WHY I WANT TO BE A RED FLOWER?

A day in flower's life
Starts with drops of water flushed by the gardener
The little red flower opens eyes
With sun giving his warmth
With breeze welcoming the little 'ne
Flower starts growing and radiating fragrance

Now friend bee comes
She kisses him,touches him and loves him
Little Red flower enjoyes the company
Suddenly,she finds another companaion
...........he keeps growing

Young flower keeps growing as the day progress
With new marks of age and traumatized with bruise
These blemishes.....offered by the gleaner himself
and he wonders ....WHY?
The young flower learns the rules of life quickly
Discovers soon that world is cruel

As the darkness crawls,
Adult Flower is alone
Wondering "was life cruel?Why gardner did that?Why bee did that?"
and discovers too late
the purpose of life
was in spreading his aroma
And......forgiving everybody

And that's why .....
I want to be a Red flower ......


This Poem is a Birthday Gift to my friend Shrek.Thanks for all the good times you have given me buddy......

Lost but not Found

It was an I-spy game between sun and clouds ….sunlight kept appearing ,disappearing and then again appearing. Standing on top of South India called Dolphin’s nose, I was wondering that there must be a painter of this megacosm…..A painter who makes errors in form of dark clouds covering the entire top view and then erases it from sunlight!!

Be it the Nilgiris(The Blue Mountains), apparently appearing to me as a gigantic lady who is sleeping in between mushrooms (The Eucalyptus trees)..or the sunlight coming from window of Chaiyya Chaiyaa train and piercing my body…or angelic blue colored flowers bidding adieu to the passengers of the train….or the Sun rays ,falling on leaves of coniferous trees and making their green leaves glow with white shine ……I was lost in Koonoor.

Journey to this place with six other friends started with a deadly stare of Bison in Bandipur Jungles which is on the way to Koonoor,a hill station 18 Km east of Ooty. The time was 4AM in the morning and as usual, I was awake along with my friend for the journey…the gibbous moon .The shriek from Chandan made all of us to look into shining eyes of that Bison and after that, those who were sleeping in the Qualis were also looking for more adventure…..sadly we could find few stags and herd of deer in the Bandipur and Madhumalai forests.

Ooty is artificial,Koonoor is natural
when Raja guide said this, he meant it. But our decision to stay in Koonoor was purely based on financial constraints. We were in middle of tea estates and then in SatyaMangla forest where brigand Veerappan had monopoly few years back accompanied by the guide who told about the numerous bollywood movies who were shot in the areas where we went. There were lots of view points on the way…sadly I forgot the names!!

Koonoor is the fifth hill station I have visited but number of view points make it rank two after Nainital in my list…no doubt why Bollywood should not come here to take a shot of The Painter’s outstanding creativity…or why love dales in form of honeymoon couples should not come here …Love and beauty of nature flows with cool air and to feel it, you got to be present here.

The train from Koonoor to Ooty (The Chaiyaa Chaiyya train) is an experience in itself. This historical steam engine passes through two tunnels and scenic hills.You can see the houses very beautifully arranged on different levels of the hill,as if one little nudge on the topmost house was sufficient enough to topple subsequent ones…so delicate was their placement. I was lost third time while on the journey ,only to be recovered once we reached Ooty,where we visited the Boat house for a four seater paddle boat ride and then to rose garden… full of all kinds of hybrid roses. Ooty is a crowdy and ear popping place, basically abundant with couples. It didn’t strike me at all. We decided not to visit Botanical garden (very similar to Lalbagh botanical garden of Bangalore) but we left Ooty to have some fun in between the way to Bangalore and that we did by stopping at some unknown place and freaking out with locales!

It was not that I was lost in nature only…but was Lost in translation too. Four of my Telugu friends kept chatting in their native language and me trying to decipher them was a fun!! In the end I could figure out two-three telugu words. Horse riding with Shrek was also interesting.Helper whipped his horse who jumbled and mumbled and Shrek started shrieking …stop stop. Sadly,my horse was also stopped and fun ended soon.

The height of excitement came to me when I fell in mud twice!!..one while crossing a long passage and second time while pulling out my beloved shoes from the mud result was myself half into mud….but the spirit didn’t end here…third time I crossed the same passage successfully!!

It was a nice change from Bangalore’s routine life…I suggest,if you go to Ooty,don’t give much weightage to Ooty city.Lots of unexplored places such as tribe’s village, trekking spots and the places I described are waiting…..

In the end It’s all about experimentation, bodaciousness and the limit to which you want to have adventure and fun.

Making The Grade

I will be in Ooty on coming weekend so my new post will be available on Monday,June 12th.So for the time being,following is an essay written by Kurt Wiesenfeld a Professor at Georgia Tech in Atlanta Georgia. The essay was originally published in the "My Turn" section of the June 17th Newsweek.
This is an old and famous essay and I want to thank Neelesh for sending it.

Please stay tuned for a travelogue on "Lesser known aspects of Ooty"

It was a rookie error. After 10 years I should have known better, but I went to my office the day after final grades were posted. There was a tentative knock on the door "Professor Wiesenfeld? I took your Physics 2121 class? I flunked it? I wonder if there's anything I can do to improve my grade?" I thought: "Why are you asking me?Isn't it too late to worry about it? Do you dislike making declarative statements?"

After the student gave his tale of woe and left, the phone rang.
"I got a D in your class. Is there any way you can change it to 'Incomplete'?"

Then the e-mail assault began: "I'm shy about coming to talk to you, but I'm not shy about asking for a better grade. Anyway, it's
worth a try." The next day I had three phone messages from students
asking me to call them. I didn't.

Time was, when you received a grade, that was it. You might groan and
moan, but you accepted it as the outcome of your efforts or lack thereof (and, yes, sometimes a tough grader). In the last few years, however, some students have developed a disgruntled consumer approach. If they don't like their grade, they go to the "return" counter to trade it in for something better.

What alarms me is their indifference toward grades as an indication of
personal effort and performance. Many, when pressed about why they think
they deserve a better grade, admit they don't deserve one but would like
one anyway. Having been raised on gold stars for effort and smiley faces
for self-esteem, they've learned that they can get by without hard work and
real talent if they can talk the professor into giving them a break. This
attitude is beyond cynicism. There's a weird innocence to the assumption
that one expects (even deserves) a better grade simply by begging for it.
With that outlook, I guess I shouldn't be as flabbergasted as I was that 12
students asked me to change their grades after final grades were posted.

That's 10 percent of my class who let three months of midterms,
quizzes and lab reports slide until long past remedy. My graduate student
calls it hyperrational thinking: if effort and intelligence don't matter,
why should deadlines? What matters is getting a better grade through an
unearned bonus, the academic equivalent of a freebie T shirt or toaster
giveaway. Rewards are disconnected from the quality of one's work. An act
and its consequences are unrelated, random events.

Their arguments for wheedling better grades often ignore academic
performance. Perhaps they feel it's not relevant."If my grade isn't raised
to a D I'll lose my scholarship." "if you don't give me a C, I'll flunk
out." One sincerely overwrought student pleaded, "If I don't pass my life
is over." This is tough stuff to deal with. Apparently, I'm responsible for
someone's losing a scholarship, flunking out or deciding whether life has
meaning. Perhaps these students see me as a commodities broker with
something they want--a grade. Though intrinsically worthless, grades, if
properly manipulated, can be traded for what has value: a degree, which
means a job, which means money. The one thing college actually offers--a
chance to learn--is considered irrelevant, even less than worthless,
because of the long hours and hard work required.

In a society saturated with surface values, love of knowledge for its
own sake does sound eccentric. The benefits of fame and wealth are more
obvious. So is it right to blame students for reflecting the superficial
values saturating our society?

Yes, of course it's right. These guys had better take themselves seriously now, because our country will be forced to take them seriously later, when the stakes are much higher. They must recognize that their
attitude is not only self-destructive but socially destructive. The
erosion of quality control--giving appropriate grades for actual
accomplishments--is a major concern in my department. One colleague
noted that a physics major could obtain a degree without ever answering
a written exam question completely. How? By pulling in enough partial
credit and extra credit And by getting breaks on grades.

But what happens once she or he graduates and gets a job? That's when the misfortunes of eroding academic standards multiply. We lament that school children get "kicked upstairs" until they graduate from highschool despite being illiterate and mathematically inept, but we seem unconcerned with college graduates whose less blatant deficiencies are far more harmful if their accreditation exceeds their qualifications.

Most of my students are science and engineering majors. If they're
good at getting partial credit but not at getting the answer right, then
the new bridge breaks or the new drug doesn't work. One finds examples here in Atlanta.Last year a light tower in the Olympic Stadium collapsed,
killing a worker. It collapsed because an engineer miscalculated how much weight it could hold. A new 12 story dormitory could develop dangerous cracks due to a foundation that's uneven by more than six inches. The error resulted from incorrectdata being fed into a computer. I drive past that dorm daily on my way towork, wondering if a foundation crushed under kilotons of weight is repairable or if this structure will have to be demolished. Two 10,000 pound steel beams at the new natatorium collapsed in March, crashing into the student athletic complex. (Should we give partial credit since no one was hurt?) Those are real world consequences of errors and lack of expertise.

But the lesson is lost on the grade-grousing 10 percent. Say that you
won't (not can't, but won't) change the grade they deserve to what they
want, and they are frequently bewildered or angry. They don't think it's
fair that they're judged according to their performance, not their desires
or "potential." They don't think it's fair that they should jeopardize
their scholarships or be in danger of flunking out simply because they
could not or did not do their work. But it's more than fair; it's
necessary to help preserve a minimum standard of quality that our society
needs to maintain safety and integrity. I don't know if the l3th-hour
students will learn that lesson, but I've learned mine. From now on, after
final grades are posted, I'll lie low until the next quarter starts.

WIESENFELD, a physicist, teaches at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

First Year in Software Industry

Welcome aboard…Mr Saurabh boasted my director Shytam
Thank you, Sir
Lesson no. 1…there is no sir, no madam…I am Shyam,he is Rama(manager)…
Wow!!!! … So I will call my uncles with their names I thought

I was a fresher with Electronics Engineering background whose CV was brimming with most of the VLSI (Very Large Scale integration) related projects. My Knowledge in devices was perfect and specialization was the field of VLSI ….. Training in STMicroelectronics on memory design was like icing on the top of the cake. I am sure there are many guys like me…..unsure of what they can do during there B.Tech ..what they want to do and finally landing to a place where you will not use the specialized knowledge which has been perfected during you formative years.

Next day,I went straight to director

So Shyam, what is the work you are going to assign me?

Good that you are learning the etiquettes fast…apparently our division works on wireless infrastructure and mobile device management soft wares ,which includes server and devices to be managed. And there is no such well defined team. Whole division is a team. Try to learn Server side of it and then move ahead towards devices in future. So Start on Java. I have already seen you as a guy who is not afraid of taking risks!!(So I was under scrutiny from day one) and talking to senior management

But.. I demurred..what is this…there is no fixed group …no hierarchy…and above all no embedded software where I was interested…From VLSI to JAVA was a big change

I hated Java. This was a paradigm shift .From projects in chip designing to making a career in network management and that too using Java…yukk ..like any other fresher,I hated the idea

I am from Ece background Shyam..will this suit me?….. but I will give it a shot

And from that day in history to this day,I have worked on projects which hardly required Java.They required an attitude and aptitude to learn….learn the tools ..learn to write pertinent codes along with coding standards…Attitude to implement ….. acclimate with different teams working on different kind of projects

Here I am going to present my treatise on what I learnt from Industry in past one year. It may help some of the freshers and few seniors who find their work boring and disgusting …Mind it,I am not giving gyan ,it’s kind of self talk.

1)Leave the prejudices in the college---Don’t be prejudiced about the domain where you are going to make the career, unless you have explored about it thougrouly.

2)The software tools which you are going to use must be given high assiduity. Using help or goggle, learning their intricacies always helps. e.g I use MG-soft browser regularly but haven’t seen many guys using it effectively. They could use basic functionality but whenever a tricky situation comes, they fail. Same is the case with CVS(A tool which helps you to put code on a central repository and not on local machine).You can learn every utility of these tools by TRYING out some dummy things and screwing up your system(or if you are luckier than me,you will not).For the developers, the platform(DOS or UNIX) and development tool(s) they use SHOULD be as familiar as their own rooms where they know what thing to look for at exactly which place.Same to testers.

3)Always be ready to learn new programming languages and scripting in no time. I know it’s easy to say but once you break the ice, next time it would be easy. Believe me..I have learnt JSP,Beans and servlets much slower than multithreaded programming in C++, purely because of ordering dependencies. Once you break that, you are through.

4)Don’t be irresolute to ask right questions…who so ever be it .Initially I used to fear from my team lead

What he will think? How he will react? Is this a stupid question? how dumb I am?

Believe me, there are no stupid questions. All you have to do is prepare yourself before asking. Be clear about what you want and even if you are not sure, give some time on it before approaching and you will get it…for sure. Right questions are always appreciated in software industry.
I have heard “If you are a fresher, you can ask question but as soon as you grow up, you cannot”
To me, this is an absolutely fallacious quote. You can ask at any point in time of your carreer..leave your hesitations in bay area and go.

5) Speak for yourself and your work related problems….in front of managers…in meetings or anywhere, whenever required. I have seen guys and girls who are impeccable technically but hesitate to tell the world about the problems they are facing in their work life.

6) Last one is of sheer importance. It’s the attitude towards work which counts at the end of the day. If your work is boring you can try out things to make it interesting. If the work is getting repetitive day by day, do it in a best possible way as if you do your daily activities like watching TV…listening radio….cooking…brooming…exercises earnestly.

e.g.
a)If you are running a script which takes lot of time, between that time, find out the different ways to optimize it or at least think about it. Even if you succeed in decreasing the time by 15 minutes, isn’t it not a motivation to reduce it further by 15 more minutes and hence more interesting think based search again.

b)If you have to do lot of manual entries in a file(Like I did!),try to find out how to automate it. Even if you don’t get succees,the pleasure of finding different things in the process will not let you get bored

You can devise different methods to make your work…but always believe that nothing is junk and even if it is,try to make out something of it…..as they harness electricity from garbage .

My metamorphosis from a hardware guy to a software engineer was not as effortless but the aptitude and attitude have brought me to this stage where I can now go and say..

Hey Shyam, I can do any kind of work in any domain…