2010 summary

1. The stork (Dr. Patankar and helpers), brought us a bunch of kids.
2. Office got real boring all year round.
3. Bored of air travel.
4. Football on Sundays was revived, thank God.
5. Finally quit Tieto
6. Life now revolves around B & T, their bottles, diapers and their smiles. They did good so far, no cry, sleep at night, pretty good for someone who is 5 month old.

आई आणि बाबांनी फार मदत केली मागचे दोन वर्ष.

Wikileaks: proves Americans are scared of their government

I used to think America is where there is a highest level of freedom of expression. Seems otherwise actually. After the wikileaks started showing a lot of govt official conversations, the US govt has threatened to "kill" Julian Assange. Nothing surprising there. But, companies like Amazon and Apple chickening out is more amazing. Looks like the citizens of America are indeed afraid of "big brother" :-)
Amazon: removed wikileaks from their servers after govt pressure
Apple: removed Wikileaks App from their store under similar fear I believe.
Sometime I think media in India is far more free from direct fear, they just go ahead and say what the hell they want to. Sometimes even condemning persons before an enquiry. Its called "trial by media" these days.

A new beginning again

After a break of 4 years, I have decided to make another new beginning in my professional career. This time I will work for a startup with a foot in the world of banks and their customers.
Its been a long and well thought of change this time. Not impulsive like I usually do. I have been trying to probe into what kind of person I am and what job would keep me excited. I don't have a very definitive answer but I am going to give this a positive shot.
Trupti has been very supportive and I have promised her more support with baby-sitting and allowing her to get a few hours more per day to do something else. On the whole, i feel a little relieved and pleasantly excited about whats coming up from Feb/March next year. I will miss the people in Tieto the most. The work was not exactly to my best liking although there was definitely plenty of travel and exposure to all kinds of business situations. too bad I am not such a good "manager" after all.
So with optimism in my heart I move forward.

Where have the crisp sunny days in Pune gone?

I have been observing that over the last few years the number of days that we have clouds or haze over Pune city has gone up significantly. I am nothing jumping into all those smog and pollution discussions, but it does seem that we weather has turned a lot more hazy and particle laden off late. Rarely these we get to see the dry sunny cloudless skies over Pune. Those days its typically burning if you stand under the sun but quite comfortable in shade since the humidity is low and the air as such is cool. I wake up these days more often to see some sort of clouds or haze in the morning.
Personally I am a man of the SUN. I prefer hot/dry/clear skies to murky and grey days.

Its time for new cribs for new members coming in on 1st Oct

I got wood yesterday for making 2 cribs. They should be ready before Oct 1 when the 3 members come  to the house from their grandmother's home.

Indian company, Notion Ink, whips up Apple like fan frenzy in its small way

First time I have seen an Indian company whip up a fan frenzy across the world. That company is Notion Ink and the product, Adam slate.
The official blog and comments is here: http://notionink.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/inception/#comments

If these guys pull this off, I will be very proud of this kind of acheivement. One the one hand we have Apple fanboy frenzy, which is fuelled by a company worth hundreds of billions and on the other hand Notion Ink which is venture funded and started by 21 year old college grads. The old entreprenueral spirit aint dead yet... garage startups still live in the age of mega corporations.

Indian IT manpower resources endless?

When it comes to Indian IT companies' business model, it has been often observed that manpower resources are assumed to be almost endless. In the last 3 months I have observed a certain pattern. I am a IT recruiter for a moderately known IT comapny in Pune, India. In the last 3 months all the persons I have recruited have originated from very small villages; not even cities or towns, but vallages which can hardly be spotted on the maps. They usually have 1 or 2 siblings but not the earlier like trend of 4 or 5. I think even the over populated India will start running out of IT workers in another 5 years.
I believe that about 1 in 100 persons are suitable for IT or software development. and about 1 in 10 for IT support and such tasks. If India has 120 cr population, about 1.2 cr are potentially suitable for software development. Out of those many dont want to do software jobs. So in effect a much lesser number. We will run out of good IT software workers very soon. The figure is a little better for IT ops support kind of tasks.

Twins are here

a boy and a girl are here. Born 23rd July. Everyone's doing fine.
Names are not decided yet. Happened so suddenly. Trupti went for her regular sonography, and the doc Mr. Patankar told her that she will be operated on in 5 minutes. and so I wasnt there at all. By the time I came to know everything was done. The boy is a little smaller than the girl on the right. he weighed 1.7 kg and she weighed 2.1. Bundles of joy have arrived. :-)

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx is impressive and iMac for Baba :-)

I loaded Lucid lynx on my Acer 6930 and its fatser and slicker and smoother than any previous version.
Plus as a gift to baba, i and Neha bought him a iMac 21" :-) it was fun configuring it for dual boot with Win XP.

Aai also got a gift of a pendant from us. Both of them have been distributing largess over the past few years so this time I decided to do something in return.

D Y Patil stadium Navi Mumbai

I went to the DY patil stadium in Mumbai yesterday. Its beautiful. Although parking is a big issue. I mean simply there is no parking space at all. Well thats Mumbai, and we know that too well.

But the scenes were beautiful. Very much like a large Disco with not just music but some excitement and thrill of an unpredictable outcome.
It truely is the best entertainment package in recent times.
I, personally would never to to watch a cricket match in a stadium. because I dont like cricket and its to overwhelming. 4 hours of dance music is sickening in the end.

A sad and shocking day, 13 Feb 2010

Yesterday a bomb ripped apart a restaurant called the German bakery in Koregaon park. It killed 9 persons and injured another 50. Terror in the real sense has reached Pune and me in person. Until now I was aware of all the news of terror attacks in India but this time it feels very different because you were there, in that very place many many times in your life. The last time I felt like this was on the day of Sept 11 2001 in New york as I watched in horror the twin towers come down right in front of my eyes. I was standing near a window on the 34th floor of the Morgan Stanley 750 building in midtown and watching the attack take place. I am a little scared and afraid of what happens next now. History is in the making all around me right now. Pumpaa and I are expecting twins coming July. Those children are going to be born in a world full of hatred.
As have al the children till now ... wry smile... As in the words of the protagonist in the "Blood Diamond"....."When was the world ever not in conflict?"

My experiments with House Improvement

It all started with the idea that the kitchen is way too small for my standards. So i decided to take off the side panel granite on one side and after 1 day of hammering with all kinds of tools I managed to pry it off. Looks like this.

 After filling the remaining hole I put in Plaster of paris there.  अता मज्जा अशी आहे की साइड कडप्पा इतका बकवास दिसतोय की त्याला कसा झाकायचा?