Away from the concrete jungle

Six reasons why I thought this particular trip should come in here.

1. Until the last few minutes, we didn’t know where exactly we are going to travel during the weekend. All we knew is we are going to visit some place. Ooty was one of the last options.

2. It was a sleepless Friday night and we didn’t like the idea of taking rest and leaving. Decided to pick our bags (and cam esp.) and leave straight. Our bags were really not that important but the cam definitely was.

3. There were at least 5 accidents on our way to Ooty that day with 2 of those accidents on cars that overtook us a few minutes back.

4. We didn’t know the temperature in our destination could go up to -3 decrees C during this season until we reached the foot of the hill. This made things a lot more interesting though.

5. The 2 month old car that we travelled already suffered a lot of injury. Thanks to its owner’s frequent Bangalore-Trichy trips :-)

6. The breakdown.


Okay paying due respects to Section 2 - Renovation, I am planning to split this one into few parts, how many parts and how long each part is I have no idea. Anyways.


The Plan

It all started with a plan to visit Pondicherry as a company sponsored trip for Christmas holidays. This flopped due to various reasons. I would still say this got postponed and not cancelled. A plan to travel along the E.C.R is something that you can never ditch. Then explored hell a lot of options and settled on Yercaud. Plan to Yercaud looked good, it’s closer to Bangalore and it is not expected to be crowded during this time. Pondicherry was over-crowded and all rates hiked up, a lot of carnivals should be the reason is what one of my friends guessed. Well scrapping out the Pondi trip had nothing to do with the crowd or the hiked-up rates. And not the carnivals for sure!. For some reason, Ooty came up in between but was rejected many times considering a few extra kilometers that we might have to travel (over a hundred and fifty extra approx). But what the hell, got a car and five guys all charged up for the trip, so why not Ooty.

Plan was simple. I don’t like planning in the first case and things have always worked better unplanned. We happened to do a lil of planning for the Pondi trip just coz there was a 3 month old kid which was supposed to accompany us. Now that Pondi trip is scrapped out, it was just five of us. Ram woke his car up from the shed and in a few mins, we were all together sitting in the car, me, Shekhar, Ram, Priyatham and Venkat, all set to leave.


The Begining

Me and Ram were supposed to drive through the highway which was the most interesting part. We started somewhere during the morning and crossing the city limits was a challenge in its own ways. We hit the highway a couple of minutes later, something that we had been waiting for a long time. Considering the fact that we had taken close to 600 snaps during this trip, I guess these pics can describe the trip better than what I can with words.

The Long ride

Green Field

Lunch on the (High)way

Old car

A good lunch would mean a lot of energy; a long highway would mean a lot of speed. Both together would mean a lot of fun.

With five buffaloes and fan turned on in the car (Photo courtesy - Shekhar)

Forest check post - Tamil Nadu border (Getting closer to Ooty!)

Accident on the way (One of 'em)

Peacock

This was the last good thing that I can talk about in the rest of the trip towards Ooty. Roads were messed up and it was a real roller-coaster ride. The car could not literally move at any speed greater than 5 Km/hr in most of the parts of the road going forward. Travelling up-hill was kewl in it's own ways, with around 36 sexy hair-pin bends and place getting colder and colder as we moved up. It was just before climbing up that we heard that the temperature could go less than 0 degrees which made things really exciting. Being in South India most of my life, and considering how 'cool' the weather is in Chennai all through the year, this was something that I had never imagined would happen anytime soon. Would we really get to see frozen water? Well anyways...

Ooty

It took close to an hour is my guess to climb the hill and hey, we had reached what everyone in the car had been waiting for, we had reached Ooty! It should have been night, I guess, but it gets darker sooner is what we heard later. The fountain during the night was a great welcome.

The Fountain

Place was super kewl and what was left was, oops we realized, find a place to stay that night. Finding a guy on the road (a broker probably) didn't take time though. He took us to a couple of places (imagine 6 in the car now) and we happened to like the first place we saw the best. A peaceful cottage somewhere inside. The third and fourth room in the cottage might be given to other tourists, the owner warned. But who cares. Got into a little of negotiations and stuff, formality sake since the rates he quoted anyway sounded OK. A cook who could take orders and make stuff for us made the place even more interesting. Ordered a lot of food, dumped the bags into the room, and set out for a short walk. A real peaceful place, I should say. At least during this time, which was not supposed to be 'season-time' there. Found an ATM on the way, none of us had a penny mind you. ATM was not crowded at all and no Q to get the money. It is good to take your own money without standing in Q, I realized.

Not much of shopping at this time since all the shops close 'early' during this season. Climate was superb, it should be close to 3 degrees is what we heard. 'It can go further down as mid-night approaches' the localities claimed. Got some local 'platform' shop selling some monkey-caps. Not that it was great but it seemed to be a fashion there. For 10 bucks, you don't expect some woolen cap anyway. Each one of us got one, and walked our way back to our cottage.

Food was ready by then, parked the car in a better place, it was a whole different experience trying to stuff the car into the so-called shed in a hill, really. Anyway that was done and food was great. But it was a long day, a sleepless previous night, long hours of drive, bad roads during the second half of the journey, and we were all dead tired. That doesn't mean we should sleep but we were more interested in the early-morning Ooty to catch the sunrise and decided to hit the sack.

Thick woolen blankets, warm inside the cottage, bloody tired we were, what more do you need. Off we went to sleep.

To be continued...

Evolution

I kind of felt unfair on my part to have thought a hundred times before purchasing my music player a couple of months back wondering if it would do justice to hold the music collection after looking at the picture below. The music player could hold songs until it hits the 1 GB size is what the ads on the internet claimed.



Apparently, this one happens to be a hard disk with 5MB of storage size and weighed over a ton launched by IMB in September 1956. 305 RAMAC - the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). I doubt if this would be good enough to hold one 5 min 192 kbps song in it.

Photo Source - An email forward.
Not that I am a great fan of those email forwards that build up one dumb suspense by making you scroll down a hundred kilometres to finally break a supposed-to-be great message and a 'Read this and send it to a hundred people and you would receive a huge surprise the next day' offer. This huge surprise is never gonna come and am never ever gonna forward any of these emails.

Renovation

I was just taking a look at this blog, and realized this is as disorganized as things can get. Just as how muddled my life is. There are so many things that I wanted to change - add, remove, organize, customize, cleanup and nothing has been happening.

Kind of decided to sit and put these 'planned' changes down here, probably not to do *all* these things because that's the way I am, but rather to at least let these so-called thoughts sit here in peace. Well, I still do plan to do these as part of the 'Renovation' but anyways.

1. Update blog more frequently. Okay this might not probably happen because it depends on where, what and when I think.

2. Small posts. Smaller many posts are better than bigger few posts, they say. Not that I want 'em long, but at least let this one not be.

3. Change the background color from black. No, this kind of goes with what I think. Doesn't it?

4. For God's sake, remove those 'Edit-Me' links on the right. Yes, I would. Sometime.

5. Add the list of blogs I visit often, a 'Friend's list' types. Very important.

6. Pull the 'Counter' from right at the bottom to somewhere up. It's pretty experienced to climb up, I think.

Okay more of this later.

When the world is sleeping...

There are a few things that you wouldn't want to write about, and just leaving the blog idle for quite a while ain't any solution to that. Well but writing just about that is, probably.

Waking up early in the morning is something that I can never think of and have never been used to. Never. Most of the time, you don't get to do what you want to, and a few weeks back, I just had do it. Yes, wake up before sunrise to catch an early morning train.

Traveling by early train would mean waking up just on time, dumping all the scattered clothes around into the bag, checking the mails (yep that's a must), running a few meters down the street, realize that you forgot something that had to come along with you, run back home only to find that what you want is not in your room but safely sitting in your bag. Run back to the streets to take an Auto-Rickshaw (aKa rick, auto etc.) in all hopes to not see an empty platform when you reach the railway station. And all this happened that day.

I was kinda surprised to see a couple of these ricks roaming in the roads. Who would want to roam about in the empty streets early in the morning, missing sleep on top of that. This had always puzzled me ever since I was a lil kid not wanting to wake up early and travel somewhere. These ricks are seen on the roads all through the day. It's kinda tough to wake up early morning everyday in hopes of finding someone who is going to travel quite a distance and tip him a lil more than the meter (well if at all that was used). Something that can be compared to sitting in some IT company on bench in search of someone to get you some work.

But this kind of made my early morning search for a rick quite simple. I in some ways expected this guy to not agree on some rate since this is early morning and he got the whole day to wait for a better pay (maybe for a shorter trip too) and early-birds are 'expected' to be brisk and things which means more argument. Or so I thought. To my surprise, this guy hardly showed any interest in how much he is going to be paid, and all he wanted to know is where this rick needs to take me and a stare at the road ahead, which I later understood is a 'yes' to the journey. Am I still sleeping?

Our approximately 8 Km journey started and everything was just unusual. There were no attempts to rip the rick, no piercing through two vehicles that are so close to each other that you would doubt if a two wheeler could pass through it, and no constant mumbling from a dissatisfied rick driver about an unfair negotiation of the rates (which didn't happen in the first place). Early mornings have always been unusual.

It's been a couple of minutes and I could not resist from knowing the reason behind this early-morning hunt for passengers. And the obvious question - "So what time did you start work?". I probably should have thought twice before asking this. Or probably not. After a few seconds of silence came the answer, which at first didn't make any sense to me.

At 7.

At 7? There is still a lot of time for that.

No, it is at 7, last night.

Something that I didn't expect. Something that probably answers the reason for the indifference, the reason for the speed at which the rick is moving, the reason for no honking and on top of all that, the reason for not being bothered on how much he is going to be paid!

So do you work during the nights?

Yes.

Do you have some break in between to work during the day?

No, I work during the nights all through the year.

I had heard of some who rent their ricks to drivers where drivers get a commission and the owner gets the bigger chunk. But in that case, they usually rotate the night-shifts with more than one driver to see some balance. But it didn't happen to be the case here.

The rick driver continues...

I own this rick and have been in the nights for the past 18 years. The rates during the nights are higher (usually double) and it pays me better. Usually start my work at around 7 in the evening. Starting work at 7 in the evening and running all through the night means you get the 'busy' evenings to do a lot of quick trips *and* the deserted but 'better-paying' night trips.

Interesting, but strange. Now the driver doesn't want to stop, he found someone with whom he could talk. He now can talk on what he is doing and what his work is like, when the world is sleeping... Something that he probably couldn't for years.

He continues...

My usual day (rather night) starts at 7 in the evening in a place that is crowded like T. Nagar and you get some quick short 'good-paying' trips. You cannot afford to miss the evening traffic to make a couple of bucks since you never know how the night is going to be. Usually, you are sure to get four to five trips which mean approximately 200 to 250 bucks. But this might go up to 300 or even 350 if it turns out to be a good day. The whole point about the night thing is about the evening trips to make sure you don't go back home empty handed.

The whole night thing is about evening trips? Then why not start during the day and work till the evening, but I didn't dare to question him at this point, the nocturnal poor soul has just started talking.

Well, maybe getting up early in the morning is not the toughest thing on earth.

He continues...

Nights are always un-predictable. (Yes, why not, I thought). There are sometimes when you get a trip which happens to be urgent and you need to take them to a long distance, and you get the double of what you would normally get during the day. Double of a big amount is even bigger. And sometimes, you get two of them and what you earn during the evenings becomes nothing when compared to that.

I could see he was excited about this, but this excitement didn't hold good for long.

He continues...

But, that is a very rare thing to happen. Usually nights are when you have what you earned during the evenings and get back home with just that. You never know which person has a flight to catch during the night to be in that place to pick him up and drop him in the airport. It just has to happen.

There was silence and I didn't know if he was too tired to talk after a whole night's work or he was just upset about the way things are. He had stopped at a signal. It was too early for signals to be switched on and this signal was still not on. Kind of strange since ricks never stop for signals, on or off. I liked it since this is no roller-coaster ride that usually is, but was not used to it. It took sometime for him to scan the road on the left and right, decide that nothing on earth is going to travel that fast to hit us while crossing the road, and then set his rick back to action. But this was not all, there was more to come.

He decides to continue...

It sometimes happens that you do not get enough trips during the evenings or the nights. That is the reason I work until 7 in the morning.

Okay now what is that? Work during the evenings to catch the crowd, during the nights to get paid more for a shorter trip, and now during the day? I thought.

Continues...

Usually, the best place to halt during the early morning is a railway station or the airport. Airport is better considering its distance from the city but you need to travel to the airport empty to get a passenger from there which doesn't work out well most of the times. What if you don't get anyone while returning back also? In this case, the best place is the railway station just before some early morning trains would reach from other cities. That would usually be the last trip. The longer this trip is, the longer my work would go. This usually happens to be a long trip and you can easily make up to 100 bucks during that time. Depending on when this lets me to get back, I would hit back home, have a cup of tea, a piece of bun, a beedi, and go to sleep.

I really didn't want to know more about his family and things fearing some more bad news on that part. Maybe he has a family waiting for him, but how could he manage a living like this for the past 18 years? The worst part is after all this work, he does not want his self-owned rick to take rest when he is resting. He had managed to arrange another driver, who would work during the day, where he would take a commission and give the rest to this owner. He earns when he is sleeping too.

He was too worried about the money that he spends for his so-called breakfast and beedi and justifies that letting his rick for a day trip would help him with that. And, he would also extend his 6-day work week to a 7-day work week if it happens to be a not-so-good week for him. For money, he said. Huh, money? Okay what next? But, I didn't want to ask him.

I could now see the railway station come closer.

Continues...

We have reached and you have brought me to the right place. I am good to take my last trip, the early morning trains would arrive in sometime. I had not planned to extend my work beyond this trip today but since I am in the railway station anyway, it could get me a couple of more bucks. Could I drop you outside the station?

I could not digest this, was he going to take another one today. For money. Or whatever. All I could do was thank him for the trip and tip him 10 bucks more. First reason being he didn't argue for more, and second because he deserved it. And yes, I knew him better than what I did before.

He preferred to drop me out so that he could place his rick in a strategic position to catch his next pray, and keep himself ahead of other 'real' early-birds who would hit this place in sometime to start their day's work. I remember they used to say "early bird catches the worm". Well not anymore, probably we got to re-think about that. What about the birds that do not sleep at all?

Online Networking - A boon or a bane?

There’s more to online networking than catching up with friends, the darker side to this form of so-called virtual social interaction. Wondering what this is all about? You are sure not to miss this article - click here.

It is really unfortunate that a network community that once helped me find my good old friends, some of whom I happened to meet after more than a decade is now turning into a virtual mess. A few things that your profile in the networking site can reveal to a stranger are your name, age, frraands (that's how the word 'friend' is usually referred to as by many in this community), interests, school, college, girl friend(s)/boy friend(s), family snaps, location up to the level of which street you are in and some of your well-kept childhood secrets. I mean everything.

Sounds like a devil in disguise? Well not really. As far as you know what to put and what not place in your profile, things are just going to be fine, hopefully. So what's the whole deal about this new virtual interaction - a boon or a bane?

What's in a Name?

I guess it's high time I write about the crap behind parthaslair. It might just mean different things when you throw a glance at it.

Here are some of 'em
parthas liar (Partha s a liar) - no, believe me
partha slair (Partha s a slayer) - Oops

Okay, here is what it was intended to mean

Partha's Lair
lair (lâr) -noun The den or dwelling of a wild animal. (read wild thoughts, well not wild all the time :-) )

To Go or Not to Go

Stop when Red is on, Go when Green is on, Take a snap when both are on :-)


PS: A snap that I had taken at around 8 on a busy Friday evening

Pluto - A big blow indeed

Sea water turns sweet, alarm on Mumbai-bound U.S. plane, the Israel-Lebanon conflict, youngsters run riot in city, encroachments, floods and hey Pluto is no more a planet. Really interesting that Pluto managed to reserve a place for itself in most of the leading news papers' Front Page. Something that it couldn't as a planet during the last 76 years.

Looks like there had been much discussion about whether Pluto, which until lately was considered the outermost planet of the solar system, should even be counted as one of the planets. And the result? It had to step down of one of the most glorious status ever of being a 'planet' only to be declared a 'dwarf planet'.

I couldn't stop digging into this more when I saw this in the headlines, probably coz of my little dream of getting into astronomy during the schooling days. Never mind. A quick look at Pluto's history would let you realise that it had been a fascinating planetary object in itself. Interestingly, Pluto proved a disappointment after its discovery, as it was much smaller and fainter than expected. The planet was initially thought to have a mass six times that of the earth which implied that Pluto was an unusually dense planet (for whatever reason that may be). All this changed in 1978, when Pluto’s satellite, Charon, was discovered. This showed that the mass of Pluto was only 1/400 of the earth making it only somewhat denser than water, much smaller than the moon in size.

Spending most of my life with computers these days, why the astronomers approved a 'new' definition of a planet that demoted Pluto to a lesser category might not make much sense to me. But Pluto ain't any IT Pro to get lethargic after a bad review. Well the number of planets has gone down by one and it's just a good news to all the kids struggling to remember the planet names during their exams. I wonder what would a site like www.nineplanets.org do, now that there are just eight of 'em? How would your little sister use your old physics text book, which in turn was borrowed from someone else a year ago?

I am not sure how upset Pluto probably is hearing the news, but just in case you are wondering if there is someone who just got frustrated, you should consider reading this.

If this is the fate of a planet, oops a dwarf planet which worked real hard circling the sun with a period of 248 years (oops!), I wonder what would be the fate of other planets going forward, hey Earth, you reading this?

The Job-Hoppers

This one is dedicated to all the IT pros who consider it is their right to get paid once every month and their duty to jump from one company to another at least once every year - The Job-Hoppers

Note: Anything that follows will revolve around IT pros who have less than say 3 or 4 years of experience, I am not sure if it is the same with the other set and haven't had a chance to experience it myself.

Okay before I start this, I thought it would be more appropriate to include some of the jargons that one cannot do without for reading what would follow, so here goes a few of 'em.

It would always make sense to start with the one that happens the most, which is spoken about the most, something that you would never imagine to happen and something that any normal company can't do without, and the one that flashes in my mind is the "bench". If you are in bench, it means that company has just taken in too many people and sweet enough to recognize you as one of the "potential" candidates to get paid for doing nothing, yes nothing. Some of the things that might help you be occupied during this time are email forwards, email forwards and email forwards. Bench period can typically range from a couple of days to god knows how long. They say idle mind is the devil's workshop, the devil in you starts thinking, and off goes a mail to a hundred different ids, all in the hopes of getting out of this "dream" land, yes that's what you get to do when you don't have the forwards to entertain you, hoping to find a better place, to stay away from the bench, only to land up in a place which turns out to be even worse. I just can't imagine the reason for such a concept; I have heard that the "lucky" ones in bench play a good back-up role considering the numer of job-hoppers. Yes, projects can't come to a halt when someone leaves and you need to have back-ups ready to replace 'em, but a guy can't be put in bench until someone leaves either. If people leave, you get more people than required and put 'em in bench, if they are in bench, they leave of boredom, idleness and frustration, if they leave 'coz of bench, why put 'em in bench at all.

The next one that I cannot miss out on is "paper". This is what this whole damn thing is about! "Putting paper" as it is commonly called. This is when an IT pro decides to take the prestigious decision of quitting the company and moving to another place. This happens so often that the common question about your work from a friend of yours whom you get to meet after a year is "Where are you working now" and no more "How is work"! The act of putting paper is "silently" executed so well at times that it might just make you wonder as to what is so big in it that one has to be this over the top secretive about it. But this is just one side of it, it is mostly one of the much celebrated period in one's "corporate" life too. There are some obvious ways to find out if someone had just put their papers - The most common one is when you notice this guy spending just all his time in a cabin with his manager, ideally positioned far away from the rest of the world, discussing something that you would never make a right guess on what that would be all about. This can happen even more when there has been a guy who had been in this company for around two years, and there comes a new one into this company with the same profile as this guy getting a few bucks more than him. This guy had been slogging here for the past two years only to see a new person come in with his same profile and getting paid better?

Well the company is not at fault always, as it might have sounded until now. Expectations are just too high. The mind-set of "yearly" promotions and onsite being the only goal in life often leads you to press the red-button - the paper. The concept of how you grow is often totally different from how it could have possible been, like how it is in any other industry, like how it is in the other parts of the world. The hope to see a new designation every time you receive your appraisal letter is something that one cannot probably see in any other place. And when this change does not happen, what best can someone think of, other than the paper. Probably these are things that can exist in any industry but onsite is definitely not one such thing. Onsite is when you get to fly out of the country, for work I suppose. Onsites are at times compared to be something equivalent to your honeymoon period. It's not uncommon for companies to be rated based on the "number" of onsites that they might possibly have in store for you. When there are two who are eligible for the onsite and just one who can be sent, our dear manager puts in all his brains to make sure he is not going to see an empty seat in his office due to this, manages to send the better one off to the honeymoon promising stars and moons to the other guy. Stars and moons are nothing when onsite is missed, this guy gets ready to run out of this hell, to probably land in another. The other guy gets back from onsite, after having a lot of fun, making a lot of money, doing a little work with just one thing in his mind. Now that he has got an onsite, the next one is definitely going to the other one. Our guy is not happy with this, well what is life without any onsite, he had been living for it after all. He is now all set to hunt for the next best place, his quest for onsite begins, again.

Now when there is a new guy who is joining, the company had taken him in since they could not do without one additional guy and desperately needed someone with that profile. This guy is already in another place and this company should take one step forward to pull this guy in, and fix on a pay which is a couple of bucks greater than what the other guys who have been in the company for over two years are getting. Well finally, if one guy comes in, the other goes out and this continues, just continues.

There is one more thing that you would have probably expected to see a little earlier, something that you would have guessed would be the evil spirit behind the paper, the pay cheque. This is something that you can never workout on a balance between what you think you should get and what your manager thinks you should get. Something more than what you expect is the best thing that could happen but that's only until you hear someone say numbers greater than yours. What else can simulate the devil in you better than this?

Leaving a company might not be just as simple as it probably sounds. There are certain things that one gets to realize only during the last few days. You won't get to walk in to the same good-old office, won't get to do the work that you had been doing all these days, won't get to see your "decorated" cubicle ever again and the worst of all will miss all the people with whom you had worked day in and out. They are not just people working with you anymore, they are now a few of your friends whom you will never want to miss. Things have gone too far by now, not-so-happy pay cheques, a missed onsite, bench and every other crap, it's just time to leave, leaving all the good things behind.

There are so many reasons that could make you finally use the red-button, well there should be quite a lot when it happens this often. This is just the tip of the iceberg, a few things that used to haunt my thoughts sometime back, and something that I don't want to dig too deep now. I can't talk about everything, well I don't want to, these are few things that you wouldn't want to think about, things that you wouldn't want to happen that often.

Huge state-of-the-art buildings, pool tables, swimming pool, gym with all imported equipments, cafeteria, A/C all through the day, vast parking lots - few things that you can see at my work-place and probably not at my dad's place. He worked in the same company for more than 35 years. I wish I could, and I hope I would.

Shall I blog?

Its kinda strange, to start blogging just after a few days of the infamous "ban" on a few blogging sites in the wake of the Mumbai blasts. The Indian government had momentarily clamped down around 17 blogs apparently deemed dangerous to the country and in the process, inadvertently cut off access to the other innumerable blogs.

"But in an effort to comply, the companies mistakenly blocked hundreds of other blogs hosted on the same servers." reported the TIME

Who's to be blamed - the government or the ISP, I am not sure but this has definitely raised a hundred questions on the rationale and motive behind blocking these blogs. The outcome of the ban had led to a flooding of posts on the net on ways to get around the ban and debating the government’s decision to block blogs.

"Experts believe that the government’s sudden move is aimed at thwarting the use of blogs (online journals) and websites by terrorists and their supporters." reported the Economic Times

"According to sources, the rationale for blocking these websites and blogs is to prevent foreign terrorists from communicating with the cell networks in India." added the Economic Times

Move to block a few of the public blogs is in no way going to help anyway, considering the number of private blogs and all the other ways to publish your thoughts on the net. Well if blocking the blogs would help in bringing down communication between the terrorist, I wonder what would be the fate if terrorists are found using the phones!

Well some consider that this does have some positive aspects too, this might be something that should no longer surprise (or shock?) people and probably expect more in the future too. With all this being said, if things go this way, I wonder if blogging would still be considered as mode to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and I am not sure if I will get to see this blog when I wake up tomorrow morning. Shall I blog?