What is the time, Mr. Software Engineer?

What is it about software industry and punctuality? When the software industry was born, was there a deal made with punctuality that both of them can't exist together?

I myself am in this industry and the one of the few things I hate about it is tardiness, not being punctual. Meetings are scheduled at 10 AM and it always starts atleast 10 minutes late. This not only reflects in the professional life, but it also sneaks into personal lives.

Movie starts at 6 PM and you reach the theater at 6.15. You fix a time of 10 AM with other people and you end up coming half an hour late! You don't even bother informing those waiting that you will come late.

Why do people take others' time for granted? All these sloppy people should spend a month in Mumbai. When they miss trains by seconds and lose pay by minutes, they will realize what time means. They will understand the fact that time can be measured in seconds and not only in minutes (or for some people it's in hours).

It's time people respected others and other's time.

A touching gift

For our second wedding anniversary, my husband gave me a wonderful surprise. He bought a cute little barbie for me! Yeah, I know I am 20+, but a toy won't do any harm.

My family was not very well off. I wouldn't call ourselves poor, but we didn't spend money like water. Every penny was accounted for. If I wanted to buy a pencil, I was never denied one, but my parents would ask me an account of what happened with the rest of the money they gave me.

Coming from a family which didn't earn more than 5K a month and which didn't believe in lavish life style, it was natural that I didn't spend my childhood among barbies and stuffed toys. I grew up in a small village where there were no shops dedicated for toys. Well, I don't think there were any good toys in the general shops either.

I had never touched a barbie in my life. None of my cousing, none of my friends, nobody I knew owned a barbie. I would watch the delicate barbie dolls and the cuddly stuffed toys on TV and dream that I too will own one of those one fine day. And that dream of mine has come true. Thanks to my husband and my dear mom.

My mom bought a cute, cuddly bunny for me from Singapore. Mr. Bunny has a cute pink nose and a pink bow around its neck. My husband bought me a dancing barbie, Genevieve with a little barbie called Lacey. Lacey spins and barbie twirls. They even have a pet cat called Twyla.
It shows the drastic change our lives have gone through. There was a time when my Mom would think twice before buying me a Rs.35 frock and now my husband went to a shop, picked a barbie worth Rs.1,500 and didn't even think once if it was really worth it or where that money was coming from.

All thanks to the education that my parents and my husband's parents gave us. Without our education backing us up and without our parents' blessings, we wouldn't be here where we are. I hope we end up giving our kids such a bright future and lovely life.

Hunting business



I am at it again. 18 months back, I did once and I am doing it again. What? House hunting. With time, we change jobs and with jobs, we change houses. Ad mag has a lot to offer. I can query by property type (independent house/ apartment), sale type (rent / sale), area (JP nagar, Benson Town etc.), requirements (2BHK, 3 BHK, with car park) and voila it gives a neat list of items that match my query. It even has a camera icon next to properties which have photographs! Neat, huh?


It's good time-pass to read the descriptions. Some ads have good descriptions like 2BHK, pooja room, 2 fans, 1 geyser, 1 bathroom, 1 car park etc.Some have weird ones: 3 bedrooms & 4 bathrooms (You people bathe more often than you sleep?)Some are terse: 2BHK flat jayanagar. Good location. Call immediately.Some owners go on to include a nifty photograph of their proud properties.


I have short listed some of them, picking the 'Brokers excuse' over the 'Brokers welcome'. Next step is to call each of them and find out if the property is still available and if yes ask questions that are not answered in the ad.


That's scheduled for today. Let's see how it goes.

It's your head, dumbo



With the helmet rule still on in this side of the world, I see helmets everywhere. Helmet on a luna, helmet on a bullett, helmet in a car... no the last one is not true.


There is a floating rumor that this rule might go away. Reason? The rule kicked in, peole bought their share of helmets, helmet shops cleared their stock, in short, mission accomplished. People think that the main reason the helmet rule came into being is to increase helmet sales. Hello!! I think you are forgetting one teeny-weeny fact. The helmet if for your protection. You wear the helmet, you save your head if you ram into a divider on a drunken night.


For all you dodos who make up reasons for the helmet rule and pray to God that the helmet rule goes away, I have just three words for you. "It's your head, you idiot". Yeah, yeah, I know that's not three words. So what?

Innocence




This post was due on Children's Day. Better late than never.

Why do all people like children? Because they are innocent, they are non-judgemental, they are unbiased and above all, they are just lovable. The main difference in an adult and a kid (and which is why kids are kids) is innocence. The why's and what's that trouble adults, their assumptions, their mischievous smile - everything is based on the pure innocence. What if this main ingredient is taken out? Will you continue to like kids? I found that my answer to this is 'No'.

My niece-in-law, I mean, my husband's niece is 5 years old and she had recently visited us. She stayed with us for a fortnight and over these 15 days, my feeling towards went from love-like-ignore-dislike. I wouldn't use the word hate, but it came close to that. She compares herself with me, who is like her mother. She wants everything I want. I wear make-up, she wants it. I wear gold bangles, she wants it. She thinks looking beautiful is the most important thing in life.

Fairness is another obsession, which in fact is a side-effect of the first one. She wants people to tell her that she looks good and she is fair, which in fact, she is not. But, who cares? I would like the same even if she was pitch dark. She looks jealously at the neighboring kid and asks me, "Why am I not as fair as her?" I was flabbergasted. At her age, I didn't know fairness even existed, leave alone wanting it.

Gold. She wants to wear gold and feel important. She wants to decorate herself, admire herself in the mirror, walk the ramp in front of all the family members and won't quit until everybody gives her a nod of approval and a praise or two. She is god damn FIVE years old!

All this goes back to one main cause. Television. That's her biggest obsession. She is in front of the idiot box for as long as she is awake. And what does she watch? You name it and she watches it. Cartoons? Yes. Movies? Yes. Movie songs? Yes. Serials? Yes. Yes, you heard it right, she watches Ekta Kapoor serials. She adores all those saree clad, gold adorned, make-up smeared barbie dolls and that's the inspiration for looking good and looking fair (no, they don't go together. You need not be fair to look good and vice versa).

I tried explaining to her what kids her age should do. Didn't understand. I tried telling her how unimportant is looking good. Didn't understand. I gave up. This should explain the emotional wave of love-like-ignore-dislike, which almost reached hate. No, I don't blame her at all. Her parents, her care takers have made a terrible mistake for which she is paying the price.
This is the age where kids see a photo of Gandhi and say "Munnabhai". I won't be amused if people look at a photo of Bhagat Singh and then face a dilemma of naming that person Ajay Devgan or Bobby Deol.

People, please, don't deprive the kids of their basic right. Innocence.


The decision

All I can say is 'Thank God it's over'. After a lot of grey cells grinding, nail biting, saree end twirling, hair splitting, I finally took a decision. It was a dilemma. It was either my dream or my responsibility. And, many would find it shocking, I chose my responsibility.

I let go of my dream and decided to fulfill my duty. I know if I let it go now, I will never be able to make my dream come true. It's now or never. And still, I decided to stick to the latter. That does say some things about me. That I have finally become a family woman. I care more about my husband and his wishes over mine. I choose him over others, including me.

I just hope to God that we both continue to love each other in the same way. May this love never cease to exist.

Firefox 2.0

Firefox released the latest version. So did IE and so did Opera. I do not use the latter two browsers and I am a great fan of Firefox. The best thing I like about Firefox is the flexibility it provides to the users and the developers. Users can download any extension from the myriad available extensions. There is an extension for every possible thing that you can do with Firefox. Same way, the developers are given enough freedom to hack Firefox and add any feature which they deem as necessary.

With the latest Firefox released, I can't help but regret installing it. The only reason: most of my extensions are broken. Agreed, Firefox is smart enough to catch compatibility issues and inform you what extensions will not work and quietly disable it. It even searches for updates regularly and the moment any extension is upgraded, it informs you. But, why not inform the extension creators and ask them to upgrade the extension to be compatible with the latest version? After all, all it takes is a change in the maxVersion number, isn't it? At least, that's what I did for a few extensions to make them work.

With this complaint, I continue to use Firefox and admire it. Let's continue to fire the fox.

Ruffled because of Shuffle



My beloved Apple iPod breathed its last today. I bought it exactly 14 months ago and as predicted by hundreds of users online, my Shuffle died its last before it completed even a day more than 14 months.

If you google for iPod shuffle I/O error, you get so many pages and all the pages have users ranting about the same problem. My shuffle died, restore doesn't work, what do I do? It's quite obvious from all this that something has gone horribly wrong with Shuffle. How accurately can you goof up a product where it dies exactly 14 months after its birth? Yes, you can expect this kind of accuracy with Apple alone!

Know what tops all this? Apple knows Shuffle is faulty. The moment you step in to an Apple service center and show them your now-dead Shuffle, they will quietly replace it for a shiny, brand new baby on the spot. No questions asked. Even if your warranty is expired.

That says a lot about Apple and how much it values it customers. Why not withdraw the product from the market altogether instead of replacing the faulty ones?

Dream jobs?

A 10-day long vacation. All I did was cook, eat, sleep, watch T.V, play games and read books. The best holiday ever!

Life was so peaceful in those 10 days. My appetite was good, my sinusitis was under control, my stomach never grumbled and my head never ached. I have to go to office on Monday morning and I have all the problems I can think of. My stomach decided to act crazy, my nose imagined itself to be a fire hose, my sinus swelled up and before I knew it, I had a banging headache.

Why can't life be simple? Why do I have to work when I don't want to? Why do I have to do something which I don't like?

If I don't like what I am presently doing, what do I want to do? I want to own a library. Lend books to people and read a few books myself. Run a play home for kids. Play with them, enjoy their non-prejudiced, non-judging company and forget the evil, outside world. Teach. Yes, I have always wanted to teach and I am pretty good at it.

The truth is, I am not doing any of the above things. I am sitting here, in front of a dumb monitor, ranting about my life and hoping that it would be better one day. Hope, that's what keeps us alive, isn't it?