Transition to 2010

Its getting hotter – no its not me, my body temperature or the weather outside. Guess what? Come on tickle your brain… no answers? Its very simple come on I know you can do it .. No? Ok, I’ll tell you – it’s the water in my bathroom! Wasn’t it simple? – I told you!

Anyway .. I just returned after picking my cousin from the station and dropping her at the ladies hostel near Cummin’s Women’s College. Aaaaaaaah … now I know what you’re thinking – I must’ve gotten an eyeful isn’t it? Well, if that’s what you’re thinking then you’re WRONG! I didn’t even meet a single good looking female of the species – homosapiens of course! No regrets by the way – sometimes there are better things to do in life than just appreciate god’s beautiful creations.

So … I’m home and waiting for it to get hot. Uh uh .. the water I mean. In the meanwhile, the transition from 2009 to 2010 was both a bitter and sweet one but very smooth and memorable. And you can say this is exactly the reason why I’m talking about it for the first time in 30 years of my eventful life and having seen lots of ups and downs and bumps and what not. I’ll talk about the bitter things first as I want to keep the sweet memories for the last and of course lasting forever.

Here’s comes the bitter part ….

31^st of December 2009 was the day when I thought I’d go to office, spend the whole day working hard and reach home early (and I mean before 9PM). No big plans as such but days have been so monotonous for me as far as the routine is concerned and the work schedules and the stress aaaand the deadlines – that I thought the last day of the year’09 would be a lighter one and I’ll catch up with some sleep, watch a set max movie or the new year celebration basking on my bean bag having a very simple conventional dinner. So – while my plans weren’t any great fortune had something else in store for me.

I reached office at the usual time 9:45 driving in a “not so very cold” morning with my winter gear on. Office was usual – folks in a mood to celebrate the New Year and loads of work for me. Now that we are working in an agile mode, quality deliverables are expected in “as small as possible” turnaround time, not to forget there are iterations of deliveries. Over and above this, we are being consistently told that NPW DR has a high visibility – both from the customer’s perspective as well as from the perspective of L&T Infotech being the offshoring partner for Travelers.

The day was hectic as I had to push two of my items in the build to be done the same day (of onshore). After merging the changes for these two items by handpicking selective lines of code onto another machine, I was quite confident that things will work as far as testing is concerned. While testing the second item, I realized that there were major changes in requirements since the time I last coded for that item. This meant a lot of rework and of course going all the nine yards to complete the testing and sign-off.

Evening was time for onsite-offshore status call and we came to a decision that item#2 is not going in the build due to major requirement changes and the amount of rework required. I still had to put in item# 1 into the build and that meant that I was back to square one. I started merging the code for just one item and it was like finding a strand of hair in a bag of rice. I was almost losing patience but then had to hang on – because I knew after merging, the code was sure to blast some place, I’ll have to make fixes and test for four important test scenarios. I had to do fixes and tested all the four scenarios. I kept my cool and when Abhiruchi called me again (the15th time during the day – ugh! What a pain in the @$ she is), I straightaway refused to answer her query – I said please leave me alone for today. My intuitions that the code will fail somewhere came true :( That meant more work for me and all this work took a toll on me. It was 10:30 by the time I left office – phew! What a way to celebrate the New Year’s Eve.

Oh! And before I move on to the very first day of 2010 there were two important things that I’d mention that make the 31st of December'09 memorable.

First, my very special and best friend (name undisclosed) came to me and said that there were issues that she wanted to discuss. I thought what better day to listen to issues and improve upon myself than the last day of the year. However, it was a little disappointing to hear from her about "issues" on the last day of the year'09. Nevertheless, I’m keen on improving myself and since I’ve always given my time and preference to this special one, I decided we’ll talk. I’ll never forget booking a conference room on the last day of the year to hear this ‘special’ one’s concerns. The meeting lasted an hour – I took note of things and made New Year resolutions to improve on them. I have to strongly mention that I did find her very revengeful for as long as the meeting lasted. Lastly, I assured her of my best for the year 2010.

It was time to leave – no, not for me but for her. We came face-to-face and all we shared was the good byes – no “wish you a very happy new year”? Wasn't it the last day of the year? I felt hurt, sad and sorry about it all.

Anyway, it all finished at 10:30 in the night and finally I was all set to go home (eat and sleep, of course!). I finished my dinner by 11:00 PM and since I knew it was going to be a "blue moon" on the last day of 2009, I decided to stay up until late in the night and do some shooting - pictures, I hate guns and gun-walas too. This is the second thing I wish to talk about!

I went up to the terrace of my apartment and took pictures of the moon. This is a picture taken from my DSLR Nikon D40, edited to add text in Adobe Photoshop Elements and saved to a resolution of 800x600 - I'll never forget the beauty! It keeps me wondering that the moon actually looks bright white - but another mysterious object in the sky looks blue :-) Can any astrophysicist describe what I saw that day other than the moon?

The new year’s eve ended with this picture of the "blue moon" and I went to bed with thoughts that 2010 will definitely be much better and happier than 2009.

Welcome 2010 - and the sweet memories ...

Wish you a very happy and prosperous new year. For me - I'll try my best to live up to my New Year resolutions.

1st of January, 2010 started off as a regular day. After the breakfast and tea it was time for me to send the New Year greeting to friends. This picture taken using my HTC Touch Diamond from the 8th floor of L&T Infotech was edited on 26th Dec'09 in Photoshop to add my personalized wishes for the new year.

If you take a closer look at the picture, HTC has done a good job of capturing the colors of twilight. More importantly, what I like about this picture is that the left side of the picture is actually a reflection of the right. Awesome isn't it? .... another memorable creation of mine, I'll never forget!

I then decided to go to SBI, Shankarsheth road to submit the demand letter from the builder. Unfortunately I was told that an architect's certificate is also required along with the demand letter for the bank to accept it. I then decided to return home but stopped by at the Archies Gallery. I bought a gift and had a verbal hussle-tussle with the store manager - what a thing to do on the first day of 2010 :-) But ... I was fighting for all the right reasons - I'm never wrong (right?!?) ... I'm kidding.

I then called up Sandhya - there were a couple of calls back and forth and the decision was taken. We were meeting at "Jazz By The Bay", a pub with beautiful ambiance and good music. They'd already done the reservations and we decided 8:30 PM as the time. I was there on time (as usual - i'm so disciplined!). These guys showed up at 9:00 and with them was the expected someone new - i never knew (Laveena - Sandhya's friend). We got in and took the table we booked.

The evening at Jazz by the bay was jazzy :-) it was a beautiful evening. Umm .. we had a lot of "coffee and conversations" - surprised? It doesn't look like coffee - well, it was booze, conversations, gags and laughter.

Though I had decided that I wont take any drinks, I didn't want to feel "the odd man out" amongst my friends. So I decided to drink and had a couple of large red RUMs (old monk to be precise). Oh! and ask me, I was my best at talking over there. And that too after a couple of drinks, I was almost unstoppable ;-) I'll not load this post of mine with a lot of pictures. You can visit Google Picasa to see more of our party pictures, I don't insist - only if you like.

Celebration ended with saying good byes and promising that we'll meet again - some day soon! I reached home by 12, fell asleep at 12:30, woke up at 3, tried to sleep until 4 (but could not) and finally decided to get off the bed. I was awake from 4 until 6:30 in the morning. 2nd of January was mostly hangover with nothing special to report for the day except for a headache, trying my best to catch up with sleep during the afternoon and 35 missed calls!

Day3 of the new year started off with breakfast and I was supposed to pickup my cousin ... While returning after dropping her at her hostel, I stopped at Cafe Coffee Day for a cup of coffee. I was disappointed by the poor customer service I received over there. While returning and opposite the L&T office, I decided to stop by at Shopper's stop to buy hand gloves. To my astonishment, I didn't find any in the winter wear section. So .. I ended up buying a pack of three Nike deos at a discounted price - one was a discount from the shop and the other because I had collected a good number of points on my card. I reached home with a headache so I had a nice hot water bath. The first thing I did was reported Cafe Coffee Day about their poor customer service. Then on, I started blogging and watching movies side by side. I had 'adrak chai' in the evening, spoke to Nitin (an old college friend just returned from UK) and lastly with my sister. The day ends here now and I'll go for dinner (makkey kee roti, sarson kaa saag and gaajar ka halwa) - yummm ..

I'm happy at the end of the day and I've had enough of writing. So, I'll sign off now, disclosing one of my new year resolutions - To be vocal (at the same time have control over my tongue) and be heard .. of course not hurt anyone!

Hoping I'll keep up to it all :-) Goodnight!

- Jassi