The Girl with the Cutest Smile

Ron – So you mean if she wasn’t… you would’ve said “yes”…

The stage manager came and informed that my cue was in 5 minutes. Five minutes… that’s all I had to answer or else…

There are always two faces of every coin… one is to believe you can do something and other is to believe you can’t… maybe’s don’t quite exist really. I was at the “Annual Scientific Congress” ready to present the paper on my first major project and my heart was racing like anything… and well somewhere in back of my mind I was contemplating “how in god’s name a person with stage fright will go and speak, add a bit of stammering to that and trust me… doomsday was clear as the sky on a sunny day.”

CHAPTER 1 : HISTORIES THAT MADE US WHO WE ARE!

Only Time Speaks

It was my housewarming party and I won’t be lying, i was in not in a good mood. Still I made sure everyone enjoys and then when it came to see each of them off… that’s where this guy’s story ends.

The road was crowded per usual and miss asked for a rickshaw, so we went and negotiated on the price and even though the other four were standing afar… miss walked away from me and said her goodbyes to them… I was waiting for her to come back and hug her one last time. When she came, she straightaway sat on the rickshaw… a moment later when the rickshaw started moving she realized that she had forgotten to bid goodbye to me… in her charming face, she said “goo..dbayee” and all i could do was stand there and see her the way i saw her. And that last hug never happened.

The story began about a year ago during our post graduation days… I had no idea who miss was. To be honest, i always thought she “if ever” saw me, saw an uncultured, moderately good in studies loafer. Obviously she disagrees now, when i put this analysis of mine.

If person A asks something from person B and person C… and openly chooses person B’s reply… where does person C stand in A’s life?

But nonetheless we were placed in two companies together and we both chose Reval. During our 2nd week of orientation, we were told that the whole fresher batch of developers will be grouped in two and then a project would be assigned to each group. Even though i never tell this openly but i wished for miss to be my partner not because she was pretty cute, but because i had this feeling that if i was to be compatible with someone, it’d be her. About her, i think she was ok with anyone being her partner.

And then we were assigned a project together.

Day 1/50 : Getting Started

[sunday 14th june, 2015] Let me brief things up a bit first… today was a boring day, i woke up at 0900 and followed my usual hunger insights and then watched Orphan Black s03e09 which was also an average episode [except for the part where helena butchers the mafia]…well that was fun 😉

Then the usual routine of sleeping throughout afternoon continued so much so that I missed the lunch.

When i woke up [this time properly] i decided to clean my room [after I guess a month], and what followed has been a regular routine for past 5 years now. The deep cleanse – a procedure that takes several hours before I could sleep on my bed coz it serves as dumping station at that time. Anyways the room was cleaned before 1600 and the I called mritunjay aunty to ask her if i could come to her house, to which she replied politely that there are few guests in her house.

Abhijeet went home this time in Yuva Train which as per the current updates is 6 hours late. after accompanying him in Uber Cab till university gates, dharmesh and me went for shopping eggs. by the time we came back the snack time in mess was almost over. Dharmesh made some delicious omelets and we had total dinner experience with tea afterwards.

I had downloaded Jurassic World yesterday and had thought about watching it. so when I got time to see it… I did. and it was good, learning that it made $511.8 millions in first weekend was better 😛 And oh yeah… i started reading this book “Zero to One – Peter Thiel”.

Telling My Story – MSA

“How Microsoft has impacted my life and how I plan to bring a change to the society being a Microsoft Student Associate”

The earliest memory I have of my journey with Microsoft started in junior high school. We had this computer lab period and there we were encouraged to learn how to doodle in MS PAINT, writing a letter in MS WORD and doing some programing in BASIC. I didn’t use MS PowerPoint until I was in senior years of my school life. But since then it has become the first tool I use in every presentation I need to give.

Before 2008 all I remember is the classic themed MS Office in our school (they didn’t upgrade to Word 2007 til then), the operating system called “Windows XP” (probably the reason I fell in love with computers). Also, then we didn’t have internet connection in our homes and doing homework without it was a real pain. Then one of my friend showed me (now discontinued) “MICROSOFT ENCARTA”… and I was mesmerized by its glossy look, the animated menus and the ability to search any topic and get sufficiently updated results without having an internet connection.

But after that time the world changed, I got a PC and it came with MS WORD 2007, with a completely overhauled look, those blue glossy redesigned menus… I just fell in love with it. How much in love!… I was so obsessed with using MS WORD that I decided to ditch making notes on notebooks and started making them on my PC with MS WORD 2007.
Given my love for writing blog post, there was “WINDOWS LIVE WRITER”, that I found to be immensely helpful. I loved writing in it and it had the ability to simply add pictures and embed videos and add customization very easily.

I was introduced to Visual Studio in my Senior Years of schooling and for the first time in my life I felt the power of actually making a software that ran on my PC. This feeling still lies inside me and is probably the driving force in my Windows phone Application Development. I bought a windows phone when all my friends were suggesting an Android phone with the sole purpose of indulging into App Development.

And this quest of App making wouldn’t have been successful if it wasn’t for MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network), an online repository of resources that has everything you might need for programming. Combined with visual studio, it give you ultimate power to shape things as you wish.
A very interesting thing I saw with VISUAL STUDIO was that even though it’s costly for individual person, Microsoft was kind enough to offer its Express edition free of charge and the Dreamspark program for educational institutions was a true expression of encouraging creativity.
The big change from Microsoft was the introduction of Windows Vista, even though everyone loathed how bad it was, I saw the superior look and wished of having it in my PC. With the launch of windows 7, it was Christmas for everyone, it ran on my old PC and the workflow was just unbelievable. Upgrading from Windows XP, it took me about an hour to figure out the basics of how to work with it.

My Laptop came with windows 8 and the metro look (which it was called earlier) just blew my mind. It was amazing. And again the best thing about Microsoft… they made it compatible with oldest versions of windows i.e. the programs made for older versions of windows could still run in windows 8.

Speaking of Internet is incomplete without mentioning Internet Explorer. I used IE6 in its heyday, and then I was introduced to IE7, a multi-tabbed browser with cleaner look. Before there was any Chrome, there was IE and that is a big thing. Even today I prefer to use IE11, why? Because unlike Google Chrome, they don’t look into your cookies to sell advertisement.

I switched from Gmail to Outlook a couple of years earlier and I never looked back. Outlook feels safe and with other cloud tools like OneDrive, Office, Calendar… it feels like home. My windows phone applications took me to Windows Azure – a service from Microsoft for cloud computing and seeing the power of Azure, I felt empowered to dream even bigger.

Hypocrite Youth!

64 years of being republic and 5000 years of this countries cultural history and it breaks my heart to say… we are still far from being a moral nation!

I know I can’t change the mindset of even a 100 people but I sure hope if you are reading this, you take the stand of doing what’s right.

Every generation for some time was the generation X of its time. If you ask anyone who was born in the 90’s… they will concur that indeed “Twilight” or “Harry Potter” belong to our generation. “The 70’s Emergency” and “Star Wars fantasy” belong to my Mom’s generation (generation X-1), and the Indian independence happened when people considered my Granpa the then “Generation X-2 youngistani’s”.

The society always say “young people shape the future”. And it gives us sense of power, a feeling that “yes, indeed what I think is right. And yes I am contributing to a better future”. I don’t know if you’ll agree with it or not, but I do.

Whenever I hear Raghu (on roadies) say – youngsters should take a stand if they think there elders are wrong, I feels blood rushing rapidly into my veins. Now I’m not an angry man (if you don’t count few perky incidents :P) and most of us say the same, we think we are good and when incidents like rape happens, we protest… and in our mind that is enough to prove that indeed we are good guys/girls of our generations. But are we?

 

• The Testing times:

Take for instance the case of dowry, we know it’s WRONG, and if your mother/father/grandfather etc still fix marriage’s based on it… you know it’s wrong! But still you do it. You let your parents decide your worth… and in your opinion you are being an obedient “son/daughter”… don’t you!

A few do protest but in the end… the MF Society Clause comes and we bow our head to it…. The same society that tells us that “girl walking with a boy means she’s characterless”… the same society that preaches “bribing gods and spending lakhs to build a temple which literally has no sense”!

But Even though we are Generation X… we don’t want to be portrayed as Lunatics and harbinger of shame to our family… isn’t that right! But it’s not just us, what I’m feeling, I’m sure many of X-1 and X-2 generations must’ve thought… the thing is one day you say drinking is bad, other day if not soon you will succumb to saying “hell.. What’s wrong in drinking”… it’s just human hypocrisy and nothing can be done about it.

• The Reason:

Well if you ask yourself truly… “Why even though I know it’s not wrong, just because my parents said so… I’m following them?” Some of you may think I mean… be violent or all decisions our parent take is wrong… of course not… They are the ones “who if you are able to think rationally” – provided the moral support. What I pray is – be the voice of today, don’t follow something that’s right because it’s part of some “Dharm”… “Ritual/Religion”… they won’t save you if you wear a burka and you got hit by a bus while crossing the damn road… will they?

The other risk is – to be branded as “Aawara” by our family… our neighbors or simply everyone around you. And we don’t want the society to treat our parents badly for our courageous act. Well, that’s what the previous generation youngsters feared (my personal queries from someone yielded this reason for not standing up for what they felt right). And somewhere down the line it made my voice a little dimmer.

• The Solution:

But then, WHY DO I CARE/ why my family cares what other’s think?The answer is simple… Because we do have to live with them. You can’t keep on moving from one place to other throughout your life… coz these social deformities will be everywhere and willingly or unwillingly with time you get accustomed to being the same hypocrites as our father’s and his father’s before that.

However, there’s a silver lining to all this… it only takes one person to change what society thinks of him. If for instance someone got a girl-friend, first the society calls them “characterless”… but if they both earn a good job/money… the same society will soon start referring both of you as idols. Well that’s what my mom says. 😛

But you got to have the courage to not break even once… We will become hypocrites to what we think now – in future someday – that’s inescapable fact! Watching porn will be bad for our kids 😛 … drinking will be bad too… girls wearing exposing dresses will be bad… but NOT TODAY! 😀 today… ask yourself Why those things are bad ? does a person watching porn means he’s a rapist “HELL NO”…

Today and until we become hypocrites… do WHAT You feel right… break few shackles of society and maybe in future we will become the ideal republic, that respects the real meaning of humanity – Love and Care!