Random office memories - Series,

All of a sudden, I get a thought to write about random office memories, I don't know why, I'm missing my previous workplace where in I spent close to 3+ years, its the longest I have spent in any organization I have worked till date.

I survived this time, because of friends, rather cab mates or is it the passion to trek which rather started during my tenure at this organization and still lingers on. Its during these three years I got to visit, Kashmir, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh (2 times) and Uttarakhand.

I got a lot to write about these trips, but equally important things happened at office too. I wish not to write about work (rather abstractly infact), but about random incidents, which I remember. Apart from the cab series, I can recollect loads of things, hence thought, why not write about them (while listening to Fleetwood Mac of course :) )

Cheers,

Fleetwood Mac 3

Here is one such Fleetwood Mac concert, year being 1982, this one is older than me.

Here's what they were like when performing live at the peak! One plus hour of sheer bliss, listening to these folks!

Cheers,

Fleetwood Mac 2

Sunday would be worthless, if I failed to share two other Fleetwood Mac songs, each one of them a beauty! yeah over 20-30 years old. Thats why I love 80's and retro!

Cheers,

Here is the live performance of the song Everywhere, this song is from the year 1997. Can you imagine, Christine McVie singing the song is 50+ years old in 1997. The song, whilst performing live looks better than the studio version. Take a bow Fleetwod Mac, what a song!

Cheers,

Fleetwood Mac!

This is called a live performance, and not the crappy lip synch-ing ones'.

I would rather prefer to listen and go to this kind of live performances, by paying money, instead of listening to free music oh sorry advertising on the radio!

This concert is 20 years old, the song is 40 years old and the year today is 2017, and the song shall move into the next century as well!

Fleetwood Mac a band that has lots of history!

Cheers,

Here is the 1977 version of the video, you can see the same artists, just 20 years younger!

This is the same song from another live performance in 2013, these people are now 65+ years old in 2013. How many 65 year olds' do you know who perform live to this extent and attact so much crowd, yeah Fleetwood Mac definitely rocks! This is what happens when you do things you love, age just turns to be a number only! The performance might not be the same as 20 years back, but yes, they are still out there, doing what they do best, PERFORM LIVE!

Two good songs

Two good songs which begin with a good piano note, remembered these two hence writing about them.

Well these are almost two decades old!

Cheers,

Finally its sunday!

After working non stop for almost 15 days (on the trot) I get a day off. If you think, I slogged a lot with too much work, well, I would like to say more than work it was the dependencies, and poor infrastructure resulting in me slogging.

Only plus point being, workplace is closer to home. I did not have time for anything, literally, listening to music or reading or cooking or watching television, I was literally walking like a zombie. And the day I broke the build and tried to fix it, I was driving like a zombie around 1 AM in the night back to home :)-

Finally the sprint comes to a closure, and the European colleagues who had gone on leave will come back on Monday. There shall be some sanity restored over the monopoly of the dumb Indian Management :)- (sarcasm can never hide from me).

One thing I realized after the past two weeks, a service based company mentality can never match a product based mentality, come even God may!

Cheers,

Listening to retro Kannada songs

Previously I had written, how much I liked the program on Big 92.7 FM called Straight hits with Ravichandran. I was never following Kannada music actively before. Even now I do not follow Kannada contemporary music.

But this program made me familiar with few of old Kannada songs like from the movie Ranadheera and Premaloka. It brought loads of nostalgia. Growing up as a 3-5 year old kid, I could remember these movies passing by us, without me , making head or tail of anything. 

Its now only I get to appreciate what 80's was all about in terms of not only English music but also Kannada music. Kannada songs were being played even during our day journey to office. But, I would like to emphasize that, my interest in retro Kannada songs would never have taken off without one such colleague's intervention. Infact he too had grown up in the 80's but was a bit older than me.

So, it was he who gave me insights into which movie, who's the singer who composed who wrote lyrics and story line plus actors. This was almost instant, as the song aired. His knowledge about Kannada  movies was superior. Just like Imdb, he was Kmdb, K - kannada.

Just like all good things have to come to an end, with a heavy heart, we had to say goodbye to him as he was laid off. Even before that, our 7 seater AC Innova cab too had to be aborted, due to mounting transport expenses. 

So, its close to an year now to that incident and I too have moved on, From the past three months, I no longer cross silkboard, nor travel by cab, but, whenever I get to listen any of the kannada retro song like from PremaLoka, it triggers immense nostalgia, unforgettable memories and undeniably loads of respect for the man who educated me about 80's movies and music. Who says traffic can be bad when it brings out bond amongst people!

Organizations run out of money, people run out of jobs, all that remains is, the nostalgia, memories, when times were good, and guess what, its always music, food or a good past conversation that binds these memories together.

Over a fine weekend, we ex employees of this organization are planning to meet, lets see! will keep you posted.

Cheers,

PS - I spoke to the same person over the weekend, he's moved on to a new job, travels by Metro (MRT) and yeah, he's happy with his life post this workplace!

PPS - Immense nostalgia because, on one side, reminds me of childhood which just passed by and the other being time spent traveling by cab which too passed by, both of which reminding me of good things coming to an end.

Backing vocals - Sheryl Crow

As a kid, I was pretty naive and was totally unaware of backing vocals. But as I grew up, I could see backing vocal artists in many concerts and realized they do play a very important role.

But this one particular song, I wish to share, where I feel, the lady giving backing vocals, overshadows the main singer. Though only a few lines are sung by the lady singing backing vocals, it so happens to me that, while I listen to the song, I feel, all through the song, I keep on waiting to hear the lady providing backing vocals.

This is what happens when someone of Sheryl Crow's persona comes up as a backing vocal artist. The song just turns out to be a 1000 times more lovable. Combined with the drums, its a must on my playlist with good bass and an woofer, its so much enjoyable, what more I can say. And this song just turned 15 this year, since it debuted. Back then great music was being made and not marketed aggresively. (Now vice versa I guess). Great job Mr Adam Duritz!

Btw, I heard this song first time in 2002, on the radio, Late show 10pm. teenage memories!

Cheers,

PS - You can disagree with me, but give a try emphasizing on the backing vocals instead of lead singer!

When west meets east and says goodbye!

I do not know, if I could classify this as nostalgia, never mind. Secondly, west meets east has got to do with West of India and East of India. India is a vast vast country and the distance between east and west is huge.

So one such friendship happened between two guys one from the east and one from the west. Both of them joined our organization on the same day and were working for the same vertical, but different technology.

Apparently one of them was a consultant and not on a permanent payroll. It so happened, this person who happened to be on a contract role, was working on a project which just failed to take off. So he was left with no work and was straight in line to get laid off. Instead he chose to accept a job at his hometown and move back.

Today, he had come back to Bangalore from the west in order to collect his remaining things and wind up from here. And what happened to the guy from the east, well, he still works in my team.

Around 7pm in the evening, the guy from the west called the guy from the east asking him to meet outside office campus, probably for one last time, before life drifts each other miles apart and away.

No sooner the guy from the east was leaving office, it somehow struck me and I told him look west meets the east.

If you are wondering, west meaning which place, well its Pune and east.. East is Chennai and the place they meet is in the middle, Bangalore!

Cheers,

After a long time!

Today being a Sunday, I had been to office too. I had work and was busy at office. But today was different, I had been to office in my car. After joining work at Global Village tech park, this was the first time I had been by car.

You might be wondering what's so strange in me going to Global Village in my car. Well, the last time I had been to Global village in my car was in the year 2010, month being May/June. It was at 8pm in the night and I was extremely happy that day, because, I had been offered a job at Mindtree. It was the first time I had been offered by a company at Global village. I was travelling to ITPL at that time and I was very happy to get relieved from ITPL duty.

So I had been to Global Village by car at around 8 30 pm in order to submit my photos and filled up form for background verification and other things. The sad part is I never got an opportunity to join Mindtree as I joined elsewhere.

Life has come a long way since I rejected Mindtree offer, infact, I'm so happy that I rejected that offer, I got to see a lot, do a lot and in turn learn a lot. Sometimes, sitting in comfort zone never helps.

Joining Mindtree was more of comfort zone for me if not anything else, as it was closer to home. Today going by car brought back all those memories. So indeed nostalgia!

Cheers,,

You might be wondering, joining a job at Global village is again falling into comfort zone, well, it is true and I agree, after close to 4 years of hard hard software work with no breaks I needed this one badly. Fingers crossed how long it continues!

Busy at work!

I have been busy since the last week and its continued into the weekend. Ever since I joined this new workplace, things were looking normal. But with local software development team half retired, few people in Europe on long leaves and other development teams in Europe disbanded, I had to deliver on something critical epic/story for the release.

So have been chugging along. Planning to work tomorrow as well. Hoping to be in good shape for next week's code freeze! Wish me luck. Post that, its going to be a full on blogging run!

Sometimes, I feel, I should stop doing technical work and become a manager / get into management. But what fun in being non technical in software industry and stakeholder plus software market being European or American. Management sitting here would be entirely people management, because everything from hike percentage is decided by European management (for that matter)!

Plus the fun directly working with European and American teams, stakeholders being technical (instead of being one with local management) is nothing short of extra-ordinary. There is no place for diplomacy and its either deliver or perish, so I would rather chose risk over diplomacy!

Cheers,

PS - By the way, did I annoy someone? 

Upcoming post

I had plans to post multiple things over this weekend, but since I'm working over the weekend plus I'm not allowed to post from office, I am just contented with writing about the post which was supposed to come over here. (from home of course)

Recently, I have been seeing the program India's Mega Kitchens on Discovery. It airs at night 11PM I guess. I saw about Golden Temple, Sri Harmandir Sahib Langhar. Last year I had been there. I have yet to write about it.

I just got a thought of writing about my experiences of eating at the community kitchens. Golden Temple is the only one such Community Kitchen outside of Karnataka where I have had a chance to eat prasad.

But I have been blessed to have had lunch at many community Kitchen's all over Karnataka. So thought of writing about them as few posts. Will serve my goal of reaching 100 for this year too!

I have been reading a book on Making of the classic movie "Sholay" so thought of writing a post on the book more like a review of mine.

Cheers,

Remembering Singapore!

If I could read about history of India about all the aspects India has to offer, it would take more than an entire life, because every corner of India has something to offer in terms of culture, food, lifestyle, tradition.

Same way about Singapore too, it has so much of history. I never read any book on Singapore history but, this one particular site is the first I came across which has so much to tell about history of Singapore, that I felt, its very much needed to mention it over here on my blog, just in case, someone else connects with this blog too!

https://remembersingapore.org/

After staying and working in Singapore for over an year, I so much connected with this site that, I'm in awe with the history of the country, what a nice place and what quality solo time I spent!

Cheers,

PS - regarding the site, hats off to the person who has chosen to put this together, may he achieve more success and here's wishing him great health too.

Shuttle driver #17 - A driver who moved a dump truck!

This tale is pretty much a very old one. I have traveled in office shuttle many a time after I started working. So one such tale is this probably from early 2008, may be Jan or Feb. I used to travel to Sarjapur using office shuttle.

This vehicle was a Swaraj Mazda a 22 seater probably a bigger one. Once what happened was while passing through ISRO layout, there was another vehicle blocking the road and hence we had no option but to come to a halt. Our driver did honk two times, but the other driver was nowhere to be seen.

It was a truck which was blocking the way and the owner of the truck was working hands on in the neighboring empty plot of land. So can you take a guess what was the vehicle and what was the driver doing and how we finally got to move?

The truck blocking our way was a dump truck used to collect trash and the driver was hands on digging into pile of trash adjacent to an empty plot. He signaled our driver to wait for few minutes before he would move his vehicle. Since it was early morning he was expecting our driver to wait. But our driver instead chose to move the dump truck himself. He argued that he had the licence to drive a truck and had driven a truck before.

I agree to this logic of having licence and thinking about moving a truck. But how many of us would do it, that is move a garbage dump truck, given the fact that we have a valid licence. He moved the truck few meters and cleared the road and came back looking like a man who had achieved something! (no hint of sarcasm please).

This is one such cab tale from a while ago!

And by the way, was I judgmental? Never mind!

Cheers,

Phil Lynott - Old town

I first had heard about this song, being performed live by The Corrs at MTV unplugged. But little did I know that the song was sung originally by someone else. I wasn't sure for almost 6 years, when I discovered who's the original artist. 

It is Phil Lynott. A talented man from the same country as The Corrs - Ireland. It took me a while to appreciate the song but once I did, boy, I just fell in love with it. 

I cannot believe this is an 80's retro song. The instruments used in the song, like the piano, keyboard, drums, bugle/trumpet, guitar are all done to precision not an inch of overdoing things and its the simplicity which keeps the song going.

Well the youtube version may not be acoustic enough, need to check out the song in a different player on a local copy to appreciate the instruments.

In the age where music instruments are played digitally, here you get what is like a naturally aspirated music instrument sounded like back in the 80's. The piano sounds fresh, the trumpet overflows with soothing effect and can you just believe this was 30 years back? 

No wonder I proudly proclaim - " I LOVE 80's".

The sad part is Phil Lynott happens to be one more of those musicians from the British Isles (Ireland to be precise) who left us early, 36 to be precise, apart from Steve Clark, Freddie Mercury, I can't believe such talent of making music comes at such young age. 

All I can do is sit back and think wow what a song, what a life!

Cheers to Phil,

PS - Here goes the song performed by The Corrs - sounds rather boring after listening to the original one, that too with so many musicians around, can't create the same charm as Phil. I better stop listening to the cover version else, I will lose interest in even the original tracks by The Corrs.

Song blog

So I get up early this morning and do what, well file my IT returns and then got some more time, I revive my old blog which was unused for almost 7 years and then use it up as my song blog.

There you go, dual purpose served by waking up an hour early.

The link for my song blog is -

http://sandeepskulkarni2.blogspot.in/

I'm just adding it here, to keep myself reminded about the URL if I ever forget!

Cheers,

What an irony

This sure is my favorite irony in recent times. This is a real life incident. The above statement in the picture is really simple and makes loads of meaning. I had never embraced so much of solitude at workplace until the time when two of my team mates left and I was left with no one to talk to or interact during office hours.

Though my team at work place was replenished with 3 new people, I had fully seen what solitude can do and chose silence over unnecessary yapping at workplace. Loads of things have happened since then. Recently I shared this picture with another person and told that person, what silence, solitude and being alone and thinking can do, how much it helps.

And irony is that person got so much impressed with this idea of solitude and silence that, the person stopped speaking to me also.

I somehow made an effort to understand why that person is not responding to which the reply was precise - "You showed (told) me what silence can do, now I don't want to talk to anyone, including you too and rather remain silent.!"

Such is life. In a way, I'm happy, in a world where noisy people are dominant everywhere, here's one who whole heartedly embraced solitude or rather silence.

Cheers,

And regarding what solitude/silence plays in my life, well, I'll leave it to your brains to guess it out!

PS - I have used silence and solitude together or interchangeably. In reality these are two words, but go hand in hand in a super awesome way, that I felt like using them together!

Nostalgia - one more!

I always wanted to have a song blog. A blog which lists all of my favorite songs over the years. I never started that thing, but I wish to do it soon. I would love to have one such blog, I'm being honest. So, if I ever started a blog, I was wondering, which song would make up as the first entry or the first blog post. 

Yeah, you are right, this one, the above one. The song is by John Mayer from his debut album Room For Squares, name of the song is "no such thing". This song brings back tonnes of memories, what more apt than this song to chose as an opener. Hence thought of writing this on blog too.

Regarding what memories it brings well here it goes!

- I was in college while this song came out, (College memories)

- There were not much radio stations in Bangalore and the one I used to enjoy was radio city 91.1 FM and especially the show at night 10PM.

- This song used to play regularly at the night 10PM show and many a time, I had left the radio on and slept off, with the radio playing all through the night! it was indeed sweet but I used to get loads of scoldings for this habit of mine.

- This one's right or wrong not sure, the year was 2002-2003 when this debut album of John Mayer called Room For Squares went head to head with the debut album of Norah Jones, "Come Away with me" and alas Norah Jones won grammy. I always had secretly wished it would have been John Mayer for this particular fantabulous album and superior piece of song writing.

- How I knew about the album and stuff back then, well, I was following contemporary music back then. Back then great music was being made and played on radio too. 

 Unlike now where only advertisment plays and each and every song is over marketed, instead of its actual merit doing the trick, its force fed to people by playing 100000 times on the radio even though the song sounds like a jerk, you can hear the jockey telling it being an awesome song(paid media/marketing, such is the era). 

So I stopped following contemporary music since few years and have dived into retro only and I'm happy. One such song is this, whose video I have attached, great  lyrics, and in the song he talks about reunion and yeah, its been a while I have graduated from college, this song reminds me that too. Loved what the song speaks about, there is no such thing as real world, after working for these years, yeah, I just feel the same, its all what we perceive and just a lie which we gotta get above!

Cheers,

Half through the year 2017

A friend of mine asked me, its been half a year and the number of posts is not even touched 25, and yet again asked me, if I would make it to 100 by the end of the year or not.

I'm not sure of reaching 100 or not, because, I get myself occupied with loads of things these days and with minimal travelling and interaction with people, I get nothing to write. Everyone seems to be busy with their own lives. And after years of writing posts over here, I just have slowed down, being more self conscious than ever.

I remember, my last year trip to Himachal and Punjab is still pending to be written. So that would count for a good 10 posts atleast. I wish to write about couple of other treks which I did in western ghats. But yeah apart from that, all that I get to write is about the crap which runs in my mind!

But yeah, will attempt a 100 this year too,

Cheers,

Jayanagar Nostalgia

Well, the day I joined my new organization, I had to undergo a pre-employment medical checkup. So, since the office I was joining was located at South East End, I was told to report to a hospital close by which was Jayanagar 3rd block.

I headed out and got to know, my check up would be done in two parts, first part where a blood and urine sample would needed to be given plus a chest XRay and a second part including doctor consultation.

There was a good 3.5 hours gap in between and I chose not to come back home. Instead I chose to have a breakfast somewhere in Jayanagar then chose to sit in Madhavan park before being told to leave because the park closes somewhere around 10 30 am and then walked all the way to cool joint 3rd block in search of someone selling books on the street. Couldn't find any and had to walk all the way to Sapna book stall just to see that, RK Narayan's autobiography being unavailable.

Didn't chose any Ruskin Bond books as they seemed to be pricey and the kindle one appears to be cheaper. Then managed to pass some more time and finally had my doctor consultation and then left.

So why am I writing this post in the first place. Well, I have been through Jayanagar area many a times, during the last few years, days or months or whatever, each time, it was business purpose, buying something, meeting someone, some function, getting some stuffs, never it had been with a no mission intention. I used to travel through Jayanagar while coming back from office almost many such days.

This time, with 3 hours to spare, I just did not have any such above mentioned business motive and wandered aimlessly around Jayanagar. It had been almost a decade, I had been to Jayanagar just like that for casually spending time.

Gone are the days of less traffic less people and less noise. Every inch of space is used up and the moment you enter Jayanagar vicinity all you want to do is leave the crowded place behind, atleast myself.

Finally the day came to a close, I joined my new organization and its been a month, I recollect and write this,

Cheers,