End of a vacation

My vacation will soon draw to a close. Had a wondeful time with no sense of how time passed by this past month, doing all the things that I have wanted to do for long - a lot of reading, painting and ofcourse sleeping. A break in between jobs is good provided you don't change jobs too often :)

No luck with the job hunt yet! Ofcourse I haven't been pursuing aggresively as yet. All set to move to Pune next week. More blogging from Pune!

Book Review : Five Point Someone

"Five Point Someone",a novel by Chetan Bhagat exchanged hands yet another time at work over 5 months back. I had heard a lot of "wows, this is great, I did that too" every time a member of my team read that book and religiously passed (or promoted? ) it over to the next. It is beyond my understanding why they didn't pick up a copy of their own from the bookstore on MG Road that have been flaunting a copy of this book on the front racks for months now.

Four months overdue, on one of our customary visits to Crossword Bookstoreon M.G. Road in Bangalore. I recommended this book to Vivek not knowing quite what he would expect. He read the back cover and picked it up. I started reading it that evening. Flipping through the pages, I read out a few lines aloud. Every time I did that he had this reminiscent look on his face with a glimmer of satisfaction that perhaps said "I've been through this." The turning point was the line on insti-rood, Floyd and Vodka. He snatched it from my hands and went onto complete reading the book in one sitting, as most under grads would do. Just so I made myself clear, one sitting in this case meant even while having dinner, trips to the looo and a 4 hr sleep that night eager to finish the rest next morning.

This 300 odd page book starring Ryan, Alok and Hari is a smashing success. It took me 2 more months to start the book all over again. And definitely not one sitting for me. Every time I asked what someone what was so great about the book or what it was about, came the monotonous reply, "It is about an IIT grad about his 4 years at Indian's Premier Technology Institute".

This is partially true. There is much more to thee book that the 4 years at IIT. It is a mockery on the Indian Education system. Be it a premier Institute of India or a third rate Engg. College built ina no-man's land, our system leaves no stone unturned in churning out and recognizing muggers year after year.

This book attacks the mythical equation :

top of the class === smart
under performers === dumb a*s

More importantly this book is about friendships. A friend of mine from College had recently said, "I made a few friends at College and I intend to keep them for life whether you like it or not". Friends made in college are for life!

This book is about survival of the smartest. It is about the transformation of obedient boys coming out of home for the first time getting acquainted with don't-give -a-damn guys like Ryan, getting easily influenced and making a comeback in the last year landing a job and turning into fine young men. Life teaches them a lot more than muggers like Venkat go through!

Written in simple English, Bhagat is a master story-teller. Of course I don't buy the fact that Hari had the guts to sleep with the prof's daughter in broad daylight. Fiction it is. He went a lil overboard but I guess its ok just as we can live with the item numbers in mainstream Cinema for commercial success.

Believe it or not, if you were a top performer, there are times when you are going to hate this book. There are times, when you would think, "OMG, I was so much like Venkat. Shut myself in a room for hours together mugging the 8 hr notes ready to vomit in the tests."It would make you think "There existed a LIFE outside while I was in the company of books." (Just for the record, No , I don't regret what I did back then).

Ryan's character is difficult to identify with but one that everybody fantasises to be. Memories of the adrenaline rush the night before the sem exams, a flurry of activity around the hostel rooms in search of the right photocopies, quarrels over lab practicals and cooking of obsy readings came back...

Surprisingly, normal IIT girls didn't figure in this book. Probably because they were Mech guys or do such guys find better company in insti roof, vodka and Floyd than ..

Overall, the book was entertaining. Guys can draw an instant connection. If you want to the revisit the 4 years of your under grad again, then this is a must-read.
It is actually fun to borrow this book and read. You can then buy a copy of your own. Priced at Rs.99, it is a steal. This book is very difficult for Western readers to relate to but if you want to understand how Indian Education System works, then do read this. On a closing note, don't ask me again how the book is. If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand.

Categories: Categories: booksbooks, five point someone, chetan, bhagat

Art : Tanjore Painting

Thanjavur Painting (or Tanjore Painting as it is widely known today) is a medieval form of art that orginated in Tanjore, a town on the banks of Cauvery, in the 1500's. Most paintings depict Hindu gods and goddesses. A very expensive art, as the colors used in original paintings were natural colors made from vegetables, barks of trees and fruits. Some of the original paintings are preserved to this day in museums. The cost of the paintings are also high because the jewels worn by gods and godesses in the paintings were real precious stones such as Ruby (for red), Diamond (for white), Sapphire (for green) and gold foil used for the throne outline.

I have long wanted to learn this form of painting. Now on a vacation for a month, the longest in 2 years, it seemed like the best time to do. The drawing that I'm doing is shown below in various stages. On completion I will add the real painting as well. The painting that I have started on is a 20*16" one of Lord Krishna (as a child) sitting on a swing. The sketch is drawn on a board (first pic). The board preparation itself takes 2 days. Once you draw the sktech, you start pasting the stones (pic 2). These stones are not real precious stones. Then sticking the gold paper followed by painting colors and framing. I'm learning it from a person who has been doing it for around 10 years now. The craftsmanship that goes into creating these paintings is tremendous. I'm pretty excited about it as I'm doing identical ones simultaneously. One for myself and another one as a gift to mom!

Technical (Java) Interview Experiences and Tips - 2

Numerous calls and e-mails from a consultant persuaded me to take a break in my vacation and come to Bangalore for 2 days to attend an interview. The promise that all the rounds would be completed the same day with an offer given made it all the more lucrative. I should have known better that it was too good to be true. The interview process was scheduled for 2 hours from 11:00 a.m. -1:00 p.m. I had arrived just that morning after a night journey and looked a disaster with no sleep from the previous night.

Nevertheless, we drove to the avenue and I presented myself on time with the laundry list of documents that they had asked for. Thank God, they didn't ask for my parents' birth certificates!
Waited at the reception area to be called inside along with some 50 odd candidates. 11:30. 11:45. Still chatting with Vivek. A guy clad in black presented himself, addressed us and took us up. I still hoped to be out by 1:00 for lunch. After filling a form, the waiting continued upstairs with 25 odd people. No sign of any action. A bunch of referral candidates were whisked away to another building. I had a few referrals but people had warned me against it here as this org didn't work that way.

More waiting. I kept myself entertained with SMSs to Vivek, gazing at the 10 odd clocks depicting times of various places across time zones. It was quite an entertainment as all were showing incorrect times from New York to London to Tokyo to Sydney.

Just I was beginning to get impatient, the black clothed guy that I would call P presented himself again and gave a very attractive offer of who wants to go and have lunch? No one was in the mood. We just wanted to finish it and be done for the day. Discouraged by a lack of response, he muttered, "you should cooperate. You should understand blah blah". So many "shoulds" drove me mad. No apologetic tone. No courtesy. Zilch. That was it. I told him they needed to organize better. It didn't matter whether I got the job or not then. He asked us to reassemble at 2:00 p.m.

Skipped lunch for a lack of place to goto nearby and came back at 1:50 p.m. More waiting. I finally went in at 2:40 p.m. totally exhausted from the 3.5 hour wait. The interview was ok and the interviewer was cooperative. I blacked out and my eyelids were closing but I survived. Lasted 30 mins and I moved to the next round. Little did I know that the next goddamn round would be at 5:35 p.m.

With no lunch no snack and meaningless waiting for 6 hours, I finally emerged at 6:10 p.m. My gut says I wouldn't get the job because I was very aggressive. But I really don't care. If you are curious to know, what was the place I interviewed at, it was IBM.

Today's Tips :

1. Get a good night's sleep before an interview day


2. Plan your travel ahead. If it is a last minute one, negotiate for a better travel deal with the company you are interviewing for. Else postpone the interview to a convenient date. That shows you are not desperate and works well in a services market.


3. Do not take bullshit. If you respect yourself, only then can you expect others to give you one. Don't be inhuman and wait for unreasonably long hours. Plan an alternate solution and suggest you would visit again for the next round. That gives you time to get things in perspective.


4. Check your e-mail and ensure that you have all the documents that they asked for before you leave for the venue


5. To avoid delays at arriving at the venue, make sure you find out where the place is a day in advance


6. If you are waiting for longer hours at the venue, keep yourself refreshed by splashing water and drinking lots of water.


7. If you have information that there are going to be numerous other people taking the interview, carry a book or iPOD to keep you entertained. And ofcourse some snacks to munch.

Was it my "Imagination at Work"?

July 29th was my last day at work. Exactly 75 days at this wonderful place. It is always difficult to leave your first job. But this was my second, so I didn't have the emotional bondage. It was too short a period to have one either.

I admit the transition was difficult and the early days don't bring back very happy memories. But that would have been true at any organization I would have joined. Technology was not their forte and they admitted it.
Too infatuated by technology, it took a while to come to senses and to learn how to balance both. To realize the fact that if one had the potential and the drive to change things for better, it was only a matter of time to be empowered to see those changes. I was beginning to feel that when I had to leave.

When you haven't seen what can go wrong in how an organization functions, you start whining about trivial shortcomings and don't appreciate how good the place is. So I want to take a moment and jot down all the good things that I observed in my short stint here:

1. Recruitment - Just as you can judge a person by the company he keeps, you can judge a company (read: organization) by its HR. If there was single biggest factor that persuaded me internally to join this place, it was the recruitment process. Amazing HR team. 3 round of interviews within 2 days and on the dot. Never did I have to wait for more than 2 mins. When I arrived for the interview once, I was escorted to and fro from the gate. Sure, for security reasons or courtesy. You are free to perceive as you want to, but I was impressed.

2. Between Recruitment and Day 1- Calls from immediate manager and HR to ensure that everything was going per plan and there were 2-3 hiccups my way and all were resolved with NO fuss.

3. Day 1 - I was floored. Same level of hospitality as I had witnessed before. The winning score however was a feedback form that I had to fill in at the end of the day. It had questions like --

Who did you have your lunch with? - Team, Friends, Alone
Did the joining procedure take long ?

Very comforting questions. The thought that someone had actually thought of putting such questions and not mediocre ones copied from somewhere was appreciable. Day 1 can be nightmare with hundreds of forms to be filled up, an intimidating feeling of a new place, judging eyes, the nervousness to be at your best to give a very good first impression and so on...But at end of Day 1, I felt GOOD. None less.
I did not have to grope for answers or lie for any of the above.

Can you believe I had a machine and place to sit within 3 hours? It is a big deal in India.

4. First week - I had to go on a 2 day emergency leave to attend to my hospitalized mom. That was no problem either.


A few things that I loved about the place:

1. Professionalism - No where ever have I seen such an universal display of professionalism. Respect for other's time was so high that no meetings were ever conducted without a request placed atleast 2 weeks in advance. Having said that, it did not mean that you could not have ad hoc meetings if the situation demanded.

2. Transparency - They proved all the rules wrong. I have learnt the hard way to read between the lines in an offer letter or in a financial dealing. Whereas in this case, my suspicious mind tried in vain to find a catch point. There were none. It was all there in BLACK and WHITE.

3. Integrity - Amazing. The rules were the same for everyone. "All animals are equal. Some animals are more equals than the others" principle did not apply. Integrity across departments from HR until Finance and your managers. All read the same rule books, it flowed in their blood, there was no question of mending them.

4. Passion - People drive a company, cattle don't. And passionate people drive a company better. In India where you can easily replace anybody's job, it was good to see a place where people are given due respect at all levels and vice versa. The passion is clearly evident in the tone and every action. It is not just a job. You do it because you love it.

You may say I'm dreaming. But this is for REAL. It is a no-brainer to guess the name of the place I worked at.
I don't know how to put this. But if I ever come back to Bangalore, I wouldn't think for a moment to consider joining this place again. (and this is a BIG DEAL for someone who believes not going back to a place you have quit from).