The Hysteric Indian

Cricket India lost the World Cup in 2007,

The cricketers statuettes are burnt, Mobs attacked cricketers houses, Shouted slogans, Conducted rallies and media was raising its voice to its maximum to blame the cricketers, the board and the politicians! Did people realize that one team has to lose, when the other wins?

Cricket India won the World Cup in 2007 T20,

The cricket team was announced 100M rupees of prize money. Cricketers are in ad campaining in every news paper. Government declared lakhs of rupees worth gifts. The Mumbai roads were crammed for 40 Kilometers with people to see the Indian team, that arrived after the win. For them Cricketers are Gods! The Hockey team, the players of Indian National game were not even greeted by Government when they brought India the "Asia Cup"! huh!

Amitabh failed as an Entrepreneur :

The most revered film personality started a company called ABCL, which flopped losing millions. People are not even bothered to give him his meagre expenses!

Amitabh returns to Film Industry:

The then Prime minister IK Gujral, had a french beard. Nobody was bothered to even look at him. Amitabh, to make his both ends meet made a come back to film industry with a french beard... The next day I could see lot of Amitabh impostors in my office too! India today Cover page has Amitabh, and it closed with a photograph of Amitabh, for nothing except drama that he has done in his entire life but before a camera!

Nagarjuna grows hair:

I once visited Hyderabad 2 years back and saw lot of ruffians around. I enquired my friend. He said that to grow hair to shoulders is the new fashion, set by Nagarjuna, for his film "Super"! Damn!

Chiranjeevis Son makes Debut in films:

The other day I was watching "Maa" TV. The TV had a full coverage of Chiruta movie premier, interviewing all film personalities. It makes sense for 10 mins... 20 mins... Is it worth hours of airtime?

Why are we so crazy about the film personalities, cricketers and not about scientists, philosophers? This is the reason why our country faces brain drain. We don't give one damn value to brainy people. We are only after drama! Our day starts with a film song and ends with one. Our nights burn the oil to see Cricket matches. Did we ever think of improving India by putting our this so called "entertainment time" to a "constructive work".

If the crowd that Mumbai has gathered on the Cricketers return, has gone to any Government hospital for 10 minutes, it would have cleansed the corruption there. If it went to any government office there, the projects would have seen a light. If they went took one brick each, they would have built a 10 KM China wall. If they had given 10 rupees of their money to a red cross society, that would have made 100 families get a square meal for their life.

When will we learn all this? Are we a developed Country or still a developing country. Ignorance and the lack of right education in India are the causes for not setting the right goal to youth!

Professional Chat Etiquette

Instant messaging has become a vital part and a role player in the IT sector. The days are long gone when we used to open Yahoo messenger or a MSN Messenger to talk to our friends in a net cafe. We have found the ease of "pinging" our friend who is next to us than to turn to him and say "Hi dude!". It is not pathetic, but its the nature of the work that has made us adopt "typing of data an easy method than to dictate it!". With this kind of workplaces becoming Professional Chat rooms, there is every need to define the standards of chatting in a professional environment. Because people in corporate world are no college going and have earned respect over the years and expect a decent and complete words than chat jargon and short cuts. Lets see some sample Cases
Case 1 : New employee right from college joins a company, sees his boss online and wishes him!
Employee : Hey Boss! Howdy!
Boss : $#@#$%^&*&^(

Moral : Be polite and use correct language with the superiors

Case 2 : Employee suddenly chats with manager in his usual tone to his colleagues
Employee : Hi Andy! Did ya get my sent N pic, You must have lkd it?
Manager: What the hell you are talking!
(Obviously Customer didn't receive what Employee sent, but interpreted it "Hi Andy! Did you get my sent Nude Picture, You must have licked it!" where the employee actually meant "Hi Andy, did you get my sent Niagara picture, you must have liked it!") The variance is too huge

Moral : Don't use abbreviations in a professional chat, it could lead to even firing from job

Case 3: Employee gets a new opportunity to talk to the customer regarding some more details required for a work request the customer sent
Employee :
Hi Mike,
I realize that the request you sent is not complete. Send me other details immediately. Otherwise, I can't complete the work in time!
Thanks
John

Customer : in his copy to Manager
Hi Rob,
I see one of your resources John is not very impressed with the work we got, Can we get a replacement for him in the next one week?
Sincerely
Mike

Moral : Employee is fired! Use courteous language with your superiors or customers.


After looking at the above three cases, we remember many others when we were embarrassed with such chats, if you really are sensitive to people's way of talking. Let me list for you a few things which one must adhere to while doing a Professional Chat.

1. Use proper language with all the employees, unless the other person is too intimate to you, or you have known him for long time.
2. Don't use abbreviations or Chat jargon (ASAP, BRB, LOL, C U will be alright to some extent but not entirely). Use complete words or till they convey the right meaning. For example, to say "appointment", you can say "apptmt" and not "aptmt" which is "apartment". Never use abbreviations with superiors. They least expect it from you.
3. Show courtesy in every request you make and every "No" you say. If some body requests you something, and you are unable to do it, never say "No, I can't do it", rather say "I am sorry, I feel I may not be able to". The former shows your incapability and your headstrong attitude, while the latter shows your amicability and respectful attitude.
4. When trying to message others for more than a minute, ask them , if they have time for you. Other person has not added already your calendar entry for you for 30 minutes when you start talking to him/her
5. When you need help from others, be polite and humble. Do not demand help.
6. Be enthusiastic when the other person chats with you. That creates an impression of your liveliness.
7. Treat your new subordinates as your new friends and be polite to them. They might not be aware of your rules and regulations. Make them aware of first, before commenting their ways of talking.
8. Don't be rude any time. You can put your thoughts humorously than in a rude fashion.
9. While pasting web links. Brief the other person what it is before hand. He is not free to just click on whatever you send. He might be in a happy mood about his new born baby; You send him the link of "100 people dead in a plane crash".. Does it make sense to him?
10. Use Thanks/Sorry when you are at fault. Don't let your ego rule the situation. When ego rules, You may have to search another place to work.

Well the list goes on! But these principles would definitely work out best for you in your corporate ladder. All the best!

Shit on roads, Pee on walls, Spit on others!

I bought a new pair of sport shoes, a good make, shelled out 2K for it. I wore it in the evening the other day, proud of my new possession and was walking on the road, legally on the correct side. I was thinking of how good I would look with new shoes and was searching for answers my co athletes would ask me about shoes!
Aaargh! I landed my foot into a clutter of Spits on the road! Disgusting! I cleaned my foot on the nearby grass and started again, cursing all those sanctimonious sons of bitches! May be I was a little rude, but I too had a disgusting time.
A few months back I was climbing the steps of a Old Government building, every corner of the stair case is decorated with a red patch of red color, looked as if the color was sprinkled! Yes! you got it right its the Pan-Spit! These pan eaters are majorly from North part of India, though I don't rule out some cultured brutes among ourselves. Who will teach them decency, hygiene and cleanliness. I wonder if they spit in every corner of their houses also, or they spit only in other's houses! huh... How could their wives stay with those rotten mouths! Don't say women also are the same!
One day while trying to avoid a traffic jam, I took a small road which is generally deserted. I reached home early and parked my bike in front of my house, just before my living hall. Soon after I refreshed and was looking through the window of the living room, I realized my bike is stinking! Damn! I cut some cakes on road!, some are by cattle and some are by Human Cattle! When they have public latrines constructed every where, why do these people make the roads a fire place to walk! Don't they feel like relieved if they don't sit in open air, observing people go by!
Jago India Jago, Sikhao kuch, Seekho kuch! Doosron ko takleef mat do!

Software Engineers, are they really?

A few years back I was talking to a so called "Software Engineer" in Bangalore... He wanted to install "Linux in Windows"! I helped him say "Linux and Windows together". Of course, we got tools which dub Linux on Windows now. But that was not the case then. I was surprised to know that he has a work experience of 5 years in the industry and cannot install a operating system. I fear how many of us can!

I was looking for the meaning of "Engineer" in the word-web on my desktop, it says "A person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems" . And we are software Engineers!

A few months later a manager of mine came to me, when I was re engineering some program I put the code on the left and was writing into document on right. Both windows were together and visible on left and right of the monitor, so that I don't have to keep either one of them in background and while working on the other. He exclaimed, "How could you do that? you must be very smart!"

Another incident that happened with my friend, when his manager asked him, "I copied the content from the desktop using mouse-click, can I disconnect the mouse and attach to another computer and paste it there!"...A bit innovative :) but not possible with current state of technology. However mouse needs a power supply to retain the information and a memory in itself, which will complicate things and makes mouse a USB memory stick and not a mouse!

One manager in a IT company, suddenly realizes that she sent a wrong email to the other person, and in a hurry to stop the email, she switches off the monitor and relaxes.... Had this been CPU power or a network card, it might have helped! Brains!

Are we lacking the spirit of being an Engineer when we got into secured jobs with decent money in hands? Engineer is no less to a scientist and should always swim against the stream to find the best ways to do the job. Only dead fish go with the stream!

One should know in the IT industry at least to install, remove the software and Operating systems. One should know how to partition a disk, what is a boot sector and what is a bootable disk. One should know that there exist shortcut keys on the Operating systems, the differences between a Operating system and a Software. The difference between a DLL and a EXE, a Shell Script and a executable, the development environment and the run-time environment. One should know what tools would ease his day to day work. I don't feel a Engineer is a labour who does, what he is told. He should know what is the problem, known solutions, and should be enthusiastic to find a new solution to any existing problem.

The educational institutions have mushroomed with lack of solid infrastructure to groom the youth and the parents just aspire their sons be called as "Engineers", whether or not they are actually! Pitiable situation.