Thank God Its Black Friday ---

The term "Black Friday" originally was named because of the heavy traffic on that day. Its a day when most of the shops open at 5 am (thrusday all the shops are closed) and people (Desis, Chinki, Caucasians, Afro etc), all ages from 5 to 75 stand rather sleep(with sleeping bags) in the queue from 7 pm previous night (yea 10 hrs ahead 0f opening time). The reason is that stores would have some item sold at half price with limited quantity 10 or 20. Its all the supply Demand bull. It's on this day people have no time for sorry n please n appreciate. You might be wondering whats so special of this TG day shopping, well U can' get a (Wireless Mouse, Blue Tooth head set, Creative Noise Canceling head set, 2 Gb SD card all for Free of Cost yea I mean 0$ after filling the laborious PIA rebates) on other days. The best part is that if you miss out or fill in the wrong info on rebate forms then the shopkeepers would say thanks for giving .

Well this was how we (Saurab,Sunder,Vinit n Myself ) started our thanks giving shopping last year. 11 pm to 2 am repairing vinit's car (fixing his head light), Half went to Best Buy n Half went to Circuit City and remaining to CompUSA (Sholay's Asrani stlye) . It was relatively warm that day - 2 C (yea when it was -13 C some days back), and standing the queue for 3 hrs was not that easy. (Yea just remembered previous thanks giving it was -17 C).

5 am was when our dreams turned tangible, door opened and bang 500 people jumped into the shop. Got the flier and quickly headed towards the items. Just like "Maine Pyar Kiya"s dialog -- "No sorry No thank you " was our policy. Because if u utter sorry then next sec you would feel sorry for missing an item. Just put your head down and grab the items. At times grabbed items from some one else hand. Darwin would be proud that his theory "Survival of Fittest works here". In next 1 hr we were filling our shopping carts and headed towards what was called Moksha -- yea billing. Another 30 and we were out, feeling on top of the world. I felt one step above that because-- the billing guy had forgotten to bill one of my items. woooppeee.

Finally at 11 am when we were done with phase 2 and 3 of shopping we headed towards the bed. My roomie had just woken up, told Good Morning and slept. Next 1 week all we were doing was filling rebates and rebates. The real PIA. (Pain In Ass)

This Thanks Giving Shopping was rather non existential, no motivation and as no company to shop. Yea forgot I was in office and blogging this blog.

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Picture Abhi Baaki Hai doston............

What's common between Deepika Padukone, Richard Illingworth(Eng), Nilesh Kulkarni(IND)--- they all have one of the greatest Debut any one can ever dream off. Yup Wicket on the first ball.

I have not seen a better actor (female) who having a better debut than namma (our) Mount Caramel Deepika, n boy she is one of those actors(female) who looks fabulousness and acts great is an understatement.

OK OK - OK is OK ..... let me come back to the movie-- U guessed it OOOM SHANTI OOM. This Deepaavali I wanted to do some thing really memorable, what better can it be watching OSO n blogging about it. So at 5 pm got the tickets(Online), and was on I-101 "freeway" at 5:15 in the carpool lane along with my colleague. They say "Agar dil sey chaho to Khuda bhi milajata hai, freeway to use bahut maamuli hai". They say Friday 5 - 7 pm never travel on I-101, i just took the challenge. For the next 1 hr I was traveling, driving aka breaking and reached Century theaters at 6:35 (yup only 1 hr for 22 miles). To be frank its one of the worst theaters that I have ever visited, dirty seats, bad seating arrangements, horrible sounds, blore's Urvashi theater was 10 times better.

The movie through out was like a photo slide shows, there was no smooth transition between scenes, but each slides were good. The movie lacked richness n intensity n class, the sets looked very cheap, Deepika appeared top heroine only from SRK point of view. Even the filmfare scene looked like a 2nd degree set and felt like people were actually acting. It looked like "Diwali's Ram Leela", but full points to execution of the scene. Gosh getting over 30 actors all well dressed on one stage is amazing. Akshay Kumar's cameo was the best.

The movie was more like a Buffet lunch in bay area, the best thing you can get for 10 bucks, n items packaged into one component. Individually you wouldn't have liked each item, but the end of day it would fill your mind n stomach. The one thing that movie lacked is intensity what Chak De INDIA had & it would be SRK top performance till date. OSO was more quantity rather that quality, but in today's zaalim world we prefer quantity over quality. You would have a Buffet over single custom menu meal-- Don't you think so?

I just loved the ending for the movie rather that showing "THE END " or some fundu shayeri, all the people associated with OSO both onscreen n offscreen did a final ramp. The technicians must have felt on top of the world. The best part of our theater was the at 10:12 the next show guyz started to pour in before people of our shows had left. At one point we had like 2 batch of people, felt so much like INDIA, the crowd, yelling, shouting we couldn't go out they couldn't come in.

All I felt was "Picture Abhi Baaki Hai doston............"........

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Quit INDIA wih MOMENTUM part 1

Its not a spelling mistake -- its momentum ; mass * velocity.

The memories of 8 th Aug 2005, the day I left INDIA to pursue my master's in U S is still fresh in my mind. I had a 3 am AI 127 flight to Chicago via Mumbai Frankfurt, reached airport at 11 pm. My parents sister and my 2 uncles plus family had come to see me off. Before which I had "aathi " , "pooja" and teeka as well. I felt as if I leaving for KARGIL. After the initial rooha dhoona (my sister especially) went in and checked in my luggage(s). I just had 3 - 32 kilos suitcases, & a 15 kilo carry bag with me (80 kilos).

By then I had met this guy lets call him Dr Sanjeev, who had 3 - 32 kilos suitcase + 15 kilo carry bag + 5 kg leather jacket + 3 big medical books trying to find some one to carry his extra luggages. I was successful in avoiding him. Cleared the security n went into the lounge. At 2 am came in the announcement AI 127 is delayed by 2 hrs. For the next 2 hrs we 5 students had a good time chatting and eating. Finally 5 am we boarded the flight. These was this guy with long beard n cap (got the picture :)) who scared me a lot.

Sitting in my first international flight trying to stay calm n compose, beside me was this interesting fellow student. She had some weird n scary n irritating questions to me. We exchanged names. She began
She: "You know this is my first international flight" ,
me : so is mine
"First time I am leaving my parents you know",
me : so am I
She: "What if our luggages get lost ",
me: may be baggage claim.
" Did u read about the rains in Mumbai rains ?",
me :Ya hope the flight doesn't skid. -- she got a bit scared.
Are we going via london or germany.
me : Frankfurt didn't you see the itinerary,
That bearded guy was sitting adjacent to me. She was irritating, he was scaring me.
Finally the flight took off, she got so scared that see stopped speaking for next hr. I was relieved.

We then boarded at Mumbai, my first impression was "Airport or Railway station". It reminded me of CST (VT) station. Due to mumbai rains, the flight was delayed by 2 more hrs. I told that female "MATCH DELAYED DUE TO WET OUT FIELD". Seriously she had no clue what I spoke. We were then given a complementary breakfast at airport which we call called Passage to U S food. Good thing about AI is that food deterioration is gradual. Its like tunnel worse worser worsest (hahhaha).

Finally the flight took from Mumbai at 10 am with MOMENTUM i.e. mass * velocity. So it was a true QUIT INDIA with MOMENTUM.

to be continued ...

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Profession Caste

Caste system in Hinduism is based on what hi/her ancestor were working as.
If they were Pujari's then they would end up being Brahman. If they were warrior then they would be kshatrias, if they were land lords then they would be Gowdas .. so and so forth.

But with the advent of technology moreover software boom catching up, time would arise when we could have castes based on Profession, rather software profession. Then we would have only castes based on software technologies. Like J2ee,Dot Net, Databases, Networks, System Engineering, QA etc.We would have Traditionalist (traditional programming like C, Cobol) and Modernist (Object Programming c++,java etc), with each opposing others. With two main religions Open Source Platform(OSP) and Microsoft Platform(MSP), each opposing other. With people in one religion hating other & all marriages should happen in same religion.

Then we would have festivals like Database day, Network day, System day, QA day, and one particular day java day would be celebrated by both the Open source and Microsoft religions as java works on both the platforms.

When it would come to marriage parents would oppose saying "Woh hamari technology ke nahi hai ", "Woh loog Open Source ke loog hai, proprietary naam ka cheez hi nahi hai ". "Product nahi Khareed te, sirf servcie khareed te hai". If a Microsoft Platform guys wants to marry a Open Source Platform guy then he would have to give up his religion and take up OSP, and he would be forced to take a oath saying that he would henceforth use only open source tools and will contribute to the society.

On a date boy would ask the girl, do u know struts, AJAX, how much do u know about Liferay. Girl would respond I am comfortable with app server and MS Sql server, liferay is good.
Then final verdict would be I think we both have some common things and some differences, we can make a good pair. (FYI these are all the tools that I use at E*TRADE for my project).

Imagine this happens then life would be so hilarious n fun. Hope U have enjoyed. Sorry I went too technical.

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