The day I met Anna Hazare

 Today is 26th January 2013, the 64th Republic Day of India. A day which the whole of nation celebrates proudly, and also a day when I met Anna Hazare.

 I have been fortunate enough to have worked at Infosys and seen Narayan Murthy in life and speaking, his speech is very mind blowing and keeps you involved. Today I met another such person,  Kisan Baburao Hazare, popularly known as Anna Hazare.

 We had gone on our office trip to several places nearby Pune and happened to visit Anna's village, and fortunately he was in the village. We had to wait for about an hour, but the wait was worth it. I actually was a bit nervous to met such a great and influential person and was lost and blank when I actually saw him and heard him.

 Many of us including me touched his feet. He is a very very simple person. He met us openly and very humbly. There was also not much security around him, personifies his simplicity. We asked him to share a few words with us and he readily obliged. He said he always wondered what is the purpose of life. Everyone comes to the world empty handed and leaves also empty handed. What is the reason to carry all the luggage, he did not want to carry the luggage of a small family and today he has the whole nation as family and he is very happy.

 He said he also tried to commit suicide once, and this is also written in his wiki page, but then he read a few books of Swami Vivekananda and he realized the meaning and purpose of life. He then devoted his whole life for the good of the country and helping poor and needy people.

 He said he lives in a temple in the village and owns a plate for food and nothing else. Yet he had the power to take the wickets of 6 cabinet ministers and expose their corruption. Also he forced the resignation of 400 corrupt government officials. He asked us the youth of the country to be ready for the fight against corruption.

 We took some pictures with him and he humbly obliged, he is very down to earth and very simple person. There is a museum in his village dedicated to all his achievements and boy there are so many trophies and certificates given to him. It took us around an hour just inside the museum. Also there is a trophy from World Bank given to him and they also offered him a blank cheque, which he did not accept!

 Anna has fought corruption in India using non violence and principles of Gandhiji. I was not fortunate enough to meet Gandhiji, but I believe I have definitely come close today...

The Pursuit of Happiness

 Happiness is a state of mind. What is the aim of life? To be happy or to be rich? Does happiness comes with wealth or it is independent of the amount of wealth a person has. How important are friends and relatives in being happy?

  So many questions! Being happy depends on having satisfaction in what you have and where you are. One must not have craving for something which one does not have. Aiming for high goals and working hard to achieve them is one thing, constantly complaning and crying for something you do not have is another. Be satisfied in what you have and you would be happy.

 These are some simple lessons, but it may be difficult for over ambitious or over confident people to unnderstand in one go. They just want everything in life. Are you of that type? Constantly asking for more than what you have? It is a bad thing to be and may not lead to happiness all the time.

 This post is coming after quiet a while. I have got settled in my job at Amdocs now and back to working in shifts. This is the first week of working in shifts and hopefully I will get time to work on my Untitled Series sci-fi novel. Also I am approaching 100 posts in my blog, this is number 98. The 100th one I am planning to cover all the previous posts.

 What else is happening in life? IPL 5 has started. MAncheter United are 8 points clear at the top of EPL and looking to win the title easily. Facebook is doing good, not much bugs and new full screen image viewer looks slick. Also good decision on buying Instagram, payed them more than required though I guess.

 Saw the movie Kahani last weekend. Very nice movie, the plot is good and the climax is very nice, good suspense movie and excellent work done by Vidya Balan.

 As I mentioned IPL5 has started, it is not that exciting as it used to be. There is gonna be the T20 world cup too, clearly there is an overdose of cricket and people are getting bored of it. Speaking of getting bored, its surprising, facebook is still able to entice its users and going strong with all the tweeks and modifications. They added Angry birds game and that is fun to play. However, I still believe facebook won't be there forever, 5 years tops I say!

Facebook lives on...

 There is something about life, it lives on. There is something about time, it goes on, and now one might very well add, there is something about facebook, it lives on. Facebook now has 800 million strong users and is looking to come out with an IPO to generate $100 billion, which is truly an estimate of the popularity of this website.

 There was time, when I was making claims that Google plus would beat facebook before the beginning of new year 2012. Well my claims have been proven wrong. Millions of people did register for Google plus, however it is not being used that much compared to facebook.

 Another big point in the above assertions is the fact that, facebook is making constant efforts to improve itself and bring out new features. Facebook now has the facebook timeline,facebook cover photo and the subscription features to name a few. Also the new image viewer does appear descent compared to the old one.

 Today's generation is very busy and online all the time. These two factors have resulted in flourishing of social networking domains like facebook and twitter. People find friends online and stay in touch online, however for me a simple call to a friend from the humble cell phone still means more than online conversation.

 Enough about facebook and Google, India is suffering from a miserable tour down under. Had to endure a 4-0 white wash in the test series. The new Oz skipper Micheal Clarke aka Puppy, surely is enjoying captaincy. He scored a double and a triple century and was in remarkable form. India lost the first T20 game yesterday, however it was a completely new young side and they were showing notable seriousness and commitment. The reason for the loss, was that Australia was just the better of the two side on the day and hopefully India will give some descent performances now.

 There were many attacks on the star studded Indian batting line up and rumors about Dhoni been asked to give up captaincy. However, Dhoni has done a lot of good for Indian cricket, he has won every single possible tournament for the team. There are times, when team may get out of form, one must still have faith in the team and the captain. Don't forget, this is the same team which finished 2010 as number one test team, won the 2011 ODI World Cup and also has won the 2007 inagural T20 world cup, all under the leadership of Dhoni!

25th November 2011, Black Friday

 Thanksgiving is a very important part of American culture. Black Friday is considered as the day after Thanksgiving day. For what reasons, it is considered as Black Friday, I did not find out yet, but for me, it was a day to never forget.

 Have come to Florida for Thanksgiving weekend. Spent most part of Thanksgiving day on beach, playing american football and making sandy mountains with tunnels in them. It was a wonderful day yest. Today, we decided to do all the Black Friday shopping, we have come to Panama City, Florida and the malls here are pretty good. Bought something from almost every store here, good deals for Thanksgiving! No! did not buy any electronics, mainly some clothes.

 Then we decided to go jet skiing. Last time had done that in Patayya, Thailand, its pretty simple, until we realized the might of the water, especially when it is the ocean. We had rented 2 jetskies , 90bucks for 2 hours of jet skiing seems lot of fun and yes it was lotta fun indeed, I even touched 35mps on my jet ske. After around one hour, tragedy struck. I was driving mine with my sister sitting behind and my brother-in-law was riding with my mom behind him.

 They somehow lost the balance and the jet ske toppled in the water, sounds non-threatening, untill you add three factors, first no lifeguards, second they dint know swimming, and finally it was the ocean. I was in my jet-ske and felt like jumping and trying to help my brother-in-law, my mom was saved by other jet skiers. I felt like jumping in the ocean to save my brother-in-law, but my sister said no to me as that would result in imbalance of our jet ske and was very risky.

 Finally a  bunch of folks with a motor boat saved my brother-in-law. It was an experience to remember. I did topple around three times in canoeing a couple of months back, but that was in a stream of river, this was the ocean and today we experienced its might!

From FloRIDA!

Having a mixture of feelings now. Yes I am in Panama Beach City, Florida with family and having a ball of a time. The sad part is I withdrew from my Masters study and will be heading back home soon to start from  scratch. I hope my previous experience would help me, but I want to enter the field of development for a while, from a support and administrative domain.

Leaving for India in December 1^st week, as I reflect this year 2011 of my life, it had a mixture of everything. I quit Infosys job for Masters studies, came to US and enjoyed a lot with family, visiting lots of places and the goal was to stay and study, complete Masters program.

They say there two ways to live life. One is to let it happen and other is make it happen. I tried to follow the latter and did not work out so well for me. The let it happen schema was what I was living at Infosys, it was not bad, just not good enough. I realized that may be, I am not good enough, Masters program from Purdue School of Science proved too demanding and strenuous for me and I had stop it as my health was getting affected.

Right now as I am sitting in DaysInn, beach facing hotel in Florida, I have realized, choosing your destiny is a tough task and should be done carefully.It requires a lot of hardwork and persistent patience. For now I am going back to let it happen. Have No clue, what job I will get, how long will it take to get one either? I am not depressed, may be a bit sad,however, astonishingly I am a bit excited too, what’s next!!!

Diwali 2011,OURS!

Jindagi jine ke do tarike hote hai, aur Duniya mein 3 tarah ke log hote hai. It’s because of dialogues and movies which have such dialogues in them, Aamir Khan is aaMIR kHAN, and that is the reason why one whole country can proudly say…oy teri…every time they burp, rather than saying I am sorry, or peeing in their pants and not burping at all.

Diwali 2010, My to Diwali 2011 OURS, I have come a long way indeed. Long way in my life, long way in character, long way in attribute and long way in mY continuum called time!

I had a dream to come to US, I had a dream to pursue Masters, I have lot more dreams. I quit my wonderful job at Infy to pursue further studies, I wanted to control my life, choose my destination and choose my path, and this far ir ir going pretty well.

What next? People asked me many times? You want to settle here? What will you od after mASters? Well to begin with Masters is not as easy as I thought and I have just started putting on my strides, so the future is declarative and not imperative, it’s all about learning, implying the learning and doing the do!

Also today was a wonderful memorable day. Every weekend in US is and always will be memorable for me. I found family like friends in my sisters friend circle, you find a connection and a sense of relvaration with the. Relvaration is a new word I coined today, one after a long time!

RGIT....the place where I come from!

 Having worked full time for a few years I had almost forgot the importance of my undergrad education and how much it is helping me now. I was just taking some rest and few memories came back to my mind. Memories about my under-grad studies back home. Memories about the wonderful, state of the art building we have, the wonderful location of the college which faces the shore, great bunch of people, yes I remember that when I was in my second year and I had thought of a punch line which said: RGIT: The place where the crowd rocks!

 Currently doing grad studies, I realize the importance of all the classes, all the effort our professors used to put in. Coming for campus connect program on weekends was a big headache for us, but if you see it from the point of view of the professors, they were working on weekends! I actually feel like calling up a couple of professors and talking to them , especially the concepts taught on Systems Programming, Compiler theory, Software Engineering, Data Structures, it is all helping me immensely and I really thank all the wonderful faculty of my undergrad.

 To give u an idea, as part of one of my grad study course, we were suppose to write an SRS for a 3 tier cloud based application, also compatible with mobile devices, and hell I smoked it in 2 hours flat. Object oriented analysis and design and software engineering helped for sure. All the courses I have taken involves a hell lot of mathematics and logic, its application to computer science and we had mathematics in 5 semesters, dint we?

 I mean somehow, now everything makes sense. Like all the concepts you learn at undergrad level are actually implemented at grad level. Not everyone does that back home, as there are not much reputed institutes apart form the IITs, the IIS , BITS and several others, but hell no way I can get into an of those for grad studies...

 So yes...I came to US...and it actually feels like home...grad classes have 80% indian population and frankly speaking you are so filled with assignments, papers and quizzes....you don't actually get time to think tht you are in a whole new world, a new country...and add a 20hr job to that and basically you know what u get..hell if you still want more be a CS rep for IEEE and a member of ACM council...

.I actually believe the strenuous course structure of Mumbai university prepares us to slog, survive and succeed. Remember those days of chapping the assignments in SE and TE, chapping pages and pages...well everything helps in someway or the other, it's all about connecting the dots, and realizing that the dots are getting connected.

 The library is the best hangout place for me, wherever I go...hehe. RGIT, yeah they all know me, Infy DC library...yeah they know me too...bas abhi yehaan bhi pehchaan ban rahi hai...hehe The library in US is like OMG....like my one has 4 floors, graduate carells, skpe and multimedia rooms, best part is access to absolutely any paper from the world, be it IEEE, ACM, anything if it's there out there, we have it here. Also not to mention the big bomb MAC systems...hehe just started using those, ideal for reviewing papers...

 The other day, I was talking to one of my friend who is from SVNIT, very humble guy and I know him since more than a year. I was discussing, how reviewing 2 papers every week, gets to your head and he said, it was a norm at his college and his college students actually started publishing papers at undergrad levels...and I was like what...just awesome! Wondering what all they cook up at the IITs? Well I tried to get an in...just don't happen to study two years, all night along with a regular day for it!

  What all this implies is the power of indian minds and the extend of things we can achieve, I mean I am just an average or below average student and I know tons of people smarter than me, all that is required is a right path or a channel for them to use to get to a specific goal! I mean there is a reason why India is yanking close to 8-10% GDP every year with a population of 1.7 billion. You discuss about India with American grad students, and there is a good chance they will tell you they have many friends from India. However the notion still persists about the poverty and all, but then I tell them do a comparative analysis with US...and then one day somehow we started talking about China....that day I had a new found respect for China...how great China is and how much it is respected in the US! Try to look up Chinese history and culture and you will be in deep awe of amusement and enthrallment!

If I were Google...

 For people who know it, and for people who know me, know the fact what piece of crap facebook is. The question is if Google is so awesome after all, how come it's not yanking facebook left, right and center? Why is it being so naive and not capitalizing on the chances?

 If I were Google, I would first get some really smart marketing people who are creative and know the know of technology too. Like, cmon look at this, facebook just dished out another piece of trashed features, which is so fucking horrible that I don't feel like loging into the website anymore. If I were Google, I would take note of that, and may be I am, and may be I am waiting patiently for facebook to freak out and come out with more of such crap, untill it self destructs! May be, just might be!

 The other thing I love about Google is the amount of things they offer for free, their open source filospfy and their non commercial, problem oriented outlook. But if I were Google...I would have not shut down Google Wave, and if I would have done that, I would work on it and I would come up with a new avataar of it, may be integrate it with Google plus? May be Integrate it with all the other Google products? May be...just might be!

 If I were Google , I would think of getting into the domain of networking and cloud computing more deeply and with  more aggression. Going by the notion of private Internets to take shape in near future, I would be aware of the awesome features I already have set up for the users in it, well then again the question is May be....or Might be?

After all we are talking Google here! \m/

Thank you Rahul Dravid!

Yesterday 16th September, 2011, Rahul Dravid announced his retirement from one day cricket. Another great cricketer retiring who has done wonders for the Indian cricket side, not to mention, all happily under the shadow of Sachin Tendulkar. While writing this, it actually reminds me of my article on Sourav Ganguly , which apparently is the most popular post in this blog, all time!

 Rahul Dravid is however different than Sourav Ganguly in many ways. Technically, with regards to batting, it seems that Dravid would have worked a lot, and practiced with uncanny patience, to reach the epitome of success, however Sourav Ganguly had this immaculate gift of timing. Also the fact that, Sachin Tendulkar has wonderful hand eye co-ordination(read natural talent) coupled with passion, patience and hard work, he is where he is. 

Rahul Dravid has been The Wall of Indian cricket and we all know that well. There is a general assumption that, there is a good chance, he does not hold a good record, can be easily debated just by looking at his stats. Well, for starters he has third highest number of half centuries (82) in ODIs in world cricket, which is superseded only by Sachin Tendulkar(95) and Inzamam-ul-Haq(83). Well and if you thought he was a slow player in ODIs?...well he did score a 22 ball half century against NewZealand, in Hyderabad in 2003, which is the second fastest fifty by an Indian in ODIs.

I still remember two of his best test knocks. One was the knock of 180 against Australia following on at Eden Gardens in 2001. He and Laxman made merry of an Australian side which was probably one of the best Test side in the world and at their peak. Another noteworthy knock would be the 331 run partnership with Tendulkar against NewZealand at Hyderabad in 1999. 

Rahul Dravid has played remarkable well for the country, and with great attitude and humility. 10,820 runs in over 340 ODIs and 12775 runs from 155 matches speaks volumes, not only of his talent and persistence, but also his humility. Also how can one forget the facts that he was the highest run scorer in the 1999 World Cup in England with 461 runs and probably is the only player who has more percentage of runs away then at home, now how valuable is that?

Rahul Dravid. Thank you for all the wonderful games, Thank you for all the victories, Thank you for making our nation proud! Jai Hind!

Why facebook should start counting their days!

 No doubt facebook is an awesome piece of thing. The number of users it has is frustratingly unimaginable. It is unbelievably unconceivable that at the end of the day it is just a website. With regards to evolution of internet, it is technically one step back and it reminds of the days before google search engine when people used to use just one website to do lotta stuff...so dats not good actually!

 Facebook has been buggy and a hell a lot too! Before Google plus was launched, the contents of the wall used to be misplaced, and you can’t really blame your browser for that as the presentation layer and the application layer is not that intelligent, hell it's not at all intelligent. So basically, the facebook servers were not giving proper header information back to us I guess...

 Then came their image viewer...and it was like LMFAO! It was horrible and they took long long time to finally upgrade it to something decent, but still the new sucker has lots of semantic bugs and logical bugs. Try to read any notification or chat while viewing an image in fb viewer...can't do that maan! Compare that with google plus, I just replied to a comment and that too on my friends stream, without even opening google plus in the browser, now that's what I call evolution!

 After the advent of Google plus and all the buzz around it, somehow all the application layer bugs got fixed...well they had too, din't they...lol Then there was the big day, facebook integrating with skype...wow that's awesome. But then again I was attending the webcast of that lunch and the same problem as with the image viewer...can you really multi-task on the same browser tab while doing a video chat???

 Also the new interface of facebook has 3 things to do on the wall instead of 4, namely update status, ask question and add photo. Now try to do this, try to upload a photo. Select a file from your local machine and then stop. Now if you decide that, hey I don't want to upload this pic or any other pic...WHERE THE HELL IS THE CANCEL BUTTON? C'mon facebook guys, such a single thing missed your interface!! :P One of the few workarounds would be clicking on home or facebook, but that sucks if you consider from the point of view of software designing and engineering....and especially for someone of the might of facebook which is worth billions of dollars??? what type of developers do they have??? really!!!

Another fact if you consider Google plus in this regard or even google company as a whole. They never release products out of beta till it's perfect. How many times did u actually encounter a problem with the Google search engine or your gmail? Do you know that Google plus is actually called a project still and they are going systematically one step at a time, while maintaining super sleek interfaces, providing 100% availability and a perfect piece of design from the software engineering perspective!

 Well this is all for now, I have a blog on Google blogspot, but somehow felt it exciting to bajao facebook on facebook…hehe and it is really ugly actually that such simple bugs are so easily visible on a website with 700 million users and worth 50 billion dollars?? You gotta be kidding me!!!                             


~Kartik Vyas~


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