End of an awesome summer and I fall into Fall…

I know. It’s been really long time since I penned down my thoughts and shared updates from my life. I won’t say any lame excuses anymore and it’s simply my inability and my inability only. I hope this Fall gets me back on track with blogging and make my invaluable service of excruciation continue …I thought of several different topics to resume my blog and contemplated back and forth on them without really zeroing in on anything…Finally, thought I could provide a status update from my side before I could actually write something important (it doesn’t mean this post is unimportant and you can skip…you should still read this )…

My summer was damn hot as I was in Houston doing my internship with Deloitte. After initial week of orientation, I was assigned to a client in Houston itself. I was supposed to travel to and work from my client site from Monday through Thursday and report back to my office on Friday (typical consulting life style). Only issue was my client was situated on the other extreme end of Houston. The bus used to show me half of Houston before reaching my office. I spent 4 hours everyday in just commuting back and forth. I never seen 4:30 AM for the past so many years (not even on Diwali days), but I woke up by 4:30-5:00 almost everyday for my first 4 weeks. My endurance did not last long and I ended up buying a car (of course, its a separate story!)…With only 2 weeks of International Driving Permit left and with my new (used) car in place, I was under tremendous pressure to get the driving license and luckily I got that in first attempt…

If that was not enough for the summer, I did skydiving on the July 4th long weekend. I was claiming it as an achievement all the time but realized it’s not worth to be an achievement…There was no adrenaline rush, no butterflies in stomach, no real sense of fear, though it was enjoyable…I won’t say it is really adventurous if you are really adventurous…I think I should try bungee jumping or something of that sort …If you have missed my video in Facebook or Orkut catch me in action here

My internship got over on 7th August and I walked out of the office with a fulltime offer in hand …I will be in Houston for next few years and hopefully my job will be as (or more) challenging as my internship…Though I had 4 weeks of time between my internship and Fall semester, I never really relaxed or had fun except for this weekend…I was shuttling between Houston, Austin, Atlanta, and College Station for various things…Finally, this weekend was awesome with 3 movies (Inglourious Basterds, District 9, and The Final Destination 3D), a day of fun at Lake Bryan with lot of games and my first Friday night out in US…

Now, after a highly eventful summer, it’s time to get back to School…I am expecting less course work and more of other activities to keep me busy this Fall…Nevertheless, it will be no less hectic than the other 2 semesters…but, I found my way of having fun and it should be a great last semester before I get back to the serious life…All said and done, I am excited, about being back to school and finishing my small hiatus of 16 months with a reputed Masters degree in hand soon…Time flies, literally!

PS: When I reviewed, this post looked a lot more narcissistic than I thought it would…I will make sure I don’t do this again (again, how many ‘I’s )…

India chooses to stay with the worst…

Indians have always been tolerant..tolerant of corruption, tolerant of false promises, tolerant of insecure environment, tolerant of lack of infrastructure, tolerant of lack of basic hygiene, tolerant of deteriorating education quality, tolerant of vote bank politics, tolerant of pseudo-secularism, in short, tolerant of anything and everything…that has reflected in the election results now.Though a lot of us keep blaming BJP for its lack of strong allies in many important states and lack of clarity in its leadership, I would rather attribute this result to the indifferent and insensible nature of our voters, both in rural and urban areas. I couldn’t see any anti-incumbency whatsoever even after facing worst possible reign with sky-rocketing inflation, reduced agricultural growth, more former suicides than ever and a much celebrated NREGA which is just written on paper. Even to Congress this could have been a great shock as they were licking every party’s boots till the day before the results. Even bigwigs were asking ‘Sorry’ to old friends to mend the relationship. Nobody can understand what people really think…

MMS Vs Advani

I do not simply understand how can people give a thumbing majority to a government which can claim nothing but the nuclear deal to its list of achievements. It was a total fiasco in all other areas. The government failed to regulate the economy and thus we are having rippling effects of US subprime in India. The government failed to take precautionary measures due to which we had worst terrorist attacks of all the time. Even then clever(?) people of India choose to elect the same government. There can only be two possible reasons: i) Failure of opposition to take relevant issues to the public to create anti-incumbency, ii) Use of power by incumbent government to create unfair advantage for themselves. When these two get combined with the indifferent nature of public, this is the kind of result you get.

First of all, though BJP’s election manifesto and vision statements focused on growth prospects, their campaign targeted unnecessarily at Manmohan Singh which was a mere waste of time. I don’t think people reacted against BJP because they targeted a scholarly person like MMS as projected by media (everyone in this world know that every word spoken about MMS is true to the core and he is nothing but a puppet PM). They should have concentrated more to talk about the failures of congress and the changes BJP can bring about. Secondly, in some states (especially Tamilnadu) the election was not conducted in a fair manner. With strong anti-incumbency, I don’t see any reason how DMK was able to win 18/21 seats in Tamilnadu. I personally know that they distributed money (Rs.500 per vote) and captured booths for voting. Election commission will never worry about these kind of incidents with CEC Navin Chawla being the greatest ‘friend’ of Congress.

Finally, I cannot do anything but pity on our people. One cannot be more idiotic than doing this. If in cities the people were carried away by the media which was always biased, in rural areas people were carried away by false promises and Rahul Gandhi’s personal touch (esp. in UP). I hate dynasty to the core and Rahul being touted as next PM with so many qualified, senior leaders in Congress makes me wonder whether Congressmen have any self-respect. From BJP’s point of view, it is a great opportunity for them to redefine the party with a new leader. As suggested by many, it is time for BJP to understand the ground realities and build a stronger base before 2014. If they simply waste time like they did from 2004-2008, it is not going to help in anyway. Luckily, this election has helped BJP gather support of thousands of youngsters which will help a lot in subsequent elections. Till that time, stay with the worst India. Even God cannot help you

Its over! Its over!! Its over!!!

I wanted to get out on the streets and shout this like Janagaraj did in Agni Natchathram. Man! Its one of the craziest semester I have ever had…its even more pressuring than my final semester in Undergrad in which I had 6 courses along with a large project…if I have to convey the enormity of the semester in Vijayakanth’s style, here it goes:

I had 4 heavyweight courses, 6 presentations, 10 reports,  26 case studies, 25 homework assignments, numerous articles, 1 really big data warehouse and BI implementation, 2 mid terms, 2 final exams, and 2 Herculean final take home exams. In short, it is close to 500 pages of written content and 154080 minutes of ordeal which has finally come to an end today …whether I was successful or not will be known in a few days…

Now you would have understood why I wasn’t able to post frequently in the past few months. I hope I get back my momentum and come up with interesting topics….

Recession? I care a damn!

Believe me! I did not say this. It was one of the budding MS aspirants from India. Though, overall, the number of Indian students applying to various MS programs in United States and other countries seems to have come down considerably, it is still quite a big number. To my surprise, I could not see any apprehensions about the market conditions in US amongst the prospective students. Rather, I could witness a great amount of enthusiasm. Undoubtedly, it is one of the career defining moments (in fact, it could well be a life defining moment) and I had the similar amount of enthusiasm when I applied to universities and got admits.

But, the situation is glaringly worse since I came to USA. A couple of years back, everyone from my program from my university seemed to have had multiple offers. Now, an interview call, even from a small firm is considered to be a great achievement. Most of the companies have either deferred their hiring process to see how market goes further or completely stopped recruitment to wait till the economy gets better. If you have had the chance to read my post on career fairs, you would be having an idea of what I am talking about. It was so disheartening to see many talented individuals getting back to India burying all their US dreams. ‘No..No..I just came to US to learn from one of world’s best institutions and I am not bothered about working in US’ – how many feel like this? Not even 1% would be my answer. Especially when things are not good even in home country, nobody would prefer to go back.

So, what makes the newbies be very much confident of their future in America? Possibly, the expert predictions that the economy will start recovering from the later half of this year. But, same was the perception when we came here. Even if the market recovers, is it going to be at the pace at which it plummeted? I afraid, not so. With hundreds of thousands of people waiting for second opportunity after losing their jobs, the job market will be even more competitive when it recovers. The job scenario in colleges could possibly improve, but I don’t see any drastic improvement especially for International students with H-1B becoming a bigger issue with increased job losses in US. But, if you do get a job, H-1B is assured as there may not be as many applicants to enter into a lottery.

The institutions are cleverer now. They are offering more scholarships and waivers to attract more students. We, Indians always fall prey to value-for-money things. Even one of the biggest attributes I considered when I made my final decision on higher studies was ‘In the worst case, how much am I going to lose?’. But, is it that simple? With Indian IT industry facing troubles like never before, I am not sure whether this calculation works today. Of course, some students view this as an opportunity to spend these kind of difficult times in school and thus be safe. But, the real tough times could start after graduating from school if the economy doesn’t recover. Look before you leap…

If that was not serious enough, this one surely is : -Ineligible Indian Bachelors. The easiest way for an Indian girl to enter US (no hard feelings ladies ) seems to be a big question these days..working in US is no more a ‘key differentiator’ and doesn’t give the ‘competitive advantage’ it used to give…Thank God! I still have a long way to go

PS: For Tamilians: Kumudham A.M.Rajagopalan has predicted that the economy in US would start recovering from January 18, 2010…Let’s see

One another reason to vote for BJP…

This is not definitely a campaign post for BJP. But, it will certainly seem like one . I just wanted to share one of the most interesting things I have come across recently. This election will be an interesting one. For the first time, we have a strong third front ally apart from Congress and BJP. I always had an aversion towards Congress and this time I feel that every Indian should have that. The incumbent Congress government has failed in all possible dimensions. Be it national security, economy or infrastructure and healthcare, the government has evidently nose dove.

I am not in supportive of the third front either which has almost declared Mayawati for prime ministerial candidacy. She has been awful in UP. Instead of eradicating reservation, she introduced reservation for upper caste and started implementing reservation system in private sector in UP. If she does that at the national level, our GDP will plummet as the efficiency of the private companies will become as that of government’s. So, I am left with no other option but to support BJP. I was supporting BJP since I started voting, but they haven’t done any magic during their reign either. But, they were way better than the current government.

Coming to the point, the reason for this post is the new IT Vision created by BJP which is available in LK Advani’s website (http://www.lkadvani.in/eng/images/stories/it-vision.pdf). Its a 40 pages document which has addressed several problems in India with the help of IT. As an IT professional, whatever I can visualize as a solution to the problems that we face in India, is there in this document. Though in some places the ideas look far fetched, overall, I could see a lot of thought process and intelligence behind this document. If BJP gets a chance to form a government (which is a big question with their weak allies) and implement their promises, we can definitely overcome China which has started implementing IT everywhere since 2001.

Modi already did some of this in Gujarat and the results are evident. So, nobody can claim now that it is not possible to change the way the government operates. All that we need is a strong, visionary leader who can have absolute control over things. But, as I mentioned above, BJP has done the same mistake again this time. Losing too many strong ally possibilities. And one of their biggest challenge will be taking this IT Vision to the majority voters who live in villages and make them understand the proposals. Nevertheless, this will be an interesting election with lot of tussles expected towards the end…Lets wait and see….

25 random things about me…

Somebody tagged me with this nasty thing in Facebook because of which I had to write 25 random things about me…

1) Good things first, I am extremely hard working. Somehow I don’t lose energy till the task is completed. But, when I do not have much to do, I procrastinate things to the very last minute and waste time on useless things…so, I always like to have loads of pending things left…

2) I am an ardent believer of Almighty and destiny. Even after putting our best, if we don’t get right opportunities at right time, the efforts go waste…so, I attribute all my success to Almighty first before thinking about my hardwork…

3) In my childhood my favorite color was Red…but somehow changed it to blue in past few years…you can see a blue shade in everything i do..my shirts, my blog, my presentation backgrounds, my project report backgrounds…my mind doesn’t think out of blue…

4) Though I watch movies from all languages, I only listen to Tamil songs…somehow couldn’t change this habit…

5) My memory is content specific…I remember lyrics of several hundreds of Tamil songs…I could still remember the lyrics after several years…but I forget subjects immediately after exams

6) The only thing I am afraid of is DOG…once a dog chased me for nearly half a mile and I luckily escaped

7) I had an aversion towards Curd (Yogurt), Butter Milk and Butter till my age of 22…I even leave the place if someone is eating any of these…but, now these are integral part of my life…in fact, its a huge transformation in my food habits since I came out of my house for work

I am extremely bold towards incidents…I never lose hope and courage till the very end…my policy is simple – ‘except for death, nothing is end of life’

9) Having said that, I cried for almost every exam till 12th standard because of ‘exam fear’…I study at the very last moment and get afraid of the portion left to be read…till my mom says ‘don’t cry…just get (score) whatever you can’, I keep crying and reading… I didn’t write my quarterly and half yearly exams in my 12th standard as I fell sick because of ‘exam fear’…on the day of last exam of half yearly, my uncle slapped me and dragged me to the exam hall…i scored 97% without reading anything…thats the last day I cried for an exam

10) My mind is very ‘relative’…I automatically remember all things I heard, read or seen related to a topic as soon as that topic is being discussed…

11) I plan for far off things but do not plan for immediate things…for instance, I do not have a plan for next week but I have a plan for what I should do after my age of 40

12) I started reading things in English and conversing in English only 8 years back

13) The only thing I feel bad about myself is my weight…the maximum I have been is 61 kgs (134 lbs) 4.5 years back…I constantly try to improve on that but never did …I also feel bad for not having developed reading habit…I seldom read books…

14) I didn’t talk to my brother for 4 years since he didn’t listen to my advice…I didn’t talk to my neighbors for 6 years since they scolded me for a mistake I didn’t do…I am serious about things like these

15) I have been myself irrespective of the place…everywhere I try to follow all the rituals and practices I do at home

16) I wanted to learn several things in my childhood which I am yet to learn (like Mridhangam, Sanskrit, etc)

17) I take bath everyday without fail ( yey! thats an achievement) and I always take bath only in hot water (even in extreme hot temperatures)

18) I get excited very easily and quickly recover from that…

19) I was short-tempered a while ago…now, I am more matured and better…once I beaten my brother with a club black and blue for cheating in a game…he didn’t go to school for a week after that…

20) I am a pure vegetarian except for chocolates (snickers to be specific)…I am somewhat addicted to it…

21) I don’t like people who don’t follow their rituals and become rebels…I never had a friendship with such a person…

22) I am an ardent fan of Ajith (Tamil actor)…if I am in India, I watch all his movies on the opening day…when I was not earning, I even stood in queues for 5-6 hours to watch his movies…(still don’t know why)…

23) I love cooking…thats one of my stress busters…another stress buster is shopping (only window shopping )

24) I was a good painter in my childhood…probably, the last painting I done was the day before we
bought a PC…

25) I think and write very fast (even if it doesn’t make any sense )…during my undergrad, for one of the exams I wrote 65 pages (ruled sheet) in 3 hours….you can see it here, I didn’t have any problems in thinking 25 random things about me…you will feel the difficulty when you start writing

Success is counted sweetest…

There is this poem by Emily Dickinson which goes like:

“Success is counted sweetest 

By those who ne’er succeed. 

To comprehend a nectar 

Requires sorest need.”

If I remember correctly, I read and understood this poem in my 9th standard. But, I realize the meaning only today. My life was as smooth as a high way in United States when I was in India. It has become an Indian road after I came here to United States. Part of that is due to the high expectations that I had for myself. As always, ‘expectations bring sorrow and surprises bring joy’. I faced several failures after coming to US. They were extremely painful as I am not used to failures in my life. Right from my 1st standard to my college, I always got what I wanted. I got my job without even knowing the value of it. I got an onsite at right time and life was peaceful. 

But, only when you face failures, you realize the value of success. My failures were in getting an internship for this summer (which will potentially get converted to a full time job in most cases). I interviewed with couple of firms, went on to second round but ultimately got a reject. I was clueless on what went wrong as in both instances I did my best. But, God is great. He was having something big in store for me. Last week, I had an interview with Deloitte, one of the leading consulting firms. It was a tough day as we had 2 rounds (4 interviews) on the same day. I cleared the first round in the morning and was called up for 2nd round in the afternoon. I did OK in the 2nd round. But, you never know how the interviewer interprets it and the relative performance with fellow interviewees. 

Ultimately, I got an offer from them today …I am excited, not only because I got an internship, but also because I got one of the best roles I can get…Now, I understand the joy ’success’ can bring in, after a couple of failures…I must say I am lucky…after all, luck is when opportunity meets preparation, isn’t it?

Naan Kadavul – a ramble through raw realities

With tons of pending work stressing my shoulders, I managed to pull some time off to watch this stunner. I was expecting a different movie from Bala and I should say I was not disappointed. Even after reading many reviews which suggested the movie to be showing disgusting realities, I never had any dilemma on whether I should watch the movie or not. Being a person who will immediately puke after seeing blood, I managed to watch many gory and disgusting movies like Hostel, Hostel2 and The Texas Chainsaw massacre without any difficulties. So, I decided to watch the movie irrespective of whatever it has!

To my surprise, it was too emotional for me than disgusting as many had suggested..especially, the scenes in which the physically challenged (thats an understatement) beggars are tortured by the villain….only Bala can tie a knot between an Aghori sanyasi and beggars with all sorts of deformities…there is no Hero, there is no Heroine, there is no Comedian, yet this film leaves a long lasting impact on you…It is a radical shift in acting for both Arya and Pooja…they completely excelled in their roles…I don’t know whether they deserve national award for their roles or not, but it is certainly the best for them so far…the task master he is, Bala extracted the best possible performance from all new comers, including those who would even struggle to open their mouth…I read somewhere that he spent nearly 9-12 hours in filming some shots…his efforts are definitely visible in the film…If I don’t mention the Maestro’s music here there’s no point in writing about the movie…the movie, which sans dialogues in many scenes, lives with Ilayaraja’s music…it is quite unfortunate that only two songs are picturized…

You all might wonder why I call this film a ‘ramble’…its because of few odd scenes that have been added just for the sake of commerical aspects…the police station scene ridiculing current actors was laughable but was an obvious digression from intended story line…similarly, I could witness lack of connection between few scenes which possibly could have occured due to the long tenure of this project, which exceeded 3 years!…the much hyped villain dies in the hands of Arya without even giving a tough fight and the movie ends abruptly…I still couldn’t figure out what was Bala’s intention…is it showcasing the Aghori life or is it bringing forward the reality of underworld mafia controlling beggars for their benefit? Though Bala managed to tie a knot between these two, it is not taut…

Punch:  Naan Kadavul – only for those who dare to experience difference and digest raw realities

A black Monday and a green(?) Tuesday

This is something which I wanted to write when I attended my first career fair 4 months ago, but then stalled the idea as I was not exactly sure of how the system works here. Now, after attending my 4th career fair today (after a day in which US lost 71,400 jobs), I feel educated enough to write a post on career fairs and the current situation.

Coming to the point, beginning student life again after 4 years of a high paying job is not that easy. Initially you might be enjoying the feeling of being back to the student life but then when you realize that you are ‘actually’ jobless and need to get one, the pressure builds up. Career Fairs will most probably be the first opportunity for many students here to meet potential employers. In every career fair (be it engineering, retail, business, geoscience, etc, etc) you can see Indian students dressed up in suits with a folder in hand carrying bunch of resumes visiting almost every stall. By the end of the day, it hurts when many end up with lot of goodies in hand but not even one promising offer (especially International students).

In fact, I was wondering about how changed I am, for good! I never bothered about a job during my undergrad in India. I was told by one of my friends that TCS is visiting our campus in a week. I just casually prepared and some how made it (Believe me, my confidence with English was extremely low that time compared to now). But then, the competition here with a gloomy market makes you really worry about securing a job and makes you more mature and better prepared. Good thing is that, the job market is dry but still not dire, which was evident from today’s career fair (and the word green has been added to the title to denote that). So, there are opportunities out here and there and it entails lot of efforts to land in one of them. At times, it might make you regret on the decision to leave a job and do higher studies. But, if you are lucky (seriously, that is what is needed with this market), you might get good opportunities too.

I had a very tiring day today having three 1:15 hour classes (I bunked one of them) and a whole day with potential (?) employers at the career fair repeating almost the same dialogs with each of them and handing over my resume. As a resolution, I decided not to collect any goodie this time and I never did I wrote this post not to educate any one on career fairs but to advise those aspirants of Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 from India to reconsider their decisions. A couple of days back, I got a chance to talk with the CIO of AMD. The first question he asked me was ‘So, are you planning to take another course here once you are done?’. Thats the kind of confidence he has on this market. Even if there are some improvements, I don’t expect any miracles within a year. So, its better safe to play a wait and watch game rather than getting into the quagmire like us. Be happy with your current job

Oscar, is not far!

I was telling almost everyone that I am not going to write on A.R.Rahman’s new feat of getting Golden Globe as almost every tom, dick and harry has discussed about it. But then, I felt, if I don’t write few words praising Rahman here, its meaningless being an ardent Rahman fan and having a blog.

The ‘Mozart of Madras’ as they fondly call, Rahman has made all of us even more proud yesterday. Something that Indian cinema industry has been struggling to do since its inception 60+ years ago. Three Oscar nominations for an Indian and most probable chances of grabbing one…man, I must say I felt elated when I heard about this (I was sure of a nomination, but never expected three)…though many of his compositions in Hindi and Tamil movies are still better than Slumdog Millionaire, it takes an English movie to bring fame to a technician even if he is not English (wish, this changes over time)…

Indian cinema, to be specific, Tamil cinema has seen many talented music directors. There was never a dearth for good music. But, there are only few who have redefined the way music is composed. You can count them easily. In my humble opinion, A.R.Rahman should top the list. Though I am an ardent fan of Ilayaraja also, (in fact I listen to way old songs of 60s and still enjoy them) A.R.Rahman has set a new trend when everyone else was doing the same. Roja – the songs are still fresh and got a place within Top 10 compositions of 100 best soundtracks of the world by Time magazine. Almost every single album of Rahman had something unique in it, which is still true after 18 years since he started his career. That is why, Rahman is often being compared with Sachin Tendulkar. He is a ‘trend setter’ and ‘trend changer’.

Boys, Taxi Taxi, Behka Behka, Masakkali – he is still setting new trends which even younger music directors are afraid to try. He is a living legend and man of humility. Of course, big shots never boast. I can keep writing about A.R.Rahman for several pages…but, all I wanted to say is ‘I pray God to get A.R.Rahman the must deserving Oscar and bring glory to India and wish you do the same’…as a tribute to Rahman, watch and enjoy some of his jingles here (the ones he composed before he got popularity in film music)…

JAI HO!