Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Rain

Its raining in Bangalore. Rain in Bangalore is as un-predictable as a output of Rainy day test scenario in software :-)I love rain. Do not know the reason behind the love for rain May be because

1. I am from Malnad

2. I love fresh clean green leaves on tree

3. I love the aroma of the mud after first few drops of rain

4. Sound makes me feel relaxed

5. I used to get holiday during my school days because of heavy rain( may be I still have a hope holiday declared for my company because of rain and no need to compensate on Saturday :-) )

or because of some beautiful quotes like below?

1. Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear?

2.I love walking in the rain, 'cause then no-one knows I'm crying

3.Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain
Whatever is the reason I simply love rain

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Year of New experiences

Jan 1st 2008 started very differently. My owner came to my place early morning to inform water pump is not working and no water in the Tank. I had a holiday and I was asked to get the electrician to set it right. I did think what a way to start the New Year, but without much wait I could get hold of electrician and he did fix the problem.
Next day I took out the car to go to office, guess what, back tyre went flat. Parked the car and went with colleague. Always I call puncture service to help me in replacing the tyre. I did call the puncture service that day too. But No one turned up. In the evening, I and my husband learnt to replace the tyre.

Days passed by and this weekend we came across "Bird Watching session" at Lalbagh. Getting up early on winter day was challenge but we went to Lalbagh. That was very nice experience. Till I saw "Tickle's Flowerpecker" I couldn't imagine any bird to be that small. Finding these tiny birds on a big tree needs alertness. Probably saw some 10 different kinds of birds yesterday.

Have been planning to go to Rangashankara from almost a year but couldn't make it. Yesterday we got ticket to "Neenu Nanadre Nanu Neena?" a Kannada play. This was the first play I was watching.

This year seems to be so for good for me. And I am open for any number of good new experiences.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Tickets to watch Cricket, for Free

All of us might have heard this Advertisement. Take your mobile phone( will not mention the service provider)call the number play the game and get free ticket to wtach upcoming cricket match. There is a catch "Whoever plays more will get free tickets". Advertisement is ended saying call charges Rs 6 per minute.
Not very sure who all will play and get the free tickets. But Whoever gets the "Free" ticket should re-think if it was really free. Person may end up spending more money than the Actual rate of Ticket.
But Free is tempting, isn't it?

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Where I want to go?

I want to go around the world. To make this dream a reality it takes lot of money and time.
Decided to take first step to make dream a reality and started exploring Karnataka.
Here are few places I want to go trekking.
Kumar Parvata

Sakaleshpura railway track
Kodchadri
BR hills
Skandagiri( Moon light trek)
Brahmagiri


Dream trek as of now(India/Nepal) is "Manasa Sarovara". Some time back it was "Kodchadri". Person behind my change in places is Shrilatha. I get to see her trek photos and dream destination keeps changing.

This weekend I have registered to Brahmagiri Trek.

Will share my experience once I am back.

Monday, November 05, 2007

M G road Disaster

Saturday I had to drive from Marthhalli to Rajajinagar. Only road I was aware of was Martha halli->Airport road->M G road ->Cubbon Road -> Rajbhavan road -> Malleshwaram -> Rajajinagar. I don’t try new roads especially when I am driving a car.
I started around 11.20 am from Martha halli. Even though it was a slow moving traffic at some places I reached MG road in 30 minutes. Air Port road to MG road entry was closed. Traffic was diverted. There were no boards mentioning where to take left /right to reach cubbon road. I was almost lost. I did not know where to go. Putting together all the knowledge I had of roads and direction I choose a road to go, thanks to Bangalore traffic Police even that was closed.

I had to ask many people for direction to reach cubbon road. I kept driving in the direction suggested. When I reached a road near Commercial Street I was sure I haven’t lost and I can reach home.
This was not problem with me alone. I could see many more enquiring the direction to reach their destination. I took nearly 1hr 40 minutes to reach home.
For whatever reason they block one road, it would be great help if they put the boards for the alternate road to take.

I pity those who have to live with this disaster every day.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Om Coffee :-)

We all have heard of "Filter coffee", "Nescafe" but not "Om" coffee? Then visit a coffee shop in HSR. Many a times we had coffee there but last Friday we were served a beautiful coffee. After Closer look at the coffee we found that they had designed "Om”.

You too take a look.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Sabudana Upama

No No I am not giving a recipe here. I am sharing my long relation with
"Sabudana Upama".

I did my engineering in "BEC Bagalkot". First year and Final year I was in Hostel. But Second and third year I stayed with my friends in a room near to college. Attached to our room was a house were "Aunt , Uncle and their 2 kids" were staying. We were lucky to have such a nice family as neighbours. Aunt Used to prepare "SabuDana Upama" during Shivratri. She may be preparing other days too. But I had got to eat on Shivratri. It was very tastey. That time I didn't even know to prepare a cup of coffee. So I didn't bother to know the recipe.

Recently during lunch we lunch mates started discussing on "Sabudana payasam". Thanks to our caterers. Now I know to cook so I asked if any one know how to prepare "Sabudana Upama". One of them mentioned how to prepare.

On same day I happened to tell how much I like "Sabudana Upma" to my friend Shrilatha too. She probably took 1 minute to send me the blog on preparing "Sabudana Upama".I decided I will prepare on weekend.
Next day I was surprised to see one of my colleague(who was not aware of Sabudana discussion) had brought "Sabudana Upma" for her breakfast. I was shameless enough to say I love it. So sweet of her she asked me to eat. That was also very tasty.

One Sunday I prepared as mentioned in blog. I was disappointed as it was almost like a glue. I told my colleague who had brought Upama what had happened. She told I have to soak it only for 45 minutes and not 3/4 hours. Second Time I tried again. This time it wasn't glue but it was little harder. Again I told her my upama story. She said she soaks previous night and keeps in Refrigerator and prepares in the Morning. And she buys Sabudana from "FabMall".

Yesterday I did the same steps and Today yeah "Sabudana Upma" came out really nice. My theory "To learn any dish you need 3 days" proved right again.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Not Paying Tax

Few days back I was flipping through old news paper. And my eyes caught an interesting article "How it feels not to pay any tax". Reading the subject itself my eyes opened wide and I guess I started dreaming about "no one in India paying Tax".
Putting a break to my day dream, I started reading the article. The guy who wrote this article mentioned that he stays in Saudi Arabia and there he earns 8000 Saudi riyals and he doesn't pay a penny as tax. Whatever he gets in paper as salary is his take home salary.
Surprisingly that person felt he was not contributing to the growth of the country as he wasn't paying tax. He also mentioned that company pays the tax.


My view regarding this is fully different. I feel company would have fixed the salary taking out the tax a person should pay. i.e if he is worth 9000 riyals he would be payed 8000 riyals.

Directly or indirectly each of us pay the tax and also part of country's growth.I don't think I will feel left out If My country says no tax from people. I will be the happiest.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Standard of Govt Books

I went to "Chalghatta govt school 2 weekends. First weekend, some time I sat in class where my friend was taking class. And then took Hindi for 6th std.
Second week I was demoted:-) and sent to take English for 5th std.
Being sure that, that school has from std 1 and I won't be demoted to '0' I went to class 5th.Very few students in class. Asked them which chapter to start?. They said I need to teach them "Posting a letter".
I thought good one for 5th std. And started. Note in Govt school from 5th std they start learning English alphabets. So we need to spell the letters first and then spell the word. Even though I felt it difficult as that habit is gone from so many years.We started reading each and every letter and each and every word. There are few words written in book for example
I would is written "I'd" Who on earth can expect a kid who just started learning 'A B C' to understand this. And if we teach them this way how will they know the spelling of "I Would' If everyone on earth think 5th Std kid can understand "I'd" then I must be from mars :-)One more thing I was unhappy was
Situation is Raju goes to Post office and asks postmaster for a postcard. Post master answer is ."Here it is". This is still OK. But for beginners I guess it should have been "Here is the post card". That helps kid to read the same word multiple time and get familiar with that new word.
There were many such spelling which I feel difficult for 5th Std kid to understand.
But we have to teach the same way :-(

Hamesha such bolna !

Wait wait I am not preaching you anything here. This is a one of the Hindi chapters for 7th std Govt School in karnataka.One weekend I decided to join my friend who visits a govt school in "chalghatta" near Air-port road.
She takes Hindi for 7th Std school. Since I was new to that school I thought I will sit in my friends class and help her in controlling the kids. Chapter for that Day was "Hamesha Such Bolna". She started teaching. This was a story taken from MahaBharat. So Dritarashtra was one of the name in book. Almost all found it difficult to pronounce his name. Few said, dushta rashtra, dushta raj.After some I asked one guy to write on board "Dritarashtra" in Hindi, with very small mistake he wrote on board.
Make sure students were listening what we were saying my friend started asking question.
Question she asked was "Who is Pandu". Even though all knew the answer, no one wanted to attempt pronouncing "Dritarashtra".But incident made write this is a guy said "Pandu is brother of" and showed his finger towards the board :-)
We both couldn't stop laughing at his answer.Is it his laziness or his intelligence to properly make use of available things !!!

Friday, December 29, 2006

Change in my Office timings

I was staying in Kamalanagar and my office is in Bannerghatta road. Office to Home is 20km distance. I was to leaving home at 7.30am, and reach office by 8.15am. And Leave office any time after 4.30pm. I was so used to this timing and most of the days I avoided traffic.
As we (my husband and myself) spent more time traveling to and forth to office, we decided to shift to HSR Layout. I am not a person who can look at the city map and find the route to the destination. I need to go with someone to know the route. Since HSR was new for me I decided to take office cab facility for one month.

We are 4 who take one cab. I am picked at HSR around 9.15am. And cab starts from office at around 7.30pm. At 7pm I closed my system and went to read the newspaper. Security personnel was astonished to see me in office at 7pm. He asked me why am I in office still. I gave him the explanation. Before he asked 90% of the team members had asked me the same question and had given them the reason. One colleague thought there was some problem with his watch J
Second day my colleague who leaves very near to my house dropped me and I went back early. Third day again I had to stay back till 7.30pm. 10% of the team members who had not seen me on other day were surprised to see me so late in office. I was taking staircase to go down to parking lot, then security at 1st floor called me. He said why madam not getting your car? Yours used to be first car. Looked like he missed my car in parking lot. I played my story again there.
Change in my schedule has raised question in so many people.
I will change my schedule again next month, no not to check how many people ask me, but was to get rid of cab.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Day 1

Company I work for announced merger with another company couple of months back.
Very frequently we got merger update mails. From one month along with merger update we were seeing about "Day 1" a new entry in the merger update mail.
Since New Year was nearing we thought (at least I thought) “Day 1” is Jan 1st.

Last week we got a mail mentioning December 1st is day 1 and stay tuned for more updates. One after the other mails floated and looked to be a big day. 29th November got a mail requesting all employees to vacate the office on 30th November by 6.30pm for them to make arrangements.
I was thinking what arrangements they will do? They also notified that higher management would welcome the employees after 8.30am on December 1st.

I am an early bird to office, but didn’t wanted to miss higher management welcoming me, so reached office at 8.45am. New logo was at the gate that gave a feeling of loosing the old identity of the company. As they say change is the only constant thing life I accepted the change in logo. I entered the gate and came to the entrance of office. Was surprised with the arrangements they made. We were welcomed with a beautiful rose, day 1 agenda and also a chocolate.

Elevator door opened and guess what even elevator was decorated with beautiful roses. Entered our floor and couldn’t believe it’s the same office were I was working. Whole look gave a festive mood, and we Indians get holidays on almost all festivals and so didn’t get mood to work in a festive mood. We few discussed about new logo, decoration, agenda for the day. Can say did everything other than work. Around 10.30am or 11am started to work. Around 12noon managers came to everyone at desk and congratulated for the new company and also welcomed to the new company.

12.45pm is our lunchtime and being in festive mood decided to go out for lunch. But one colleague asked us to have lunch in our own cafeteria as the food is good that day. We had lunch in cafeteria and really food was wonderful. After lunch again back to work. Around 3.30pm managers asked us to gather, this usually happens in our team to celebrate Birthdays and Anniversary’s in that month. But this time it was to celebrate Day 1 of the new company. We all got bouquet of roses and a seasonal greeting card. Manager mentioned that roses and card was not for employee alone but was for the family as without the support of family we probably wouldn’t be what we are now.

Then it was time for cake cutting. We all gathered in cafeteria had the nice pastry. Agenda had program till 9.30pm, due to some personal work I had to end my involvement for the Day 1 function and had to take care of personal work.
This was the first merger I was part of and we were apprehensive about the merger, but it was un-avoidable and hope it’s for better. Have to thank the management to make it a wonderful day.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Day Good/Bad

Tuesday 28th November 2006, I reached office as usual at around 8.20am. There were couples of mails in the mailbox. US colleagues had come back from “Thanks giving” vacation and lots of issues reported. Who likes to hear about problems in their code, even I felt bad to read mails about only issues. Thought a Bad day.

But I had to start working to fix the problems and started looking at that. Usually logs provided will be insufficient and finding the root cause of the problem takes time. But that day logs were sufficient and could find the root cause for almost all issues. So thought Day is not that bad.

I have telecon every day at 6.30pm. So I go home and take the call. I left office at around 5pm so that I can reach home on time. I might have come a kilometer from office and I found front tier gone flat. Should this also happen the same day? “Bhagvaan deta hai to chappad bhadke deta hai” so true.

But again I could get hold of mechanic to fix. I couldn’t reach home before 6.30pm. So parked the car on road and attended the meeting. Day was more of problems and getting it fixed.
End of the day I couldn’t make out if it was a bad day or a good day.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Back To School

Its long time I completed 7th Std. I did in a village near Sorab Taluk, Shimoga District. We had 2/3 three teachers to handle from 1st to 7th Std. My mother says, I knew 2nd std poems when I was in 1st and so on because we used to have combined classes.

Till 7th Std My mother taught me . I did learn in Kannada medium till 7th.Now I work in a software company. Thanks to my parents and relatives for whatever I am today. I know how difficult it is to educated in life studying in village when there is no support from parents. Govt schools in Bangalore is similar to schools in village at that time for many reasons. One,village people didn't give more importance to education same with the parents of govt school kids in Bangalore now. I wanted to help such kids in knowing the importance of education. I got such opportunity when I joined DSF.

From 3/4 months I am going to Govt Primary school on Saturday to teach English/maths to the govt school kids. There are few kids who are really interested to learn things, and there are few who probably don't know the importance of education.Its little difficult to make these kids learn things though not impossible.

As usual I went this Saturday to School at 9.15am. We are 5 to 6 volunteers who go regularly. This Saturday they got late and I was waiting for them. I Was listening to music sitting outside. School Headmaster didn't like me sitting outside he asked me to sit in office room. I went and sat there and couldn't listen to music, so switched off radio. I didn't had any other work than listening to the headmaster and teacher discussion in office room.

Head Master had work in Banks and so he had to go to Bank, he was expecting few visitors too, but didn't knew what time visitor will be coming. He told the teacher, he will go to bank and if someone comes asking for him, give a missed call and he will come back :-)
I was surprised, its not that I didn't know he had a mobile nor that I am not aware of missed calls. But how technology has helped us. We probably can't imagine a day without a mobile now. But didn't we leave without all that few years back?
When I heard that discussion , I remembered a incident which my mother told me.
When I was in nursery my father used to drop me and come back to hospital. My father is a doctor and he was posted in a village that time. One day when my father was away to drop me to nursery his boss came to hospital. Hospital and our house was in single compound. He asked my mother where is my father and when he will be back. She told him my father went to drop me to school and he will be back in few minutes. Boss asked will he come back, my mother replied he will drop daughter and come back and he will not be sitting in nursery. If we had mobile at that time Boss would have called/given a missed call to my father :-). We didn't had even a phone in that village at that time.

Even though I go to school now on Saturdays so many things are changed. Back to school yes but not back to good olden days.