Trip to Bhutan

In between all of the company change, travel, I managed to go on planned leave in the first week of December 2018. It was to Bhutan. I had this planned while I was in my previous organization only.

Sad part is I executed it while I joined new organization. It happened to be loss of pay. It did not matter. Somehow, I managed to take my mind off work and travel for a while.

Initially planned for 5 days the trip stretched to 9 days. Owing to missed flights, change of plans. Finally came back after a long deserved vacation.

Cheers,

Kailash Mansarovar Yatra - 2019 - Leaves - KMY - 2

I needed couple of weeks plus 2-3 days on top of it in order to complete Kailash Mansarovar Yatra in 2019. My manager was kind of skeptical, reason being, I had no leaves plus, I had taken leaves in the month of December for Bhutan trip, now in month of February, asking for leaves again, and me being under probation, sent some very distress signals.

But Kailash Mansarovar Yatra waits for none, a job can wait, it something which had to happen, irrespective of whether I was employed or not, I wished to do it.

As I write this in the month of December, 2019, I am still employed, and feel blessed to have completed KMY this year. I already applied for subsidy from Karnataka government too, thought cut off age is 45, which is rather sad.

My manager kinda agreed for it, very hesitantly. I put everything at my workplace at risk including my confirmation for this trip and yeah, Lord Shiva pulled it off successfully.

Initially it was planned in the month of May 2019. and what happened next, well in my another post though,

Cheers,

PS - Posted in december

Kailash Mansarovar Yatra - 2019 - KMY 1

In the month of February, in one of the trek groups a friend of mine posted a message saying, he is planning to take part in this year Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, via a private tour operator, and called for any others willing to join.

I had plans to go Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, let me call it KMY hence forth. Since couple of years I had this in sight, but little did I know it had so much process/procedure. It took months to fix things and in between Jet Airways collapsing and shutting operations did not help me in any way.

One of the reason for lesser travel was this too. I wanted to keep in good health for the yatra and not fall sick by involving in summer treks. Summer treks cause lots of dehydration, UTI's. So in a way, I was focused by sitting at home and exercising. But it took months, more on KMY in the following posts.

Cheers,

Ode to Swamiji

On 21 January 2019, a great gentleman left us. It is none other than Sri Sri Shivakumar Swamiji. It was a very sad day, his work and selfless dedication is nothing which can be measured or compared.

Multiple times my eyes got moist reading about the dedication which he showed towards upliftment of mankind. The institutions he had set up. How many people he had guided, fed, taught. One life is small to even imagine the magnitude of contribution of Swamiji.

So thought of starting new year posts with a post remembering the great person, so proud to have been born in this Country and State

Cheers!

The year 2018 has been

2018 has been one such year where lots of things have happened, both on professional and personal front. I have not been writing much, I have spent couple of months pondering, I have traveled less, and finally there are multiple things which took toll on me and for most part of the year, I ended up thinking and thinking.

So let me write a short note on what happened on work front.

On the work front, the year started very well and was enjoying work. Somewhere in the middle things started to go wrong at workplace and I ended up doing a whole lot of work instead of little and then for couple of months it was work work and nothing else.

Finally October month was nearing and I had planned to take a week off to travel to Leh. But I ran out of luck that time. I fell sick with fever had to cancel my leave plan, also on the side, I was released from the project due to shortage of fund.

So it was three ways to tackle, one the work which I liked so  much and the bond which I had built with the European colleagues was abruptly broken. Second the humiliation of being released from the project was so much to handle. People told me I was abusive on the management. I used to scold people badly. Everyone came up with their own set of advises and it felt horrible.

Nobody knows what the real reason for my release from the project was, but everyone was of the opinion that, I was really behaving horrible, by being rude towards other team mates, not collaborating etc etc.

Morever I was helpless, nobody could do anything about it. I am not someone who licks the arse of the management just to stay in the project. So there I realized where I changed paths.

But more than humiliation, I was worried about the future. I did not know how would I sustain in such a low paying organization. I was the black sheep out there, I was so freaked out about the market too. For two weeks I kept thinking and applying.

But as the saying goes, when we are in trouble, God comes to the party or to the rescue. Once my october leave plan got cancelled, I got a referral from my friend's organization.

I attended interviews which would not have been possible if I had gone ahead with my Leh trip. Then finally 5 days after being released from the project, I got the news that I shall be offered in my friend's organization..

I was over joyed, but somewhere, I felt cheated, I had worked very hard, built a very fine and strong reputation and bond with European colleagues, which I definitely refused to let go.

But truth is you cannot help. Most likely management got insecure of my presence in the team and told me to leave, you never know.

I shall write about various reasons which went sour in the coming posts. As of today, I finished a week trip to Bhutan and I am kind of relaxing in my new organization.

Cheers and loads of thanks to God for coming to rescue when I needed the most.

Cheers,

Lesser writing even lesser travelling

2018 has been not such a great year in terms of trekking or travelling. i did not travel much, my interest in travelling came down due to too much of office work.

I was highly stressed out with work always deadlines and something to deliver, planning trips could never happen. Now that slowdown has happened and I will soon move out of the project, after I had asked release plus budget issues, I get some relief.

Sometimes, we just need to stop working and think about something else. Yeah, my engagement with the current project comes to a close after year and half. I have done sufficient work got sufficient recognition, but yeah, it cannot continue.

I can't close my eyes and always remind myself of work. How much ever I like my work I have to limit myself from overworking. One way is to move out of the project. Yeah, I chose it too.

So now I can concentrate on trying new jobs writing, going back to gym more so traveling as well.

I might even quit and take a break from work for few days. Reason being i have overworked in the last year and I just need a break!

But quitting without another offer makes no sense because it puts you on too much pressure. So i'm thinking  just to move out of the project first and then try outside.

By the way, I am back to writing,

Cheers,

Ode to my place or worship

Like every year, this year too I did attend ayudha pooja at my gym. Though I haven;t been to the gym in a week and half, I was down with fever for 3.5 days and doctor advised me not to workout. So i temporarily stopped, after two weeks, I will re-join on Monday.

All these days I got an opportunity to wake up late and ponder.

So cheers to my place of worship.

Cheers,

When a late train helped our cause - TTTT 61

Last month I had been to a trek around Karnataka Goa border. It was one of the best. But in the end we reached a remote village in Karnataka and were about to leave by 6pm from there. We had our train at around 9 40 pm from Dharwad. It was Sampark Kranti coming all the way from Chandigarh.

We were around 100 kilometers away from Dharwad and we were in doubt whether we could reach in time.  We reached Dharwad railway station at 9 40 pm and we were about to miss the train.

But luck was on our side that day. Because the train was running late by 40 minutes. We had earlier information from the railway website that train would be late, but was that information accurate?

Well turned out to be true,

Cheers,

When we cut and ate jackfruit on a trek - TTTT 60

Jack fruit is one such fruit which you do not want to get your hands dirty with. Its difficult to digest unless you are used to it. But to get to the point where you get to eat a jack fruit you need to slog your hands of cutting and peeling the huge fruit.

This happened during our recent trek around Karnataka Goa border. We entered a village on our first day, we were too late to move out of the village. Hence thought of camping in the village.

It was 5 pm in the evening when we reached the village. Very soon it would turn dark. Few of our guys were resting, while our two guides were doing something very interesting outside.

They had brought down a jack fruit from a tree opposite to the house and they were cutting and peeling it. After 10 minutes, I too joined in. It was a sticky mess peeling the jack fruit.

In the end I ate 12 or even more pieces of jack fruit. I cleaned my hands which were now sticky by rubbing palms with oil. But I was cursing myself for eating so much of jack fruit. Jack fruit is one such fruit which is very hard to digest.

The guide made fun of me for fearing the unknown. In the end I was glad I did not throw up in the night nor had a problem in the morning.

Alls well that end's well..

Cheers!

When my client / business partner thought I knew German!!

For two weeks we have our German business partner in India. They arrived last week and came to office on Monday. For the first day they sat in a meeting room towards the end of the floor. But on the second day they came and sat next to me as there were empty spaces next to my seat.

Not sure why they decided to sit amidst the team instead of meeting room, but yesterday while on Friday, on two occasions the business partner started speaking amongst themselves in German, I was quietly observing and on one occasion they were conversing in German trying to find out where was the dustbin, for which I directed them out of intuition.

They then got a doubt if I understood German.. I had previously told one of my German colleague that it was my 4th time working with German client. And as much as I like working with them, I hate to admit I do not know German.

How about learning the same.. Well, yeah probably will give it a thought!

Cheers,

Relief from work

After working hard starting january february all the way till mid of june, braving summer going to the gym office resting on weekends, I found some time finally to head out of town. It was for a 3 day trek on the eve of Ramzan.

It turned out to be one of the best decisions, though we traveled by train, we ended up doing a whole lot of trek and thoroughly enjoyed the 3 days.

I will write about it shortly. Also I need to cross 50 posts since its half year mark. Last year I consciously decided not to hit a 100 posts, because someone who always insisted me to write 100 posts was a bit down after losing their pet dog. Hence last year I chose not to write a 100 owing to this reason.

Cheers!

Sins of joining a service oriented organization - part 2

It happens so I joined an IT service organization in the year 2017. It was my first in-house project. I have worked for service oriented IT companies before, but as a consultant. I was outsourced rather sent outside to a client place to work. In other words, I was working and have worked for a product development organization all these years.

Now it happens so, this in-house project made me realize what a notorious shit hole an IT service company is. Full of quacks, people with no heart, no interest to work, roaming in the building carelessly.

Sad to see, when I enter global village IT park to go to my office, or during lunch, I see hoards of people just sitting, doing absolutely nothing, chit chatting. I wish not to mention which organization, but it happens to be one of the other competitor service oriented organizations in Global Village known for hire and fire policy. So many people simple sitting, doing nothing just speaks of the amount of work being given to Indian IT.

Never mind, I had worked very hard over the last 6 months, written lots of code and established such a fine working relationship with my German Colleagues, I'm still proud of that. But the sad part is some of my allocated task couldn't meet timeline.

Some of the allocated task of my team members didn't meet timelines. It had lots of loopholes and complaints, escalations from German management. So my manager considered this.

When I told him I had got equally good appreciation, he told they don't count. Only escalations count but not appreciation. In english language its called hypocrisy!

So, all my hard work went to gutter and got a rating of 2/5. It means moderately meets expectations, or rather needs improvement. Any person who gets this rating never gets variable pay or bonus. But I got them. I got my variable pay 100% of what the company allocated out of the given amount. What an irony.

On one side, I need improvement, on other side, I get a bonus reserved for performance. I guess this happens only in a service oriented organization.

The best part is I still enjoy working with Germans, I think, the only reason for me to stick with my current service oriented organization, is the fact that, we have a very good relationship with onsite team and equally bad relationship with our offshore team plus its close to my home.

5 members of my team have quit. All of whom had problem with Indian management and not a single complaint against German management.

I think service oriented organization works just like this.

What I feel is mid level management is like a mid layer fat on a human body (result of Bengal famine?)

Muscles at the shoulder or biceps help us to lift loads, muscles on legs and thighs help us propel or walk long distances. But mid level fat does absolutely nothing, helps us to sustain famine situation?

So mid level management is like this fat, absolutely unuseful for an organization. Just adding complexities to our working environment.

Oh I forgot to tell you, my organization management is very jealous of the fact that I'm too close with German's sitting over here and they aren't able to achieve the same level of closeness. How little they know its all about hardwork and intellectualism.

Somone please tell them, quacks can only quack!

Cheers,!

PS - I wanted to write this for a very long time, but exercised restraint and lack of time. Today I'm in good spirits :)-

Back to travel and blogging

After outworking myself in the last 4 months, I finally found time to travel, write something. I was regular to the gym in the last 4 months something which makes me feel proud.

A forest fire in Kerala Border put an end to our summer trekking plans. I feel bad that tragedy happened, lives were lost. Permissions were denied owing to the fact there could be more forest fires.

So I dug into gym and work. Things did not go well at work as well. I was overloaded with work and in the end I got an appraisal rating of 2/5 which means moderately meets expectations.

It really broke my back. I had worked hard over the last year and this is what I got. I realized this is how I pay the price for joining a service oriented organization I thought.

Then there was an opening, in the form of a 3 day trek. With much difficulty permissions were obtained, in-fact, over 3 month effort yielded permissions. This 3 day trek was to an unknown place. It was in the rains and it went well.

That brought me enough courage to make a comeback to writing!

Cheers,

Over read myself in 2018

Started the year's reading with a book called Mindful way through depression. Believe me it was the worst nightmare I could have, it took me a month and a half to realize that, this book was utter gutter crap.

It wasn't the way out of depression, but it tried its best to put me into depression. I couldn't read for days together because I was so hell bent on reading this book completely, and this book was so adamant that it didn't want to be read.

Finally, I gave it up for some good old Ruskin Bond and there you go, problem solved. As of today in the fourth month, I have read almost 9 books for the year, much have been Ruskin Bond to give me that feel good factor of the mountains (of course).

But all in all way to go.. wohoo.. pat on my back, considering how hard I work these days :)

Cheers,

CommonWealth games at the gym

Yesterday had been to the gym and found TV to be airing common wealth games instead of music, which usually is on. So whist exercising, I could watch a game of squash. Once the game was over, somehow it being an Indian channel, provided an update on the gold medal being won by India.

But the intense competition which I got to see during the squash match put me into a bit of thought process.

- What do these players bring to the competition.
- What all do these players have to endure to gain this level of competitiveness.

The answer was simple. Plain old practice for years together. If this was the simple and straight answer, there was a lingering question, as to why aren't we producing enough gold medals in a bigger stage like Olympics? I have always realized the reason to be a compound of many a thing.

I generally do not whine on my blog on problems which have no profound solution at all. But the way the whole eco system is structured, it just has no solution at all :)

The rewards for a professional athlete are very much there, but is the infrastructure in place, if someone wanted to compete in swimming, do we have enough to go to a swimming pool everyday, day in and day out, does Bangalore traffic allow us to focus only on swimming.

Recently, saw a video on Dravid Padukone, sports village. Heard few words of encouragement from Rahul Dravid to come and make use of the facility to one and all.

I just had one question, how does someone sitting in Kengeri, make use of this facility? For someone to reach this place it would take a while, and the way professional athletes train is each day for hours. So for someone to train idealistically, he or she should relocate closer to home, forget family, forget study, basically forget everything and this after investing in the membership.

Why would anyone do that, one life is meant to be enjoyed, why would anyone put his body on the line just for a medal and few quid  money in return that too not guaranteed?

I  still somehow wonder, Hyderabad has produced so many good shuttlers, I sincerely feel there is something about Hyderabad infrastructure playing a part too. Going by Bangalore's growth, I can only see round and pot bellied people adding weight on mother earth rather than muscular Olympians battling it out with someone like Micheal Phelps?

I am sure 20 years on we still would be medal less :) And regarding common wealth games, yeah cheers guys.

I wish all those who have access to equipment stadiums and will to fight it out, all the very best. I can only settle for my mediocre rant :)

Cheers,

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 :)