Travelling across continents, some little things stuns me. We all know Tortillas are like Chapathis, but did you know Chimichanga is like indian Poori. And “Goiya” in Madras(Indian) Tamil and Sao Paulo(Brazilian) Portuguese means same double meaning (stupid fool / gauva fruit).  Malakan in Greek and Maakan in Tamil also means same (jerk) and can be used to refer a friend.

Happy Travels

Summer meant a lot of time when I was in school/college. It meant

mangoes, vacations, lazy afternoons, cricket, tv, cinema, beach, grandma, chennai central, tinkle - chandamama, uncles, cousins, umlimited sleep, board games.

But soon, as you grow you take garbage. With hectic work I lost track of months, seasons. Work occupied so much in life, I feel I am overheated machine. Calls have dropped so much, I rarely pick up a personal call. Family and friends have been distanced.

Admist of all the dull trappings and mundane chores, you find amusing about some girl in Dubai (http://curiously-curious.blogspot.com) ranting about something or some tid-bit story from an unknown guy in Europe(http://prabhukrish.net/category/he-she) or a similar ranting from another girl (http://thotprocess.wordpress.com/) .

What one comic book gave smiles, now one blog may give. If you are still thinking WTF is this about..this is about how ranting, gossiping and bitching is turned into an art called Blogging. After all everyone wants to be heard.

And if not for the bitching of above and innumerable personal blogs in my RSS reader, I would have be gone as a hermit long back.

With a travelling job, you get to meet so many different characters - Some of them impresses you, others blow your brains off

• A person who repeats every word you told to him, to you again.
• A friend who wants to scan his a@# over my scanner
• Guys who can sit and watch all the re-re-runs of B4U with same interest.
• Another so worried about the distance to nearest gas pump when he is yet to buy his car.

For those guys I dedicate the following haiku

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Monkeys like you
should be in zoo

 - Found in college toilet

I am building up work stress a lot. I used to shout alone until I got this free-gyan at 35k ft some weeks back.

• Life is like a new movie. You never know whats going to happen. If you know the movie already you will not be interested.
• Deadlines,promotions,power struggles in office-space will not matter in 3years from now. So why give a big-deal
• Your relationship with your friends exists longer than your relationship with manager.
• When you are promoted to father-ship, that’s the longest role in your life. So why give priorities to the roles existing for 8am-5pm. (Family comes first)
• Have you invested in yourself before you invest in the market. You are more valuable to people around you than market is to you. (Health is more important than wealth)
• When you fall in true love, make sure you never get out of it.
• People tell you to think out of box. Have you ever though of people out of your box ?. Have you donated  your kindness and not claimed tax-rebate?

I jotted it down so that I can make plaques and sell it on ebay. 

Actually I didn’t get touch with my friends-circle often. Opportunity presented in god-gifted form with my ex-roomies visiting and ex-colleagues moving nearby. Let good times roll by! 

My mood is even more up-beat after I listened to Seal  in Toronto. I never knew soul form of songs or I could distinguish between indie-pop and hindi-pop until now. I used to be reserved for english music form, now I am all ga-ga for indie-pop & soul.

4 devils in project management which we cant avoid.

1. Business requirement :- They will never freeze and they change more times than womens’ mind.
2. Matrix Organisation :- Project manager is happy, line manager is happy..reportee feels crappy
3. Offshoring :- Its for operations mgmt. Which dumbo told them to apply to project mgmt. Anyone working as/worked as onsite co-ordinator can tell stories about it. Its not about indian offshoring quality but the very concept is not workable solution for projects atleast for tight-bound ones.
4. Status reports:- Its better renamed as story reports.  Status reports mislead managers. They are like the sweet-pill to the bitter audit-review reports. Status reports hide the facts that we are behind schedules.  

We know the pitfalls but we still use it . Why? As someone gave me a tongue-in-cheek philosophy “Its better to sleep with known hooker than unknown wife”.

Yesterday I was watching the CNN last round of debates at Reagan Library, CA. I was angry and laughing at the same time. McCain and Mitt Romney was talking about greenhouse gases. Any participation in cutting out Greenhouse gases should involve China and India as they are the biggest polluters! Excuse me!. China I understand because it is world’s largest powerhouse (but still I had my doubts) but India ??!!.

How the heck we should get involved when you guys drive big SUVs which gives better emissions than mileage?. How can you compete on mileage and emissions with your airlines and freeways system against Indian railways?.

If Presidential candidates are getting it wrong, then what will be the fate of entire Americans. It’s known satire fact that they cant place their geography nor do their math. Now they cant even get thing right.

A look at Y2000 CO2 emission revealed interesting things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita

1. US emitted 22 (cubic?) tonnes of CO2
2. China emitted 3.9 tonnes of CO2
3. India emitted 1.8 tonnes of CO2.

When you emit, you better pay for it - not India and China.

For my second part of rant, I came across the news that Internet in India was spotty due to cable cut.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2008-01-31-mideast-damage_N.htm

Take a look at the comments especially. Its so anti-India. Hey bro, here is a food for thought. When companies establish the offshore operations who gets the savings..the American corporate. GO and ask him to put the money back into US economy rather than some Caymans Island bank. You dont even know with whom you have to get angry at ?Pity you.

When you are taking Indian money through Coke, Pepsi and Gillette, we have to take money through IT and ITES, though they are paying peanuts when you convert it into USD. Most of the money still goes to the American corporate.

You are being fooled by your media, leaders and corporate - watch out

I am looking at the marriage ads in matrimonial sites, programs and etc just to gain insight. Its not l am looking out for a girl but my friends are. Soon I might also need to jump the bandwagon. One thing is its a multi-million dollar industry and other thing is its going towards wrong notions.

In one popular site, I found the following

“About My Family :
Father-***** Graduate and ****** from ****** MNC
Mother-Housewife
First elder brother - **** employed in USA .
Second elder brother - ** & ****** with engineering firm in Chennai “

 This is just an instance. People when they tell about their family they explain so and so child has completed this degree and employed in XYZ company. How does it really tell who the person is ?.

I am quite fathomed why such enormous amount of importance is placed on person’s educational degree and his/her employer’s Fortune 500 standing. Its quite contradictory to Indian values and ethos which, to my extent of knowledge, has placed importance on one’s personality, behaviour and traits. And even the astrology is all about behaviour and traits. Even there one only part is about wealth and career.

This is worse than astrology. Are we so notionized and started placing importance on wrong notions and values. Another ad talks about “She is married to highly qualified management professional”. Which idiot said the management professional can do better at family. I was rather expecting like “She is married to wonderful and caring person”.

When we were blamed that we are career-oriented or money-minded why our elders are placing such importance on degree and employment.

Unless you tell about your family or your traits , the poor indian onsite consultant cant find out anything…things are looking grim.

Mine arrived today. $20 for entire year of VOIP. No monthly bills. It needs a laptop and ordinary phone unlike vonage.

Voice is bit flattening but that could be due to my laptop setting. For $20 its more than bargained for. Check out www.magicjack.com

Update : Jan 23 10:30 AM PST

I am trying it for nearly 1week. So here is my review.

(+)1. Simple to use. Plug magicjack into your USB. Connect your phone to magicjack and start dialing. Your mom or pop dont have to fiddle anything with the computer. They have to pick up the phone and start dialing the US number - not even +1 country code is needed. Make sure to tell them not to dial 911.

(-)2. Voice is flat. It doesnt have cellphone quality. You will miss the experience but still I would say you to stick for the reason - i dont find a difference in voice quality as too big for me to put off, my each call takes 1hour to 2hours to complete (I still dont have a girlfriend!! ), savings are huge - Rs400/$20 per year with magicjack when compared to Rs400/$20 for every 2months

(|) 3. Your quality depends upon few factors. Quality of magicjack, quality of cordless phone. Things improves a lot if you use good phone. If you want to use cordless phone use DECT technology or 5.4Ghz cordless. Ordinary cordless which operate on 2.4Ghz which is the same frequency of your Wifi router.

(-)4. The supplied VOIP program is crap. There is constant keyboard polling. So you will hear click sounds in calls. Solution is to minimize the program to system tray. Its a 2 step process. You select minimize to tray option from menu and then click on top right (-) minimize button.

I am sending one to my parents this week. IMHO its definitely worth more than $20 but dont get your expectations high!

We are already working to setup a uni-mobil system using bluetooth, grandcentral , magicjack and ever-present cellphone. Welcome Phone2.0

I am pounded with questions whether I have listened to Jodhaa Akbar!!. I was quite impressed by the trailer but I didnt listen to any of the music until now. My friend in Florida and Prabhu of www.prabhukrish.net tipped me to go ahead and listen now.

Well! I need to say I am not that ga! ga! over the songs. Azeem O shaen sha had a quite good tempo and the big crescendo (dhin dhom dhinatha dhom!) was capturing. Equally good was Khwaje Re Khwaja.  Rest were too good in putting me to sleep.

I am still wondering how good the unreleased qawwali would have been

And I couldnt have better laugh when UTV goofed up about the music launch.  

Now i am Toronto, CA things are looking totally different. After being used to California weather its hard to adjust to single-digit C temperature. A suprise is waiting in every nook and corner.

• You expect english and french in the clients office. All they speak is Portugese.
• You expect Canadian, its full of Brazillians , New zealanders, chinese …of course indians. 
• You expect US units..good they follow degreeC, kmph
• You expect simple block navigation in subway…thats the most confusing part in entire toronto…and one of the iconic examples of underground city…even though I get lost everytime its kind of amazing place.

So what I am complaining about…only one thing bad timing…if it had been summer ..i believe toronto would have been more fun..for now I am tucked away in bed.