SCARED...WHO ME???

As a teenager I loved horror shows like QUILA, AAHAT and ZEE HORROR SHOW, all of which were telacasted late in the night. My Dad was strictly against watching horror, particularly in the night. He believed, it had some harmful impact on your brains, since some of our brain nerves would be tired and not actively functioning by late in the night. So I would wait for my parents to sleep and then sneak into the drawing room to watch the horror shows.
I remember watching RAAZ with my friends during my hostel days. When we entered the theater, we were 9 people and by the time the movie ended we were only two left in the theater.
We watched BHOOT at the middle of the night, I remember half the hostel slept in the same room with the lights on. I had a hearty laugh on them before I retired to my room. I slept with the lights off.

But last night I watched this movie 1920. When I saw the promos, I passed it off as a B grade horror movie that came from Bollywood in recent times. By word from mouth, I decided to give it a try, horror being one of my favorite genre. I got a DVD, and watched it last night soon after dinner.
This film is certainly not for the faint hearted. Man!!! There were a few breath taking scenes, which sent a chill down my spine. I could have never watched it in the theater.

More than just the horror, each frame in the movie looked like a painting. The movie is set during the year 1920. The locations in Yorkshire are captured very well. The first half is used only to build the platform for the second. Merely, the best part is where Lisa (Adah Sharma) is pulled into a Dark black hole of a room just before interval.
And the roller coaster begins when the girl is possessed by the spirit.
The scene where she is caught by her husband eating a dead cat was disgusting(more so since I am quite incapable of seeing blood).
The scene when she (rather the spirit) talks to the doctor when he is about to inject her.
The exorcism scene, when Lisa breaks loose and runs away.
The climax of the movie is just apt. Normally the horror movies in bollywood have rather funny climax(e.g. BHOOT).
The main protagonist Lisa, she looks like a entirely different person when posses. Brilliant debut. Normally girls look for a debutant film where they can showcase their beauty, dancing skills and sexuality. Its nice to find a debutant who can act.

Overall, its worth a watch.
And yes, after watching the movie, I did feel a little eerie when I entered the kitchen in the dark last night.

DRESSED TO KILL...

No...It wasn't me.

Its some lady at Db's office, the way she dresses up seems to have caught some attention from men. Not sure if its a deliberate attempt, I do know some girls love that kinda attention from men.

But Db is worried, since theirs is a small office with very few employees and he is bothered if she notices him looking at her assets and complains. He has been trying to avoid her by all means but whenever she does come across he cant keep his eyes off her.
He will sure be relieved when she is sent back to Pune, i.e. where she originally comes from, after her deputation is over.

Ah!!!Think of the ways a woman can scare the day lights out of men.

I AM TOP 100

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
I am among the top 100 coders in my firm. I am so happy.

Well...I agree on some foul play. I accept that I answered a few questions by actually running them on eclipse. But then I am sure, everyone would have and why not, it’s a competition and all that matters is YOU GOTTA WIN!!!

And no matter what, I am a winner.

No stop, there are two more rounds to go, to reach the Top 10 coders and win myself a laptop. But I already feel like a winner. Being among top 100 coders in a firm of say 50000 employees, is a great deal too.

Yipeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee again!!!

I AM PLEASANTLY SURPRISED

I am at Db's office today.

On a weekend!!!!, as you might ask. Well...he was working, so I thought I will give him company and will get to see his office too. I always considered his office work culture to be a lot different than what I have normally seen. It’s a smaller firm with a strength of only 200 across Bangalore.

I have always worked for big companies, and branded clients like metLife, New York Times and JPMorgan Chase. Big brands have big policies and big headaches. For instance, I have never known to use yahoo talk and GTalk in office. In my current account, I cant use web mail either. I want to download I.E 1.8 and Google Chrome, to get a hand on the new software, but I can’t download them without the approval from my manager and the networking fellas. Downloading any freeware, mp3, songs, watching youTube, using webmails is all prohibited by my client and my employer. The cab I use, the tea/coffee I drink is all billed to my client. So my employer provides me with limited facilities so that they don’t have to produce never ending bills to their clients. Off late since we have seen the market going down after Lehman brothers and Merrill Lynch have filed for bankruptcy, I have even found toilet tissues disappearing :)

Now I am here since morning and this place has been constantly shocking me.

I am sitting in the ODC(Offshore Development Center) next to Db, blogging on his laptop while he is in talk with some team member, and all I had to do is sign in the Visitor’s Register, I am taken aback at the trust the company has on its employees here.

I look around and find that I have ready access to all the company resources(I just used the scanner) unlike my employer, who allows vistors only till the reception.

I moved to the pantry, I saw all kind of fresh juices, tea, coffee, milk, cornflakes, bread, Jam, soup, Cheese slices, butter, biscuits and whatnot lying just like that, unlike my workplace where you get a limited no. of tea/coffee cups per month, horrible food for lunch and nothing except water is free. I am amazed, to what level this company pampers its employees.

The cleaning guys here are quite friendly and don’t give that why-are-you-here kind of look.

People here don’t have cubicles, they just sit together in one stretch of a table, including all managers who are given no special rooms or dedicated phone lines, and everyone is at par. They ensure equality for all.

I also found sanitary napkins provided at the ladies restroom, not those cheap, tacky ones, but the hygienic and the most costly ones. These guys sure have an eye for the employee convenience and hygiene. The fact that the napkins are costlier ones only proves that they actually respect and care for the employees and don’t do things just for the sake of doing it.

There is a guitar, a basket ball and some little soft toys around to give you the feel at home kinda mood. I really wish somebody would pick up the guitar and play something here as Db says does happen here at times.

There is a pack of facial tissues, a huge pen stand with all necessary stuff that you might need. These are very little things, and I don’t think they need a lot of money to get them, but they do make the employees feel they are special to the firm and does add on to the employee satisfaction.

I guess that’s the advantage of working in small companies. You are as important to the company, as the company is to you. The feeling is quite mutual. I big companies, you are one of the tens of thousands of people, who cannot be given any special treatment, who cannot be trusted and cannot be pampered.

No wonder, they say TW is an incredible place to work.

हिम्मत करने वालों की हार नहीं होती

Man!!! I had been looking for this since long...

हिम्मत करने वालों की हार नहीं होती,
लहरों से डरकर नौका पार नहीं होती|

नन्ही चींटी जब दाना लेकर चलती है,
चढती दीवारों पर सौ बार फिसलती है,
मन का विश्वास रगों में साहस भरता है,
चढकर गिरना, गिरकर चढना ना अखरता है,
मेहनत उसकी बेकार हर बार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती|

डुबकियां सिंधु में गोताखोर लगाता है,
जा जाकर खाली हाथ लॉट आता है,
मिलते ना सहज ही मोती पानी में,
बढता दूना उत्साह इसी हैरानी में,
मुट्ठी उसकी खाली हरबार नहीं होती,
हिम्मत करने वालों की हार नहीं होती|

असफलता एक चुनौती है स्वीकार करो,
क्या कमी रह गयी देखो और सुधार करो,
जब तक ना सफल हो नींद चैन की त्यागो तुम,
संघर्ष करो मैदान छोड़ मत भागो तुम,
कुछ किये बिना ही जयजयकार नहीं होती,
हिम्मत करने वालों की हार नहीं होती|

-सूर्यकांत त्रिपाठी निराला

Yawning off...

Testing stuff again today…**yawn**

Well…1 year back, I would look down on testing, dismiss it as something which is done by people who are not good enough for development job. But since last 1 year in this project, I have spent 75% percent of the time testing. So mindset is changing very quickly about testers.

But I would still stand by it that it’s a damn boring job. May be testers would say the same thing about development job. Somehow, I can’t make myself do it from my heart. Despite the fact that the module I am testing today is so damn complicated that I sympathize with the plight of my team member who has developed it, I don’t have half the motivation to test it. Even listing to my mp3 player doesn’t make it any better. After 5 cups of coffee and three rounds of walk on the terrace, I am still at the same place where I started, only 3 damn bugs, that’s all. I am sure a tester would have filled up the excel sheet with failed cases by now.

I desperately want the clock to strike 8 so that I rush back home. No, there is something more interesting today…Db is going for a get together with his friends, I am keen to join them. A nice chit chat with a café frappe with an extra scoop of ice cream, chocolate sauce and nuts sounds far more interesting for sure. BHAGOOOOOOO….

Almost an half an hour to go. Let me start winding up things, have a glass of water, do away with the restroom, close up all windows on my desktop, check my bag…that would kill some time

'A Wednesday' on a Sunday...

I got a chance to watch “A Wednesday” last night. I kinda loved this one for more reasons than one.

Firstly, it doesn’t waste a lot of your time, a riveting plot with duration of 100 minutes.

Secondly, it’s a no-nonsense movie. It’s an intelligent approach which made 100 minutes of complete sense.

Thirdly, the characters are all believable. The character of Naseeruddin Shah is someone with whom you can relate to. Not that you would do what he does, but sometime or the other you would have certainly fantasized something similar.

A common man who is tired of tolerating things going around him dares to make a difference.

He is a ‘common man’ who vents out his angst by taking on the system and trying to bring it down to its knees.

It somewhere echoes exactly we feel as common people…doesn’t it???

”Given a chance I could kill all the terrorists, given a chance I get a chance to meet the corrupt politicians and beat the shit out of them, given a chance I could make India a better place to live in”.

It’s something within us, the frustration, the fury, the anger for things which don’t go our way.

I have always been terribly irritated by the crowd that has no other job other than protesting on the street which leads to my office. This way has no parallels, no shortcuts, and one of the busiest roads of the city. And there are freaks who have nothing better in their life to do other than making a hue and cry for, God knows what, making life miserable for us. I get terribly frustrated each time I have to fight my way through the road when one of such protests is happening. I believe, Gandhi gave us this idea of protesting against injustice through mass gathering, but people today are misinterpreting and misusing this weapon. Gandhi, through his non-violent gatherings wanted to say it loud and clear that “You can’t make us do it your way, I am not willing to co-operate”. It did not mean “We are going to harm you”. But these days the protest means “We are going to cause inconvenience, we are going to harm and disrupt till our demands are met”.

The roads in Bangalore is also plays a big part in frustration. The road that leads to my house was dug up for the OFC work. Once they placed the pipes, they simply patched the road with mud, without caring about public inconvenience. Soon the rain came in, making life miserable for us. Every other day a car or an auto or a truck gets stuck in the road blocking the way altogether. And no municipality, no government bothers to give a damn.

So what else is expected out of a common man in such conditions???

Are we expected to be tolerant, and bear this all, since we are given to believe that we can’t make a difference, or do we take up the task of cleaning the mess on our own.

I wont be surprised, if some day I get down and pull out and beat the daylights out of the fellow driver honking at a red signal or a traffic jam.

That's exactly the message that the movie passes on.

Needless to say, a rare example of great cinema, coming from Bollywood.