I wanted to be an airforce pilot!!

I had to rehearse 15 times before i could tell him the dreaded words.... 'Ur fired!!' Pink slips are a favorite phase among IT employers with all the recession and stock markets crumbling. The worst part is, inspite of the guy being a permanent employee he cannot challenge the decision. Simple reason being, the pink slip is a one way ticket to eternal bliss!! The pink slip has more clause than the Constitution of India.

I had to ask this new join guy to leave the project. There were the usual Ifs,buts, maybe's, ....and all the usual statements. Although he took everything in his stride, acted normal and tired to keep his keep arm from not impulsively smacking me, i swear i could hear him mouth a four letter word. Hey but who cares, today its him, tomorow its me!

To be fair, very fair that is...the guy is just 24 days old in my project, he's joined the team at the very last phase. The project is for Aramco which in itself is like a complex bureaucratic govt office with about a million systems/servers/networks and architectures. How could i expect him to deliver with so many constraints and giving him very little time to get accustomed to the Saudi way of life?

Yes, its unfair, yes its bollocks, but who the hell cares? 'IT' for all its shining glory on the facade has a dark dog-eat-dog side which nobody notices until this bloke called Recession happily strolls along every 8 years and unleashes the dirter side.

My company is hit and fairly speaking, all my colleagues kinda look forward to the dreaded word. Wish i was selected for the Air-force when i finished skool, too bad the selection guy asked me to run 3 bloody miles in 2 fuckin mins...wat am i?? Superman!!

So, I decided to take up the next best job in the world "Sitting in front of the computer 14 hrs a day"!! Now how does that compare to shooting fighter-planes for a job!...sucks eh??

Daybreak

The AirIndia flight to Chennai from King Fahad Intrnal Airport was bang on time, its a 4.5 hr flight across the desert and the Arabian Sea so no spectacular scenery and moreover i will be flying just about midnite. Decided to eat the airline meal and have a nice nap till i reach chennai.

Of all the flying i've done this one had a suprise in store for me. I was sitting besides the window (i always shamelessly ask for it in the counter). Just out of the blue i gotup in the middle of my nap and witnessed an awesome sight of nature at its finesse. The sun was just about to rise over the horizon, the sky was splashed with a beautiful hue of orange/purple/yellow. A streak of bright white/orange extended right across the horizon announcing the impending arrival of the Sun. Wat a sight to behold!! In view of the pleasant surprise my brain started to rewind.

To compliment the mood, the mp3 was playing some soft romantic number and i was going nostalgic over moments which i never thought i could recollect. All the romantic misses, crushes, getaways, college friends etc etc... it was like a flood of thoughts and i was reliving my childhood and college days. I was day dreaming until the sun rise was no longer romantic and started turning out to be hot instead. Similar to life........ "No good thing lasts forever!"

Note: The photo was taken by my mobile and does no justice to the spectacle

Gone are the Tigers!

The Lankan army has decided not use heavy caliber guns on the civilian population caught in the 6 sq km of land. Instead they have decided to use smaller guns to limit colletral damage. WTF!! The damage has already been done.

Im not pro-LTTE and neither am i a supporter of the Rajapakshe regime, but its a real pity to see the once famous LTTE being trashed in their own backyard, ofcourse India and other countries have given 'tactical' support to the Lankan Army but still to see a once prominent fighting force which had a fully functional Naval and Air wing and which controlled one-third of SriLanka being pulverised so mercilessly is truly spectacular.

I remember the late Anton Balasingham's comment about the assasination of Rajiv Gandhi 'It was a mistake which is regrettable', Mr. Balasingham if you were alive today you will notice what this mistake has caused to your organization, LTTE and the tamil people in SL.

Civilians have been ruthlessly killed among the fighting and its no suprise that both the govt and the LTTE have been blamed. The govt on their part do not allow any bloody journalist or foreign body to operate in the conflict zone making a fair judgement almost impossible. Btw, the lankan govt has never been fair to the Tamil people hence the whole reason for this confict!

Now that the LTTE is crushed and no longer considered a true blood fighting force what is going to happen? Wat about the millions of tamils who have left everything and moved into Army territory gonna get? Will they be given back their properties in LTTE controlled areas? Will they be resettled in a 'strategically' safer place so that they dont regroup? Will they get employment? Will they be allowed to lead a normal life like any sinhala? These are millions of questions which need to be answered.

Like any conflict the world will soon forget what happened in SL, but the suffering Tamils will still be searching for their lost lives and limbs.

No free lunch!!

Its past 9 pm and im still in office. Here in Saudi we start work at 7 am, so its 14 hrs straight now and i still dont see the light. Working onsite on an IT project is no bloody fun.

I've also practically eaten nothing the whole day and my head is a tizzy coz of looking at the laptop for so many hours. This is wat i've been stuffing down my food pipe the whole day

Cornflakes for breakfast at 6:00 am,
Coffee at 7:00 am,
Coffee at 10:00 am
Fruits at 12:00 am
Coffee at 1:30 pm
Coffee at 3:00 pm
Mocha at 5:00 pm
Cup Noodles at 8:00 pm
Tea at 9:00 pm

Not that i am complaining, i get paid fairly well and infact enjoy my work, but its a weird feeling to spend a good part of the 24 hrs in the same cubicle. You kinda become claustrophobic looking at the same cubicle, same colors, same screen and worse your brains/eyes start to beg you to look objects which are not related to work.

For some reason I keep thinking what my dad quotes everyday about life "There is nothing called a free lunch".

Today is April 14 2009

I so badly wanna record this day in my life. Wish i had somebody following me with a camera for today only, only today. I have never ever been so overwhelmed in my life...im sure there will be more days like this but for a start today April 14, 2009 at Saudi Arabia is 'THE' day.
Wer do i start? ok here goes...
I squirmed, apologized a 100 times (mistakes are all mine!), felt like killing myself by jumping outta a car travelling at 140kph, apologized again, spoke my heart out to who ever would listen, reallocated tasks to my team, restrategized mine/team Visa arrangments, got managment lessons from an illustrious collegue, ran into problems which will never occur in a normal work day and the list goes on. Its 10 pm now and im still waiting for any bloody suprises which are in hold to complete my day!
Gosh, will you ever stop learning in life? I think not...but if every learning day is like this then hell no! I wud rather gladly strip to the barest minimum and brave a snow storm than face the music of my superiors.
Hitting the sack now and waiting for tomorow to start new with a new set of suprises.
Life is just so awesome!!

The woods are lovely dark and deep..........

I secretly do wish for my life to be much more simpler, stress free and full of vigour but life really needs to have ups and downs. One should enjoy their sorrows and thrive in their joys. For now its mostly enjoying for me now. Life couldnt be much better. My project is delayed, my private life is a mess and still i manage to keep a happy face. I ought to be mighty proud of myself to have handled so much till now, but as Robert Frost put it " ....... and miles to go before before i sleep"

All in a days work.

I am predominantly right brained and i know what makes a good design 'good' and a bad design 'bad'. My current project involves convincing ppl that the User Interface Elements i design is in conjection with project demands and user liking, which in most cases is just the opposite. I happen to lead the project and that makes it far more complicated because i am now trying to convince my designers and my client. Its like justifying murder to two sets of layers who are arguing against each other. Confusing??......that how it is when trying to do designs for a client who is so damn left brained!!

Trying to visually satisfy clients is by far the most challenging of tasks to a designer, i've tried and tested a few novel approaches.

• Guage his sense of dressing, a good indicator of the type of person he is. A well dressed person is slightly easier to deal with and normally has some design sense
• His desktop, a dull boring windows default desktop indicates a bad artistic sense
• His legacy system, a very good indicator! A visually good system, then your dealing with somebody with good design sense
• His mobile/mp3, an upto date gadget; then somebody with enough understanding of technology and awareness about latest design style

There are a few more ways i try to judge ppl but again, im being very subjective and am not right at times.

By the way, my present client dresses very badly but has a very good sense of color; that makes my life more miserable since he does not understand design but understands the colors used in these designs.

His legacy system is designed very well but has bad color schemes :( now how the hell should i judge this guy??

His mobile was created during the stone ages but has the latest iPod touch! Now, thats what i call extremeee.

I've been at loggerheads with him for so long now that i have decided to tell him this:

"No great thing is created suddenly."- Epictetus