Yep, 2009 has come and gone, for good. Not a particularly good year, both professionally (in part) and personally.

No major highlights except growing older. And…

Left GE Healthcare. I think the team is imploding literally, almost like a repeat of Applibase. Heh
Joined SPML-Semitech, with responsibilities in an entirely different industry and segment. Heck, I don’t even code for a living anymore. Don’t know if that is good or bad…
Work has been a killer in my new job (which does not have Saturdays and also some questionable policies but then the company is managed by my uncle and cousins so can’t complain )

Traveled a LOT. Visited Xi’an (Sian), Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong (All in China), Bhopal, Mumbai, Jaipur, Delhi (about 4 times this year) Pondicherry, Assam, Calcutta.

My Grandmother died this year and I was really close to her. That was the worst of the year. I miss her.

Well 2010 is here now and I have a lot of hopes for this year. Hopefully a lot of change in my outlook, life and work, a lot more travel and clarity about myself, future and my thoughts.

Here’s to a new year and bye bye to the year past

Oh yes it does.. It was just sometime ago that I was going through the whole application process. And now it seems to be that time again.

Work had been hectic the past few weeks. Completed a major task at work so things are better now and seem to be slowing down now.

Got a new MP3 player, a SanDisk Sansa Fuze. It’s flash based and really cool. My colleague thinks it is very cute (yes she is a girl )

I’ll soon be joining a short course called Social Entrepreneurship Outreach Program (SEOP) by a group known as Center for Social Initiatives and Management (CSIM).

Oh and I’ve been reading quite a few books as usual. Quick list of books I’ve read recently:

• Making Money – Terry Pratchett
• Thief of Time – Terry Pratchett
• Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
• Smoke and Mirrors – Neil Gaiman
• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – Niel Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• Watchmen – Alan Moore
• The Discworld Graphic Novels: The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic – Terry Pratchett
• Johnny and the Bomb – Terry Pratchett
• The Color of Magic
• Monstrous Regiment – Terry Pratchett
• The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons

Oh and I think there were a few more but I don’t remember. I’m sure you can imagine why
These are in the past 4-5 months (except the Watchmen Graphic novel)
More later.. Hopefully..

So I’ve been busy. Old news what!

Past few weeks have run away like seconds.

Two trips – Jaipur for a wedding and Pondicherry for a holiday. More trips likely this year with one definite. Want to try and go to Goa at least once this year. Could not go last year which sort of broke my promise to myself to go there at least once a year.

Work has been hectic and killing. But is sort of fun because I am in charge. BM coding has slowed down too slightly since folks at home so am always with them. This sucks because I have a lot of stuff I want to do but do not have the time to

No time for photography. Reading has slowed down too. Sleep seems to always hover around me but not for enough time.

Time seems to be flying away. Apparently relativity is hot around me but without the pretty girl.

Found this lovely video of a addictive song and an beautiful voice. Have listened to it at least 15-20 times in the past 2 days. I think it was a very good discovery. Nice songs on the singer’s (Emily Wells) myspace page too. I think I really like her voice and her unique style of singing. Will keep track of her.

(Direct link to the video if the above embed does not work correctly)

Birthday was celebrated in the trip to Jaipur. Turned out to be a fabulous day capped off by an awesome party; not due to my birthday but the bachelor’s party of the groom whose wedding I was attending there. His wife is lovely. They are staying with us for this month so yay..

A virus from an infected flash drive infected my system. So I basically spent the last 4 days (including today) trying to clean out my system. Having run at the least about 6 different anti-spyware/malware/ware and 2 Anti Virus applications to scan my system, all of which show the system as clean, the system is still not usable. Any application which connects to the Internet starts using close to 100% of the CPU.

So this brings me to the topic of this post. If I found the author of this virus/spyware (whose name I don’t even know) I have in mind some very enjoyable activities to take part in, enjoyable being for me of course. Due to this infection, I have essentially wasted 4 days of my time when I should have been working. Office can be so boring if the comp is down.

And also thanks to this virus, I called the IT support at work to try and clean it. So this gentleman, brilliantly, manages to lose ALL my open tabs (numbering in the high 80s, low 90s). All gone, collected over a period of months. Oh, did I also mention that he suggested that I use Netscape Navigator. What’s that you ask? It’s the old, discontinued browser which was so crappy near it’s end that even Netscape developers would probably not use it.

Anyway, so apparently the end result is that even was unable to determine the cause of the system freakiness and I have to get the system formatted tomorrow. Which means that I will not be able to take it with me on my trip which further means that I waste another 5 days without managing to do any work which means that someone seriously deserves some nice, slow, delicious torture.

ooh

Ps. And no, I did not wish to bookmark those tabs because I had other uses for them and bookmarking them would mean I forget about them and I did not want to forget about them cos I needed to go back to refer info from them.

Well it’s about time I posted. It’s been a long break. Have more than a few topics I want to blog but just cannot motivate myself. To add to it, the lack of time keeps me away as well.

I’d typed out a fairly long description of what I’ve been upto over the past few weeks but then removed it. Did not feel like rambling so much.

Anyway, several important events have happened in life. Some for the good and some I’m not that bothered about.

Life is a lot more simpler right now. Am quite busy with work (am volunteering for extra projects) which provides me with a reason to avoid people.

Anyway, more coming up. Soon. Hopefully.

One of my biggest pet peeves is people reading from a Powerpoint slideshow when giving a presentation.

The powerpoint slide show is to guide your audience about what YOU are presenting, speaking about. It should NOT convey all the information nor should it be YOUR (The speakers) guide or prompter.

Ideally, the speaker should “know” the topic and speak from his/her mind and allow the bullet points/diagrams to connect what you are talking about.

It is quite irritating that the speaker turns away from the audience to look at the screen to gather his/her thoughts or determine what to talk about next. For the love of the audience, stop referring to the screen and look at the audience when you are talking to them.

- I found this article quite a good take on the US Presidential race. What will it take for politicians to be more honest and actually work for a country and it’s people rather than amassing money or power. I think politicians are the worst scumbags on the face of the planets ahead of lawyers (Matko, no offense meant to you)
(I usually write about politics but this article was a very interesting analysis of the state of politics)

- Devegowda is one of the worst politicians ever to walk this country. And he is scum

- I really really want a MacBook Pro with the new Mac OS, Leopard.

- I need to sleep, write, read and work (in that order) but do not have time to do all.

- I came up with this quote

- Of late, music helps me get through a day

My blog feels neglected. And not without reason. I’ve barely posted recently. Though there has been a lot to write.

A combination of work, mental imbalance and guilt of not working on my applications has kept me away from typing out anything. Also, I want to make a lot more private posts to put my thoughts into words, but only for myself.

The blog itself is also neglected since the theme is fairly old and I’ve not changed it for a while. No idea if any of my plugins have been updated nor have I upgraded wordpress itself (though  this is partly because I am thinking of moving over to Habari. If only Habari were a little more stable. But I digress)
But the guilt of my apps does not let me. Once the apps are done….

Kuku wrote:

Its so fagging irritating when some people ask you for feedback and then when you do decide to give them some frank feedback (which obviously they do not like to hear) they get all irritated and worked up and downright delirious at times.

My own team had a feedback session (Anonymous) for one of our leads with a facilitator to act as a bridge. I was not really interested in this initially because I assumed that it was for “critical” feedback but being in the team, I had to participate.

While there wasn’t much spoken initially, people did voice their issues (which imo was nothing major and indicated that most were happy with the lead) which was noted and put into context by the facilitator. But I did get a chance to speak since the feedback session also included positive feedback (which was that I had)

Anyway, the feedback was given to the lead in front of the team and very admirably, the lead actually agreed to most of them, and stated his intention to try to correct them and change them.  The way he took it and accepted it, my respect and admiration for him only increased and made me glad that I was in this team that any other.

Since i was about 2 months old, I’ve had a condition which made the involuntary nervous control of my neck muscles weak. Due to this, I do not have complete control over my neck and unconsciously “shake” it from one side to the other.

Unfortunately since its not under my control, I never realize when I’m shaking my head. Most people understandably find it weird or funny, but surprisingly to me some people think I’m mocking them during a conversation (as I shockingly found out recently) which of course is not my intention.

And it’s not like I’ve not tried getting it treated. My parents and I have consulted more than 50 docs over the years without success. I have tried allopathy, homeopathy, ayurveda, physiotherapy, yoga, concentration exercises etc. And yes, (very unlike me) even meditation. But as obvious, to no avail

While most people ignore it, many tend to make fun by giving me names, mimicking it or joking about it behind my back. As a kid, I’d get upset (quite a bit) with anyone who made fun. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve started to ignore it all, even suppressing a very strong feeling to confront a colleague who was making fun. Ultimately decided that someone like that is not worth me getting upset (and it being a weekend also helped )

why am I writing all this? And out of the blue? I don’t know. But I just felt like “venting” when a guy who goes by the same bus as me mimicked me.

Maybe it is this that has made me the social inept and introvert that I am. It’s not that I am short of self-confidence (or according to mom, I’m over confident) but I’ve somehow held back on interacting with people, very importantly, acquaintances (people I know but who I don’t consider friends)