Quality Time

Blessed with such wonderful parents and even more amazing sisters, I thank Him for everything he has given me so far.

Pune trip

I spent my first 2 weeks of vacation ghettoing around in Mumbai meeting friends and relatives, eating home-made food and chilling out. After completing the VISA formalities and getting the last needle out from my back, my plans for travelling was lined up. First comes Pune.

Supposed to reach Pune early Thursday to avoid the cribbing from Penny, I still made it during the day (latter part ofcourse). The travel was sickening and I was already getting headaches after the bumpy ride in one of those fake German luxurious Volvo buses. We immediately left for a quick stroll to enjoy the developments happening in Pune - I am talking about girls and bitches. Spending one hour around FC and drinking Cool Ice at CCD, it was time to meet the KPG group based in Pune.

Inspite of Indians not having a good image for punctuality, Saurabh was waiting outside McDonalds at sharp 7 as decided when I arrived. Ek haath mein Helmet aur doosre haath jeans ke pocket mein daale apne Gune bilkul Style movie ka Saahil Khan lag raha tha. I was told by Bobby that Saurabh has put on a lot of weight and you will be surprised to see the changes in his looks and bla bla - I think he is still the same from all angles.

So after waiting for prospective attendees :-(, we still remained a headcount of three. We first hit Khyber - a restaurant across the street...shared our job experiences as well as the culture differences. That was followed by our second pitstop in E-Square...great mall. Udhar thoda bahut aur khaaya peeya aur baatein continued. Aisi cheez bhi dekhi jo US mein nahin mile. We got a sketch made by the computer which i will shortly scan and post it online. Gune Bhai ne phir lagaaya Bobby aur Nishant ko phone - unse bhi thodi chat hui. Bobby was lazying around in Kolkata after a laborous day whereas Nishant was still working past 10 onsite. Kudos Dudha!!! Pata nahin - keh raha tha ki client site pe hoon but considering his past image .... I really wouldn't comment. (Changes do happen for good Nishant).

The next day, Penny took me for lunch in Rajwada - excellent food but no drinks. Caught up with Ek Ajnabee in the evening followed by hookah till 1 in the morning. Oh man, I still think that girl was giving us line. Tujhe McDonals mein thode der baithna chahiye tha yaar. Interestingly, two of us decided to explore Koregaon park and find the directions as how one would typically do it in Mumbai. We succeeded - horray! A stop at Pan ki Tapri and that was it...a bulls-eye. This was one of the best nights I had in this vacation. Two of us and we spoke about everything - sharing our experiences with work to our girlfriends so far....all over hookah.

Detained and Delayed

The computer systems at the Kennedy airport did not show up my graduation and still considered me as a student. On showing my H1B at the immigrations, there was an alert and was escorted to the Dept. of Homeland Security. Sitting there for almost 3 hours and finally clearing up the matter, I got home late totally exhausted and irritated. Whatever - cannot blame the school officials either except that I need to ask them to update my record now. Decided I must be happy now - guess not. Read my next blog.

I hope there arent any more suprises.

Christmas Gift

I got home late night last night after a month-long vacation (blog coming up later about the trip). Things were quiet around and peaceful - everyone probably winding up after the Christmas celebrations, I felt happy to be back.

Suffering from jet lag, I was up early this morning and decided to do some groceries and unpack. After walking around the entire block again and again, I could not see my car around. After digging out details, I found out that I owe a heavy amount to the Auto Tow-ers on Crown Street. That was my Christmas gift - what was yours?

Birth of a new blogger

She was recently introduced to the concept of blogging. Keep it up!

Thirteen days to go

I had been planning this trip since last year and it has already been postponed from summer to this winter. For all those who saw the ball missing your head, I am going back home to India for 3+ week long vacation.

Inspite of heavy planning, there are still a few minor threads to straighten out. Packing has started and so has shopping. Lets see - I have already made 2 trips to the mall pick up clothes for my sisters (thanks to Falguni) -whats next? Mom wants a dinnerware and a toy for the family. Probably a digital camera. Well, I must say - there is no other place in the world other than your own sweet little home with your family. I am so excited.

All the readers who havent been home for quite a while and are studying/working away from your family - I pity you !!!

My First Halloween

Life is about experiencing different cultures and traditions. After trying out rock climbing, fishing, golf, and shooting real guns, Halloween was next. I have been in US for already 3 years and the time had come for me to attend Jason's 4th Annual Halloween Party at his place. Ok - I thought of options - gangster, Rick James, evil Jason or a hippie. Hippie somehow sounded a little different and much entertaining to me. So here I am.


With Elvis Presley.



Evil Jason - IT/satan specialist.



Aias was the local Gangster while Kate was a gypsy



Another gangster

New York City with Sumit

One way or another, I always found an excuse going to New York City. Last time I made a promise to myself that this will not happen again on a regular basis but deep down my heart, I knew that I might not keep it. Even after doing this kind of 100 miles travel in a bad weather with heavy rain, we were there again but this time with new faces and new motivation. Sumit made plans on staying back at my crib after his business trip to NYC. So I showed him the city that never sleeps.



Outside Time Square



Dum Laga Kar - Haiya. (Size does not matter)

As you see, he decided to take a peek on whats going on there.






Kpgites finally.

Paintball? Really?

..was what I kept on telling myself if this sport is worth risking whips and blisters. We were eleven at HogansAlley celebrating Aias's birthday.



What is the strategy?

Our carefully engineered plan designed for taking the opponents out took a dip when I was first shot thrice in the head by Aias. Look below where he sneaks without my knowledge.



Kasmir is ours. Har Har Mahadev.



Done doing mix n match with teams as well as fields, everyone is tired.



Getting drinks and discussing moments in the game.



Revealing his Greek culture.



Aias turned 24 and I turned black n blue. Not really.

With Housemates n Karl

Photo is taken at C.O.Jones bar where Karl (guy extreme left) works as a bartender. Next is Paul K, Aias, Paul J and me. Both the Paul's are students at Yale doing divinity where Aias works with me in the same company.

Office Space

9 hours of my life revolves around this place every day.

Marriage Profiling

In this era of Globalization 3.0, I never gave a serious thought on how well can online dating sites can be worth. Take for example, "shaadi.com" technically was started off by an Indian company and as of now they claim to have thousands of entries in their database which includes people with an international flair to a reasonable extent. My first impression was as how a Chinese salesman would proclaim in one of the Russel Peter's standup comedy - Noooooooooooooo.

Looking for girls online seemed different. I just didn't get it, the world is getting flat (quote from Tom Friedman). If more and more people start using the web power, why cant marriage be taken to this level. Moreover, if I dont find a girl soon enough, I would probably land up doing an arranged marriage too. Big deal - uh!

I never had a first hand experience with anyone who would probably share the same feelings until today. I came across a Romanian colleague of mine who told me that he will be off on a 2 week vacation to Jamaica for his honeymoon. Cool! I congratulated him and casually we started talking about marriages and women in general. I learnt that they dated for over 2 years now and it all started with one of these regular marriage portals. I just couldnt beleive it!!! Do people seriously take these web sites? Are people getting more and more tech savvy? Or is it really G 3.0?

There is only one question guys. Am I right?

Level 1 - SJCP or Rome: Total War

2 interesting things happened to me today.

One, take a date for my long-awaited Java Level 1 certification. Second, install Rome: Total war - a strategy game. Whats the point behind fulfilling each? First leads to professional prestige (ABCDs) while I love the second. Comes from the days where I used to sit for hours beating up Age of Empires.

Time to rethink my priorities....

Chak De Fatte

...has been something that I have been saying a lot recently - on posts, amongst friends, on phone calls, and even dreams. Recollecting back to the old memories, how did this start in the first place? Courtesy goes to my old roommate - Mr. Amanpreet Khurana. Aman moved here last week where he took up a new job in CT, not far from my place. Glad that I have a Desi friend staying closeby - nothing that can be still better than a guy from Kopargaon - someone with whom I stayed for 4 years. Isnt life good to you?

Now thats what I call - Chak De Fatte.

Legally Void

Yet another long weekend and I had pre-decided that this should also not go waste. So I made a few calls and Mahale, Huned, Umesh and Rahul pooled in for this trip. Out 6 of us, the vacation was planned for a New England tour. It included sight-seeing Boston, Cape Cod and the world's renowned whaling capital - Nantucket.

Everyone drove up to New Haven Friday night and stayed at my crib to start the vacation with. It might be the first time that my room was filled with 1+ Desi. Happily, we were all dancing away to glory and having a gala time that night. Lal and myself did our usual dance copy of Amit, Bari, Yatendra, Gujju and Hiren Bhai. There was also a special imitation of ABCD.

Saturday early morning, we headed towards Hotel Marriot up in Woburn, MA singing Kajra Re for a 2-night stay. The check-in time was the usual 3pm and so we spent a few hours driving around Boston. We saw Harvard Square, MIT, Prudential Center, J Hancock tower, Chinatown and a little of Cambridge driving around on a Dodge Caravan. So we reach the hotel, check-in and come back 10 miles south to Boston again for lunch and then go back to hotel - bad planning maybe but the drive was not that trouble at all - 20 minutes maybe...and I was not driving too.

We basically passed around time on Saturday talking and a little bit of chilling out. It was an eery silence before the storm striked. I slept that night at 1 in the morning and was scheduled to get up first the next day at 2:30 again that morning. Now I am not a kind of guy who usually sleeps less than 8 hours...unless its a vacation. Anyways, We got ready and were off sailing on a Flying Cloud to Nantucket. As soon as we reached the land, I saw a shop renting mopeds and bikes. We got three of them and made pairs -it was me urf Jaidev and Laale Di Jaan aka Veeru together shooting for Sholay on that island.

Ghoom Ghaam kar we decided to do some water sports in one of the beautiful beaches - we played frisby. I noticed change in my complexion in less than few hours which meant that I will be spending my next few weeks with a darker version of Sandeep. Day passed by like a snap and I was shooting the breeze in the backseat. Monday being the last day of the vacation, we took sort of easy and were home early evening. Huned stayed back that night and left the next morning for Binghamton. We even caught a glimpse of the 4th July fireworks.

Weekend was great.

MSG is not Monosodium Glutamate

It is Microsoft Sues Google unlike what you see MSG in Chinese restaurants. Well, I am a Google fan but seems here that Microsoft has a valid argument. What is the whole point of someone signing a contract when they can easily get off the hook? They might get something out of Lee here but from Google - possibly not enough evidence. I am sure Lee can hammer out a mutually acceptable agreement if he gets some legal muscle working on it too.

The winning finally kicks off

I was up in Glastonbury to attend Raj's daughter 3rd year birthday anniversary party last Sunday. We were scheduled for a match against Cognizant later that day. Naugatuck was 40 miles west and I was hoping that we should start off by having to bat first. Yes, no-one was happy to stay outside on a 3-digit fahrenheit scale. We did win the toss and posted 98 on the board. Having them defeated by a margin of 20 runs, I must say that there is a lot to improve finally. I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing GOD ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isnt too bad either. Erik was right, its all about that fucking commitment.

IBM takes on GE

Desh was looking for his Lagaan 11 to play against GE this Sunday. So I drove this afternoon to Shelton to play for IBM which means I had to get up earlier than expected. Weather became perfect as we lost the toss and took the field. Some time later, it became hot and I was worn out on the field completely dehydrated. Opponents piled up a total of 65 runs in the allocated 15 overs.

Sadly, I couldnt open my account inspite of some powerful strokes and the wicket keeper took an excellent catch by jumping to his left and receiving the ball. We lost by a close margin but had a good exercise. Looking forward to a second round next week.

Wait and watch..

Memorial weekend with a SRK fan

For those of you who might wonder what does SRK means, I am talking about a big star who once stood near Marine Drive and said "I came to Bombay to own this city, now the city owns me". Kumar is a die-hard Shah Rukh Khan fan and a firm follower of all his movies.


Mr. Raj Aryan posing for Ashwariya in Mohabbatein 2


So, long weekend was here and I made plans to visit him in Arlington, VA. Took sort of half day from work and left early to catch a 5:30 Amtrak to Union Station. Luckily, I found an interesting company during the travel where we discussed about techical gadgets, mobile agents and grid computing. Sheila was a sales-rep for Capital Printing in NYC and was also tech savvy. Times flew so fast that I never realized 5 hours have passed by and I was already in DC.

Met Kumar outside and we went home. There I was Friday night sitting in IHop charting out plans for the long weekend. We started off visiting monuments Saturday morning.


Outside Lincoln Memorial - Akaash and Sameer

There was a huge motorcycle rally and you could only see Rockstars and Harley around.


Bike Rally for Memorial weekend

We later went to Ebbott Grill in downtown which is supposedly pricy and sat for 2 hours chatting over Hummus and drinks.

Then came Sunday. We decided to rent a car in the morning and check out beaches around. Ofcourse, I had to make the plan about the location and bookings (kidding Kumar). Both of us woke up close to 1pm and had to rush out to get the car at 2. Kumar took the driving seat and we missed the exit for 395. Finally moving around the area and after getting burgers and drinks, we reached Lake Anna State Park at 5pm. Drive was scenic and there were a lot of farms around. Virginia was beautiful and the place was much more exquisite. There was a quite a crowd with families sitting by the beach and enjoying the space. We hung out for a couple of hours.

..at Lake Anna State Park 


Enjoying the breeze 


And what am I supposed to pose like? 


Ki Ki Kiran - tum kidhar ho 



Kumar then promised me to take me to Adam's Morgan which is supposed to be a happening place in Arlington, yes, I mean full of clubs and bars. Missing the directions and taking a long time to find a place to park, we got there at closing time. Not much exciting though since I couldn't drink. Lekin Kaun kambakht bardaasht karne ke liye peeta hai...Its okay Kumar, Bade Bade Deshon Mein Aisi Choti Choti Baatein Hoti Rehti Hai.

Then came Monday and I knew I had to leave that day. I took that day easy and moved around the area and finally left for my town, New Haven. Vacation was well-spent and I was very happy to meet Kumar after more than 3 years. My return travel was disgusting and got home early morning of Tuesday for a yet-another short week. Yeah....

Ceremony 2

Some more pictures posted by Hiren at
http://mscs2005.blogspot.com/

I just booked my tickets to visit an old friend of mine,Kumar at Arlington, VA. Excited..

Pictures at our new work place coming up...

From a slacker to programmer

After completing my 12th, I said to myself for the last time "Am I fit to pursue Engineering?" and my conscious spoke to me in binary - I landed up in a rural town called Kopargaon. All geared up to learn bits of programming, life was more pitches in making good friends and simply chill. After all, it was a hostel life.

My 4 years doing Bachelors was a joke - I never took an advantage of my unusual qualities or shall I say talent to sit and learn to code? Even after finishing my BS degree, I still lacked good coding skills. Life went a down hill. Economy struck in year 2001 and I was out on the streets finding a job in a universe full of unemployed programmers. I remembered the time when my father was keen on me to engage myself with a shippe life. I took a step forward and started looking for suitable jobs not necessarily related to my field. Somewhere in Hiranandani Complex, Mumbai; Hiren and myself just got out of an interview from a call centre when we met this aweful or shall I say awe-inspiring person trying to win us over to join a consulting firm focusing on call centres. Initially, it sounded like a good idea and so we spoke about $alary. Package of 25,000 Indian rupees with abso-freaking-lutely zilch is what we should be expecting 5-10 years down the line. We smiled and walked away to grab something to eat. Unable to control laughter on what the lady suggested to two pitiful job seekers, I thought of further education. Narrowing down my options, a Masters degree from US was the best and easiest pick.

Programming still nowhere in my radar, I came to Binghamton, NY for a Masters degree. Life became more challenging that what I had expected. I slogged for 2 years coding and seeing myself turn as one of the regular geeks you must have seen in "Pirates of the Silicon Valley". My advisor got the hell out of me and I started taking pleasures in writing programs.

I completed my Masters last year and was recently up in Binghamton for my graduation ceremony which most of you must have seen in my previous blog. I must admit that I have learned a lot and see myself being evolved as a real software programmer with above average calibre. While still happy with coding, I might be losing my tolerance and patience for mindless rules, regulations and internal politics. I will stop coding when I don't need the money. How about opening a subway?

Time for celebration

Friday the 13th was when the Rubber met the Road. Yes, we (I and Aias) took a day off and left early morning for Binghamton. I took him via Rt 17 which was an additional 30 minutes journey and worth the scenic drive. After touching Binghamton around 4ish, we headed straight to the University Bookstore where I bought the graduation gown plus the hood. After meetings friends oncampus, we went to Nirchi's outside the campus for a quick grab. Ok - time for action. One of my senior was keen on frisbee, so we did some sports oncampus with this lots-of-running and I fagged out. Being tired, we all agreed that its now time to check-in to the hotel. Well, guess what - 7 guys in 1 room with 2 twin beds. Everyone adjusted and stayed comfortable. Who cared about it? Dinner was at Olive Garden. Started with a toast of Tequila shots followed by Sicilian Senegrea. They called it Berry Wine. Wish I had some pictures here.

That evening, we went to the Downtown - did some dancing plus lots of drinks and had a blast. Chris had also joined from Virginia with his 91 model pony (Red convertible Mustang) which I rode the following day. Jeez - that car flies. He taught me this nice trick to drive the car until it reaches 3000rpm on second gear and then you floor the gas pedal. Wooooosh - you are 80+ within no time. Thats what I call a car - it was a machine. Good that traction was in place else I would have just taken off. It was fun driving oncampus with all the girls looking at you while you make that engine noise. I felt great.

Imbibed in fun, I slept around 4 and was up in no time ready to go oncampus at 8:30 for the graduation ceremony. Thats what I am talking about- the day I waited so long. Every international student here in US must be eager to wait for this day. Morning was the Watson School ceremony where I was dressed sharp in my business casual as a mobile agent.

The Concluding Dimension of the Masters Ceremony


Mike & Agent


First to be congratulated by the billboard


Then came the cultural American tradition later at 5pm where I wore the black gown and the hood and walked through the right of passage. It was a mark of my student life to professional life.

After receiving the final ultimatum


It was a pleasure meeting Denise and Patel family that day too. Sunday morning was a bit relaxing. I completed my usual 8 hour sleep and got ready to play some sports. We went to Huned's place first where he made some Indian tea and then headed for Cole's park off Exit 3 on 81S.



Old Friends at Cole's Park

Did volleyball on the beach for few hours. We had strong players on both the teams.


Himanshu with his professional serve

We started off with around 10 players and few more joined us later.


Sourabh, Sahana and Amol join us later

It was 3:30pm and time to depart for everyone. Some had to drive as close to Pughkeepsie while some had to go all the way up to Boston.
A final picture to mark the end of the weekend had to be taken.


The Entire group at Cole's park. Something is missing here...?

I had promised Aias to show him around Binghamton and take him to where Williams (Friendship Family) lived which we did next. The clock ticked so fast that it was time to leave. We got home around 9pm to New Haven and now its time for a yet-another looooong week at work. Oh, damn!

Cricket or JMS

Weather today was cloudy and windy, and Desh (a friend of my colleague at work) called me to confirm plans of cricket. That was at 4:45pm and it sounded like a fantastic idea since I had nothing to do that evening. All my plans on making the weekend worthwhile never occured but isnt playing cricket by itself a work of great merit?

I drove to Naugatuck which is around 30 miles north and saw some new faces today. There were around a dozen of guys who were waiting for me to get started. Wow - what an esteem? I felt great. The honor didnt lastlonger after I realize that they were waiting for a couple of more guys (and I was just one to come earlier). Nevermind - we started the match. Game went on until 8 after which I drove back home. Dinner was already ready and served on the table; it was a Greek cuisine waiting for me. Nice.

Himanshu made reservations today at a hotel in Binghamton for the next weekend. Looking forward on meeting everyone (Hiren, Priya, Sushant, Gujju, Umesh, Sabbu, others..) then. Hope we all have a nice time then. Right now, time to sleep.

SSL undertaking

Life has been great to me at work but my expectations never perished. Last week, I kicked off a project on porting our entire application (CMP) over SSL 3.0 as a requirement from some clients, one of them being Comcast. Company already supporting Weblogic 7 and 8, I thought that holding SSL on 8 first might be a smarter idea since BEA itself could give everyone a farewell party soon after launching version 10. After all, why should they endorse something which is more than 2 versions old?

Now here when it gets more interesting. Weblogic 6 supported flat files to support private keys/public certificate whereas WL 8 supported the concept of keystores only as flat files became deprecated. Always dependent on Google, I found an interesting viewlet which lists steps on how to configure Weblogic 8 over SSL. Tons of issues barricaded my progress due to which I had to open a support case with BEA customer service. At the end of the day, I found out that a trial SSL certificate supports a common keystore only and that this applies to a one-way server authentication simply. Cool - doc was so much up-to-date! Even before I fell into this, I was able to solve most of the Java exceptions thru forums. But what struck me into the head was that the support closed the case with a resolution which was totally absurd. They never accepted their mistake on thier documentation, one of the reasons being who has the time to update their site.

Finally, after having CMP ported to SSL - my next challenge was what if Comcast sticks to Weblogic 7? Now - you dont want to shoot your feet, would you? IT industry is already on version 9 and we start something new for them which is 2 versions old. Then I decided that there is no point me taking that decision and I must do my part. I followed the same steps using keystores on 7 which supports keystores as well as flat files and it blew up on me - Yuk. Page cannot be displayed: what do you mean?

Investigation continues...

Friday

There hasnt been any weekends after I bought a Toyota where I didn't have any plans. Tomorrow is one. Weather plays its trick too so guys from IBM will not be playing cricket. Neither can I go anywhere outside because of rain.

Hmmm - how about if I resume my preparation for Java Certification? Or start a new project which goes offhand from company's work? That seems a nice idea - lets see whether this actually gets kicked off. By the way, I just saw Boondock Saints - a must watch.

Finally...

Got my H1 approval today. :-)
What else can I ask for? What comes next - a girl...thats what a friend of mine said today.

Updates

Back to the blog.
Graduated in December, I currently hold a Masters degree.
Have been working for this wonderful company in New Haven, CT.
Excited to attend a graduation ceremony next week in Binghamton, upstate NY.