What an end to this year

Cold, cough and fever. What an end to this year...
I haven't been to office ince last two days, and mostly not going tomorrow also. And what the hell...I am al alone at ome watching back to back episodes of CID.
I had such a terrible chest pain today that I almost thought I had an attack.

It all started with my sudden fascination to belly dancing. I downloaded the tutorial videos from youtube and started with the basic stretching exercises. The body pain and the sneezing started almost immediately. The rest of the issues started the next day.

With my vaccation to my hometown Rourkela getting cancelled, and such a deterioting health, it can't get any worse this new year. :{{

My year revisited - 2010 is coming to an end

Another week, and the year is gone by.
Its been a quite happening year, many major decisions taken, many events that affect life forever and the bitter taste of how compromises feel like.

Let me pen them down, the major events of 2010

The job switch : 8th Feb, I decided to call it quits, I quit my job and joined here. I was quite skeptical about this job profile and intended only to stay till I get a better offer. But I did end up staying here despite of the crappy project and team and outdated technologies. Why??? probably I would be able to answer that next year.

Bhai gets a job : After more than a year of hardship, Bhai finally landed with a job at HCL. It not only boosted his confidence, and brought an end to misery of the entire family which made us all lose sleep for all these days, but also fixed most of his issues in his personal life as well...or so I'd like to believe.

Db's Australia trip : Db visited Australia for work, and stayed almost 3 months. We got to have a taste of singlehood again, yet it was necessary not just because we needed the money that came from it...also to realize that we do not want to stay away from each other for such a long time ever again.

We bought a house : A decision that affected us like never before. To buy this house of our dreams, We took up a home loan for 40 lakhs, which we are paying up each month. Most of our savings are gone and we find ourselves cutting on many little things that we desire. But as they say, you cannot have everything...to gain something, you have to lose something else.

A realization : I realized eventually that being polite and nice doesn't help. This is one trait that could make you proud of yourself, but the world doesn't need it. You could probably do things for people considering them as your duty towards them, or empathizing on their situation but the feeling also has to be mutual. It can't be one-sided. I somehow don't find the reflection of my empathy on the other side, which makes me feel I am being taken advantage of. All was well, till I started getting uncomfortable of the fact that my kindness is being taken as my weakness/ foolishness. I am not a fool, its just that I cannot bring myself to hurt people who matter or should matter. But clearly now that the feeling is not mutual. So its time to take a stand and get as selfish as I can get.

And finally : Its my maid who triggered it, though she is not the only one...she was just the final nail in the coffin.

Maid : Didi...why don't you consider expanding your family?

Me: We have enough responsibilities now, lets finish them off first. Then probably we'd have time to think about ourselves.

Maid : Hmm...(she understands!!!) But you should think about yourself also naaa. A kid will bring happiness to both of you.

Me : Achaa...and who'd take care of that happiness??? We are both too busy with our jobs. I cant quit mine...we need the money that comes from it.

Maid : Main hoon naa (Aila SRK!!! After cooking, cleaning and dusting...she wants to extend her services to baby sitting). I'll handle everything, you don't worry at all.

Hmm!!! Maidy dear, you were the only one who was pending to coax me into it. And now that my parents, Db parents, my relatives, Db's relatives, our neighbours, my parents neighbours, Db's parents neighbours, my collegues, Db's collegues, the neighbouring cats, dogs, cows, mosquitoes, cockroaches and at last my maid also wants it...I finally give up.

Next year its is...now will you puhleeeze stop bothering me!!!

foggy at bangalore

At 7 in the morning, my alarm shoots. I have oiled my hair last night to have a hair wash today. The last two days have been quite sunny so I expected it to be the sasme today. I open the balcony door and 'Shit !!!' I go.
Db wakes up to it 'What's wrong?' he queries
'Come and have a look.'
He walks up to the balcony and 'Wow !!!' he goes.
'What's wow about it??'
'What's shit about it???'
'I have to wash my hair'
'Your problem, I told you so'

What we saw outside the balcony was a rare scene ion Bangalore. At least I havent seen it in the three years that I have been here.

And given below are more pictures of the fateful day. Db handed me his phone to click pictures around while he was driving. Wish he'd be half that enthusiastic to click my pictures. Sigh!!!

The Ejipura Signal

The inner ring road

The EGL campus

The Diamond District (Db's office)

I changed the blog header picture

Now this is what features in my blog title. I hung the picture here in order to keep track in case I happen to change the picture again.

Db wasn't too impressed by it.

He believed this picture doesn't depict me in any way. Contrary to the image of this woman walking carefully in a beach, he visualises me as someone who would be jumping and splashing around...basically creating nuisance.

We tried to find pictures on keywords like 'impulsive' or 'unpredictable' kinds...but niether caught our attention.

So be it for the time being.

It backfired...

Always believed a developer’s job is way tougher than any of the BA's and QA's.
I have been actively involved with testing as well in my previous projects, and I realized the biggest challenge with testing is to try and keep yourself interested. With this, Db has ever been criticizing that I do not respect the job that others do, while only giving credibility to my own job.

I beg to differ. It’s not that I do not give any integrity to testers and BA's, it’s just that I feel their's is a job even I can do, and to some extend I do as well...as a developer we do have a descent domain knowledge and we are involved in testing as well, maybe not as profoundly as the specialized people with the corresponding designations, but certainly if need be, I can with some effort fill in their shoes. But can a BA or a tester do what a developer can...can they solve technical issues or develop modules like us!!!
Yet, particularly in this project, I am amazed to see how BA's and testers behave as our bosses just because one provides us requirements while the other is supposed to review and find faults with what we have developed. They have to be spoonfed with everything from starting their servers, to creating their paths as well as cleaning up old data from their databases. Blasphemous!!!

Yes, I did try to bring about some changes in the team, to be able to change their mindsets and reduce the dependencies on the developers. I was even successful to some extend despite having very limited support from people in the team who were resistant to change. With the inclusion of some more new people, things were fairly smoother.

Yet, I am cribbing.

Because, I find the responsibilities of the change all coming to me while the credit is going to others.I was all game for the inclusion of the TestOlympics in the team. It would help us in the long run to identify more bugs and deliver bug free applications. But because I was game for it, I was assigned the task to prepare the platforms for 6 domains, I even participated in the game to raise bugs and now that we have 52 bugs just by including 30% of the application for the scope of the game, the BA’s happily raised them in the Bug tracking tool and assigned them to me. While the hard work is all mine the credit goes to somebody else.

How can we expect people to be proactive in continous improvement in the team when very obviously one section of the team is clearly overworked than the other, while the other section enjoys the credit for bringing in the change. With what has come out of the recent event, the developers are much more skeptical of trying anything new...at least I am.

Murphy's law it is

If you have four pairs of socks in a drawer, what is the probability to find a correct pair in four picks?
Mathematically, I don't care...but practically its zero. More so, when its early in the morning and you have to catch a bus to office and you are already late....all the four picks are gonna give you a different sock each time.

For the lesser mortal people like us, the only law that works is the Murphy's law.

La Français

Je me présente.
Mon nom est Mansi. J'ai 27 ans. Je suis un ingénieur. Je suis marié. Mon mari est un ingénieur ainsi. Son nom est Db. J'aime écrire des blogs où je me connecter mes pensées à différentes phases de ma vie. Je déteste la circulation dans Bangalore. Je rêve d'acheter une masion dans Bangalore.

Okay...now that was french. I have been burning my morning sleep on weekends and taking french lessons since almost a month now...and above is most of the french I have learnt till now. To decrypt the above please copy the same here.

Talking about languages, I am well versed with English, Hindi, Oriya, Bengali and to some extend Punjabi too. I like to learn new languages (Je aime apprende nouvelles langues). Yet French is a language I hate (Pourtant, Je déteste français), not just because its a tongue twister but also because what you write is not what you pronounce. Most of the words sound all similar to me and as if you were just blowing air out to somebody.

Yet, it worked...when one of the clients was here recently. He seemed impressed when I spoke in some toota-foota french with him. So, see its worth it!!!

I am a woman...here me roar!!!

I am writing finally, it hurts me a lot having not visited it since almost a month now.
The last few weeks have been crazy. With no exaggeration, there hasn't been any time to pee either. Its different and quite difficult, as I realize now, to be responsible myself for the deadlines. Also I have again started to change things around me, and luckily this time I am not the only person who wants some change and is willing to do something about it.

Among other things, this time around I have been at the recieving end of how women do not and to some extent cannot take their work seriously after a point. I'd be red in face when the women in the team would not turn up for the standup meetings in time most of the days on the pretext that she cooks the meals, or her MIL is here or because her husband was too much in a hurry today to drop her at office and she had to take a bus or an autorickshaw. Come'on now, you have to find a balance...I am a woman too with the all these problems and more, yet I dont create such nuisance.

But issues are more serious now. While one lady in the team is yet again on her maternity leave (3+3 months) while she returned from her last maternity leave only this february...the other one suddenly stopped coming one fine day, Since last 5 fridays, she'd been calling every friday to say that she isn't coming this week because she is expecting.
Sometime last week, while having lunch, my manager expressed his concern on key resources being unavailable as cases like mentioned above. He questioned saying if these are the issues they bring along, tell me why do I hire women in my team...I'd rather hire only men.
With all due respect to his concerns and reasons, and the fact that we women have to at at some point of time have to give importance to family and the carrer has to take a back seat...we cannot take away the fact that they are now not considered as dependable resources any more. And this too not just by the men in the team, but sorry to say for me as well. When the expecting mother is back in the team, I would never find her reliable enough to give priority work to her...at least for another year or so.

I could only reply to my manager 'If everyone starts thinking likewise, who'll give us jobs then!!!'

It bothers me that some day I would be at the recieveing end of this. Some day my team will not find me dependable and I would spend probably a year or two of my career like a vegetable. Yes, I know a lot of people to whom it doesn't matter as long as they draw their monthly salary...but it would certainly matter to me.

The previous generation, that of my mom, I found her judged on looks or how good she cooks or how clean she maintains the house or how cordially she behaves with her inlaws. But I find myself judged on all this and more. In addition people also judge me on my job,my salay my presentaion as a good hostess. The freedom as a woman has increased and with that the criterias for judging us has also increased. That is probably because we are stuck in the middle of the evolution cycle. While we have probably evolved to the other side, yet we still have a older generation to please who are stuck in between.

But its amazing how we claim to be to equal to men while there are still norms in the societe to be followed only by women.
Forget the society, I even stand by it that God Himself has been discriminating between the two sexes, and whatever litlle was left the societe took care of it, so that it would take numerous generations to bring the female species in competetion to the males. Sure, not just the ones who made the norms of the society, even the God who created us humans must have been a man himself.

True, the mentality is fast changing, men are more accomodating now and have lesser male egos, but what is the ratio of such men!!! I still see a bigger ratio of men around, and that too the educated mass who still take huge amount of dowry with pride, who wouldn't let their wifes the freedom to work or to take their own decisions, women getting reduced into cooking machines and baby bearing machines.

Hopefully,the next generation will see less of the social discrimination. Yet, the physical weakness which God chose to give to all women would never change. We as women will still need extra sick leaves every month, we would still have to take maternity breaks.