A good sleep can do wonders to your confidence, that coupled with the day being a Friday was a big morale booster. Watching the title song of "Dil Chahta Hai" on Music television (MTV) in the morning made me nostalgic about some good old memories associated with the movie.

It was an eventful day @ work. There was a feeling of satisfaction as I learnt something new when I was writing code after a long time. In the evening we had birthday celebrations for the first time @ our new office.

After a month, I will be visiting home. My bus is scheduled for departure @ 21:40 p.m. I will be returning to Bangalore on 2nd October. Can't wait to grab some home made food :)

Looking @ the newspaper today especially Times of India one couldn't help but think there's a new wave of euphoria which has enveloped the whole country. Dhoni and his boys are being feted after winning the cup and they deserve it. It's a feel good factor we haven't seen since a long time.

I wish the feel good factor rubs on me too...:) At work today was marginally better than y'day as I assigned some small tasks to myself. I have to pack my bags because I will be leaving home tomorrow night. Hyderabad I am coming :)

So India finally managed to do it after a long time. It didn't matter if India lost coz the way they performed so far has surpassed all expectations. However a win is always welcome :)

The pace of work @ office is painfully slow. I am planning to visit home this weekend. The only thing remaining is booking my bus ticket. I have booked my return journey by air. Sometimes you aren't burdened with much work and yet @ the end of the day you're tired. You just want to go home and crash into the bed. It's a similar situation with me.

Saturday rocked literally. I am talking about the team outing I had with my colleagues. I reached Cascade resort 30 mins behind schedule. It was good fun all day long. After a long time I got to play Table Tennis and Carrom.

Close to winding up we shook our legs and hands @ the discotheque. The DJ belted out the latest chartbusters like "Hare Ram" from the unreleased film "Bul Bulaiya" and punjabi pop songs.

All in all it was a day to remember :)

"Sometimes life can be cruel" maybe this is what South African captain Graeme Smith would be thinking after their shock defeat to India and being knocked out of the Twenty/20 world cup.

I watched the match till late night.What an awesome match that was... This Indian team which is without a coach, star players and an injured Yuvraj Singh knocked out a formidable team and the hosts South Africa..:) Few people including myself would have given this Indian team an outside chance of advancing to the next round forget the semi-finals. Indians @ home and in the audience would have been thrilled to bits.

I have given up watching cricket after the match-fixing scandal and India's poor performance in the world cup. There is a moral in this story. Confidence and self belief is the key whether it's in sports/one's career or personal life.

Chakde India...:)

The downside of watching the match till late in the night was droopy eyes @ work. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as I thought and I managed to survive the day :)

Friday has come to an end. Tomorrow is our team outing @ Cascade resort which is a few metres away from the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore(IIMB). We will be having an event manager who will be co-ordinating activities like team building, indoor games etc.

I am almost done with my assignment except for a minor task which needs some clarification. Overall there is a sense of accomplishment. The cold seems to be in no mood to leave me. We have a first-aid kit in our office which has prescriptions and medicine for various illnesses.

I was looking for the "sinarest" pill which I took yesterday however was surprised to find the whole tablet strip missing. I had to settle for a crocin instead. My eyes are drooping and I am waiting for the day to get over.


The big news in today's newspapers was the Sensex closing @ a record high of 16000 points and the 6 sixes which Yuvaraj slammed against England in the Twenty/Twenty tournament thus becoming the first player to score the fastest 50 in 12 balls.

It was a hectic day @ work. I am working on enhancements to an existing application. To begin with, I thought it was a daunting task however as the momentum picked up I found it a more rewarding experience.

I am expecting to finish the work atleast by tomorrow. As if the airconditioning in the office was not enough the weather outside was also quite chilly. It was like a double whammy :) At the close of the day, I was feeling a bit sick so popped a sinarest pill for cold & fever. I am feeling a bit better now and also feeling drowsy @ the same time. Need to hit the sack now :)

Monday afternoon and it's back to work. I am feeling very drowsy and just about managing not to fall asleep @ my desk.:) It was a nice trip to Mangalore I had during my last weekend. On my way back I had a problem getting a bus ticket for a Volvo to Bangalore . I ended up purchasing a ticket for Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation’s (KSRTC) “Karnataka Suvarna Sarige” which when translated to English means “Karnataka’s golden transport”. Contrary to the name it was nowhere close to what it promised except for the cheap fare.

It was a 3:2 seater, there was no place to keep my luggage and the intense humidity coupled with the fact that there was no pushback seats and the road condition on the ghat section of the road from Mangalore to Bangalore which is so bad that you might as well end up with a sore back made me change my mind @ the last minute. Thankfully I somehow managed to get a ticket for the KSRTC Volvo aptly titled “Airavat”. Airavat means the flying machine in kannada. It was around 5 a.m in the morning and as the bus was cruising along smoothly we could a hear a loud bang in the rear of the bus. After that noise there was a screeching sound whenever the bus began to pick up pace. I was praying and hoping that it was not the axle which has broken down.


After some distance the driver parked the bus @ safe corner of the road. The problem was with the inner rear tyre of the bus. It had suffered a tyre burst. The damage was immense as the tread seemed to have blown off due to the impact. The problem was solved and I ended up reaching Bangalore @ 8 a.m.

On my way back home from office yesterday things didn't seem to go well. Our office shuttle was late by 45 minutes and then we got stuck in a traffic jam. The reason was the heavy downpour which started late in the evening.

I normally reach home by 9:45 p.m but I couldn't believe it when we were still in the shuttle and the time was 12 a.m. I wished couple of guys & gals in the shuttle "Good Morning" and they sported a wry smile on their face :) It wasn't a good timing coz people had this famished looked on their face as they were literally longing to get back home and have their dinner.

Luckily for me I finish off my dinner by 8:15 p.m and that saved me the blushes. The moment I got of the shuttle and started my walk back home, there was heavy winds blowing across with such a force that I had to tightly hold on to my umbrella. My trousers were partially drenched and I started shivering.

Only after I had a warm shower, I was a bit relieved and then crashed into my bed :)

I will be going out of station this weekend to Mangalore. It's been a long time I visited the place, so it will be a welcome break for me :)

I am getting used to my new cubicle and I have begun to like the place. The only downside is that we have a transparent glass behind us and that's the place from where the people enter into the office.

The good thing is that our boss (Delivery Manager) is not sitting in the room she was supposed to be in. Her room will be located just near the entrance.

We had a conference call today and we could barely hear the caller from the other side as they were 2 simultaneous conference calls underway in the neighbouring cubicle(s). It was a bit chaotic and noisy situation...:)

The nice thing about today's call was the praise I received from my on-site manager for the good work I have been doing...:)

I couldn't help thinking about the movie I watched last weekend. The title of the movie was "Apna Asmaan". A beautiful movie which revolves around an autistic child Budhi and his parents. The struggles which the child's parents face about social stigma especially in our society where forget about people with learning disabilities even normal children are put through the grind. Budhi is good @ drawing sketches but his parents rarely encourage him. His mom who was good @ Mathematics during her academic career has big dreams to see her son doing well in the same subject. Budhi's sketches only tends to irritate her.

Parents put enormous pressure on the kids so that they can become an Engineer or Doctor and always compare them to their neighourhood kids who do well. No wonder then, when the Board exams or SSC results are out you find the children commiting suicide. Not everyone wants to become an Engineer or Doctor, they too have their dreams & aspirations. I have been through the stress and I know what the pressure is all about.

There was this incident when I was on my way home from Mumbai. One of my co-passengers asked me as to what I was doing in Mumbai and my academic background. I told him that I am a commerce graduate. The expression on his face suddenly changed to that of disdain. He proudly started speaking about his two sons. One is studying @ IIT, Mumbai and the other is preparing to leave for the U.S to pursue his Masters. This gentleman was a bit surprised as to how did I get a break in IT without an engineering degree under my belt...:)

Anyways coming back to the movie Irrfan Khan and Shobana who are good actors in their own right don't leave the audience disappointed. They portray the anguish of the parents quite well. Rajat kapoor as "Dr.Sen" also does well. The real star of the movie is the young kid .He gives a stellar performance as the autistic child who undergoes a transformation into a "Mathemagician" thanks to a novel drug "Brain Booster". Dr.Sen is right when he says "Budhi is not disabled but he's differently abled". The high point in the movie is even in the midst of gloom there are comic situations now and then which helps to break the stranglehold.

It's puzzling as to why such a movie which has even won a prize @ one of the film festivals abroad didn't get an encouraging response from the audience. The theatre was barely half full. True the movie didn't have an Shahrukh Khan or hit songs etc. to pull the audience however it had a good script and excellent performances and most important as the film critic Nikhat Kazmi has written in his film review in Times of India (TOI), it had a topical and relevant theme.

After a couple of busy days work has come back to normal levels.

Work has kept me busy today for most part of the day. We have moved to the new office premises in the same building from today. I didn't realize how time just flew for the rest of the day.

Have a lot to write however I am running out of time. Watch this space tomorrow..:)

Today before going to work, I visited the dentist to get my steel brackets taken out and the scaling done. It feels much better without the steel brackets in your mouth :)

In the office all the PC's (except mine and a couple of my colleagues) were being shifted and the draws emptied. We will be relocating to the 2nd Block / 3rd floor office and operating from the new location beginning Monday next week.

The new office premises is quite spacious and my new workstation is cool..what's not so cool is that I am seated bang opposite to our Delivery Manager's cabin. ): Work wise it was another productive day. I didn't feel that it was a Friday and now when the day has come to a close the feeling has begun to sink in :)

I need to get up early tomorrow morning to have my medical check-up done as part of the term policy cover I have taken.

You sometimes tend to get frustrated if your job is monotonous or you are not exactly loving it coz it's not doing justice to your skills. However when your options are limited atleast in the short term, the challenge then lies in making what's supposed to be a dreadful job into an exciting one.

Now that calls for sheer patience and perseverance. I realized it today when I took on a task inspite of knowing that's exactly not my kind of job. I thought to myself I don't have any tasks on hand and what's the harm in doing this job if it helps to ease the burden of someone.

It was a pleasant surprise when the client for whom I did the work was quite appreciative of what I had done so far, it brought a smile to my face. For the first time, I felt happy...:)

It feels a lot better to get back to your normal routine after 2 days of stomach upset. Every morning I watch the non-stop hits on MTV for around an hour though it runs from 7 a.m to 11 a.m. There was one song from this movie "Kalyug" titled "Jiya Dhadak".

It was a nice song beautifully picturised on the lead pair of Kunal Khemu and Smiley Suri. I loved watching this movie for it's strong script and the songs which are quite relevant to the theme.

After a lull I was busy @ work today. During my tea-break I came across an interesting article in the newspaper which mentions about the tug of war between Bajaj and TVS in the motorcycle market over the "DTS" engine. People in the industry may not like competition however it's definitely good for the end-user i.e the customer.

It was a nice weekend and here I am back to office. I wasn't feeling well today thanks to an upset stomach. Also there wasn't much on the work front as our U.S counterparts have a holiday today.

I am feeling slightly better after taking a pill for stomach ache. Can't wait to reach home and crash into the bed.