YAGNI distilled

I strongly believe in YAGNI ("You aren't gonna need it") philosophy when it comes to Software Engineering (and life, why scratch before it itches). Very similar to how i was taught to use GOF design patterns to solve problems when you see them instead of starting with a design pattern. Advent of J2EE/Spring created Java programmers who would start with a factory pattern that created only one thing. Rationale for this was, tomorrow we will create more things. Now these amazing programmers are moving towards Scala/FP (mostly no semicolon java) and are bringing their philosophy of "We will need this day after tomorrow". Obviously they search their bible stack overflow.com and decide to use Scalaz/Cat etc without understanding the underlying concepts. I have heard guys who can't grok Either talk about monad transformers. You can see the same behavior with infrastructure too. Multi AZ, Auto scaling etc is mandatory even when there are no customers using the crap.

So to explain YAGNI, I have come up with an analogy, here it goes; "You aren't gonna need Viagra when you don't have a partner or money to rent one". I guess its self explanatory but let me distill it (I am not sexist but for ease, I will assume we are talking about men).

Necessity of Viagra occurs when the following occurs in sequence;

1. You attempt to have sex.
2. You experience erectile dysfunction(ED)
3. 1 data point is not good enough but if you panic, see a doctor. Do not google like you do while programming.
4. If he prescribes Viagra then use it, when you get a chance to have sex.

You are a programmer for crying out loud, you should be able to translate that to software engineering. If you can't, I am really sorry for your company and colleagues.

My software engineering process litmus test below

Mentorship!!! Is it a SCAM

Wikipedia:
   Mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The mentor may be older or younger, but have a certain area of expertise. It is a learning and development partnership between someone with vast experience and someone who wants to learn.

During the early days of my career, I was fortunate enough to work under some awesome people who mentored me. Naturally I believe mentoring adds a lot of value at work place, schools or elsewhere. We all need some one we look up to/learn from.

Recently I have come across/been part of some mentoring programs. Mentoring as a word has like 150 synonyms. Naturally it is an ambiguous term!!! I will write about my experience below.

Mentor High school children

I was part of a program that is catered towards helping troubled children(bullied, troubled families etc.) at a high school. I had to undergo professional training to be part of this program. In a nutshell, your role is to show up and listen to the kid, if he or she wants to talk. We all know teen agers do not want to talk to anyone, let alone a stranger. I(and lot of other mentors)felt that, most children that were part of the program, were there for 2 reasons

• Miss a period.
• Free morning tea

Since it is so hard to measure the effectiveness of these programs, are we doing it just to satisfy our guilt. Is this like how we donate money to charity and feel good about ourselves??

Mentoring at Technology companies

I heard from John (lets say an acquaintance, obviously I have changed the name) about the shambles of mentoring in their organisation. They bring in university students and mentor them (God save those students). I asked John, what kind of plan/structure do they use. He said, there is no plan. Its impromptu, learn on the go... Students show up, watch YouTube videos, play pool and go home. Organisations selfish motive! marketing. Students pair with mentors who can't code dig or drill (lookup its a programming puzzle) if their life depended on it. Some of the mentors resist learning new things citing, its too hard. I asked John, doesn't he feel ashamed to be part of something like that? Imagine your child being mentored by such people!!! (John does not have children that he knows of or is responsible for hahahahahah). John himself needs mentoring hahahahahah. He was curious to know, how to run these programs. I explained to him how Thoughtworks, with their university program does an awesome job of mentoring University students. He said, that's all too hard and he is too low in the cadre to bring in changes.

What bothers me is the future of the society with such mentors and such attitude. If these mentors have kids, imagine what they will leave behind. If you take the hypothesis of, next generation will be better at things than the previous generation; Well, will leave that for your imagination.

Now read the definition again!!!!

"Honesty is a liability worth keeping"
     ---- Keshav (trade marked)

How to hire like an amateur

I am an engineer(Fake one, Computer Science that is). When I was looking for a job in Melbourne, I realised how broken the process of hiring is. Mostly it is all recruiter driven. On a job ad site like seek.com.au, you can't even see the name of the company before applying. I think thats rubbish. I will narrate my ordeal with an organisation and then express some ways of fixing it (I think).

This organisation is a property listing/searching organisation. People who want to rent/buy houses in Australia use this website. There was no phone conversation to start off the process. I received an email asking me to solve a hypothetical problem to assess my coding skills. After seeing the problem I replied with below email;

Hi HR,
    Glad to hear from you. Hope you are doing well.

I would like to express a few points with regards to this opportunity.

The problem that you have asked me to solve is old and outdated. If I search for solutions, I find hundereds of them on github. I don’t think the problem does justice to either my time or your developers time who will review it. Instead I would like to share my github profile so you guys can see the Open source projects I contribute to. I have also attached the codebase of a personal project that I have been working on since last 3 weeks. I saw an opportunity to solve a lingering problem in most systems, came up with the design and implemented the prototype. I have invested around 20 hours of time on this. This would give you guys an opportunity to see what I have to offer.

I would also like to mention that, I have interviewed with your organisation couple of years ago. I solved a few problems on a code evaluation site. I have attached the code of the same. I passed it with flying colors. I had few meetings with folks. In the end I was informed that I would get bored, as they did not have an opportunity challenging enough for me. Unless that is your way of saying I was no good, thats how it ended.

I am really passionate with my work, hope it will not be perceived as arrogance. I want to make sure it is worth my time and yours (this time around).

It would be great to have a discussion with your developers after they have seen what I have done.


My thoughts;

1. Same strategy to hire everyone is not great. I am not a rockstar programmer but 19 years, 3 Continents, couple of failed startups with niche products and 18 months of Social Impact work, that makes a difference. I am not saying don't assess my coding skill. You should always start with a 15 minute phone call. Treating candidates as if their time is not valuable is ridiculous. Not everyone looking for a job is desperate.
2. Contribution to Open Source is a great indicator. Its about time we in Australia start adopting good things from silicon valley.
3. If there is a way to assess candidates hunger to learn, that would be awesome (can be done in face to face conversation)
4. Assessing coding skills should be based on the resume, should not be dogmatic. When I interviewed at google India, I was not asked to write any code but I got raped (mentally) for 7 rounds. They did make me an offer.
5. As an organisation, do you want to hire people who say yes or the ones that question the status quo? Answer to this question is very important. That will guide a lot of decision making when it comes to hiring.

I am a strong believer that, an organisation must get their hiring strategy right (other than the business model to make money). If that is broken, everything else will fall apart.

The very same organisation, boasts about their startup like culture etc etc.. at conferences and their hiring process has no respect for the candidate!!!

I haven't heard from them after the email... hahahaha.

"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." - Abraham H. Maslow

15 Months Memoir

In 2012 my wife and I decided to move back to India, to provide Hita an opportunity to be in a different culture, OUR culture. We were trying to accomplish the following;

1. To see if Hita is academically interested
2. Travel India/Asia
3. Work for a Social cause

To see if Hita is academically interested

This is very easy to test in India. We put her into a local school that is absolutely academical. It would need a separate blog post to talk about that school. I will mention 2 things about the school to give you guys an idea.
i) The basket ball coach of the school was fat and clumsy. He would stand in the shade (when kids were sweating it out in sun) and teach kids how to play bball. It was so funny to watch, I would go 5 minutes early to pick Hita so I could watch him (my wife thought that was sick...).
ii) There was a swimming competition (dolphins day) in which Hita won, gold in backstroke and silver in breast stroke. If you win something outside of school, you can take your medal to school and they will announce it in the assembly(entire school, pretty cool). Naturally Hita took her medals. They said, we don't announce 2nd place and announced only the gold medal. Hita was perplexed and asked her teacher, If thats the case why do you give silver and bronze medals in school sports day!!!! As typical of Indian teachers, she shushed Hita.
I think we found our answer to this question. Coming from Australia, not knowing 2 of the languages taught in that school, Hita was in top 2 of the class. That's a phenomenal achievement.

Travel India/Asia

Some of the travels we did
i) 13 days of North India (Golden Triangle).
ii) 7 days of Leh/Ladakh.
iii) 9 days of Srilanka.
iv) 8 days of Nepal. (The feeling of, you are nobody in front of those mountains is priceless)

Lot of savings burnt but worth every penny.

Work for a Social cause

This is the most interesting part. When I was on Christmas break (2012) in Melbourne, I started searching for organisations that I could be part of. One day, came across Logistimo (www.logistimo.com). I wrote a 2 line (man of few words) email to them expressing my interest. I received a reply next morning from the CTO saying, please get in touch once you are in Bangalore. I contacted them 5 days after landing. Met the most amazing team that had been working for 4 years without pay to make public health care better in India and other poor countries.
What does Logistimo do? Well we build supply chain management tools (very similar to US army SCM), that works in any network context. Primary purpose is to monitor stock levels of vaccines and essential drugs.  Most of our users are just numerates. For the first time in my life, I proved lucky for a startup. After I joined, we became popular(hahahahah). Our customer base grew exponentially. From 2 districts in Karnataka to 2 states in India, DRC (Democratic republic of Congo), South Sudan etc. We achieved availability of 99% in couple of states in India, which happens to be better than US (One of the gates foundation guys told us). Soon we will do things (I cant disclose) that will revolutionise public health care for rural/poor.
Things that I learnt in these last 15 months has had a profound impact on my personality (you will know if you already know me... hahahah). When you see villages that do not have the basic needs of health care and sanitation, It changes your perspective. Growing up in India for 22 years, most of us know how corrupt the country is but some of the things I learnt, puts me to shame, to say I am of Indian Origin. I guess I can feel less shameful by donating couple 100 bucks on a website or even better, live outside India and write on facebook how much I miss the culture and vada sambhar of India (hypocrisy kills shame).
       I will mention 2 things here, just to give you an idea about the corruption and bureaucracy(don't want to depress you too much).
i) Some deaths are not reported(deliberately) as its a performance metric!!!! Go figure. Hard to measure the value of something when you have too many of those (I guess)
ii) Most refrigerator (ILR, used in health care centers) mechanics are on the payrolls of pharmaceutical companies.  If the vaccines and drugs in those refrigerators go bad where do you buy them from!!! Take a guess!!!

I am lucky to have gotten the opportunity to work with such awesome people/organisation where we don't have posters of our motto posted on walls (we don't have an office hahahaha). Its in our heart... IMPACT FIRST.

As a great person(Keshav Murthy, maybe) once said, "To give, you don't have to have too much. You need to know how it feels to not have enough"

Hopefully this piece will motivate some of you hypocritical bastards to get out of your couches and add value to the society, however small it is. Donating money and liking things on facebook is great but its no match for investing your time. If you are already doing it, I bow.

Watch this short movie made about us by Gates Foundation
Vaccine Logistics in Karnataka from CurleyStreetMedia on Vimeo.

Patriotisterone

(Hormone produced in excess during Independence day, Republic day, Australia day etc.)

Since Australia day and republic day are on the same day, my facebook/twitter feed is full of happy republic day and one or two happy Australia days.

Most of the happy republic day, I miss India, How proud they are to be Indians etc. comes from people who don’t live there (atleast on my social network). What happens on these days I wonder!!!! I think it’s like the monthly cycle for woman, Independence Day and other national days, reign in yearly cycles. People who live outside their mother country go through hormonal imbalance. They miss the idli vada sambar, dosa or aloo parathas more on those days. Now do I have a problem with that? No not at all, I have goose bumps when I see patriotism.

I always ask myself; should I be proud of something that I have no contribution in? Lots of kid #2, #3 etc. (my generation) in India were born probably because of a mistake (lack of knowledge about condoms) or trying to have a boy. In my case, I know for sure. My Mum was not that well off, she didn’t want a second child (Me). It was too late before she could get rid of me (according to me the kind of guy she is married to, having any offspring is a crime hahahahha..). Now she feels bad about it, as I have turned out to be an awesome bloke hahahaha!  If your parents turn out to be morons and abused you day in day out, were never there for you when you needed, should you be proud of them because they fed you until you could get out? I am proud of my mum for all the sacrifices and hard work she put in to shape us, can’t say the same about my Dad.

Can you be proud of Apple because you own an iPhone? You can be proud of your smartness if you bought apple shares for $4 (year 2000 maybe). Shouldn’t we strive to be proud of being better human beings than proud to be a Hindu, Muslim or a Christian? Why should I be proud to be an Indian, Australian or American? Women getting raped at daylight with no hope for justice! Original indigenous Australians ill treated in their own land! 6 year old kids being shot by nut bag who was taught how to shoot by his mum. Should I be proud of an opportunistic decision made so that my daughter can have an option (hopefully better one)?

I am a little confused; I will allow the commenters to enlighten me. No death threats please!!! I already have one (and I am proud of it) for my blog about Indians in UK protesting against corruption in India in UK (how ironic).

What should I feel?


Last day of citizens as India has been a day of mixed feelings. I found out that it would cost us 147$(really want to know who and how that number was decided) to renounce our passports. Congratulations from Australian friends, wife emotional of renouncing Indian citizenship. It made me wonder how come I cannot relate to what my wife is feeling. As I asked my daughter, if she understands what it means to be either Australian or Indian on an application form, she said aren't we Australians, I thought we were, we live here. When I explained to her what all these borders and citizenship means, she consoled her mum by saying, its not like we cannot go to India, we will just be called Australians. I am not trying to play Lebron James trick after watching south park(hahahhahah). I am really not sure whether I should be congratulated or condoled. If you are congratulated, that means it's some kind of accomplishment. If you get condolence then its a loss. Which one is it? What am i suppose to do?(tell kids I am not a role model, can't stop laughing) Not listen to my conscience and accept that having Australian passport will let me into 166 countries without visa? When having Indian passport, even 3rd world countries like Malaysia want to suck 100$ for visa from you! Should I feel bad supporting Australia when they play India on boxing day test? If there is a war between India and Australia whom should I support? Is War even a solution for any problem? even if it is, shouldn't I support the most Humane cause of it? regardless of which country I am citizen of. I have expressed my opinions about naturalisation long time ago. As the classic goes, you can't choose your parent's but you can choose your friends. Slightly modified, you can't choose the country you are born, but you sure will get an opportunity to choose one to be citizen of(If you don't, you are shit out of luck). This one is just about the feelings at the cusp of jana gaṇa mana to advance Australia fair.

What an Irony

In the last couple of weeks, whenever I read news about Indians protesting against corruption in India on British soil, I have found it very funny. The reason I find it funny is because, loooong time ago Britishers whipped Indian asses for protesting against British Bullying in India(on our own soil mind you…). Now Indians are protesting against corruption in India on British soil. Am I the only one who finds this irony funny.

I also have been thinking about something for which I would have to cop lot of flak from Indians(hahaha). Can British government stop Indians from doing this protest??? Well if I start thinking like a British citizen, I would want it to be stopped. Regardless of how peaceful and great this protest is, my tax money is being spent (police, nuisance to traffic etc.) on something that is not beneficial to my country. I cant think of any protest that is analogous to this one to compare to. What I failed to figure out (after lots of searches and reading about freedom of speech in British constitution) was, Is there anything in British constitution to stop Indians from doing this protest?

• Can British Government tell these people to fly to India and then protest?
• Can a British citizen get a stay order from court of law on these protests citing his countries tax money being wasted??

Leave your feedback if you find anything in the British Constitution :-)

INDIA vs PAKISTAN WORLD CUP 2011!!!
NOT JUST A GAME

Is semifinals between India and Pakistan just a game of cricket? Hell NO!!! People who can't relate to sports rivalry can at least relate to some of the facts mentioned below.

1. Mughal's plundered India from 1526-1858 (do the math)

2. Killed millions of Hindu's and raped equal number of woman.

3. Promised soldiers virgins for Hindu heads they brought back from war.Will run out of paper if I have to mention all the atrocities.

How is this all related to Pakistan ?

The Mughal dynasty was established by able Muslim rulers who came from the present day Uzbekistan. Pakistan is a country where majority of the people are Muslims. Aggression (good/bad) comes from their ancestors/religion.

Post Independence facts

1. War of 1947: First Kashmir War. Nehru fucker ran to UN and we ended up creating LOC

2. War of 1965: Caused by operation Gibraltar. Infiltration into Kashmir

3. War of 1971: Nothing to do with Kashmir for a change

4. Kargil 1999: Again infiltration into Kashmir.

With such a rich history between us (I have not even mentioned terrorist attacks), if we say its just a game then we are fuckin fooling ourselves. India had its last chance to loose, against Australia. "Loose" is not a word until Thursday morning. Fuckers (players playing the game) better play as if your life rides on this game.

2 things i would not let my players do(if i was captain/coach)

1. Meet/talk to family or friends:

Reason: They might ask the inevitable stupid question "how do you feel, are you Nervous?"

Of course, even Tendulkar will be nervous... Let them deal with it, no need to answer that question before the game. Its a question to answer after they win the game.

2. Watch/read News:

Reason: It will get to your head. Specially stupid stuff like Sanjay Manjrekar had to say, India is a much better team than Pakistan. STFU moron. Pakistan already know, they have nothing to loose. No one gave them a chance, now they are in semis. If players read such stuff (they might be thinking that way already, if they are, they will loose), it will get to their head.

Complacency is Suicidal. Be Humble and beat the hell out of them.

GOOD LUCK TO INDIA !!!!!!!

Decisions that affect our children

This is about an event that occurred in 1988/89. My mother was working for federal government. In India federal government employees are transferred to different states/suburbs to keep the diversified culture(I guess). One of such decisions affected my mum and I believe changed our(bro and me) life significantly. My mother had 3 choices;

1. Quit her job

2. Take us with her

3. Leave us behind and do Monday to Friday (as lot of consultants do)

Option 1: This was out of question as she was blessed with a husband who had drinking and gambling problem (double whammy). If she chose this we would probably starve to death or would have pushed my dad towards responsibility.

Option 2: She did not like this as the place she was transferred to was very small (smaller than Hassan) and no good schools around.

Naturally she chose option 3, leaving behind a 13 and 15 (my bro) year old kids to manage themselves with a drunkard.

This was the time in our life we learnt heaps (good and bad) but changed us for ever. Before this happened, I was academically very good (at least for that small town). Most teachers (i have had) were dick heads as they did not have the ability to understand children appropriately nor were they skilled for the job (I think i have a blog post about the kind of things i have experienced). I did fare well by my own effort. Proof of how good i was academically, when i graduated from engineering school, one of the guys who was competing (trying to keep up to me) with me during my good years, graduated with 2nd Rank (2nd best in the University).

I did not like going to school as teachers were morons, I did not want to come back home after school as we had to cook and clean. My dad would happily sit and drinking when I was cooking (my bro had dish washing responsibility). This was the time I lost interest in everything. My mum would come back on Friday evenings and hardly had time to ask us how we were coping with the change.I don't blame her, she was fighting with the government to get back to our home town . She could see that academically I was getting worse and lots of complaints from my school (more than usual hahahaha). It took 2 years for the government to understand how we were affected. As far as I am concerned, damage had been done.

Am I using this as an excuse for not doing well, academically? FUCK NO. I stand by my mums decision. In her position, I would have done the same. Its easier to complain or think about options in hind sight. If Gandhi was not around, may be we would have got freedom much earlier. I think, since Gandhi was less risky choice, we did not support Bhagat Singh or Subash Chandra Bose. We had enough population to piss and drown Britishers (I think).

The reason I wanted to pen this down is to remind myself that once we have kids, decisions we take is just not about us. Decisions we take during the formative years of our children are extremely important, however big or small they are.

K

Predict who is drunk using tweets

I have never blogged (to my knowledge) without something controversial before. This one is nothing like what i have written before.

For the last couple of weeks i have been playing with the idea of identifying if some on is drunk based on their tweets.

I started of with below thinking process.

Some one jumps on a site and says i want to monitor twitter id A.

We will gather tweets from that person every hour/time slice and basically analyze as below

1. Remove acronyms/#tags

2. Find number of spelling mistakes (using standard distance algorithms)

3. Find number of swear words (need to build some dictionary of swear words, not that hard :-))

4. Remember number of spelling mistakes and swear words/time slice.

5. Repeat steps 1 to 4 every hour/time slice

Say at about 10 PM in the night the person tracking twitter id A asks, is A drunk? Based on the trends in mistakes and swear words, predict if that person is drunk or not.

Sounds funny but could be useful. I even thought about revenue stream, connecting this to cab services who can push notifications to those twitter ids about being safe and not driving.

All for a social cause :-)

Addendum: Pitfalls of mobile keyboard dynamics that are hurdles for this project

• auto-correction
• typing while angry or tired
• typing while talking to someone
• last but not the least copy-paste

K

I am Scared!!!

I will be starting a new job this Monday and for the first time in my life I am scared. I have changed jobs umpteen number of times in my 15 year illustrious career (shortest duration with an employer is 1 week). With so much job changing experience on my back why am I scared? Below are the things that I will be loosing from Monday.

1. I have been working for a startup with 4 people since 3 years. I am not used to seeing more than 4 colleagues in a Day.
2. I had the freedom of working when I wanted, where I wanted.
3. I have not attended a single meeting since 3 years (demos to customer not included).
4. Not reported to anyone.
5. Other than some customers (read as IBM) and our CEO, I never had to deal with any idiots.
6. Since a year I have not commuted. I have been working from home(wfh) most of the days. I used to go to city on Fridays so that I could have beer with some friends.
7. When you wfh you get things like, you don't have to get out of your Jamis (Pyjamas), Going to Gym at 11 in the morning, volunteer work at kids school, cooking something nice for my daughter before she comes home etc.

From Monday the opposite of all those points will be true....(except 5, crossed fingers). I had an envious job till date but good things don't last longer. I am shit scared and excited for my new adventure.

Whom should naturalised citizens support

This morning when I was talking to a friend of mine i asked him a hypothetical question, if an Indian becomes a citizen of America, in future if ever America attacks India (i mean war) whom should that Indian support? My friend immediately answered, obviously motherland, India. His argument was that, Indian existed because of India. I asked the same guy, say some one disowns a kid and the kid is adopted. After the kid grows, if the biological parents try to claim the kid, whom should the kid support? According to the previous argument kid should support biological parents. In my opinion kid should support the people who adopted the kid. Biological parents didn't want him. If we translate that to naturalisation, an adult made a choice of accepting citizenship of America (for whatever reasons) and let go of Indian citizenship, he should support America. When i thought more about it, it is the stereo typical Indian/Human thinking that kids are indebted to parents as they exist because of them. That is horse shit, kids exist for 3 reasons; want, mistake & love of unprotected sex. No kid is indebted to parent.

Most of these naturalised fuckers are neither patriotic to the country they were born in (not much choice there), nor to the country they live in and happily accepted the citizenship of(by choice, no force). If ever I take citizenship of some other country, I, Keshav declare that I will support that country.

Sania, Shoaib & Ayesha

disclaimer: I do not have problems in any 2 people marrying each other (even if they both are men/woman)

There are already thousands of columns, jokes about this marriage. I really don't care who marries whom. Specially when they are from a faith which Say's, a brother can marry his brother's wife in the event of one's death. Is there a problem in that? I don't know but need not be mentioned in your bible. Hindu woman chose killing themselves when Mughals killed their husbands due to such hideous things. What is my interest in this marriage that encouraged me to write something about it? Well there are couple of things I am curious about.

1. Who made marriage over phone legal?
2. Is Ayesha happy to be a Muslim living in India?
3. Does Sania know what she is signing up for?

1. In which country is marriage over phone legal? (apart from Muslim countries) My curiosity is, did prophet write that? Did he know what a phone was? (may be he did, he was Messiah (mess ayya).) Even if he did, this is the guy who stopped his followers from eating the tastiest meat (pork), what can you say?

2. I am sure Ayesha is happy to be a Muslim living in India. If she is not, she better be. Since Shoaib and Ayesha both are Muslims, if she were to live in a country where Muslim law (I think sharia..) was the law, she had no case. As polygamy is acceptable in Islam(Wikipedia: In Islam, polygamy is allowed for men (making it polygyny), with the specific limitation that they can only have up to four wives at any one time. The Qur'an also clearly states that men who choose this route must deal with their wives as fairly as possible, doing everything that they can to spend equal amounts of time and money on each one of them), only thing Ayesha could do is fuck herself. I know that Uniform Civil Code is not fully implemented in India yet, still Ayesha had a case. This should be a lesson to all the Muslim fuckers in India who oppose uniform civil code. When their daughter's get raped and eye witness is a woman, they will realise why uniform civil code is important (curious? read about woman witnesses in sharia ).

3. Last but not the least, does Sania know what she is signing up for? She is from a community where some morons were complaining that she should not wear revealing outfit while playing tennis. She is bringing shame to Muslim religion(LMAO). I hope she has thought about what will bigger morons across the border have to say about this (after they jack off seeing her). My advice to Sania is, imagine yourself playing tennis wearing Burqa and a clinking chastity belt from Mughal era (chastity belt is, punishing woman to protect them from men, awesome invention. Couple years ago, a Muslim clergy in Malaysia was talking about bringing it back to protect woman from being raped). Opponents will complain that the noise made by your belt is distracting them (hahahahahhaaha...).

Is it worth IT?

(caution: unlike anything i have ever written before)

I am writing this an hour after I came to know that I had lost a cousin of mine in Kenyan (Kisumu) floods. This cousin of mine had lived in Kenya for 15 or so years and had moved to India around the same time we had moved from USA. He had moved to India obviously for his kids education. I am sure Kenyan education system will be as fucked up as their political and social situation. He mentioned that his house was robbed umpteen number of times when he lived there. He had also mentioned how unsafe Kenya was.Last when I met him was during a function before we moved to Australia. After coming to India he did not have a job and was staying home. He was one of the first guys in our family to have a masters in something. He studied fisheries. Its to do with fishing, storing fish, things like that. Job opportunities for him in India are very bleak. After couple of years of sitting idle at home he decided to take up a job in some middle eastern country. He moved there alone leaving his family behind. I am sure this was primarily not to affect his kids education. All said and done his kids had to live without their dad. I have no idea when he moved back to kenya. I remember him telling, his previous employer (owner of a fishing company) owed him heaps of money and he would not go back to that job unless the owner paid him. I came to know that he rejoined Kenyan company as he lost his job in middle eastern country. I am not blaming my cousin for making certain choices, just wondering if the last question that came to his mind was "Was it worth it?"

I know how it feels to grow up with out a DAD (physically my dad was there). Even though I saw my dad quite often, we were never mentally connected to him. He was always busy with his gambling addiction, leaving my mum to take care of the kids. I don't think any one of us (my brothers and I) can really say "I love you" to my dad. If we did say that, it would be the most hypocritical statement. When Hita asks me, "how come you never speak about your dad?" makes me speechless (in my mind I say, he was useless that's why). Some of my friends travel on their job (not talking about week or days of travel) leaving their families behind. Whatever is the reason/obligation for the travel (unless that's the only way to put food on table), there is no way to get that time back. I don't think my cousins death will make much difference to his kids as they are used to living/not seeing their dad often. You might speak every day on phone, but "out of sight is out of mind". If you are not there when they need, you not being there makes no difference.

I know that if you start thinking at meta physical level, if you are to die, you will. It does not matter where you are, what you are doing. What matters are the choices made before death. If there is feeling after death, I want to be saying "wow what a journey, thanks for that" rather than guilt of not doing something or not being there for my kids when they needed me etc.. Is this a revelation after hearing about a death? absolutely not. This event has cemented my belief that nothing is worth the time you loose with your kids (if you wanted them and are sure they are yours) and wife/partner (again if you want them and love their company). I do live(1000's of miles) away from my parents, but that's what birds do when they learn to fly, they build their own nest. Once you have a little one in that nest, you better stop flying. It is your responsibility to teach the young one how to fly. If you are not around (mother and father), your death will make no difference(forget about world, to your own kid) and that ain't worth it.

K

Teachers OR Cheaters

Couple of days ago, my daughter asked me a very interesting question "papa you never give me examples of your teachers, why?" I said hmmmm, give me couple days to answer that. When I started thinking about it (during toilet breaks), I realised that is so true. Apart from one man, I have never had a teacher (teacher means only in school or uni, mentors at work place not included.) worth mentioning. When I am at work or even doing day to day life things, it has never occurred to my mind that oh yea this guy had taught me this. I have dropped out of 2 schools in US, even there I didn't find anyone outstanding (may be cuz I dropped out :-)).

All my experience with teachers in India has been bad. In school they only had complaints about me(My mum had frequent visitor miles... :-) ), even when I was always in top 3 (until 9th grade I think). My faith in teachers was shattered when I came to know that they did not like kids who didn't contribute to so called building fund. One man who taught me math(for free, he happened to be math teacher for my mum too) in 10th grade, stands out. I realized, it was not a job for him. He loved teaching. When you do it as a job is when you fuck up. In India most of these teachers have private tuition's, which I am sure makes them disinterested in teaching properly in their day jobs. I have had teachers ask me to come to their tuition's when I asked question in the school (of-course in the staff room). Some of the teachers when I was in engineering, were terrible (doesn't help a student who has lost interest in education around 9th grade). Some of them were my seniors who graduated previous year. I don't think that young grads are incapable of teaching well(they were doing it while they were preparing for GRE, GATE whatever), but I believe teaching is an art. It is very similar to acting, If you don't have that talent it will take years to get better. Take people like Ajay Devgan, Karishma Kapoor etc (heaps of names from bollywood come to my mind). When they started acting they were pathetic, as they did more movies they got better. If it takes couple years (for some one with passion to teach) to be a better teacher, they would have had bad influence already. Students might start hating those subjects, hate school itself.

I don't think teachers play a big role after say 10th grade in personality development (after 15, if personality is not developed, then its a bigger issue). In primary and high school, teachers play a huge role. Teachers should not be hired if they don't have passion for teaching. How do you find out if they have passion? (same situation as finding good programmers). Well let them teach teachers before they go in front of kids. Have some training, make them sit in a good teachers class. Teach them ETHICS (very important, if madarsas can teach terrorism so effectively, I am sure there should be a way to teach ethics). Pay them well, ban private tuition's. Kids spend more time in school than at home (10 hours sleep, 8 hours in school, left is 6 hours... go figure...). We don't want pedophiles or fuckin morons who love child pornography. We don't want teachers asking kids to come for private tuitions. I know its easier said than done implementing some of these measures. One thing I know for sure is, teachers should not feel they have power, if they do they will be bad. We want teachers who teach not think they control kids destiny. There is a saying in kannada (I had told this to one of my lecturers in engineering, when he was bragging about marking my paper badly), here it goes "haalu anna haak bahudu, hane baraha bariyakke aagalla". Translation, You can provide food to some one, you can't change their destiny. All of us need to do KARMA... Lets do it well and sleep well at night (without guilt)

Jai sri krishna :-)

Indians being attacked in Melbourne, Australia

I have been reading heaps about this issue since last 6 months. I realised, i haven't written anything (bummer). Things i have read go from, its not racist its opportunistic. Honourable police department of Victoria even asked Indians to look poor and act poor. He even asked Indians not to take up taxi driving(fuckin moron, that means its ok if Taxi drivers are not safe). I read an article (here http://bit.ly/ddzBcI, don't know if its still there) which highlights the lack of manners in Indians. How Indians speak loudly in trains and listen to music loudly etc.. That sure is fuckin annoying. I have been annoyed by Australians/so called white people too. I call Apple head phones as "music to neighbours", If you like to listen to music in high volume and you are using apple head phones, god save your neighbour. Couple of weeks ago an Australian teen was asking my daughter where she lives (ass hole), unfortunately i had to be rude to him in front of my daughter (usually i am a very sweet guy). The article also mentioned that Indians don't say hi to a cashier at a store in reply. Does that mean its OK if he is attacked? My dad was a public transport driver (after retiring from Indian Army), how many people would have said thank you to him for taking them to their destination safely? None I am sure. I think it was not there in Indian culture. As we get exposed to, we need to learn. It is bad if we don't. A week ago I got bit by a manner less Indian on Facebook, can you believe that "virtual bad manners". Story is this, I commented on a post of my friend (which was something to do with Rahul Gandhi). In reply to my comment, friends friend replied asking me to get a life(to a total stranger). When I taught her manners she felt it was rude hahahahahaha....

Like every other article I don't want to get distracted from the real problem. Real problem is "A human being was attacked". Now what colour of skin that human being had, who cares. Does that guy have good manners? who cares. Does he have a right to be safe? of-course he does! I hate Muslims, I don't go around bashing people who are Muslims or have a beard like them. All these fuckers who are hurting people are either under the influence of ICE(drugs) or too much alcohol. If it is an opportunistic crime then some kind of material thing will be stolen. Hundreds (if not thousands) of laptops gets stolen in the suburb I live and in the night druggies sell it to Uni students for couple 100 bucks. When my MAC got stolen, this is what cop said "This is very common in this area, do you have Insurance?". I said, isn't it shameful to say that, it means you are not doing your job well. My wife stopped me from further friction, you don't wanna rub cops on the wrong side. If the attacker does not steal anything from the victim, then it is either racist or bastards are bullies. I read that laws in Australia regarding crime committed under the influence of ICE is pretty stupid (Specially if you are under 18), that's why kids exploit it.
By nature Hindus are cowards, if you don't know read some history. We chose Gandhi as our leader, do you need better proof. All Indians who migrate to other countries have their own reasons. May be they do not have a great life back home, which motivates them to migrate. All said and done you need to watch your own back. During such times its very important to behave smart. I have seen New york when it was scary to take subway at 8 PM. Below are some of my tips to Melbourne Indians;

1. Avoid taking public transport very late in the night.
2. If you don't have much choice, at-least don't travel alone.
3. If you cant do that either then you are shit out of luck, sit in the couch immediately next to the train driver.

Learning from Muslims (ooops, I meant Terrorists)
All muslims are not terrorists but some how all terrorists happen to be muslims?

Meaning of leadership: “process of social influence in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”

Meaning of Terrorism: There is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism. Most common definitions of terrorism include only those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.

Yesterday's events in Mumbai reminded us of September 11 2001. My wife and I remembered what we went through on that day. After that day, I have always wondered about Bin Ladens leadership/managerial skills. I consider him as a great leader for a shitty/hideous cause (we think its a bad cause, but they think its martyrdom). I believe there is lots to learn from them. If not anything IT people can learn “planning and execution”.

Imagine a project (like the one that is carried out in Mumbai) of such magnitude being managed by a manager from an IT services company? (boy I need another post for it). We cant even deliver software on time, these guys deliver death/war with immaculate precision. I am sure they would have busted projects too, but whatever they deliver, meets their goals(I guess). Few things I would like to learn from these bastards are listed below.

1. What process do these managers use? Are they PMP certified, Scrum Masters, Prince etc. From what I know, they cant be using agile/iterative methods.
2. Risk Management: Do they have a risk log? To what level do they have contingency planning. I mean lets say they have requirement R1. What if they cant implement/execute R1. How do they mitigate it?
3. TEAM Morale: How does this manager keep the team morale. Think about it. If it takes 6 months to a year to plan something like this. How do you keep these shit heads who are ready to sacrifice their life's to believe in the same when execution time comes?. Is 72 virgins and 28 young pre-pubescent boys, in heaven shit still working? (I can quote the chapters of Qur'an if needed). I guess the problem is, the dead cannot confirm that they didn't get those virgins. How do they deal with unhappy employee? I guess he will die but will not get those virgins and boys. I can't believe prophet had envisioned Homosexuals in that era.
4. Recruitment: What kinda people do they hire? How do they know if the person fits into their organisation or not? Do they have firing policy if some one does not perform?
5. Training: Other than the daily dose of Qur'an, what do these guys read/learn? Is reading Qur'an enough to build such mother fuckers? I am sure IT managers would love to discover some book which will make their team members so committed.
6. Funding: Man how do they raise money? Are projects like these funded directly/indirectly by our Bollywood actors?
   

After all this our leader, honourable Prime Minister of India, in his address to the nation said “terrorists who attacked Mumbai were based outside India”. Sir, I agree you have great brains but you need to get some balls for yourself. You should also change your speech writer(if you have one). Whats up with this "terrorists who attacked Mumbai", arent you suppose to say "terrorists who attacked us" ? or you could have said “early information indicates that these people are of Pakistan origin”. I understand that, event of this magnitude may lead to communal riots and more losses, but trying to be politically correct(so called secular shit to appease minority) when some one declares war on us (on our own streets) is not a great idea. I think you should hear Roosevelt speech to know how to speak as a leader when shit hits the roof. I guess all our politicians should be sent for a crash course with Bin Laden (if he is still alive) to learn leadership qualities.

pissed off
K

Do we need ETHICS?

Last evening when we reached home after work, my wife was furious about something. I waited for her to start the discussion rather than provoking (you know how woman are...). She started, I cant believe how companies like Infosys bill/estimate. Its absolutely ludicrous and unethical. I started laughing(my usual sarcasm). She said I know that's one of the reasons why you don't want to work for such companies. I said, one of the best services company in bangalore I worked for, did not have billing ethics, forget about Infosys/Sathyam/TCS etc. None of them have ethics in their company message. None of the services companies do business ethically. I know I am making a very broad and bold statement, but that's what it is. If they are ethical they will not survive. Competition in prostitution business is cut throat. I remember one of the VP at Thomson Financials(TF) was fired as he took soft kickbacks from a Indian IT services company to make them the preferred pimp of TF (of-course VP was an Indian).

    I started thinking, why is ethics so important for some people? I guess when you don't have kids, you don't have time to think about these things and care about them. Once you have kid(s) (you wanted to have one), then things change. The way you think and look at things change. For example, lots of my single friends where complaining about 11PM pub closing rule in bangalore. I used to think, what's wrong with that. I am sure if I was single, I would be complaining too. The problem I face is, if I am not ethical then its hard for me to teach my kid to be honest and ethical. I try my best to lead by example. I am not claiming that I have accomplished six sigma in it, but I try. Its beyond my comprehension, how these people who work at such places go back home and teach their kids to be honest. Its like you smoking in front of the kid and then later when she is an adult advising her not to smoke. I am sure if you die a brutal death and the doctor says that smoking caused it, no sensible kid will ever touch cigarette in his/her life. I understand that kids don't come to your work place and see how dishonest/unethical you are, but wouldn't it prick when you ask them to be honest/ethical?

 
     The other side of the coin is, the guy who is paying should be smart. If he is not then why shouldn't we take him for a ride. I think if you work in services industry as a prostitute, you can only have ethics as an individual prostitute. If you start thinking at the pimp level, you are in for some pain (only if you have ethics). Long live the PIMP.

    After i wrote this post, i met phani for one last mountain goat before he heads to pleasure island (Bangalore, India). We started discussing on the same thing as he is one cool prostitute (i mean works in IT services, not a Jigalow) and we talked about how everything is relative these days. For example... say we are in a big restaurant and the guy charges less than what he is suppose to, how many of us go back and say that you have charged less. Very few of us will do that. My justification would be, bastard charges us so much, it is ok for me to be dishonest. I remembered my dad, as he always used to say "If you steal mustard you are a thief, if you steal an elephant you are still a thief". I guess that is not true any more. Today if you steal mustard and compare yourself with some one who has stolen an elephant, you are a lesser thief.

    Question is, should our kids be honest? If the answer to that is yes then, whom will they learn from?

K

Home Coming...

Guys, this is not about soldiers or cricketers, OK. This is about a Brahman trying to be a Brahman again(I am talking about myself by the way).

     I decided to be a vegetarian again as of 3/9/2008. It is coincidental that it was Ganesh chaturthi on that day. My decision has nothing to do with either Ganesha or his father Shiva. Some thing happened on 31/8/2008 (My wife will kill me if i discuss it), which made me realize how sentimental/emotional my wife is about this vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. I started thinking how bad she would feel sleeping next to a guy knowing that he might have eaten this animal or that animal. I wondered, if i was her what would i expect from my partner? So i decided to stop eating meat.

     I have also been thinking about being a Vegan. Don't ask me why, some how i wanted to try it. For people who don't know, Vegan means some one who does not use anything that has animal product in it. Lots of vegans don't eat animal products but wear them happily. Me being me cannot do that. I have a favorite leather jacket, damn i cant think of not wearing it. My wife has been convincing me saying, things that were bought before you being vegan, you can wear them, don't buy anything new. I do agree, she has a point hahahahaha..... So first step towards being vegan is to be VEGETARIAN. Does being a vegetarian make me Brahman? Not according to my definition(that's a post by itself) of a true Brahman. According to my wife, its one of the criteria to be a Brahman, so i am happy to satisfy that.

K

Prostitution vs. IT Services

I always believed that there is not much difference between prostitution and IT Services. I have tabulated my observations in the table below. Guys this does not hold good for every one, so please do not get offended. If u do get offended i don't give a fuck.

Trait	Prostitution	IT Services
Body part sold	we all know, no need to mention	Suppose to be brain
Initial Selling	Does loads of show and dance.What you see is what you get.	Lots of dancing. Only best of the lot is showcased. Not necessary you get the same.
Pricing	Loves T&M (Time and Material). For people from non IT background-This means you pay hourly. Does not reduce her rates based on the clients ability to pay. Bulk Discount offered(maybe). Fixed Bid works	Same here Fixed bid is always risky
Customer Satisfaction	Doesn't give a shit	some do, most don't
Gives options for clients to save money	not at all	most of them don't. They think if they do that they will run out of business
Change in requirements	I guess will not be acceptable. Lets say you get her saying one person will screw her and suddenly 2 or 3 people try to do that,she will have objections, surely about billing and has to do Impact analysis. There are other change in requirements but lets keep it simple. If it is T&M some might not have problem and some might.	Same here. I guess in T&M motto is to "embrace change" as it generates more revenue.
Billing	I think will have ethics. I am not sure, would she take money, even if the customer doesn't screw her.	What can i say, you guys decide.
Risk Management	Pregnancy/Cops/Diseases etc.. Don't know what they do... really.	Scope Management, Escalation Procedure, Impact Analysis.. what not. End of the day situation is same.
When shit hits the roof	Say you end up getting AIDS(hahahha), I am sure you will not find the same prostitute. Even if you do manage to find her, she will blame the condom you used (if you did). Say she accepts it, nothing much you can do.	Same here, if the software doesn't work, or has bugs. Blame Requirements. If there is no outstanding invoice, you are shit out of luck.
Highest Bidder Wins	If she has 2 options, i am sure she would choose the one who pays most	If you have 2 offers from Services company, which one will you choose?

I might be way off in my observation about prostitutes as i do not have much experience there. What the heck? Vatsyayana wrote kaama sutra just by living with prostitutes. I don't know if its true, i read somewhere that he never experienced real sex himself. I have very less experience in IT Services industry as well, but i have seen them. Rest is left for you guys to decide and comment. I am trying to answer the question “Is prostitution bad for Society?” It would be awesome if a real prostitute (you know what i mean) finds this blog and comments.
Sorry for the table formatting guys, that's the best i could do on blogger. Publishing this has been real hard work....

K