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While an office colleague of mine spends multiple shots on the same scenery to capture it in different shades and then putting them all together in a single snap spending hours to get the best photo. It is most definitely one of the best picture and that is why I've put it up as my desktop wallpaper. And it has got quite a few inquisitive by passers to stop by and ask where it was taken and when i had been there, only to get to hear that it was something i got from a friend!
While this most definitely has the chance of making it big to a calender or an ad campaign with the amazing technicality with which it was developed. I've learnt one small 1 minute trick to make pictures magical and ever lasting. Guess what...put yourself in it and i bet it will no way stand in comparison with the other ones.
I'm actually caught in office sitting next to 4 neighbours and all of them have their own pictures at different places being put up as their wallpapers.
So while you next pass by a mirror setting your hair back in place...do remember you are doing one of the most energizing, encouraging, exiting activity that you could do to your self.......Admire Yourself !
- Mood:
amused
Good News is that i have been able to continue my routine of hitting the gym regularly without any hiccups(except for today that is ).
Saw "Saw" which has raced to my top 10 list of favorite movies overnight.
Caught the best Tamil remake of an English movie namely .."Kurvi" the english one which you would recognize as "The mask of Zorro".
Received the highly anticipated regret letter from IIMB about me failing to make it to their PGSEM course.
Downgraded the status of a fantastic working peer group into an engineering college friends group.
Failed miserably to execute a tour plan due to so many parameters.
I guess i could have written 7 different blogs talking in detail about each event, but that may never had happened.
- Location:Bengalooru
- Mood:
pensive
Woof the opening ceremony was one hell of a curtain raiser for the inaugural IPL tournament with singers giving performances, slit draping cloth dancers, fireworks and gymnastics, all perfect but for the puny performance of the local boys.
The dancing, the cheering, the music, if you weren't one of those who witnessed the live event you definitely missed one of the biggest shows this year so far. And the best part off all this was that irrespective of who won in the end it really dint hurt that much at all.
Weather it is going to be as sensational , exiting as the just passed Indians tour of Australia or not, a lot of big bucks are being made politicians, oil barons, Bollywood actors, cricketers to the ball boys at the stadium.
Signs of a prospering nation finding newer means of making and spending money!
- Location:Bengalooru
- Mood:
energetic - Music:Rihana-under my umberella
So much enthralled by my dedication, I do spend sometime sitting and stumbling on "Body Building" and "Self Improvement" that i hit on an article that said that your body excretes happy hormones while one is exercising. No wonder i was so high in the morning and generally at a higher enthu level in office through the day.
While i brought this info up to a colleague he rubbished it saying that he is big time into meditation and that he gets high much more than i could ever hope to get out of exercising. Well after that he did bring a valid point that it was one activity that i liked doing and that probably was the reason why i probably felt happy.
One discussion let to another and ultimately to my old philosophy on is it really meaningful to not have any expectations and be thankful of whatever you get Vs setting big goals and walking towards it.
Weather you achieve it or not I feel that it is always good to set a goal and the amount of satisfaction derived from it would unquestionably be unmatchable.
May be on our bosses, and one of them came up with a nice idea of placing a blank sheet of paper in an envelope with the cover reading "Resignation Letter".
Wah a nice idea to pull your Manager's legs especially when he is concerned about keeping the team intact and pulling through this tough financial year.
So you walk to him, hand him over the letter and he opens it to find a blank sheet. He gets his head up and says "Karthik, looks like you've forgotten filling it up. Just sign at the bottom and i'll follow up the rest !"
- Location:Home
- Mood: energetic
- Music:Living Darfur- Mattafix
If there were a debate as to should one eat to live or live to eat, I would have without any hesitation spoken that there is no shame in "living to eat". The amount of satisfaction a meal that makes your stomach full is undoubtedly unmatchable. Indians have been migrating away for centuries together either by choice or by force, and i have heard that over a period of time these people forget their roots, the language they used to speak and mostly even the religion they practice. Names however are the ones that give away that they in fact are somehow descendants of India, what is more fascinating is the food style remain the longest with them.
The next biggest attribute would be social acceptance and recognition. And unfortunately the fact that good looks which is such an important aspect works against the law of eating well. Here I am fighting one of the biggest battles of good looks vs a full stomach.
- Location:Bengalure
- Mood: energetic
- Music:You're Beautiful, James Blunt
- Mood:
thirsty
Worker: ( What did you expect after our pay appraisals, gift you with the best manager mug and put in more time on weekends ?)
Manager: Any ideas on what we could do ...
Worker:( thinking....free lunches, fun outings, movies, bowling)
Manager: And guys we are over budget this quarter
Worker:( i thought there was some threads attached, dint realize it was virtual )
Manager: I have an idea...
Worker: ( i knew something was coming )
Manager: How about we make a ppt of fun stuff we could do and circulate it ?
- Mood:
artistic
Office--Time and again this seems to be the one thing that is stopping me from taking this forward. Last year when i thought i had it really going, my US trip became the stumbling block. When i went there things were a little tight between me managing work, cooking, laundry and the weekend tourism. Time for other stuff was something i had to do some another time.
When i came back as usual there were different circumstances that with-held me. The change in my office location. The office shifting may not sound like a big deal but then, i have to take the company transport and spend close to two hours commuting. The limited time and the added responsibilities has become quite a challenge to actually have a good work/life balance. Personal time was something i had only on the weekends and this is something i need to my whole lifetime.
Alas after being done with all the excuses that i could muster to reason my lack of determination to take it forward, this V-day did provide that bit of extra energy and enthu to actually go up and sign up for six months of gyming. Getting up at eight' o clock was such a good thing last year around but newer circumstances require different and more difficult actions. No pain no Gain... and i will make sure i make it through this 6 months.
- Mood: accomplished
(Rajesh, Deno and Siva enjoying their food at Shogun)
With a lot of discussions of Barbecue Nation, The Village, H2O, Indy Joes we had a consensus and ended up at Shogun on Marthahalli road just before the innovative multiplex. The south Indian non-veg restaurant Malgudi was quite a decent place we had visited earlier and this was being run by the same management.
It was quite an ok place, just that we had the whole place for ourselves. It's place you can probably put off till you are done with all the better restaurants in the area, not that it was bad, just plain ordinary.
- Mood:
apathetic
- Mood: refreshed
Laze around get up late knowing for sure that there aint no bus that you gonna miss( I know you are probably one such person). But then that's not the way i like spending my weekend, this is my time to do stuff other than sit in front of my PC browsing code, sending mails and attending meetings. Stuff like hitting the gym(ya i know its like once in a bluemoon activity) or getting the half priced movie tickets for the morning show at Rex or join my cousin for a morning Jog around Ulsoor Lake is more like stuff i'd enjoy doing.
This week did something different, coaxed a bunch of my colleague to actually buy into my thoughts of turning up at the fitness center at seven! Thats right seven and actually managed to have a quorum of 4 guys to play badminton and had quite a nice time, tiring but in an enjoyable way.
Although i was not that good at it, i wouldn't miss any opportunity to play it with anyone. So the next time you plan to play, don't forget letting me know about it.
- Mood: energetic
The song is atleast a couple of months old, but i managed to get a hold of it !
- Location:Office
- Mood: enterprising
Time for another re-org and try to re-access if the disgruntled engineers are fed-up enough to move out or not.
May sound a little too pessimistic but there is'nt much more that either you are the manager gets out of such a meeting.
Well that pretty much resonates with the majority of the people who work around, but all it takes is a little bit of positive thinking to have a different outlook on this whole episode.
For once I had this cool idea to connect with my peers to see how much they empathized my thoughts on how things are going on and how we could collectively voice our concerns to him.
We came up with plenty of things to crib about, for some reason that comes so naturally to most people who work under a manager. The manager but obviously gave diplomatic answer to these mind bogling questions of ours as our own oppurtunities to deliver. The absolute silence as part of the rest of the group gave a feeling as if there was complete acceptance to his reasoning.
Well then if you are looking at what an optimistic outlook changed?...It quite simply showed me the gaps i had in my armor that would make me a him !
- Mood: blah
For a guy who finds it difficult to make it two minutes before the start of the 7.30 morning bus to office, made it five minutes earlier than the 7'O clock bus 6km from my place on a wednesday morning after hitting the bed the last night at 1am!
For someone who lives a life for fun, it was but obvious that anythings possible if only i put my mind to it.
The fact that the bus actually started an hour late waiting for all the other people is irrelevant anyway.
Not the hike most of us at the office expected but that was not going to be a mood dampner at Ramnagaram.
For all those hindi movie buffs(not me) this is the hilly terrain the super dooper movie Sholay was shot. A calm, green and mountainous terrain that was a wonderful holiday to the routine smoke and honking that i endure every day.
One little mystery was how half the office actually signed up for such an adventurous venture, being s/w engineers I was quite certain that nothing more than hogging in fancy restaraunts and watching movies at expensive multiplexes could have got people away from an opurtunity to miss office and recline on the couch.
If you are the kind of adventurous guy/gal who would love to try new and different things this is one place you must try out. Acrophobia or Claustrophobia you could check out your real mettle.
These guys got us through a couple of techniques of bouldering, rappelling and the worst one was the climbing up a crack in the mountain with the crack having two equal parallel sides where you climb up using a complex technique using your feet, knee, back , palms and shoulders. The physical exertion on the activity was really energising.
It is one of those weekend getaways i'd suggest you if you were'nt a software engg ...just kidding...just enjoy maddi.
Oh that was not the end of the day it was interleaved with a wonderful freshly cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner. There was a wonderful 300 step mountain to climb to view the sunset point followed by a walk through the starlit forest to head back to the basecamp for a musical night with campfire and dancing.
It is most definitely the best one day outing i've had.
- Location:Ramnagaram
- Music:Your Beautiful-James Blunt
- Mood:
cold
In my few small years in a single software company, i have seen that it really does not matter what percentage of a hike you get from your manager. Most people no matter what kind of a rating you have had tend to push their manager a little more. Sometimes they budge sometimes they don't. Manager's push the bar on the expectations on the engineers, the engineers push the bar on what they can be priced at. But that is the way its played, a game!
Your manager giving you an outstanding appreciation for your efforts for last year.
You hear of every major software company in India planning to hire in excess of thirty thousand for probably the third consecutive year.
Finance Minister of the country forecasts outstanding growth of close to 9% in GDP and no impact of the US recession.
Major Business Review papers and magazines publishing an average hike of 14% for the industry.
The mother company of which your division is part of boasts of 2 digit growth and profit.
And you end up with half the industry average for the hike for the year and you are not even close to the high end management jobs where even small percentages count for big money.
What kind of direction does one interpret from his annual compensation appraisal?
- Mood: apathetic
- Location:Home
- Mood: amused
- Music:You're Beautiful, James Blunt
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