ArunRocks

Disclaimer: The following text is a semi-review of a book. Such posts will be marked with [“BOOKS”] prefixed at their headings until Blogger.com comes up with such a feature (which BTW will not take long)

The possibilities opened up by books are sometimes so immense that it can prove to be turning
points.
I stumbled upon ‘Opening the Xbox’ in a second hand book fair in Bangalore. For 200 rupees it gave me a fairly up to date recount of the extraordinary rise of Microsoft in the gaming industry. Written by a journalist, the fast paced narrative
laced with references to gaming stalwarts gave a clear picture of the strategies required to survive in this cut throat business.

I’ve noticed that while Indian bookstores are inundated with books regarding learning new packages (from beginner to advanced “guru” levels), there seems to be a certain dearth of books offering an industry focus. For all you know this might have been an American edition (judging from the flap) left behind by someone. Well suffice to say, just my luck. Interestingly, the side effect of having read an influential book (influential? at least from my perspective, yes) is that you tend to completely agree with the book’s logic. I have often seen this with books by Ayn Ryand.
For me, at least, my perspective of consoles changed so much that I was all for the go-for-laptop-and-Xbox idea. But much later it dawned on me (finally!) that for a serious game developer, Xbox offers no value unless he buys the Xbox SDK as well! Back to the PC with
GPU-based card idea again.

Surprisingly, this is the logic of many serious non-game-developing gamers as well. This is perhaps they have other multimedia intensive uses like video editing/encoding as well. Anyway, from preliminary
reports GPU is going to be an integral part of our PCs. Despite this, over here, only a handful, including your local hardware guru, knows even
what it is.

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I guess you can say the honeymoon period is over. In a wild goose chase that spanned over 3 DCs and many, many overnight bus journeys; I could have sensed something was happening. After nearly 6 weeks of ES University and many man-days later, when the wait seemed despairingly long, it finally came. Yes, the project I had been waiting for. About which I knew only three simple letters: U-B-S. But those three letters stood for the Trinity or the Thrimoorthis or the rather the undying quest for truth itself.

If you think I’m hyping you up, consider the facts. Among all the four projects considered for me. This is the only one that has:

1. Any connection to finance whatsoever. And boy, the connection is real solid. UBS is a Swiss bank and the second largest bank in the world
2. Only project which is starting from scratch. I get benefit of seeing the whole picture
3. No maintenance/support stuff here. It is a true consulting assignment with technical architecture designing. I get to see what I designed as a living, breathing system in UBS!
4. Opportunity for client interaction in my very first project
5. The only architecture I’m familiar with inside out is Microsoft platform. This project uses Microsoft BizTalk
6. The other thing I have risked to learn in TAPMI other than finance is German. I couldn’t ever convince myself for paying for German classes. But guess what, I’ll be in Switzerland, where German is very crucial to interact with clients.

The deal was not even inked when I was identified for it, but it came though. But, the excitement is really chilling for at least two reasons. Firstly, I’m might be too optimistic about the whole thing and I’m in for major disappointment later. Secondly, the responsibility is huge, it is a make-or-break situation. I have to really, really prove myself in this using a combination of my skills.

But I still prefer to see the bright side. In my brief tenure in the company, I’ve been surprising myself at my own agility. The agonizing decisions I’ve taken purely based on my gut feel, proved that I’m different from the bandwagon and rightfully so. The gift of serendipity to meet true and inspiring friends who just by a few interactions could enhance a facet of my life. Their rewarding companionship and support will take me I’m sure to where I belong.

Everywhere I traveled I felt every place will be your home; in fact, you need to just feel it. The structures, the roads, the streets names, the people are mere multiple facades to very same abode - Home. This is the religion of the global traveler, that - this is my global village. And guess what the religion just got a new believer

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Today while walking towards the office, I saw this huge hoarding professing that their “councelors” were unique in that they “listened”. Incidently that was a quality of a good consultant as well (or a good leader, husband, etc etc). But what really intruiged me was that I couldn’t clearly differentate between a counselor and a consultant. Time to Google I thought.

The outcome of the searches were very interesting. Firstly, there were some overlap in meaning for eg:

counselor
One whose profession is to give advice in law, and manage causes for clients in court; a barrister

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998

con·sul·tant
A physician or surgeon who does not take actual charge of a patient, but acts in an advisory capacity to the patient’s primary physician

Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc

After cursory research, I will pretend to have understood and try to explain. A counselor is one who applies his domain expertise (eg: law) into the client situation, whereas a consultant tries to redefine the problem itself and attempt for, perhaps radically, different solutions to enable you reach your goals.

Thus the goals of a counselor and consultant are different. The counselor seeks to give you the best out of a situation. The consultant tries to alter the situation itself keeping in mind your goals and objectives. The latter is clearly more painful and time consuming, but ultimately more rewarding.

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It was a really exciting day today. It couldn’t have been at a better place than Bangalore Infosys, the very birthplace of this famous company! I met my delivery manager Abhishek and had a nice conversation with him. If his idea was to drive me, it worked!!! He also kind of liked my suggestions. I also met a senior consultant Rakesh who was so crystal in his concepts that the session was an eye-opener in EAI! He said I could pursue my research in EAI Patterns if I wished. Sounded good to me :). Tday for the first time at work I got a lot of action items, including applying for my visa to UK and Aus. So I felt real good.

I met a lot of people other than that. They had a interesting thing about them… they wanted to do or go exactly where I wanted to. For eg: I wanted to find a block, the person would need to go to the sanme block for something else. These weird coincidences happened 4 or 5 times throughout the day!! I met a lot, I mean a lot of ESU guys and many of them were pleasantly surprised.

I shifted from the main guest house at Adarsh Gardens to a smaller one called Saptagiri. It is more like a small house with a nice mix of resident. Purohit from CCD Calif, his wife and daughter was the first I could meet. Very friendly and sweet family. I met an young Aussie named Brad and he was very conversant. Later I met the remaining occupant another Aussie named Mark. Brad was finding it hard to adjust with Indian food and water, coz of “all the bugs”. He is planning a 3 week trip all over India, of course, including Kerala before leaving for Australia.

My junies mailed me that they are missing me!!! I was in systems committee and it was the underdog. Now it seems it has assumed a prominent position. My portal and the software I’d developed will be used as “TAPMI Intranet” portal. More importantly professors are after it as a learning tool, exactly as I had envisaged. Aint it cool?

So looks like I’ll be here till sunday, thats plenty of time to roam about this Garden City. This is turning out to be one random decision that I’ll never regret.

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A long gap indeed. The fact is that I actually forgot about this blog in the first place. Later, I was trying to look for a new site when I retrieved this account from my mail archives.

So where should I start? Joining infy on 3rd of May we had a wonderful start. The one week stay in the hotel (Fortune Katriya) was too good. We expected to stay in Hyderabad for some time so Dinakar, Danny and I found an apartment in Banjara Hills, one of the poshest residential areas. The rent was low, about 4K for a 2 BHK. We found a maid etc but had no plans for cooking. Despite Dan and Dinky being unsatisfied with Mahalakshmi mess, it became “the” eat out for us.

After the one month stint in ES University (headed by Narry), we got our practises allocated. I fancied EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) for its tech appeal and package neutrality. I and another guy from IISc called Arun Prasad and Vinod (plus a lot of red herrings) ran around a lot for it. But only three of us opted for it and subsequently we got it. My posting was in Mangalore with Arun Prasad from the 1st of June. My roomies were in CRM got hyderabad (or so they thought!)

The rest of the story involves a brief stay (10 days) at Mangalore infy guest house and finding a house in a place called Kottara close to Minfy (Mangalore Infy!). Sadly there was no practice specific training. We waited till 21st june when I came down to hyd for TIBCO training in Infy. Today it gets over (last three days was for the mock prj) and it is time to go back.

So its time to pack. This visit to hyd was very fruitful. I brought number of pirated books like “Da Vinci Code” (finished reading), “Hollywood Wives” (used copy), “Handbook of Palmistry”, “End of Shareholder Value” (used) and “Atlas Shrugged”. Moreover went to places like Durgam Cheruvu (romantic area near a lake), Birla Mandir, Birla Mueseum, Sangeeth theatre, Abids Sunday Book Mart, Big Bazaar (Walmart of hyd!!!) and Charminar. I met a lot of old friends who I’d met in TAPMI interview like Vasudha and Ujjval. I made new friends like Suma and Pallavi (classmate of Preethi Raghu, Saras ‘n Woody)

Thats all folks, time to leave!

Please note that I will not entertain any request for TIBCO “training institutes” in response to this post. I simply don’t know hyderabad well enough, not to mention “TIBCO training centres”!

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