the same.

10. When someone accepts their fault and apologies for what has happened doesn’t mean you have an upper hand to bash them up. They apologized for their behavior because that was instantaneous and not intended, but think for a moment if someone has acted out of character, you have pushed them to their limits. So your hands are as filthy as theirs.

11. Well if you think you have an attitude and can act arrogant. The other person can act like a beast, that you can’t even imagine in your worst nightmares. Just because someone is nice to you doesn’t meant that they are nice.

12. Just because someone doesn’t know what you know, doesn’t mean they know nothing. You might not know all that the other person knows. And not everyone is a Free bird you see. Some would have been in survival mode in their lives with a constant constraint called responsibilities. So if the other person too had the luxury of living free, then they might have surpassed you in leaps and bounds. And you wouldn’t have reached one fourth of what that person’s level, if you were put under the constraints they faced.

As Darwin says “Your evolution is completely dependent on your environment.”

13. Last but not least, you should get a dictionary and understand meaning of few important words. I am giving you the following which are the most important I think

FRIEND – A person you know, well and regard with affection and trust. You can’t be just friends to someone and treat that someone like a stranger. Its mutual you see, you need to reciprocate the love, affection and trust the other person is gives you.

TEAM WORK – Team work means everyone working towards a common goal. So everyone involved should put 100%. When someone is not putting their 100% and you expect the other one to put more than 100% to cover that up, well that’s not team work. Rather than having that person and covering them up, I will not have that person on my team and I will put 200% myself to see to that the activity gets done in the expected manner.

KNOWLEDGE – Well there are difference between being Informative and being Knowledgeable. You need to understand the basic differences here. Information is nothing but facts and numbers or pieces of data, which can never result in anything. But Knowledge on the other hand helps you sees things from End to End, process all the facts, numbers and pieces of data and arrives at a Favorable RESULT.

PLANNING – This is another big word, just like being informative and being Knowledgeable. There is lot of difference between trying to Plan and Actually Planning something. Well this needs to be explained precisely, if you are asked to plan something. You need to understand the variables that can influence the outcome. And have to create multiple paths to reaching a desired outcome. In simple words, PLANNING means finding all the possible ways of doing a thing and based on the current condition deciding upon which one is the best of the available approach.

TRUST – Since I think you have never understood this word, I am taking advantage of that and trying you explain you this. TRUST is one of the most beautiful things to have with someone. It is a that feeling where you believe in other person more than you do. You need to be Trust Worthy and Trust people. People telling you their most Hideous desires doesn’t make you trusty. People Trust you when they tell you how weak they are and How much they want you to help them out. As I said earlier it is when people trust you more than they trust themselves.

All that is said, I wish I could stop it here. But well I don’t see that is possible as there are few more things that needs to be pointed out. When you say that you always be friends with people who are having higher standard than you and you regret having me as a friend because you think I don’t have even your standards. Let me tell you, when I apply the same logic, you fail to even meet my standards.

So to put it simply, My standards are lesser than your standards, which is greater than your standards.

There are at least a handful of people who consider me as a benchmark that they need to reach. You might have even more number of people who wants to be you. But there is a difference in being a benchmark and people wanting to be you. When I see a Japanese I want to be as punctual as him, That is what people wanting to become you means. They want be as punctual as you are or as strong as you are or whatever. When people see me as a Japanese, they want to meet that levels of quality that I deliver immaterial of the situation, the levels of unquestioned commitment that I offer and the way I live my life. There is a difference between Characteristics and Behavior.

I have lived life with a luxury of being ME. I have never asked help from anyone other than GOD. Every time I am broken or fragile, I look up to the skies and ask the mighty one for help. Never in my life, I have been put to that level, where I need to ask one for help or be at one’s mercy. That is how proud I have lived and I have given people at least 10 folds more than what they have ever expected from ME.

So don’t keep complaining, And just one more thing. I am either 100 % or 0%, When I am friends with someone I will put my life on the line for them or else they are simply my enemy. So its your choice to be what you want to call yourself, a Friend or a Foe. Its up to you …

I believe in living an useful life rather than making myself useful after my death…

Living on the Edge…

We all run into many people in our lives. Some stay, many leave. Though some stay they don’t stay in your memory. And though many leave, they stay in your memory forever. And there are some, who constantly stay on your mind.

From the moment you first saw them, there is a feeling in your heart, something which you can’t explain with words. The feeling is something like they complete you. You feel like, they are a part of your missing soul or you both are a part of the same soul.

You are left in a constant confusion, whether to go talk to them and get to know them better or just remain a silent observer. We often chose to remain a silent observer. You are happy to see them by sheer coincidence and enjoy seeing them from a distance. You find those small things that you both have in common and feel happy about it. You trust on the worst enemies that history has ever known Time and Fate, to take a decision.

And as they say your worst of fears come alive. You get to know that person someway or the other. You don’t know whether you should feel cursed or blessed. Because when you were a silent observer, life was far easy. Every word that you spit out of your mouth can put you into trouble and you regret that never learned to keep your mouth shut.

The more you talk to that person, the more you get to know them; you will understand that you both are pieces of the same soul. But as Physics have stated for centuries same charges / poles repel each other. Now you find yourself in an uncomfortable zone. You are like a caged beast and you just can’t breakout of the cage.

You are so afraid that though breaking the cage will free you, you are not just breaking out the cage but also out of that relationship. No matter how hard you try to tame the beast, it still keeps trying to breakout. Your personality splits, there is one side of you who is ready to make compromises and continue and there is the other side which wants to wage a war.
And you live on a constant doubt, whether the other person has really understood you or they are in a constant doubt about your motives. When they just keep turning down all your meeting requests, you begin to wonder. Whether you are getting on their nerves or they are struggling to break free from you without hurting you. You are not sure of what to talk or ask anymore, because you are not sure of yourself anymore.

You are in constant doubt, whether to text them, call them or ping them. But to your surprise you get replies and the conversation stays on. You build up confidence and feel things aren’t bad. You wonder, would it have been better, if you haven’t met them and you simply stayed a silent observer?

All that you need from them is few hours of their time. All that you want to from them is to have a warm conversation. You want to tell them all your stories and want to hear their stories, tell them that we both have many things in common. And tell them, that you feel happy to have them as your friend. Nothing more and nothing less, you don’t want to waste anymore of their time.

You desperately want to make them understand that you are not there to disturb them or get on their nerves. But also you want to understand what they feel about you. Whether they also feel connected to you or it’s just your own mirage.

Your instincts tell you that they understand you for who you are and you don’t have to explain them. But your brain keeps decoding those simple facts and negative things and keeps pushing you into that self explanatory mode.

You spend most of the time, reading all the texts conversations you had. Trying to figure out if you said something wrong? Was there a chance for something to be interpreted wrongly? Your whole like you lived, the way you want and you never cared what others thought about you. And now you do care about what that person things about you.

You feel like, you are standing on the edges of the cliff. You don’t feel safe with your current position and you want to move forward. But then after you make a move, you feel even more volatile and vulnerable. Now you are not sure, whether to move forward or move backwards or stay where you are.

You now are in doubt of your greatest asset, one thing you banked on all your life…

Your Intelligence.

All you can do you, look up into the sky and ask God.

What is that you have bargained for?

Curse or Boon?

Watchout for Leeches in your work environment.

Off late I had to run into many Leeches in my office environment and sometimes I had felt like I had become a host for their breeding too. The leeches that I am talking about are those you can find in your office around you, which sucks your life out of you and leave you for dead. All they care about is themselves and they don’t have anything that ends which is even remotely connected to attributes which you expect at the corporate level like professionalism, ethics, responsibility, accountability and so on.

These people find reasons and excuses at the instant like you did when you were lesser than 10 years old and had to find an excuse every morning to tell to your mom to avoid going to school. They will make sure that no one finds out that they didn’t do anything for the whole day and that is an attribute that you can map to your school days, where you kept a huge grin on our face even though the teacher was asking about the homework which you didn’t do, just to ensure that you don’t get caught.

And another astonishing thing is that the way the execute the things, it like the ruthless hangman or executioner. Nothing like conscience or guilt stops them being them. They don’t seem to be true to themselves and it makes you wonder whether they are human beings or they are SATAN hiding itself under human cloak.

Not just them, even their words won’t give you any commitment and they are those who live in that very moment which is going past us right now. All they want to do is find a reason or excuse which will make them free of the work and they don’t have any brains behind the reason or the excuse they come up with.

They are people who want a job which pays them salary at the end of the month but they are not interested in doing the work that is what they get paid for.

One of my friend used to say that if you listen to MS Dhoni speaking in the press without watching the match you can never make out whether India won the game or lost it. Sometimes you feel MS Dhoni was far better when you listen to these people speak in team meeting because they will say the simplest of things which they did to the extent of writing code for Chandrayan 3 😛

When you try to bind them using responsibility or morale, they will have an explanation which will take you by surprise and their dictionary has different meaning than the understanding you have for words like work, responsibility, ethics and so on. For them coding is copy pasting and their brains are used only to justify a mistake they did.

They don’t have a backbone as like the original leeches, when you corner them out and start to point out their mistakes they will do a jump and say from now onwards we will do things as you say because all we are here is to help you out.

Recently in one of the team meetings one such leech said to me that “The test team is here to help the development team”. I said immediately “No one is doing anyone any favor, as development engineer my job is to fix bugs which are found and your job as a test engineer you job is to find bugs in the build”

What is the whole idea behind trying to portrait that doing your work that too to the most minimal level and boasting to the whole world saying you are doing the world a great favor?

I am not someone who is workaholic, but I am someone who takes work serious when it needs serious attention and I do justice to the salary and there is a conscience that keeps me going and I don’t fool around, I either say I do it or I say I won’t.

I am not the one who goes around saying I will do it from next time but this time, we will just keep it this way.

I had encountered another leech, which thinks that it gets paid for coming to office everyday. All that it does it sits in office from 9 AM to 6 PM checking sensex, researching on horoscopes and asking interview questions to other people in the floor and saying the answers that were printed somewhere else.

One such occasion happens that the project goes into a critical mode and the manager who is supposed to be one of the deadliest one has ever seen tries the best they can to make this leech stay back after 6 PM and this leech takes about MOTHER sentiment and says its mother has to go home and blah blah blah…

This manager tries everything they ever knew like tying this leech by responsibility, how it puts the whole team under risk because of this leech and the answer from the leech was that it clearly understands that and all that it does is in the best interests of the project, the manager says that every time the manager has listened to the leech and has shared its work to others to meet the deadlines and thus overloading everyone else when the leech was busy doing nothing in the same period. the leech says “Exactly madam, I will find someone and pass on the information of what to do and how to do to them?” the manager is shell shocked.

The manager then puts the next weapon attacking the leech psychologically saying ” How can you be so irresponsible and like this when the I have listened to your problems every time and you had put me into critical situations so many times and now you are not ready to bail the team even out once?”, The leech says “Tell me one such occasion where I had put you in a critical situation? Even if you say one such, please bear with me one more time and I will definitely listen to you next time onwards”

The last option the manager tries threatening saying ” Its ok leave today but as discussed in the team meeting please make sure you are there on weekend to support the delivery activities ”

The leech hits the final nail in the coffin saying “That I can let you know only by Friday !?”

Thank god, I was fearing that the leech will say “If you make me stay after six or ask me to come on weekend the WORLD WILL END” 🙂

All I could never understand was, how can someone behave like that? but somethings in life are better left unexplained. Because to understand these leeches you need be the biggest jerk or such a characterless character or the lowlife creature on any universe that can exist.

Probably when someday any of the leeches decide to write an autobiography, we can enlighten our self on being one of them.

I will let you know through by blog, if any of the leeches I know write such a thing. Please return me the favor, if you find any from your side.

Encounter with Police – Common Man…

Yesterday near Thirunagar Colony [Erode], I was stopped by Police saying I was on phone while riding. But what had actually happened was,

Actually I was putting my bike on the sides and stopping and just about to pick the call, I saw two people rushing towards me in Bike. One was in uniform [City Police] and another was in Mufti. I had to move my bike a little to park and get out of their way; I moved, parked and locked it, took the keys and disconnected the call. They got down from the bike and the one in uniform told the other that to book me in Mobile driving case. I just told them I was stopping and was not on call, they said They came from Thirunagar Colony bus stop [which is like half KM from the current place ] to catch me as I was on phone while driving. I was surprised, the one in Mufti tried taking my bike keys, the one in the uniform was telling him to take the bike to station. I told them the key is with me and I don’t believe they had to seize my bike for mobile driving.

I told them and explained them; I was not driving while on call. I was parking my bike and they had come towards me, I had to move a bit. The one in uniform asked for documents, I gave him my DL and RC, They also asked me to blow air to check if I was drunk.

Then they caught one more person who was actually talking on phone and was driving, he was also caught. The person who was caught told he was on call with MAYOR, Unfortunately I heard that too. I also saw a person doing triples and he was not caught. I asked the one in Mufti, why don’t they catch triple riding? For which he replied there are ladies on the pinion, I told him there is no special exception in the triple riding for ladies. Meanwhile the other had a talk with MAYOR through phone and MAYOR seems to have asked him to leave the other.

He turned towards me and the one in Mufti reiterated my words. He was so pissed off on what I told and said are you trying to tell us whom to capture and with which section. He turned to the one in Mufti and said, we should have hit with our bike and booked in accident case. There I corrected him saying, Sir you yourself can’t file an accident case on me, I too know little LAW and I added, if I am at fault I am ready to pay the fine but I need a proper explanation for the same. He told me I need to go to station to pay the SPOT Fine, he asked the other person to accompany me. I raised my voice and said why I HAVE TO GO TO STATION to pay SPOT FINE should??? He looked visibly agitated by that question, he said I will give you the slip you can go and pay in the court. Then I told its ok I will pay it in the station, the other person is also coming na? We will go together and pay it. That is when I believe I stuck the chord. He returned back my documents and said that I can go. He said he will catch me for a big thing next time and then he will deal with me.

Its not that I didn’t know Big Shots in the City, as someone who lived there for 25 years I too have contacts. I told him I could have even called a minister as per their choice, from both the BIG PARTIES in Tamil Nadu. I have been picking fights with Bus Conductors and Other Government officials in the recent past, now I have evolved to pick fight against the next level I believe.

The main points are,

1. Its traffic police who is responsible for such things and not City Police.
2. They just can’t seize your vehicle just like that. I had a good presence of mind because of which, I locked the vehicle and had the keys with myself.
3. Had they got the keys or taken the vehicle you just can’t talk, you are obliged to do what they ask you to do. I remember sometime in the past during my class 12^th, we were caught riding in a One way. The first thing the Cop did was he took the keys and took 2 Rupees that we had that point of time to let us go.
4. You shouldn’t get threatened by the loud voice or the scare of the case filing. Even if you are at fault, you have all the rights to understand your fault and demand an explanation.
5. Police are for our welfare, to aid the society to maintain the law. It’s true that some misbehave and threaten us with the same law. There are enough holes in the law which we can also use against them. If there is truth on your side, then never subside.
6. Common man is the most powerful one in the society both as the laws are made to protect him and by number. His voice has more power only thing is that he should raise it.
7. Even if it means losing your life and spoiling your personal life we should do stand for the truth. Standing for a right cause and fighting for a change is the greatest purpose any Human Soul can have.

For a better country, we need better society. To create a better society we need better people. The change we seek should come from US.

Lets be the Miracle we want to happen, Lets be the change we seek.

Overloaded Servers and Assholes …

Like I said in the What makes you think you are a Professional???, There are many people who think that it will make them engineers just with an engineering degree to their name. Well before I talk more, let me give you the overview first.

One fine day you log on to your Linux build server to create a build that is asked out of you and deliver it to the test team and customer for some verification. You feel that the server is behaving like it is a Pentium I PC. You see that it is taking 5 minutes to perform a simple ls command. Then you see it on your samba share that the space that is left in the server is just 3GB, Then you wonder to yourself, which era am I in???

Then you do a Sherlock Holmes, and decide to see who has used up of so much of space. You Google for the command and figure out the command to see the disk usage statistics and you get it as well. Then you the command and wait for it to show the statistics.

From the statistics you figure out who is that Person, who is clogging all that memory. You draft a mail to that person keeping your manager in CC, saying

” The Server [ you give the IP address ] is loaded completely while trying to estimate the usage. It is found that your login is using close to 20+ GB. Kindly do a clean up so that others can use it.”

Then you wait for the clean up to happen and waiting to initiate the build. You get a mail in your inbox as the reply of the previous mail saying

“I tried deleting the folders in my home directory. I couldn’t finish that as server you mentioned is responding slowly.

Currently as I am using a new server, I don’t have backup data in the server you mentioned. If you are able to delete please delete and use it.”

Now after reading the reply, you get so pumped up and want to draft a mail immediately. You draft another mail saying
 “Kindly delete your UNWANTED folders after moving to a new server. Kindly delete it yourself as deleting other people’s folders are none of my business.”

and you get a reply saying

“Thanks for your suggestion. I will delete the content once the server is up.”

and after seeing this reply I don’t know what you would have felt, but I felt so furious. I wanted to reply the below stuff

“Hi All,

     Kindly delete all your UNUSED logins on the Linux Build Servers, which you are sharing and not actively using. Some of your obsolete files are really loading up the servers and hampering other people’s work.

     Only you and God almighty will know, whether you are using that particular login and files, hence when you migrate to a new server. Kindly delete your previous files after taking a back up.

     All it needs to remove your files and home directory is a simple command, saving yourself from GOOGLING, I am giving the command as well

     userdel -r username

     The above command removes the particular user login and its corresponding home directory.

     Kindly do this on priority as it might be really clogging other people’s work and since we are sharing server’s it is understood that we use our common sense to make efficient use of the resources.”

Then I decided to check with one of my friend before sending the above mail to the whole group.  I sent it across and the comment I got was that “It is so harsh and rude ” that is exactly what I wanted to express. Then some modifications were done to the way the content was presented but after changing the presentation it felt like the mail looked like a snake without venom. I felt there was no point sending it across and decided to sleep over it rather than giving into emotions.

I left home earlier than I would have done on any other day, I  slept early and came to office and to my surprise the server is cleaned up and there is 60 GB of free space left in that. I was so curious, I do the usage estimate again and find there is only one person whose usage statistics has changed over the night.

All that comes to my mind are the following questions,

•     What is your problem in accepting a mistake, that too after being pointed out with proper evidence. When you are sharing resources it is your F***ING responsibility to make use of the resources efficiently. And if you move out to a new server how the F**K will I know that, you migrated to new server.
•     Understand one thing and try to get it through your thick MORONIC brain. If someone spends time and figures out and sends you a mail that to requesting you to cleanup your contents it means he is paying you request. It wouldn’t have taken much time to expose what was being stored into your account. When you reply to that person asking him to delete it himself !? What do you think of that person ? IT Support?
•     If only there were no ethics that too just for five minutes, I would have walked across and would have shown you my middle finger. And I wish if I had all the five fingers on my hands as MIDDLE FINGERS, I would have shown you all TEN.

Given your intelligence, it was my mistake to ask of you what I asked of you. I guess probably its all my mistake. As wise-men have quoted

“Don’t fight with a FOOL, because he will pull you down to his level and will beat you down with experience.”

So, I decided to GIVE-UP. I couldn’t vent out my frustration directly because that person who caused all this frustration was a girl, I would have given back all the shit directly, if only she was not a girl. Because in India no matter whose fault it is, if a girl is in tears and you are caught at the other end… You are so DOOMED…

Out Of My Comfort Zone….

These days that I am passing through are the strangest days of my life. I am far away from everything I love[d] and in a land which is so alien to me. Off late I have been on official trip first it started off with a trip across India. And I finally ended up in New Delhi. The All India trip plan was as below

Bangalore -> Chennai -> Hyderabad -> Kolkata -> Mumbai -> Ahmedabad -> New Delhi -> Bangalore

Every alternative day I was traveling through 3 cities. I was a pond frog till this trip started. I had never been anywhere outside Bangalore, For me Bangalore was the whole galaxy. The only place I had ever gone outside Bangalore was Mumbai, That was during college final year for Industrial visit. This time I was all alone, if there was one thing I would regret in life that will be failing to learn Hindi during my school days.

I had opportunity to learn Hindi till class 8, but I never thought I will make this far in life back then. It was a whole new level of living out of my comfort zone. I spoke so much Hindi in the last two months, which I have never spoke with all the time before the last two months put together. The worst nightmare to any Tamilian is going anywhere outside Tamil Nadu.

But as they say Time can be your greatest friend and your worst enemy, I too found what Time is capable of. I traveled in flight so frequently as though it is like traveling in city bus. I would have spent so much of money [Of Course its all from Company] in the last two months, which I would have never spent even if I take into account the whole time before last two months.

Life looks so different, it never fails to amuse me. I got to spend quality time with all those long-lost friends who are put up in different cities. Spoke to people whom I never spoke to in the last couple of years. I met people whom I thought will never meet in life again.

My life was getting into a saturation mode kind of thing. Now with this trip, I am getting into a different mode. I am more away from home as I always wanted to be. I am more lonelier as I wished to be. I am getting to live in an alien land as I dreamed of, This might not go on forever but I getting to live something which I dreamed of.

“When you get to realize everything that you dreamed of, You are forced to dream about New things.”

That’s the mode I am in now, Forced to dream about New Things.

Who do you want to be? An Ideabox, A Comrade or A Back Stabber ???

Well off late, I had experience of interacting with more people and something stuck me really hard. I could see many kinds of people. The way I thought they were and the way they projected themselves and whom they really were underneath was never the same. Its one in a million who projects themselves as what they are and people understand them they way they really are.

I guess enough with the intro, I am not going to mention the names but the things that happened in the last three weeks stirs my thoughts so much and result of that I user brain more than what I would have used in the last 25 years.

To start off with I will talk about the positives first for a change, Ideabox are peoples who are like the creator himself, They are people full of ideas and not just people with ideas they are those who try to realize their ideas. Those people like the creator, though full of ideas prefer having subordinates to help them realize their ideas. That is how the other two categories gets life, The ideabox people try to dedicate their work to others thus the people who get involved in trying to help ideabox people can either become trust able comrades or back stabbers. The ideabox people though they are great themselves always prefer having some people at the front and they try to manipulate them behind the screen.

As I said earlier the Ideabox people are on par with the creator, the ideas are something which only they can think off and more than thinking about it they take steps towards realizing it. Well there is not much you get to write off good people, hence I jump to the next category.

The People who fit into Comrade group are those who are between the God and Animal category. Those are those who still portrait the potential of God’s attributes that is passed down to the human beings. They might not get the brightest ideas of all time, but they can always help the ideabox people realizing their ideas. These people chase nothing but passion. Most of the time they will be lazy other rest of the time they wont be doing anything active. They will be spending most of there invaluable time in defending things like friendship, morale and trust, which are something which are considered worthless these days. These people neither try to become Ideabox nor try to become Back stabbers that’s their specialty and they know who is Ideabox and who is a Back stabber.

Though Ideabox people are the most creative people, they can be termed dumb as they don’t know whom to trust and whom not to trust. They take long time in understanding the difference between Comrades and Back stabbers and by the time they understand the credits that they deserve is already taken by the back stabbers.

The people in comrade group are often defending the ideas and glory of the Ideabox people from the back stabbers. If they let their guard down even for a second the back stabbers not only take the credit for the great idea but also they make sure the great idea doesn’t get realized as should be.

Well in short and simple the Comrades are those who head the war against back stabbers for saving the Ideabox and their ideas. They put their life on line to make sure someone else doesn’t snatch someone else’s glory.

The back stabbers are interesting characters. I guess they were the source of the information for Darwin, I think  Darwin would have thought about the whole evolution stuff after meeting this kind of people. If only Darwin was alive and had a Facebook account he would have for sure put it as his status update.

Getting back to the point, these back stabbers are those people who are very good in imitating both ideabox and comrades. To comrades they will portray themselves as ideabox and to ideabox they will portray themselves as comrades. This is where the paradox comes into play. The Back stabbers try to portray two characteristics which can never exist together. If such a thing exists there is no need at all to have ideaboxes and Comrades. Comrades exist to help ideaboxes and Ideaboxes strive with the support of Comrades. This paradox is what helps Comrades find out back stabbers.

The beauty about back stabbers is that they can portray some ideabox’s idea as their own, where in the ideabox themselves can’t portray their ideas as their own. The back stabbers are those people who know the battle strategies they pacify the ideabox with comforting words and the moment they place the trust on the back stabbers in haywire.

Don’t even open your mouth to the Back stabber because if you spit out a word to them, they will make a whole box out of the word that you had spit. Another astonishing thing about the back stabbers is that they are never ashamed of themselves.

The thing is simple Ideabox is nothing but creative brain alone at its best, Comrades are those who have got their analytics and reasoning functioning in accordance with their heart. Back stabbers is nothing but all the other bad things that can be found in every single living creature on this planet put together.

So its always your choice who you want to be ??? because your identity is what makes you what you are….

What to expect in 2012…

The Year has just begin, as always like everyone else expecting it to work wonders. This is something which everyone of us expect every year. Last year when it begun I was clueless like what to expect from it. But when it ended, I had got lot more than I expected. Both financially and Personally, I earned and lost more than what I deserve.

I guess what I learned  last year was more than what I would have learned before the last year put together.  Though if I look at the learning they are end up being small sentences, like “Don’t Trust People So easily”, “Put in hard-work but make sure it goes in the right direction” and so on. But the pain I underwent to understand these things were not that simple.

The facts are simple but to freeze down to them it takes hell lot of time. At the beginning of every year we expect the New year to be better than the previous year. But at the end of every year we do realize that the previous year was better than what we have just gone through.

Like the saying goes, “Life teaches you so many things even if you are not interested in learning them”. I guess this time around I want to freeze on what I want to learn and make sure I get life to teach me the same. At the end of each year you become a better person than you used to be at the beginning of the year, this happens immaterial of your liking towards becoming a better person.

I think the best thing to expect from this year compared to previous year is more and better opportunities for making more mistakes, but the mistakes shouldn’t be the same that you had done before.

As the great Chanakya says “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself “. I guess all to expect is more mistakes and learnings… Learning is what makes you into better person, but most of the times taste of learning is not sweet. Its a bitter medicine which makes your life better.