An ode to friendship

It was Eid-Ul-Zuha yesterday, and though there is an Eid every year, this Eid was special for me. Ever since I have moved out of home for college, I have been away from home in Eid only a couple of times. Once in college and once a few years back on job. Now college is always fun, there are way too many friends around, it is almost like a home away from home. But the time I was at job, it really sucked. I had really missed home and I think I had never felt so homesick and desolate before that.

Footage from last year: My Birthday

This time I was again away from home for Eid, but now I am a family man [Cheesy.. I know ;)], and I live in a home and this was the first big festival we are alone (my wife and I).. It was wonderful, though I missed home a lot, but it was fun. We went to a friend's place in the morning and had friends at my place in the evening and at night. We did nothing much, just ate, talked junk [me doing most of the talking, to which I got a feedback that lately I am talking a lot;) ], called home, called friends and talked more. It was fun, the day reminded me of the importance of friends in life. Family is obviously important and cannot be replaced with anything else, but friends have their special place that cannot be filled with something else. I am grateful to have made a few very good friends for making me feel special.

दिये जलते हैं,
फूल खिलते हैं,
बड़ी मुश्किल से मगर,
दुनिया में दोस्त मिलते हैं!

Wheels of change

After a long pause, here I am, back to the random bakar. The thing about long pauses is that there is so much of an inertia to start again, you keep looking for the big bang to come back with (damn Newton!). Well, but then, mea culpa [One of early comments in code by one of my seniors who opened the doors for me, to the world of absurd comments].

Anyways, I am sure that no one would be interested to know what was keeping me busy; but just in case someone was wondering, well, I got married, switched jobs [after four wonderful years at my last company] and moved to a new place. New job came with new responsibilities, new team and a brand new product that we have to develop. In smaller setups this would typically boil down to ad-hoc meetings, filling every corner of the whiteboard which cannot be erased as no-one keeps meeting notes other than the faithful whiteboard, team huddling up every now and then around every other cubicle and every possible nook and corner for lack of enough meeting rooms (I remember we once huddled up in a restaurant where we had gone for a team outing but ended up talking about work). But in a larger organization where the meeting rooms are a-plenty, you got to "book" a meeting rooom in the outlook organizer for setting up a meeting. You got to send meeting "invitations" to all concerned parties and once the meeting has started, you got to send a "gentle reminder" to everyone to say that everyone should assemble (compared to the smaller setup where all you do is shout out loud, call people and start the "huddle"). One then shares his screen and someone else would take meeting notes and in an hour you would loose the meeting room to someone else who has booked it for the next slot and you walk out satisfied with the heated debate or with the joy of having scheduled a follow-up-meeting to discuss what was left incomplete :).

But that was about what was keeping me busy, the blog was about this new.. mmm... maybe I should call it a hobby... that I have developed of drawing cartoons whenever I have some free time. Hope you like it... :)

Again I am sure no one would be interested in knowing when I get free time to do all this junk, but in case you are wondering... in those long meetings when I dont find anything better to do and I have my notebook and a pen handy :)

Age of Empires

I am sure most of us would have played or at least would know what Age of Empires is. For the un-initiated, its a game where different players represent kingdoms. It is a game based on the simple paradigm, "Survival of the fittest". The fittest is the one with most resources, most land or most advanced. Countries start from some Age [Industrial Age for instance] and advance to Nuclear Age etc.

Well, I am not here to talk about the game. I came across this article about China building one of the most efficient power plants in the world. "China’s ability to generate its electricity more efficiently could be critical as the sector expands". It is doing everything it can to win this game. From Olympics to Technology and Infrastructure it is racing against the world's super powers, but India seems to be slowly panting along bogged with its baggage of greedy politicians and lazy beaurocrats, with us who dont seem to care a lot about where India goes. The infrastructure for common-wealth is nowhere near the target deadlines, it is apalling to see the "Sheru On Track" hoardings in Delhi, sometimes I wonder if Sheru knows that there is no track ahead.
I dont believe in cribbing and ranting. But it was really a helpless feeling to see this article. Maybe I should have stuck to Electrical Engineering and worked for Power Industry, maybe someone else did and I hope someone is working hard to put Indian Power India on the globe.