ArunRocks

Come Friday and Pune Infosys would witness a remarkable phenomena perfected by weeks of alliteration. Early morning, beside the lush green landscaped autrium multicolored airbags get lined up in neat rows to greet a visitor. By late afternoon, the rabble of excited youngsters begin to make frantic calls for booking tickets. You could feel the buzz of excitement resonating off virtually every cubicle wall. By late evening, not just the D.C but the entire area becomes a ghost town. Then you realize you have just withnessed the mass weekend pilgrimage of mumbaites to their “home sweet homes”. This week was Ganesh Chaturthi, a festival no self respecting Maharashtrian should miss being at ones home. Hence, Monday has been granted a holiday for Ganesh Visarjan.

There was a party, the day before, celebrating ES (Enterprise Solutions) unit in Pune crossing the hundred mark in terms of employee strength. It was a dance party after a long time and it was really fun. Indian dance parties are always the same. On the dance floor, as in any party, there are always 2 kinds of people. You must be expecting the cliché. Those who can move and those who can’t. Well, that’s not quite true in India. It should be those who know what they are doing and those who don’t. The latter category, being a majority, knows that every self respecting DJ should play loud Punjabi numbers and crass Bollywood remixes which forces everyone to some simple Bangra (Punjabi) steps. Even an odd “Summer of 69″ or “We will rock you” is a piece of cake. You just have to imagine that you are in a communist rally and you are leaping while you are shouting a slogan.

The moment a DJ strays from this unspoken code, the entire junta goes haywire. Reactions would range from “This party needs some juice, man” to “Stop the F*@%ing show!”. We, Indians, practically play Dhandia (the Holi dance) on a disco floor. People form circles and try to make a formation as if they were Bollywood extras. The circles without girls shrink over time and the ones with girls keep growing till they start stepping into everybody else’s feet. The hot favourites both on the dance floor and for desi DJs are the Punjabis (or the mundas and mundis as the DJs affectionately call them). Feel the party is getting cold? Slowly fade in to that Punjabi pop number (which one? doesn’t matter which, yaar!). It always works. They would even happily go on for the next couple of numbers without skipping a beat, never realizing that they are dancing to some salsa tune. Perhaps the famed Newton’s law of inertia is at work here.

The distinguished crowd prefers to ogle, ahem, watch the proceedings by being comfortable seated in the surrounding chairs. This brings in elements of the classical Indian mehfil, if you wish. Some make the switch to sitting, quietly in the middle of a noisy number. If you look at it closely, it is quite a strategic move because the next moment they would be wolfing down their chicken leg like an industrial-grade pencil sharpener. This leaves the poor party good Samaritan having less desirable parts of a chicken eyeing the thankless audience with longing eyes.

Inevitably while the party draws to a close there will be two kinds of enthusiasts rocking the dance floor  the unnaturally gifted and the intolerably high spirited. The gifted are your next door girl-who-was-practicing-classical-dance-turned-cinematic-dancer. They paint the clueless crowd onida green with their authentic dance steps which you might have forgotten from the silver screen. For once it is their field day and they have to fight for all the attention they get before the Cinderella spell breaks. That should explain their superhuman stamina. The other half is the happy people in their high spirits. These cheerful lots are the twilight zone of any party. They hardly wait for sunset, ain’t they? They move with amazing flexibility and no power. In no time they cover an entire dance floor in their amazing snake-like movement.

At the end of the day, a party is all about meeting people and having really nice conversations. So what if it was an articulate goofy looking guy who you “happened” to have dinner with. You can always pretend to forget him the next day. Dim lights, you know, dim lights.

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Thanks to Dinky (Dinakar) I have discovered a very effective means of “time pass”. The wonderful online community orkut.com. Unfortunately it comes at a time when I work for 14-15 hours everyday. Yes, folks you heard that right. So much for my grand Pune visit right? Well, hope it will stave me away my boredom when I get back to “warming the bench”.

A good news for my Mallu readers is that I’ve made a simple change to my site so that you can see Malayalam text without downloading any extra fonts. Here goes my first line in Mallu:-
????? ?????? ?????? ???????????? ???????? :))
If you are still seeing gibberish, maybe you should try it on Windows XP (Service Pack 2) or upgrade your IE

My personal project ‘Agony’ is taking a back seat because of all this. I must say that I’m getting impressed at The International Functional Programming Contest 2004’s task description.

That’s exactly the way I want Agony to be defined. Mathematically clear. Like Knuth’s style in Art of Computer Programming. Well, need time dudes, need time.

The project I’m happy to say is staying on course due to lot of things committed team members, some good reporting mechanisms and a little magic. The magic is the magic of scripting which is done in VB.Net and Python. Both I have initiated. I’m happy to say that by automating we have achieved a Herculean task in a much abbreviated time. I had already realized the importance of scripting, but now the result is for all to see.

I’m planning to move my blog to a better domain (basically non-free), I’m trying out various options in my home town, Thrissur. I hope to use Blog:CMS which I find to have best feature set somewhat matching my requirements. Rest is PHP hacking which I’m pretty comfortable with. I’ve joined the Indian Bloggers list mainly due to the moderator contacting me spotting me from the Infy Intranet. You gotta see how many Indian bloggers out there. You’ll see me there soon.

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It has been a long time since my last blog. Last week was mostly slogging than blogging, that’s why. But I must not complain. The System Integration Tests have turned all five of us (in my team) into beady eyed, excel-sheet tinkering workaholic sloths, but yet I must not complain. Why? Because ladies and gentlemen, welcome the most beautiful Infy DC of em all, Pune Infosys! Well, nestled in the far far away hillocks of Hinjawadi (Pronounced, as an auto driver tutored me with the patience of a primary school teacher, with a soft j as in ‘jump’), this DC is a feast for the eyes. The people are friendly and demographics being largely
student population, Pune sets one at ease. While we are at it, the people are also really good looking. But like Hyderabad, there seems to be a mix. While I figured out it is the Iranian blood in Hyderabad, I might have to dig deeper into the history of this city for more info.

The auto drivers here are demi-gods here, with the pathetic public transport as a constant irritant. But when these gods start talking (which they often do) there is no stopping. A running commentary about this city was happening on my very first ride itself. Bombarding me with facts and figures from the political significance of a particular road to the date of establishment of a college, I couldn’t help feeling a little dumb. My guest house is inside the campus and it was everything what was promised. Gym, swimming pool, recreation center, washing machine etc. I couldn’t help feeling that this is my lucky break. Check it out:

Well, to have a real good view, you need a panoramic shot. Imagine about 8 buildings forming a circle around a lush green island with a golf course, exotic palms and a wooden bridge with criss-crossing meandering pathways. You get the picture. The gastronomic delights in all the food courts were par-excellence. Bangalore DC is really bad in that area and almost everyone complains about it. My room mate Atul Chaturvedi is, yet again, a PL (like my ex-roommate Shiv) from the Oracle practice. A pretty senior guy, but very friendly and having wonderful sense of humour to boot.

Managed to see ‘Dhoom’ over the weekend. It was a mind blowing experience. Unusually good special effects and great action sequences were the high point of the movie. In fact it becomes very difficult to make out the parts which have been digitally composited due to the use of avid technology. the output is crisp and coherent. I’m sure it would appeal to the international audience as well. As if to ensure that, the producers — Yash Raj films have roped in the pop sensation Tata Young for an English rendering of the title track. Currently, Young’s version seems to be more popular. I also saw ‘My Boss’s Daughter’ on TV with Atul, it was absolutely hilarious. Such kind of pictures hardly rise above slapstick humour, but this one was brilliant. The timing of the events piling up one after the other, leaving the protagonist in really really tough situations was throughly entertaining. I also watched ‘The Insider’, despite Al Pachino and Russel Crowe, I felt it just an average drama. Crowe delivered the same shy, introverted yet upright character he portrayed in ‘A Beautiful Mind’. Maybe the plot was the saving grace.

After doling out 4,000 for a 256 MB iBall USB drive, my next major purchase happened yesterday with my new pair of Reebok for 1,990. It is black on white with orange streak having an overall futuristic look. I intend to use it when I start going for the gym. My intention of going to the gym is simple: burn somecalories, no stupid body building.

Well, that sums up my week. Today, Atul is leaving for Belgium at 2 am in the night. I wish him a happy journey.

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