Onsite trip

First, It was Arizona & Kansas, which were rejected by me, then California trip was just missed . I chose Sanghai(China) over New Jersey ,but Sanghai gave a big hand.. slight hopes of Dublin(Ireland) and finally Prague is playing the host for me.

It's all set for my first onsite trip, first one in my four and half years of experience and I'm excited. I'm starting here ,on the third day of next year and will be back by 1st March.

U.S. Timezone

PST,CST & EST (with day light and without day light) are always confusing to me.. there had been some occasions, where I missed out some of the conference calls . The following news was published in Oracle Metalink saying that it might affect some of Oracle Application modules.

Beginning in 2007, the United States and Canada are extending Daylight Saving Time (DST) by three weeks in the spring and one week in the fall. DST will begin the second Sunday in March and end the first Sunday in November. Previously, DST began the first Sunday in April and ended the last Sunday in October.

Confusion multiplied...

I met Kishore

I met my friend Kishore, after around two years , and here are some changes I observed

• Too many 'Thank you's than needed.
• Name changed from Kishore to 'Key-Shore'
• Putting up fake american accent
• Preferred Wine over Whisky
• Over concious about diet
• Not many 'NRI extras' except that he compared his Zen car to Lorry(He had a point,though)
• Much influence of western culture
• wearing contact lenses
• His math skills got screwed up

Harsha Bhogle on Sachin Tendulkar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Fsnv6wHJo

Feeling Good

Around six months back, an 18-year old boy sent an friend request in Orkut after seeing my profile in Larry Ellison community. As we both like Larry, our friendship continued and we became good friends now..

I like the way he thinks and I strongly believe that he has the ability to achieve what he dreamt of.. He is now running three different businesses and now, close to cracking the deal with one of the fortune 500 client.

We chat frequently on Google chat and he calls me Anna and today, he pinged me and asked

"so, at any point if I need you to join along with me to my Company, will u?"

What I answered him was out of context here ,but I'm delighted ..

Twenty 20

"You are watching India's fist ever 20-20 international, Live and Exclusive on ESPN", Harsha and Allan were screaming almost every over ,the other day. Agreed, Cricket is religion in India ,but why those guys were so excited for a game, which was being played by many people in many gullies in India for many years. What I exactly mean is

We (boletho, my co-players in my village) were playing 20-20 cricket for many years. Infact 20-20 is the longest version of cricket game in my village. Others were 12-12 & 6-6 and this 20-20 was almost similar to the game we played ,like

1)Players(Batting side) sit just next to the boundary line ( like we do)
2)Two batsmen are always ready with their pads ,gloves and gurads on (similar to my village, except that these two batsmen will run fast once the wicket falls and the one who reaches the crease faster, will get the chance to bat)
3)Batting side (sometimes commentators) will get the chance to sledge fielding side (unlike in other forms of cricket)

This version of 20-20 is lacking many features from the 20-20 we play, like

1)Bat only at one side of wicket [the intention of 20-20 is to save the time]
2)No L.B.W. rule and hence no need of umpires, instead you can put two batsmen in the place of umpires ,which will save the time of batsmen walking to pavilion.
3)No No-balls, No Legbye's and all other stupid rules in the game of Cricket.
4)Batsmen sledging batsmen, to get the chance to bat (Remember 20-20 is more of entertainment ,than the game)
5)If team batting first gets out in X number of overs, otherside will get the chance to bat only X number of overs .

On a different note, this match took me to the best 20-20 game ,I ever played in my life.. That match was on Dusera 1997, between juniors and seniors in my village. Seniors scored 120 off 20 overs . I didn't remember how many wickets I took ,except that I was badly injured while taking simple return catch. We started chasing 120 and lost two wickets without scoring any runs. my self(31 not out, with a beautiful straight drive) and the other player (scored 70) built up an partnership and evetually won by 5 wickets. In the next season, because of my morethan 12-hour per day study, my health detorirated and I began to fear the cricket ball and my scores were mostly 0&1 (Incidentally, it is the same period, I joined in Computer Science Engineering). Then I changed to fast bowling ,but didn't last long because of poor fitness, next avataram was spin bowling ,then as Umpire & coach and finally settled as Cricket spectator [In other words, I was the captain -> I was the first one to be chosen -> I was among first 4-5 players ->I was chosen after they look around and if nobody found -> I was asked to umpire -> I was advised to take rest]

Exam Update

I was supposed to be in examination center around 1.30 PM ,but I started much early around 10.00 am from my room as the examination center is around 35 km far and the last train to that place was at 10.00 am.

I enjoyed the journey as I always do.Finished reading the last two chapters of 'The Google Story' book ,which were pending for so many days. I was at Arts College by 11.00 am and my Examination centre was around 3 km from that place.

Still It was 11.30, two more hours for the exam.. Had second breakfast of the day.. bought Water bottle and the time was only 12.00 PM. I was just looking around thinking how to pass time and I found an road side bookseller.. Went there and had a look at all the books. I almost had all the book ,which I otherwise would be interesting in buying . Finally picked up 'Inheritance of Loss ' by Kiran Desai for Rs.110.

Exam started around 2.00 PM and the first seventy five questions were very easy.. I was just passing time(Cross checking the answere again) assuming that next 100 questions will be of same toughness ,but I was completely wrong . Next 100 were bouncers, I was able to elimiante only one option and some times none... 10% of the questions were out of syllabus (meaning ,not covered in their course material) .Was managed to sit for four hours and when I was about to give my answere paper, I realized that I'm the only one in the exam hall (Initally we were around 40 members and this center was for two different exams one was three hour exam and mine was four hour exam). Scoring 80% on this paper seemed extremely difficult and not was in great mood.

Came out of the hall and there was the other guy waiting outside (we were only two writing this exam,from hyderabad). We introduced ourselves and started discussing about the paper. He was also of the same opinon that second half was tough ( Just like we say 'Second half was boring', when talk about movies) and continued discussion about some of the questions .. He was very funny and he made me laugh my heart out.. We walked for more than 3 km and we exchanged our visiting cards, thinking that group study might be helpful for the next time.

During this discussion, I came to know about the relative scoring for this exam, meaning I need not to score absolute 80%, but 80% relative to best of all the people appeared around the world . It means that even if I don't answer the toughtest question correctly, I mayn't be loosing much marks, but mistake for easy question will cost me more... This is the hope , Which makes me feel that I might get on..

Nevertheless, Last two months were fun, I enjoyed my prepartion and lot of positives to look upon, like I was able to think big, was able to think ahead , was able to take risk and Let's hope for the best.

Enjoyed the return journey back to my room ,with cool breeze flowing towards my face and a nice book on my hand ,reminded me the days of my 3 month working experiece with AXX.

Long post eh? I'm back to the world of blogging...