Day off, Delicious food, and something new to learn

General

There was a free seminar on Friday by IBM on ‘Web services in an on demand era’, conducted at Le Meridian. My sister registered us for the seminar. It started at 9.30 and finished rather late at 18.00. There were two speakers – an Indian trying to imitate American accent, there by speaking as if he had a bug-bite in his tongue and another American. The earlier talked about the concepts of web services and the later introduced IBM products for the same. This is the first time I am attending a free seminar and I should say it was conducted in very much a professional way. Food was good, receptionists were looking good, content was satisfactory and to top it all we were given 4 CDs having trial versions of IBM products.

Thanks to my sister, now I know food and girls in Le Meridian are good. Ok, to be honest I did learn something new about an emerging technology.

Consultant – not just there, but even here

Nothing official about it

In a typical offshore setting, when an employee returns from onsite (s)he will be inducted into either an existing team (if the project is ongoing) or a new team. But I am an atypical guy. Not knowing what to do with a senior resource like me, my firm has placed me into an ongoing vantive project. The team has been doing production support and enhancements for the past year. However none of them received any vantive training, they used the manuals to self-tutor them. They have enough knowledge to get through. Depending on the angle of view, I could be proud of a broad role or panic at uncertainty. I could do anything to empower the team – vantive training, process improvement, motivating the team and any other thing that will keep the project offshore and probably get more modules. But in all this, I am not visible to the client. So I will not get credit for the outcomes. (It already happened that I troubleshooted some production troubles and the client appreciated the existing team for the fixes. As I am not in this team officially, even within my firm I am not noticed) This could be an issue at the time of appraisal which is due in few months. Hopefully within that time, the manager of the existing team will provide proper visibility for me. As for now, I have a challenge to face.

Client Visit

Nothing official about it

Yesterday, a particular group from the client termed as ‘Offshore Augmentation Group’ visited our office. As this project is run for a major health-care giant in the US, they are pretty sensitive about security, privacy of data and so on. Apparently the client has outsourced to four major offshore vendors in the city. So this group, which is responsible for increasing the offshore projects, visited all the vendors and audited their performance.

Over the years, my firm has put in place lot of process. But still there was a holy aura in the whole unit. Everybody came in before 8.30, dressed pretty well (now boys dont have to wear Tie as like 4 years before), cleaned up their desks and so on. As I am still unbillable, I was asked to leave the unit, which was hurting but not that much; after all library is a good companion.

There are rumours that the offshore strength will increase soon. Hopefully this will bring some cheers for me too.

Qwiky for a fun evening

Life is like that

My sister asked me, if I have any plans for the evening and if not would I mind going to one of the famous hang-out places in Chennai. She pronounced the name of the place as, ‘Quickie’. Well, having been in Belgium for so long I could not think saintly. I was shocked and she could understand from my facial expressions that something is wrong. Next time, instead of pronouncing the name, she spelt it – Qwiky. It does sound similar.

I could not beat the curiosity. We proceeded to Qwiky. It is one of those cofee-only-hang-out places that are fastly coming up in Chennai. You get all kinds and flavors of cofee – Latte, Cappacino, whatever. I had latte, my sister and BIL had some kind of cold coffee. We watched Australia-India cricket match on a big screen TV in the cafe.
It was rather a quick outing, but Qwiky is indeed an experience! (I do surely mean Qwiky).

For those saints who don’t know the meaning, check
Merriam online dictionary

Deepavali, Festival of lights

Life is like that

Today is Deepavali (or Diwali as spelled in some parts of the country). It is a Hindu festival. The legend has it that Rama, the Hindu God, killed Nakasuran, an evil king, in this day. Hindus light small pot based oil-lamps and lit their house in this day. In a Hindu dominanet area, when we were kids we lived in one, tonight all the houses will be lit and it will be a wonderful sight. More than that, what kids enjoy is the possibility to fire up crackers. From less decibel crackers to those that blast your ears will be fired today. Not just kids, even my brother-in-law is very passionate about crackers.

The first Deepavali after marriage is very special for couples (it goes without saying that it is for Hindu copules). I dont have experience with this, as I am neither Hindu nor had this day. But I do know it is special for them.

I just came to my parents house. There are special TV programs – comedy clips, Discussions on current social and political issues, movies and so on. So I spend time in watching them. As we, my parents and I, meet after long intervals, we catch up on various issues – house development to relatives.

Monsoon sets in

General

After years of ‘negative’ rainfall, Tamil Nadu started to enjoy the North East Monsoon today. The whole night it was pouring. Unlike in Belgium, where rain is part of the life style, here there is a particular rainy season. For the past few years, it has not been a pleasant news for the farmers. Now that the saint has come to the state, it is blessed. It might be like this for weeks. Though it is highly inconvenient for us, it is very good for the farmers. Hopefully we will have a joyful pongal (harvest festival).

To beat the banality, I started writing about the Belgian trip. Already I got some compliments. This is only a draft version and I will write whenever time permits. Only after completion, I will do a page (re-)design. You can read the first write-up already.

Laugh at misfortune

Nothing official about it

On Friday I got a call from the HR saying that there is a two weeks requirement for BO (Business objects, a reporting tool) and whether I will be willing to work on BO. As BO is also a ‘hot’ tool and it was for a short duration, I agreed. The HR manager sent a mail to the project leader of the current project about the anticipated re-allocation and requested him to relieve me from the project. What is there to be relieved off?

Monday went by, and Tuesday went by. No news from HR. As I was relieved from the project until the end of the month, I was back to the library. I got an appointment on Thursday. It was in Tidel Park (a Tamilnadu govt initiative towards IT) which is on the other side of the city. The interviewer came in, had a little discussion about my previous experiences. After listening, he was confused and threw me a question, “From VB and Vantive, why do you want to come to Linux?”. I explained what HR informed me. He went to his manager and came back to say that there has been something wrong going. Ya, of late, everything has been going wrong. I tried to contact the HR manager and he said that he was in a meeting and he will call me back, which he never did.

What pisses me off is, not that these things happen, but how it is handled and whether any remedial steps are taken to prevent this in the future. In this two months, it has happened twice and there was neither apology nor a change in operations. I wonder often, whether time has come to quit. However my interactions with the top management has been cordial and they are empathetic and I do have good faith in them. It is the next layer of managers that screw up (I consider them bunch of morons). It is highly possible that with the express growth of the company, the values and goals did not pass through the layers of management.

With what happened and continue to happen, I lost the ability to get angry, rather I am laughing at my misfortune.

One year on and the love is still strong

Life is like that

A year ago, on October 10th, my sister got married to the guy whom she loved for years. It was a different sort of marriage, for it was not an arranged marriage as it happens here, rather how a marriage ought to happen – a public declaration of hearts-in-love. My sister revealed about her venture half a year before the marriage and sought my support. Just then we, as a family, were going through a tough period. I had no second thought about supporting her, but one thought was predominant in my mind – this marriage has to happen with the blessings of my parents. It is no easy task to swim against the current, especially in a society like ours. It took us time, but as we were convinced and persistent, not only they agreed but they came and blessed the marriage too. A year is gone and in this time my mother would have said a thousand times that they couldn’t have found a better person than my brother-in-law, which is true. I am very proud and happy that I stood by my sister.

My sister and brother-in-law (BIL) took a day off on Friday. They went for a movie, shopped around and bought some sweets. My BIL’s younger brother bought a cake. As usual, I am damn poor in these kind of occasions and I forgot to buy them a present. But I took them to (Park) Sheraton on Saturday and we had a good food. They presented a cake as a complimentary and sang a ‘Congratulation’ song for them. All in all, the anniversary went simple and joyful.

Hey Library, Goodbye

Nothing official about it

After two months of unfailing support by the library, I have been allotted a vantive project. It is based on helpdesk module for a US healthcare giant.

The team is just 3 memebers – a team lead, a developer and a production support member. Currently I am non-billable. Depending on how things turn out, other responsibilities will be given in the future. Not a promising future, but for now, I have something to work on.

And it goes on…

General, Programming

Tommorow is a state holiday in India (Gandhi’s birthday). We (my sister, her husband and I) took a day off on Friday and we are leaving to parent’s house today. This is major difference in lifestyle between a Belgian and an ordinary Indian. For a long weekend, a Belgian would pack bags and go someplace, on the contrary an Indian would just stay home watching TV or in cases like us where we stay far away from parents, we will just go to parent’s house. One might wonder (especially those Belgians), wouldn’t it boring after sometime; the answer is, if not that what else? The infrastructure and other facilities are not conducive. Also the economic mind set of people is different. The western mindset (the Americans on the extreme of the spectrum) is that when money is spent, there is enough money in the market which aids the economy, whereas in this part of the globe it is, money is put in savings (banks especially) which in turn invested to aid the economy. Anyway the matter is, we will be home for next few days eating, resting, watching TV and if I could convince enough then a trip.

Time to time, I recieve appreciation for FOW. This helps me facing my days in these tough days. Just a simple thought that I have helped someone even if in a small way gives a pretty good feeling. A professor in a US university is using it for his classes, a Lacrosse organizer creates his camp pictures, a consumer organization in Netherlands is using it for their intranet and so on. Whenever I read such a mail, it is a great good feeling. The lacrosse organizer even donated for FOW. When I get a PC, I would incorporate more features into FOW; I already got few requests from users.