Yes. that was what 2008 for me. More bitter.. Little sweet. 2008 was more depressing to me compared to 2007. The year end was even more worse. Well, some lessons are always learned in a hard way. Lets not discuss about the bad things that happened to me. There were few good things too..
- I went to Bangkok this year and stayed there a whole fortnight.
- H1b Visa got initiated and petition got approved too. However, stamping postponed till now due to some .. you know ^^^^ reasons.
- Made a lot of good real nice friends in InfyBLOGS. This is one of the best thing that happened to me in my Infy career.
- Became hyper active on twitter. It is addictive. It is crapville. It is knowledge sharing platform. There are many definitions for it. If you haven’t tried it yet, try it once. But caution.. either you get it or you will not.
- Professionally improved a lot according to my team expectations but not as much as I had wished. I yet to gain technical expertise on many areas that i daily work.
- Music became part of my life. I got introduced to diversed music by fellow friends. I bought Sennheiser PX 100. Music controls me now. It has power to change my emotions. It heels me. I yet to listen/discover hidden gems of different part of world music.
- Joined gym but gave up after a week. I have become more fat now compared to last year. Fitness was in 2008 year resolution and it will be continued this year also.
- Had 3 days Hyderabad Trip. Hyderabad is one of nice tourist attraction. I totally loved Golconda Fort.
- Started swimming and learning guitar but had to stop temporarily due to shortage of time and bangkok trip. will start both again.. thats for sure. One thing i learnt after joining guitar classes is ‘guitar is not the easiet instrument to play’. If you have that in mind, give it a try.
- I had Lasik operation for my eyes. Now, no more glasses for me. Eye operation was in my to-do list for last 3 years. It took 3years for me to fulfill it. It was postponed several times till decemember.
- Decemember was the most depressing month for me. I was disturbed a lot. I never expected that i will become so weak emotionally. I will not write anything about it. I hope this new year 2009 brings a smile on my face.
Happy New year to everyone
Welcome 2009 !!!
Tags: Life
European vistors used to call the Bangkok as “VENICE OF THE EAST”. The Chao Phraya River flows through Bangkok. This river is one of major transportation means in Bangkok.
View of Chao Phraya River from boat..
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Tags: Bangkok, Travel
Safari world is a place where you can see wild life and do jungle safari.. It also has various shows whole day.
Here are some of photos I clicked at safari world.
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Tags: Bangkok, Travel
“Wat” means Temple. Bangkok has many beautiful wats that are must see for tourists. Since 95% of population of Thailand follow Buddhism, all wats of Thailand are buddhist temples.
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Tags: Bangkok, Travel
This was my first international trip. I was at Bangkok for whole 14 days. The trip was planned to be more of relaxation vacation.
Bangkok is a place that has everything… temples, shopping malls, wildlife, ocean, night life.. the list is endless. The place is for everyone irrespective of age and gender.
First Impressions
Bangkok is clean, silent and has wide & smooth roads. Talking about traffic, Bangkok also has traffic but very less compared to Bangalore. Drivers never switch lanes no matter how fast the other lane is moving. One can hardly see using horn. This is something that we need in Bangalore.
Language, Culture & People:
Language spoken in Thailand is Thai. English is rarely used by the people although most of taxi drivers, shopkeepers communicate with you in English. They will not understand if you speak at a normal speed. You have to tell them word by word that too in their accent. NOM. They cannot pronounce ‘R’ and they pronounce it as ‘L’. Most of times, ‘T’ will be pronounced as in “Thunder” and not as in “Tea”. If you want to say to the taxi driver that you want to go to “pan-tip plaza”, you need to say him as “pan-thip plaza” and “U turn” as “U thurn”.
Major population follow Buddhism. You will see Buddhist Temples (these are called as “Wats” in Thai) everywhere. People are very friendly and innocent. Put in another way, they don’t know how to cheat. Even if you don’t know the place, tell the name of the place to the taxi driver and he will take you there in a shortest possible way without roaming around the city. They speak very softly and expect you to speak in the same way. Sometimes, increase in volume of my voice and extra actions/gestures would used to make them frightened. You also need to drag each word while speaking.. that is how they speak.
If you are a vegetarian, well you will find it not so easy here. People here mainly eat pork, every kind of sea food and meat. You will get sea food stalls across the roads everywhere. If you are a person who loves to eat sea food, you will get an opportunity to eat the creatures that you even can’t imagine.
Shopping & Bargaining:
Probably one of activities that you can’t avoid in Bangkok is shopping. Each of shopping malls here is almost 4-5 times bigger than Forum, Bangalore. The main shopping malls are MBK, Siam Square, Platinum Fashion Mall, Central World & the IT shopping mall “Pan-Tip Plaza”. At the MBK, you will get everything. It is like all-in-one hub. Platinum Fashion Mall is a girls’ paradise. Pan-tip plaza was my favorite during my stay. It has every IT stuff that you need or wish to buy. “If it is not there at the pan-tip plaza, then it doesn’t exist”. It is also infamous for selling most upto date pirated softwares. I had a glance on what kind of CD/DVDs they sell. They sell softwares, games, music, movies and even porn. You will get the OS the day it is released. Each CD usually costs 100 & DVD costs 150 bucks.
Apart from hi-end shopping malls, Bangkok also has retail road side and wholesale markets. Chatuchak weekend market and Pratunaam market ,which is opposite to the Platinum Fashion Mall, are most famous. No item should be purchased without bargaining. Bargaining is in wide practice and tourists are expected to bargain before buying anything. If you have that skill, well you can purchase that item to almost half of the price what the shopkeeper had told initially. You should liberally use phrases like “make less”, “make discount”, “for me”, “please” with smile on your face. This will often end in fair deal.
Transportation & Communication:
Skytrain, public buses, taxis, tuk-tuks (autos of Thailand), boats and bike taxis form the transportation. Skytrain are most cheap and preferred. Even if you go by taxi, then also it will be cheaper compared to meter charges of taxis in India. Chao Phraya river flows through Bangkok. Boats are cheaper if you want travel across/ along the river. Tuk-Tuks are famous in Bangkok and every tourist takes a ride on it. But beware, these tuk-tuk drivers are clever and you might end-up paying high. For alone travelers, there are bike taxis, you will get pillion ride. Prices are relatively cheaper compared to taxis.
It is always better to get one local sim when you stay at Bangkok. Purchasing sim requires no id proof and is pre-activated. Bangkok also has more than 15,000 free wi-fi hotspots provided by “true” operator. Almost all tourist places and all bus stops are wifi hotspots. Happy browsing but the speed is less.
Tourist Attractions:
Major tourist attractions in Bangkok are all Buddhist Temples, Grand Palace, floating market, wildlife, ocean & beaches, night bazaars, infamous bars, thai cultural shows including siam niramit show, Ayutthaya (old ruin city like our Hampi), dinner cruise on Chao Phraya River… etc
I visited Grand Palace & all major wats (takes one or more than one day), safari world (it is a wild life sanctuary where you can do jungle safari and also has various shows of dolphins, seals, elephants..etc. takes half-day to one day ), Siam ocean world ( where you can see weird & wonderful ocean creatures.. takes half day ), floating market ( it is 110 km far from Bangkok.. but must see..) , crocodile show ( where you can see persons inserting their head & hand into crocodile’s mouth ). I also did elephant riding around jungle for around 45 mins :-). Saw the Siam Niramit show which is about thai history, culture, and festivals. It has world’s highest stage and gives world-class performance. It is bit expensive but you will not regret watching it.
I think the post has become too long.
Will post photos in next 2-3 blogs…
Tags: Bangkok, Life, Travel
In today’s IT Industry, a Software Developer is a person who codes program rather developing it and to make it irony we call ourselves as developers instead of coders.
A developer in a small company often has to do all phases of software development by himself. The advantage of this is he will know the in and out of whole project right from requirement phase to acceptance testing to deployment in prod. The downside of this is a person has to do the tasks that he is not skilled for. A developer cannot design. Eventually, he develops the solution that satisfies his convenience instead of requirements.
A developer in a big company has to do only coding without thinking about other phases. In a worse case, he will be provided stub code with methods , parameters and return type .. etc. He has to fill up that method with required code just like filling up blanks with suitable words.
We always define program as a set of instructions that do required task. But we never care about effectiveness and quality of code. IT Industry has always produced poor software with low quality code. Tight deadlines which don’t give space for developer’s best makes him to do so. Unfortunately, performance of developer is always measured in terms of number of lines of code.
One of such mistake that we do always is writing unit test cases after writing code. I bet those test cases are the cases that never fail as we write those unit test cases according to the code we have written and not according to the functionality. Have you heard of Test Driven Development? I don’t know how many of us follow this Test Driven Development but one thing is sure most of us wont
We code. We test. We do whatever is needed. We never care about what models we should use. Infact, most developers even might not have known many models except for waterfall or spiral model ( that too if that person is from CS background ). Have you come across scrum or Extreme Programming?
Extreme Programming is one of the most debatable practice in Software Industry. You either love it or hate it. It takes software industry to more unconventional paths. XP breaks all walls and makes its own self defined room.
One last question: Do you write Java as java or as C? Inspite of repeated effort, I am still not able to come out of that. I still write Java as C 
Tags: Extreme Programming, Scrum, Software Development, software engineer, Spiral, TDD, Technology, Waterfall
Tata has walked out of Singur. Ratan Tata, on October 3rd, announced that Tata Motors will move Nano Project out of Singur.
In the dirty game of politics played by Ms.Mamta Banerjee, no one benefited. Everyone is in loss now.
A company should consider its employees security more than its benefits and losses. Tata Motors has taken right decision of pulling out. One cannot work under life-threatening situation even if one gets police protection from the government.
Two years ago, CPM government invited Tata Motors for setting up Nano Project in Singur. Government acquired 1000 acres of land for the project that made more than 12000 farmers to lose their land. Although 80% of farmers had accepted compensation, remaining 20% refused and started protesting.
Trinamool Congress led by Ms.Mamta Banerjee saw the political opportunity in this and woke strong protests making it complete shit. During protests, Tata workers were attacked which made the situation even more worse.
The sad part of the whole thing, Mamta is still not repenting about whatever has happened and thinks it’s a game plan done by government and Tata. Hail Mamta.
West Bengal didn’t lose only Nano Project, infact they lost almost all future projects by Tatas as well as from other companies. Will companies dare to invest in West Bengal from now on?
This project would have created thousands of direct and indirect jobs. Tata had offered employment for all land losers. Several vendors including hotels, restaurants, tea shops and provisional stores had made investments around Singur.
West Bengal lost golden opportunity which would have become economical boast, now the same will turn into curse for the state.
Government has told firmly that it will not return lands back to the farmers and will be used for industrial purpose only. Farmers in addition with losing land now they lost jobs too. Thanks to Ms.Mamta Banerjee.
Other states , mainly Karnataka and Gujarat have laid red carpet for Nano Project.
One’s loss is one’s gain.
Tags: Nano, Politics, Singur, Tata, West Bengal
