Life of my sweetie pie - Third year -

Well it is twosome... awesome... year that just passed by giving way for the threesome... troublesome.... year ahead. The ride in this year has been agonizingly painful monstrous and yet enjoyable joyous with all the normal limits torn apart by this 2 year old kiddo. Yes, this kiddo has stepped into his 3rd year and first thing he does is to lose all his manners. What this means?, oh yeah, until his second year birthday, he was behaving well, normally respecting elders by saluting them, call them with their proper names like amma, appa, aayee, ajji etc. As soon as he steps into year no.3, suddenly all his memory of the good deeds disappear and he starts behaving as a spoiled over-confident all-knowing brat. He starts calling everyone by our name (oh not only first name, he calls us by our FULL NAME). Ok well, lets get to the good deeds first because they are quite less when compared to his other mis-deeds.

He won the double diamond award in his play-home which means he is the most well behaved, disciplined child among the 5 people in his batch (God only knows how). His teacher compliments about him saying that he is the one to remind everyone about the morning prayer if they are late for some reason, he is the one who is most active and tries to help others when required and yet he is totally opposite at home. Next, he has started a bonding with the kitchen items. He is always ready to help his mom and grandma with kitchen activities, to the extent that he can peel off the egg-shells neatly from 15 boiled eggs, he can mash up the potatoes, he tries to wash utensils (ofcourse wasting a lot of water) and he wants to help in all the items either in cooking or cleaning. He has developed a very quick and broad thinking, acts swiftly, answers are quick and crisp and he can now understand around 4 languages clearly. He asks lots of questions as to WHAT, WHY etc which are at times difficult to answer by us. He recognizes the voices of people over telephone and identifies them accurately atleast 95% of the times. Started to use tab and can unlock and navigate on any kind of smart phone (Ofcourse he does not see or touch the non-smart phones). He likes to sing and dance and is very fond of swimming pools. This year his favorite dance track being "lungi dance" and his favorite song to sing being "tum bhi ho".

Now for the troublesome part - he has become naughtier and is attracted by some kind of greed. He wants whatever he sees as important, but once he gets it, it stays for only 2 mins and then either it is destroyed or wasted. If its food item, its wasted and if its any playable item, then it is destroyed. This has gone to an extent that he has broken a tab monitor. Luckily it is still functional with a huge crack on the monitor. There is no play softly in his dictionary. He cries for anything he is told NO to and he very very hard to console otherwise. Our patience has got no limits now as it is always on the upper side. We have forgotten what it means to be patient anymore. We need to shout at him loudly to scold atleast 3 times an hour for all his activities. He cannot sit idle for more than 1.5 mins. The only time he sat quietly was when he hurt his leg and we scared him that it will get worse if he walks or runs. That trick worked for an awesome total of 5mins (a world record) and we experienced a world with no noise for that 5 mins and then things came back to normal. He also gets angry very soon these days and the main part is, when he is angry, he throws anything held in his hand without understanding the consequence. So we are always very careful to make him angry only when his hands are empty. Also it is very difficult to make him understand when he is angry or crying. However, when he cools down and we talk to him softly he tends to understand and behaves well only that the damage would've already been done.  

Anyway the threesome troublesome year is done with and hoping the next year would be a little less troublesome. Keeping fingers crossed with absolutely no hopes of situation improving around for another year or so. 

The magic of Animated movies

"Ha ha ha... YOU WATCH CARTOON MOVIES!!!... hu ha ha ha" - one of my cousin sister blurted out at me when I said I had recently watched this movie called Shrek and it was wonderful. I could only watch her and give a weak smile on the outside as I saw her elder sister also join the conversation and join in the laughathon. The elder sister also shared the same belief as her younger sister, the belief that the animated movies were only for the children to watch and not for the so called "grown ups". Tough I could smile weakly from outside, I was laughing from inside at the arrogant ignorance of these two sister and I could only squeak out "What you believe is wrong, anyway its no point explaining to you gals now. Time will come when you will recognize what I am talking about today." and I left the place at once ignoring their continuing laughter. 

Generally people who are moving from these pre-teen to teenage, tend to believe that they have "Grown up" and usually do believe in such silly stuffs about animated movies are for children and what not. However this was not me around 6 months back, because even I did share the same belief until I happened to be forced to watch this Shrek. Once I was through with this movie, I just could not help watching it another twice or thrice before becoming a fan of animated movies. However this was just the beginning. It was just pure magic in these animated movies, looking at the various types of creatures, characters coming to life and you just cant avoid falling in love with these characters. The creativity and the believable narrations that show up in these movies are just too awesome.

It was hardly 6 months after this incident that this same cousin sister called me up asking if I had some more animated movies as she had just watched Ice Age and had begun to like the animated movies. The magic of animated movies had got to her now. I could only remind her about this incident before sharing around 5-6 more animated movies with her. Then it started that I used to be the first to watch these movies and recommend the best movies to her so she can go and enjoy the same. 

Months passed by, years went by, and today she is the one who watches these movies first and suggests me on which ones are to be watched. Following on her recommendation, I am here watching "How to train your dragon-2" and as I continue to watch the movie, I recall this small but memorable incident which instantly brings a smile on my face as to how the magic of these animated movies work on people always. Before I wind up, below are some of the must watch wonderful animated movies from my personal likes (in random order) -

Shrek (1) - Just the movie which introduced me to the animated movies. Introduced to a character like Ogre and the use of fairy tale creatures was amazing tough for the short time in the movie.

Ice Age (1 & 2) - Nice movie, characters like scrat, mammoth which are not normally heard of became more of a common animals to be known. Tough part 1 and 2 were good, the Ice Age series deteriorated so much that part - 4 was not even inspiring to watch the trailer. 

Ratatouille - Imagine a rat cooking in kitchen the delicious food, well watch the movie and it seems believably real.

Wall - E - Love story of a garbage robot. An amazing movie with least effort on dialogues and you are still guaranteed to sit through the whole movie without blinking an eye-lid.

Megamind - A truly genuine masterpiece. Wonderfully scripted dialogues and the amazing creativity of villain becoming a super-hero is amazingly narrated.

How to train your dragon - The movie which just turned out to be a monstrous hit when nothing much was expected out of it. looking to be a "childish" movie, turned out to be one of the best movies as you fall in love with the dragon named night-fury.

Cars - Amazing movie about the race cars and their feelings. Very well narrated and you will simply feel good after watching this movie.

Kung-Fu Panda (1 & 2) - You just cant stop watching this movie again and again just for the fact of seeing a panda do kungfu. This hilarious movie keeps you interested from frame 1 until the end credits are complete.

Chicken Run - An intelligent movie on the schemes and plans about a chicken trying to run away from a chicken farm. Very enjoyable.

Bolt - An animated movie inside an animated movie. Story of a cute little dog which believes itself to have super powers only to realize its a gimmick of the film-makers. 

Up, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo... and many more which have come and gone about ants, bees, bugs, penguins, monsters and other animals but the magic of animated movies keeps spreading and improving with growing technology.

Recovering Precious Snaps from my old PC

Well, It is my Anniversary day of 2014 and what do I have? Both my wife and kiddo are in native town and I am all alone. Good news is that I have all the time in the world to spend it nicely and effectively. So how do I spend this time nicely now? I have a very important task which I have been waiting from long time to get it done - There is a desktop computer of mine which is around 8 yrs old and it contains lot of my old precious snaps which I have not been able to transfer to my new laptop, because of the USB ports not working on that desktop. So I want to spend my day in getting those precious snaps with an organised plan in place.

Plan - A -

It is simple. Remove the hard disk (HDD). Take it to a computer hardware shop. Get a cable which connects the desktop HDD to my laptop USB port and copy the data. Pretty simple. So as planned I remove the HDD, take my two wheeler and go to the computer shop which is nearby. As from my history books, simple plans never fall in place as planned, so as I did not expect, the shop was closed. So what, no problem. Move to next shop. Again, as I begin to start expecting, that cable is not available. The same is the result in another couple of shops. Well, it dawns on me that my Plan - A has failed miserably being a simple one. I have no choice but to return back home.

Plan - B -

I see the size of my precious photos, its around 10 GB. So I decide to think of Plan - B now. Again, plan B is now to connect my desktop to internet, copy my files into my share drive (which is called Skydrive by Microsoft) and then download it using my laptop. Its a time consuming process but will definitely work. So as it happens, I boot my desktop and notice that it is running on Windows XP. (For those who do not know, Microsoft has recently stopped any kind of support to XP operating system). So I try to open Google in my old IE version 6 browser and it starts throwing all sorts of errors. Somehow I try to avoid all of those and go on to Skydrive homepage and login. After logging in, it asks me to upgrade my browser to either IE8 or Firefox or Chrome or safari. Well, its simple, just click a button and it starts downloading the update files. However, once download is complete, I try to start my update process and it shows a message on my face saying update cannot proceed due to some internal processing error. The same error comes for all the specified browser update files. Now this is getting a little weird. I cannot update and I cannot use Skydrive without the update. Its a road block again. After trying few more tricks, I give up. There is no point in pursuing Plan B anymore. Its failed again.

Plan - C -

Well, its a namesake plan. I do not have any plan C now. Running out of ideas and am still wondering and thinking about how I can get past this. As one final resort, I just plan to try out my USB slot. This is the same thing I had tried somewhere an year ago without any success. Still out of the living frustration, it is my only hope now even-tough I know the truth. And as I expect this not to work, my only way would be to take the HDD to one of my friend's place where the USB slot could be working and use it to copy my files. So I get my pen drive, insert into the USB drive of my desktop knowing the result as failure... but what do I see here. Suddenly there is prompt on my desktop saying "a new hardware has been recognized". Somehow I freeze and stare the monitor in disbelief that my USB drive is working. I double check and YES, it is working. Immediately without wasting any further time, I get my external HDD and insert into the USB drive and start copying.

With a happy and a pretty much relieved mindset now, I see the files slowly copying on my monitor and start wondering why did I waste my last 5 hours using the Plan A and B. If I had tried out the USB in first place, it would all have been copied by now. As it dawns to me that I am still a software engineer by profession and its a pretty usual practice that we always try all other routes before touching the basic routes unless otherwise specified. I recall another similar incident which brings an instant smile on my face and keep staring at the monitor looking at the files being copied with total disbelief.

New year without a change .... NAAAAHHHH!!! - 2 -

Missed the first part - Click Here.

So during the travel, lots of colorful people board and alight the bus, there are usually quite a lot of group of 2 peoples around who are usually their working colleagues and most often these 2 people are of opposite sex. That's where it gets interesting. Few of the conversations (which I overhear) they have are funnier and I really do not know if the conversations are worth the time spent during this travel. In the end it does not matter since its the best way to keep yourself entertained in the middle of traffic.

So here it goes - Generally I have observed in their conversations, always the female counter-parts are whining about their work, managers and other colleagues when the male counterparts are always like super-dudes who give moral support and supposedly guide the female counterparts on how to react to those situations as if the males have got lots of experience in this field. That's the interesting part of these conversations, normally females start off saying - "Oh my god, just when I was about to leave - Manager comes and gives me work. I had to beg him to let me go home and had to convince him that I would do it first thing on the next morning." So Male counterpart - "Dont worry yaar, managers are always like that. You dont have to beg for that sake. Since its beyond office hours, its your right to get up and keep going. Dont even bother to such things. Next time he says any such stuff, call me. I will speak to him." I laugh in my mind for this advice thinking if the situation was a vice-versa (i.e. If manager had given work to male counterpart), would he have reacted the way as he was advising. I would bet he would've begged too or kept his mouth shut and worked out the night to complete the task. However when it comes to moral support, all sorts of advises come along.

Similarly another instance - females talking about their colleagues spending more time during coffee and tea breaks whereas this female supposedly is working harder but never gets the credit for her work and stuff. So she wants to revolt and demand manager on why this injustice towards her by giving her more work. For this, the male starts off suggesting her to go on and talk to her manager and do this, do that... blah blah. So lot of times these are very interesting only because the suggestions and advises that come out for moral supports are not always followed by themselves. 

Sometimes it is tempting for me to interrupt them and ask then to stop talking the nonsense or whether these are general guidelines available somewhere only for the sake of talking or is it really that they generate dynamically when they hear the question. More than the stress beating techniques, it feels like - how to impress a lady in next one hour or so. however I resist my temptation to talk to them in the fear, the fear of getting to listen about "none of your business", "get lost", "Excuse me, who that hell do you think you are" kind of stuff. Generally it will be like pouring the oil into a burning fire. So keep myself out of it, enjoy the conversations and be happy.

As the travel in bus ends, nothing would change in male or female counterparts either personally or in their professional life, yet they keep talking on the same piece of crap every time they board the bus until they get down at the destination. However whether it helps them or not, it certainly does help me in killing the time and virtually reach my destination happily thinking about all these things are worth their talk or not. Certainly worth my time for listening to them tough.

This is what has been making my travel a fun stuff until now. So keep looking for these group of 2 coming together. Once I get closer to these people, I close my book, fold my bag and keep my ears open....!!!

New year without a change .... NAAAAHHHH!!! - 1 -

As the previous 2 new years my life has just started to expect something major happening on a new year eve. However, this time it has been a sudden gradual change which has started from this new year and has been continuing since then. 

My workplace is hardly 5 kms from my place and I usually enjoy travelling this distance on my own vehicle so that I can control my in-time and out-time. However a week before this new year, I got a sudden news that I would need to go to client place for the next 3 months on account of a project. Normally this is not a bad news unless your client place means it is in same city and an additional 20 kms to travel. Again, under normal circumstances, this 20kms does not matter much, unless you are living in a town where travelling this 20kms takes 2 hours on public transport and 1.5hrs in your private vehicle. I had no choice but to accept my fate (rather curse) and move on. 

Few points to consider before moving on were -

1) The client place starts the work as early in morning as 8am. (In my work place it would be around 10-30am).

2) The client place does not work on saturdays (however, since we are moving on to work with them, they somehow decided to work on saturdays instead of letting us OFF).

3) To reach the client place on time, I need to leave my home by 6-45am. (Something which I have never done before in my professional career on daily basis).

4) I would need to take public transport (read Volvo buses) to reach the client place. (Taking private vehicle was ruled out since it would just empty your pockets on petrol cost and driving in the traffic was stressful in itself).

5) There was nothing I could do to avoid this transition. (Blaaah...!!!)

So I decided to get my monthly pass for Volvo and started the hectic travel to the client place. It seemed like 4 hrs of travel time was too much to take in without any entertainment on the way for first few days, so I decided to take use of my library membership to the full extent. So my usual travel plan would include getting on to bus as early as 7-15am and start reading the books. The same plan while returning from client place as well. This routine continued for a while but somehow due to the hectic travel timings, my sleep deprived body started to argue. It was then I decided to take full use of the morning 2 hrs to just sleep away in Volvo amidst the cool A/C. This also turned out to be routine for a while until one day everything changed for me.

Usually I started cursing this routine thinking it some kind of a punishment to me and having to cope up the client pressure as well as balance the work and family life. But then few things changed. There is a dialogue in movie "Paan singh Tomar" where the militaty captain says - "Pehli baar dekh raha hoon ki koi saza ka maza le raha hai" (Translates to - "Looking at someone for first time, who is enjoying his punishment"). It started happenning to me as well. I got used to this routine and travelling became more fun. How? - Well all happened when I started to observe the people in the bus on how they talk, what they talk, their reactions, their emotions etc. Normally all people on these buses which I travel are from one or the other IT companies which can be found in abundance near my client place. 

Would like to share some of these experiences in the next part. Click Here