My sweet nephew and niece


Aren't they the sweetest and cutest things on this planet?

Five Months and counting..

A whole five months have passed since I joined my company its been one hell of a ride. A good one at it :) After a month long training we were made to put our learnings to practice. This involved skills on kite flying, dancing, and screaming the hell out of our brains with the Rock Concerts followed by strenous physical torture on the basketball field, and the TT tables of the campus. The fun was short lived though. They had then realized that although our skills in the above were great, we were far from their desired requirements on the IT front. And poof...another training. And now another....which will be followed by another and another and another.....basically its just gonna go on till they are certain we have brains. Sigh....a never ending scenario in my case. Its what one would call an infinite loop.

Start -> Does Shanim have the required intelligence? -> * If yes, Place in project ; * If no, Place in training -> Add another training to list -> Repeat query, if no re-iterate, else case yes.

Basically I've never been able to reach the "case yes" criteria as of yet. Hence, I'm enjoying the training :) But hey I ain't complaining, I'm joining my time in the company, its an absolutely lovely place to be in, not just for the chicks, but for the work culture and every bit of the company. Uhm.....guess I haven't mentioned the company's name yet have I? Its none other than the third best IT firm in India, the Rainbow flowered Wipro Techonolgies :) The place to be in!

Last night I'd met up with one of schoolmates at Indranagar. Sundays do change the whole traffic scene in Bangalore. The roads are more or less empty, and I love riding around in my ever-loving CBZ then. A quick trip on the Inner Ring road and through CMH, I finally got to where we had decided to meet. "Cake Walk" was our destination but to our luck, it was full. We decided then to move onto the Cafe Coffee Day at CMH - Full again, 12th Main...full....100ft Rd....Full...finally after a long ride into Jeevan Bhima Nagar CCD we found a space to sit! Phew! And this is with Coffee Days ever few metres in Bangalore. I wonder what it would have been without them. hmmmm....yeah I guess the Barissta at Leela would overflow then. Oh well back to what I was getting at. We had this conversation that kicked off with the traffic at Bangalore and moved onto VAT and Power distribution in India (which according to a mag which he'd read is poor in india with approximately 50% loss in distribution alone!).

What got most of my attention was his conversation on the traffic scenario. Its true, Bangalore does have its share of good roads, why it has good roads all over and not just in select regions but the catch? All roads lead to Rome they say, in Bangalore, its more like "All Roads lead to a galli". Wide roads that have over 3 lanes suddenly disappear into tiny half laned roads with the same volume of buses, cars and ricks plying. Its more like a funnel trying to stuff in as many cars as possible to their destinations (A good example beng the Inner Ring Road as you head towards Koramangala). What more, we have a junction or a traffic signal every few metres, on an avg 500m apart. Yep, these are the reasons for our gridlocks.

"What about Hosur Road?" would be your question. Yep that was mine too :) Local traffic and the devious plan on BMTC to place all bus stops immediately after a junction! We spend over 10 minutes waiting for all the bikes, ricks and tempos to cross over in a junction...say in Singasandra and just as we assume the road has been cleared for movement, a BMTC/Tamil bound bus decides to stop and take in passengers, taking in not just the hard shoulder but the left lane to prevent anyone from moving ahead.

For the first time, I seem to see a solution in the right direction by our govt. They're off to build an elevated highway. But what I can't seem to understand is that why couldn't they think of this ages earlier? Did they really have to wait this long?? Bangalore, 5 yrs ago was probably the best place to be in...lovely roads, great weather, beautiful green promenades, shady trees, sparkling lakes and the works! Now, when you think of Bangalore, you think of cars, bikes, cars, bikes and more cars, and dust all around. A prayer goes out to all those who decide to take the Hosur Road to work (Electronic City ie.) for we may not know which Hosur bound/Wipro/Infy bus or truck would run over him. Quite a contrast won't you all agree?

The world hasn't really ended and there's always a second chance, lets just all pray that things do get better and the present HDK govt. keep their word on bringin back the Bangalore that we all once knew to be the "Green City of India"

A Religion for you and a religion for me

A long conversation with a friend made me realise how narrow minded the whole world is....

It all started with a lousy forward which involved a kid's hand being run over by a vehicle all 'coz he had stolen food. The blame was targetted on Islam and the muslims who enforced the punishment on the poor kid. Kinda shocked me actually, seeing such a forward was nothing near amusing and I still can't understand why the acts of fundamentalists end up being blamed on the religion. I responded (yep the idiot that I was...i actually did) by saying that it was not the religion but the idiots who felt their religion preached violence and nonsense. This resulted in a huge debate on how that person's religion (not mentioning names or religion) was superior to others. Ok, it kinda got far and I had this lousy taste in my mouth at the end of the day....

First and foremost, I'm no orthodox believer of my religion, but the essence of my religion or any religion for that matter is nothing but love. Impart love, do good and be good. Although all religions seem to impart the same thing, why do we argue over the fine prints of the religion and make a big issue of the same? Does any1 have a clue on this?

I'm an Indian. A land where almost a zillion religions (literally) survive together and our laws promote secularism. But hey its not like we don't have our share of problems, we have our Muslim Leagues, VHPs and a billion other extremists who test the country's secularism but hey...wats the deal?? Why bother with such lousy arguments?? Life has better things which are far more important than religion. What makes a billion ppl around the world argue on religion and make a big deal out of it i can't seem to understand. Take a look at the US for example. All muslims according to them are extremists Jihadi terrorists. And this about a religion that talks about love for all humans.

Sigh...oh well this is more or less a lousy topic, but I just had to get some steam out. Oh well...sorry guys, shall get some better topic next time around..