A day without gym - Sunday

I get to write again. These days, I have nothing to write or rather, I do not find time. I have topics in my mind, but they just fade away, reason being, work, exercise takes a back seat. I haven't played my PS 4 in a while. I was supposed to complete GTA 5, but I am stuck in the game and with so much work, it has taken a back seat.

Moreover when I sit to write something, I think of social network sites, browse for songs, check mails, check others' blog etc etc and I fail to write, reason being distraction.

Now I turned off the music, turned off my official laptop, cannot concentrate on office work for the day, switched off social media sites, and here I am only to write something.

Tomorrow being rest day, I could wake up with no qualms about exercising. The thing is I have gained weight in the last 3 months, though people say it doesn't look much, I got a mouthful of words from my gym trainer as its anti to what I used to do.

I am supposed to control what I eat and therefore yet again, I am back to where it all began. Work at office too happens to be dull, with more people being released from account/project, what can you do? If there is no work obviously people are going to be let go. There is no such thing as free lunch.

But I'm happy no exercise tomorrow, plain rest! I get to work, get to do somethings at leisure.

Cheers,

Sins of joining a service based organization (offshoring)

One thing straight, after joining my current organization, I have spent multiple weekends working.

Even as I write this, I am writing source code on the side.

There are many reasons as to why I work on weekends. What do I do during weekdays?

- Meetings/management meetings.
- Giving daily status to the dumb indian management (aka Micromanagement, which team member of mine spent how much time on what, what time did they go to loo out of office etc etc).
- Answering queries of team members, reviewing their work.
- Taking part in meetings with Europeans, can run into hours sometimes.
- Infrastructure issues.

Given all of the above, I hardly get time to do technical work. Considering that I am more experienced than most of my team members, I am supposed to do the most complicated work, like most difficult work. Whilst most people stop coding after say 5 years, I am coding even after 10 years, and I love it.

But what I don't love is the fact that I get less time to do what I love to do, instead attend Indian management meetings on how to improve process via Agile.

Well, each time, I get to ask myself is it really needed. Need of the hour is to improve skillset of Indian people to tackle technical problems, instead our Indian management seems to be taking interest in Agile to hide their arses :).

Reason being our Indian management understands, no matter how much you invest in training, Indian engineers won't scale up to the European standards / expectations, not sure which river water is the source of their lacking interest, but its straight as an arrow, Indian people lack interest to do anything technical atleast in my current organization. (sorry for stereotyping)

So, to do tough technical work, I need more time to concentrate and that never happens at workplace. The overcrowded floor where most people are on bench and jaywalking, never allows me to concentrate.

Whilst I do manage to work peacefully for sometime, to ensure more productivity, I need to work a bit more and this can happen only during weekends. So whenever there is tough work to be done, I rely on weekends, and also I am planning to take leave tomorrow.

My German architect shall go on leave from wednesday and I need to check in some very important code and get it reviewed before he leaves. All this I cannot expect to happen in that noisy workplace.

So tomorrow I am absconding from office to work :)

Cheers,

PS - I don't get to read as often now, play on my PS4 - travelling is less. All this until I find a new job, or until some people in the team get laid off due to budget cut. (sorry for early prediction, but can't help a lingering team in any other way :))

I am not boasting about myself doing hard techical work, but, I'm just trying to tell you my current situation!

Growing up in the 90's, growing up with ROXETTE

As a kid who grew up in the 90's, I could identify one band distinctively apart from Eagles and MLTR or U2. It was Roxette. The song - she's got the look was being used in the reynolds pen advertisement, if I'm not wrong.

I was always wondering which band sung it. Years later when internet became accessible and radio play was much more fun with all those good songs, less ads, I got to listen to Roxette a bit more and I believe, they are amongst the best. Its sad I didn't get to listen them more as a kid in the 90's

The lead singer had to go through a difficult period but yeah, they have left us a legacy of great songs. One of which is as below :)

Trekking on a empty stomach - TTTT 59

I have trekked few places in the last few years, but each time I was atleast fed, well fed infact before the start of the trek or even through the trek. Generally on a two day trek if we are camping in the forest, we carry sufficient rice to feed us for a night's dinner plus day 2 breakfast and/or lunch.

So this time, too was no different, we were in the middle of the forest out camping, and we cooked day 1 dinner. But the thing is, instead of bringing in aluminium cooking vessel, we had taken a pressure cooker this time.

This caused a hinderance in cooking. If we had taken aluminium vessel, we could have cooked lots of rice for dinner and left over could have been consumed as breakfast. But instead it took 2 turns too cook up rice for 12 people using a pressure cooker, plus, this meant the next day we had insufficient time to cook, as we had a good 8 km trek to and fro to the waterfall plus a 6 km trek back to the mainland.

Next day morning we prepared tea in the middle of the forest with full milk and tea power and water. And we set off for the waterfall. And we reached the waterfall after around 3 hours and we were back to tbe camping place by around 4pm. So we again ran out of time as we had to reach mainland out of the forest before it could be dark, hence thought of not cooking at all.

Meanwhile we had consumed whatever biscuits we had chocolates etc etc. I had consumed a packet full of electral and still was losing salts and getting cramped like there was no tomorrow. This left me with only one option to drink a litre of water filled with table salt!

Yes, I could never drink water mixed with salt before, but this time body just took it. And by the way, my cramps vanished 20 minutes later, I could trek the remining 6 kilometers pretty much comfortably.

We made it to out of the forest by 7pm and made it to Hotel Kamat Honnavara by 8 15PM. Finished dinner and started to bangalore by 9 30 pm.

Thats how I trekked this time , with almost an empty stomach :)

Cheers,

A constant companion or friend who never vanishes.

You might be wondering a man's best companion is a dog, one who never vanishes. But not everyone is fortunate enough to own a dog, train a dog or sustain a dog. I have never been able to have a dog.

But I would like to tell that, man's best companion rather my best companion is the gym. Its because whether it is a good day or bad day or a normal day, I get there and it basically feels good. The gym never vanishes nor the trainer refuses to admit me :) (Yeah even without fees)

If I'm high on ego the gym flattens it up, if I'm low on morale, it just ups my morale. Moreover, meeting people from different background, where salary, pride, age takes social status takes a backseat, all that matters is a 1+ hour of workout session.

Its sad to say, Bangalore doesn't have rather the infrastructure to support a good exercise regime or routine, or rather I do not have enough guts to sustain it.

I started exercising seriously only when my company provided time and transport. Tomorrow, I might not have them, so I'm still wary of changing organizations just to sustain this routine.Going far, might leave me with less time to exercise.

But discovering my love for physical exercise has been the most joyous thing to have happened to me. Not sure this post made any sense, but atleast it got me back to writing after weeks together of drudgery at office, having to deal with Indian, European management, etc etc, plus technical work, coding, re-coding. Lots of things happened, but now got the time to write.

So cheers :) 

Genius of David Gray

David Gray is one such artist whom I have known since my teenage years. I have not heard enough of him for years. And now when I realize he has belted out some super songs, I only can curse my luck for not having paid attention to his music.

The bottom line is any artist from England, Ireland, Scotland should be taken seriously, I mean by me, else I miss out on loads of good music.

Imagine David Gray music playing on a silent night. There is full silence and there you have David Gray and a pinch of spiritualism. what more can you ask for ?

I have few favorite songs from his album White Ladder way back almost 20 years, but this one which I am sharing is from 2002- 2003 album. Years go by but David Gray music still remains ahead of its time. Technology may come and but it will always be short of the talent this man possess. (Wrong comparison :))

PS - to enjoy some of the songs, you need good woofers plus clear cut speakers. To appreciate drums, bass, those acoustic guitar chords, I guess, after all you need good sound system and tuned equalizers, Please do not tune disco to alternative rock songs :) You know what I mean. To register sound from each instrument individually, into our ears and mind, you need a good sound system.Period.

Some pictures from my yesterday's trek - Republic day trek - 2018

Some pictures from my trek, courtesy Ucchangi Ram Kumar

Return journeys from a Trek - TTTT 58

Return journeys after completing a trek are always fun and excellent. The sense of accomplishment, for finishing the trek, the solo time we get to unwind, watching the villages and towns pass by and the freedom to eat till stomach's fill because we have burnt sufficient calories during the trek, plus good music all ends up as a fun filled journey. I wish to put these lines in a poem but some other day.

This time too the trek was excellent. We came out of the forest only by 7 PM evening and it was all dark, and by the time we made our way to Honnavara for dinner it was 8 15 PM odd. Then it was all climb to Sagar and then Shimoga. We had our dinner at Kamat restaurant at Honnavara. I simply love the coastal towns of Honnavara, Kumta, these places have the best to offer, in terms of simplicity of food, the service, the showcase of humanity just stands up.

It was relaxing, there was no movie being played, everyone was relaxed after completing the trek, were chatting, talking about random stuffs. But it was the first time, I saw 2-3 accidents on Jog falls climb, Ghat section. I pray nobody was hurt because of these. I had seen one before multiple times, but this day there were multiple on the same stretch, sad.

There was a village festival kind of thing near Mavinagundi, full bling bling and lights. Its hard to see such a controlled festival, never happens in town. In town all you get is honking vehicles, huge number of people / crowd and everyone trying to show off their wealth or who come to market their products. The question of enjoyment and fulfillment in a city fair is far from reality. But over here in a village, just a look by me while passing was so fulfilling. All I could do is sit in a vehicle and dream of being a part of the fair.. why not :) ?

We started from Honnavara at 9 40 PM and reached Bangalore around 5 15 AM.  Thats way too quick a time, because we have Jog falls Ghat section to climb and then its all way single lane road and not NH4.

These days I do not write about the places which I trek nor post many pictures. I can, but I do not want publicity via a search engine. I prefer to keep things to myself :)

This post was more about the fun filled return journey from the coastal side.

Cheers,

PS - This time we had a Tempo traveller with a CR Engine. Very rarely we get CR engine TT, but yeah, considerably less noisy than the Euro 3 Turbo Engine Traveller.

Gym - to exercise or to market goods

A recent trend in the gym has been to market stuffs. Gym is a place where people gather, come or are easy to pick and find. So a marketeer or a sales person has a good chance over here.

It happened so, recently someone tried to sell a motivational course to me in the gym which is part of a foreign company. This person happens to be from sales background and wanted more and more people to enroll into this course and hence had organized an introduction session at his home. Looks like he has taken a contract from this organization.

He wanted me to join and told me the leader would identify an area in my life to create opportunity. I told him I wasn't interested as the course was too abstract and not to my liking.

I gave away my mobile number and this person started calling and sending messages on whatsapp. After certain point of time, I put my phone on aeroplane mode and stopped replying to his whatsapp messages altogether. (Blocking him is still pending action).

When I went and told this to my gym instructor, he told me the motivational course was costing about 16k and there was a full family of 4 people who took this course and felt cheated.

In a way I got out of this mess, just wondering, how to react when I see the person in the gym in coming days. But what can I do?

My head just can't tolerate this amount of shit, just because a person has worked for Microsoft or Amazon doesn't mean I listen to him speak :) If I need motivation I shall read a good self help book instead of attending a 16k course!

Also he told me, after this course, he opened his own venture without a single rupee of investment. I thought what the heck, if it works out for him doesn't mean it should for me. What a silly and strange logic from an educated person.

Even before joining, I checked out this person's linked in profile and realized it was his job to sell this course to people. I hope and pray more people do not end up paying 16k to such courses, instead find motivation in exercise or travel or reading or music or something else on which this 16k can be invested and not regretted.

I literally told my instructor 16k is my 2 years gym membership.

Cheers,

Crowded house - Dont dream its over

I came to know about this song in the year 2002. That was when I first heard Six pence none the richer singing Dont dream its over. I admired the tune composition etc etc, until I came to know that, its by a band called Crowded House. That was probably in the year 2010 or so.

Until then I wasn't aware of the band Crowded House. My bad. But ever since I listened to the original composition of the song by Crowded House I never went back to Six Pence None The Richer, until today or in fact until 5 minutes back :)

Somehow, the live version performed by Crowded House popped anup in my playlist whilst at office. I somehow ended up listening to the song, but, more than that, the trivia surrounding the song was awesome.

That song was the last song played on their farewell tour after which the band disbanded. The emotions on the faces of the band members are visibily noticeable.

There are people who enact and make the audience teary eyed and here are the band Crowded House who are making the audience teary eyed, live, as they perform and sing..

This song is from 1996 Farewell Tour. I sincerely wished some people remained together, just for the sake of music, just for the sake of mankind.  but nature has other plans and life moves on. Here goes the song by Crowded House. Brilliantly sung and performed live.

And regarding the song by Six pence none the richer, well, its kind of feels pretty ordinary when you have the original next to it :)

Just brought back loads of memories, what I was upto in 1986 when the song, came out, 1996 when the farewell tour happened, 2002 when the cover version came out, 2010 when I discovered about Crowded House and 2018 as I blog this :) Happy to be alive :) what more can I say

Cheers

Some writing in the new year

After a gap of 15 days odd I am writing. I got time, the mood and the patience today to write. I was super busy with office work with no time to spare. Today we had a sprint closure and I had to do a demo to the client and now thats over, I get some relief for a couple of days, knowing there aren't much things pending to go.

But its been a roller coaster last 5+ months with heavy duty hard work coupled with mistakes and learnings, all in all a fulfilling one, I am unable to play on my PS4 nor read books nor travel much. Its just about work and more work for now.

Meanwhile, I shall write about few things which I have in my mind,

But for now,
Cheers,

PS - Today's demo went well, though I ran from an old source code and flunked it mid way, the response was appreciative and pretty positive :) 

First post for the new year

How sweet of me to key in something on the first day of the year itself. Side by side, I am writing some source code trying to fix an issue in the application.

And I hope I get to check in something today. The entire German and Indian team are vacationing. Me checking in on 1 day of 2018 all alone shall be epic. By the way last week of december had only my check ins in the source code repository, but doing one on 1st seems even more epic.

Meanwhile I compile the source code, thought of putting up a post.

This year I plan to do something different. I feel I am nosing around others people's business way too much. I keep asking people questions, I try to be curious about what is happening and in a way I think, I am just putting too much of info into my brains, which isn't really required.

My main motive should be, what others do is none of my business and I would rather try to implement it 100% :)-

Also last year I probably got less angry once I changed organizations. Silkboard never played any part and hence I had no burden to cross over 44 road humps. So I got angry only once in the last 7 months or so. I get frustrated and offended easily, but that's not much of a major hurdle.

Cheers.

Billy Idol - Rebel yell

Nice screaming song to welcome the new year - Billy Idol - Rebel Yell.

Cannot believe this song is from 1983, decades ahead of its time. 

Phenomenal stuffs from Billy Idol..

Cheers,

10 year anniversary

As the year comes to a close, I did forget to mention one point all through the year.

Yes, its been 10 years since I started blogging. I wish I had started early, at least I could have got in more posts plus and I would have been much better at writing and communicating.

But it is what it is. So happy 10th year to my blog. It is so much fun to write whatever I want, considering only max 5-6 people know this blog url. Rest all are random hits from google!

In the last 10 years life has changed, and believe me, I haven't written about most of it. I just have written about stuffs which I felt like writing. There were days when I was extremely happy and days when I was extremely upset. None of which figure on this blog. But yeah, I wish to continue writing. Some day, I shall have a small diary which shall have stories inspired by my experiences or travel with fictitious characters and real ones, inspired by none other than Ruskin Bond,. Until then,. this blog shall have short posts of mine!

Cheers,

Bhujia hill

During our Gujarat trip, we got to visit Bhuj and at a distance from Bhuj was a small hill called Bhujia hill. Our time of visit was perfect. Though we missed out the evening sunset, we were very much in for a surprise.

It was a quiet place with absolutely no visitors in the evening. There were 3-4 temples and one temple at the top of the hill. So we had a little bit of climb, I wish I had come to this place alone.

Its the solitude which beckoned the most. Being all one in the quiet place like Bhujia hill can work wonders. The town was below and over here on the hill it was a temple and wind wind all the way.

I am so happy for our culture where in people have buiilt up temples on hill tops. It feels so relaxing just to climb the hill and take a moment of to admire the nature which god has created and to find a temple and place to pray atop a hill can be just priceless.

Cheers, below are some pictures.

Year ending 2017

One more year comes to a close, this year I decided not to complete my 100 posts instead let it as it is. Also one thing I did this year end, which I haven't done till date.

Yes, I did something today. I donated blood today at KIMS. Today while in the gym, our instructor asked me, if I was ready to donate blood.

Initially I was hesitant, since I generally donate on a ad-hoc basis and on demand. After few minutes, he told his relative was in need of platelets. Then I started considering it more seriously.

I told him I was ready to donate and asked for the contact number. He told he would drive along with me and other guy who was willing to donate. So I did donate today and it felt good.

Being of some use to someone and a very nice way to say good bye to 2017.

Cheers,

I think it was a very small token of gratitude for someone who has been very instrumental in me completing my 4 Himalayan treks and to the person who I am today compared to who I was in 2013.

When temperature dipped to 13 degree centigrade during our bus journey - TTTT 57

Yes you read it right, the temperature dipped to 13 degree centigrade and we were not travelling in a Volvo AC bus. We were travelling in a normal state transport bus.

It happened so, we took a quick decision to travel from Mandvi Gujarat to Dwaraka Gujarat, by an overnight bus. So caught a bus to Jamnagar from Mandvi. And from there, we planed to travel by another bus.

It happened so, we were supposed to reach around  6am to Jamnagar bus somewhere around 3 am in the morning, it turned out to be freezing cold. O boy, we were just covered up, but it was so cold that, we couldn't add more clothing to ourselves as our backpacks were all stashed away in the upper compartment and we were too lazy to unpack and wear them.

So we managed the journey, we ended up in Jamnagar early in the morning. But upon reaching my friend who had just measured the overnight temperature told me, it had stooped down to a whooping 13 degree centigrade. Can you believe it ?

It was a fun ride, and believe me, things like these just end up being so memorable!

Temperatures had gone down to -7 degrees whilst in the Himalayas, but this ain't mountains, this was plain old city to city ride!

Cheers,

An ode to the warm up man - Gym stories

Let me classify my gym posts as gym stories, just like my travel stories.

I have been going to the gym pretty regularly. So I get to see a whole bunch of people daily. Since the last 7 odd days I have a stiff muscle, starting from my lower back all the way to the left leg. I feel I'm unable to stretch it freely nor able to bend myself and touch the ground as much as I want to.

So today, I got a bit of stretching exercises at the gym and guess whom it reminded me of? The warm up man. The warm up man, was one special person coming to the gym. He's  no more seen in the last 5 odd months. I shall tell you about that later.

He was one person who used to do warm up and stretch for round about 25 minutes. I used to complete my treadmill run and this person would still be stretching and stretching. I think I have not seen anybody do that much amount of warm up exercises and stretching. He looked like a trained athlete and seasoned professional, and could not be compared to anybody else in the gym.

Last I heard he underwent a surgery of some kind and was advised not to exercise. He was one person who was regular since the day I joined the gym way back in December 2013.

Such is life, so there goes an ode to the warm up man. Warm up and stretching is an essential part before we exercise. I under do it and I bare the outcome in the form of stiff muscles, sore legs, sore back. Some day I shall remember to stretch and warm up adequately before work out.

Until then cheers,

Music for 2017 - Fleetwood Mac .

Well, this year I listened to loads of songs, either on the way to office or at work or at home. I even upgraded my speaker to one with woofer. So now I have a better sound system.

But this year can be characterized by my inclination to one such band which I feel is the most underrated. I have spent almost 3/4 of the year listening to their songs only and I am still not bored and probably will never be. The irony is most of their best work came out when I was a kid and when there was no satellite television in India.

The band I am talking about is Fleetwood Mac, some of their songs were way ahead of time. The tune the composure. They wrote more about romance and love, thats their genre. But if you ever get to see them performing live, believe me, its a bliss.

The band has got loads of history, its just that they are underrated. Listen to two of their masterpieces below. One being my all time favorite - Gypsy (1982) and the other one, - Everywhere. (1987). Now you can understand my love for the 1980's. The decade when some super music just came out and rest is history!

below is the live performance.. can it get any better?

And Christine McVie at 74 years of age...can produce a masterpiece like the one below..

BSNL and dismal internet performance

This year, I badly needed internet to perform, because, I was loaded with work, I needed to work from home and I needed internet which was reliable. BSNL this year was a let down. There was an instance where there was no internet for 1.5 weeks flat. This annoyed me to the core.

I was waiting for a chance to switch to airtel or ACT. Now during Christmas again, internet was unavailable and I thought time was right to raise a request for Airtel broadband. As of today, I'm waiting for Airtel to be installed at my home, payment is through only installation is pending.

So there goes out BSNL, no more crying for a slow internet. Hopefully Airtel shall be much more efficient, here's new internet for the new year. Something to look for! And guess what its optic fiber this time. 40MBPS line.

Cheers,