ExpertDabbler

Here we go

A must for every mani ratnam fan
via my friend madhu

A must for every Manoj errr Taj Mahal lover
via fathima

Lousy student PK proudly presents, for the first time in Indian blogosphere, a Match the following series. Please match the following people/personalities on the left to their favorite themes/hobbies/characteristics/pastimes on the right.

(Padikara vayasile olunga padikalena ipdi dhaan Sigh!)

It’s jumbled right now, prepare well and give your best. Correct answers will be announced tomorrow

X is 26 yr old ’sambhar sadham’ guy in bangalore - in love with a gumeel punjabi figure affectionately called “chappathi” - appa and amma turn opposition party at home - love still going strong like ruling party coalition in initial days.

Sambhar works in contract for TCS - one day he gets an interview call for a full time position in singapore - clears the interview - gets selected - puts in his papers in TCS - waits for his offer letter from singapore - keeps waiting - only a few days to the notice period and still no offer.

“Sambhar’ is scared - takes up another interview in a small firm - somehow clears it - delay in getting the offer from this company too - he is desperate for a job.

The love with “chappathi” turns rocky like ruling party coalition in due course -”chappathi” decides to go after another North Indian handsome hunk - our guy is neither handsome nor hunk - becomes devadas - life turns upside down in a matter of days

———-(INTERVAL)————-

Sambhar comes to hometown chennai - is completely shattered - feels like a loser - amma arranges a bride seeing ceremony - compulsion from opposition parties (amma and appa) - sees the girl - who is a gumeeler figure than chappathi - the “chemistry” is good - very rich girl - green signal from “other” end too - decides to marry her.

Courtship continues - Only worry is job - keeps attending interviews

Suddenly out of nowhere - gets the old offer from Singapore - and another offer from a top IT company with promise of long term assignment to US.

Moral of the story - Fruit falls - only to land in milk - Don’t worry be happy
PS: Adapted from a real life story as narrated by my friend ‘Gumeel Figure’ trademark belongs to Praveen.

Ram Guha is a classy, no-nonsense writer.
Why Indian intellectuals and activists are hostile to the market
From Arundhati Roy to Ram Guha….looks like I am growing up.

According to Businessworld

India in 2010

• Passenger car production will move from 1.1 million cars of today to 2 million cars
• Two wheeler production will move from 7 million of today to 12 million
• Color television will move from 11 million of today to 20 million
• Outsourcing revenues will move from $23 billion of today to $60 billion
• Will have 500 million telephones
• Organized retail space will move from 20 million sqft to 60 million sqft

What it does not talk about in exactly glowing terms about India are.

Electricity
Ports - we need to double our port capacity in 4 years (Now, don’t laugh)
Infrastructure
Here’s an excerpt from a comment on Rajeev Srinivasan’s blog

During Diwali holidays this year, a friend wanted to tour northern Karnataka (Badami, Pattadkal, Hampi and Bijapur. He left his house in HSR Layout in a rickshaw with his wife and one year old daughter at 7 PM to catch the Hampi express ETD 8.15 PM. He reached the station at 12 midnight!!

And i am not even going to talk about healthcare, primary education, and corruption.

The government obviously has no plans on how its going to tackle the unprecedented urbanization in the next few years.

The ADB chief economist warns growth has to be more inclusive to be sustainable.

The Economist here warns that this boom might in the end be too hot an Indian curry to handle.

2010 is just 37 months away.

As an Indian, I dont know if i am witnessing a gorious era in the development of this country or a period of euphoria before large scale social unrest.

I am shit scared!

>> Ind vs SA, 3rd ODI, Live report
My comment: As far as India is concerned it’s dead, not live. You do post-mortem on the dead, not live report.

>> Air Deccan to fly eight million passengers current fiscal.
My comment: Of these 5 million were to fly the previous year, but their flights got delayed err…rescheduled.

>> Consecutive sentences cannot exceed 14 years: SC
My comment: It’s rumoured that the Supreme Court took 28 years to say this.

>> India to ease visa procedures for Pakistanis
My comment: There is a plan to issue a new type of visa called T1-b using which pakistan can send 65000 terrorists a year to India to ‘work’ here.

Q: Hey did you get to read Rashmi’s article on Design schools and their future?
A: I did. Well written. But amusing.

Q: Amusing? What’s your problem?
A: The problem is, it is not relevant to India.

Q: Did they not talk about schools like NID and IDC in that article?
A: That’s exactly where I am coming from. To begin with, designers in modern India – be it architects, product designers or interaction designers – are not respected.
If at all they are, it’s usually for the wrong reasons – the glamour factor and how much they earn. To be fair, designers have a role to play in this as well.

Also, I feel all these D schools are elitist. Make no mistake, they are good. But the numbers they produce and their attitude they betray while selecting is more in tune with keeping their brand intact than addressing the industry.

Q: This is just unsubstantiated bull.
A: Let’s take interaction design. IDC IIT Bombay has a grand total of 10 seats in their PG program in Design per year. Same with NID (there it’s called user interface design program). Now apply the reservation quota factor to it. I’ll come to other aspects in a minute.

But every year, the Indian IT industry alone needs numbers in thousands. This is only going to increase with time. So where will the industry go? Hire people who are erstwhile web designers or visual communications graduates or fine arts folks.

If there are some professions which can be described ‘paavapatta’ it’s got to be tech writers and HCI design guys. Everyone wants them but none recognizes the value a good designer or writer can and should bring.

Indian IT industry is predominantly services oriented. Often, the client wants it done ‘yesterday’ or at least it’s claimed to be so. This in itself is a disadvantage for any meaningful research oriented design. Unlike the programmer types who have a recognized BE and MCA, there are very few academic programmes of repute and in decent numbers for these two professions in India. Those who toil in these two areas are mostly self-taught.

The project manager, who invariably comes from a developer background, does not have much idea about the value of a good designer or writer to software development. Nor are the designers able to assert themselves because they themselves know that they do not have any formal knowledge on Design.

The result - most of the major design decisions masquerade as ‘requirements’ which the designer has to comply. These two professions are clumped as ‘shared services’ and ‘documentation’ guys. Add fundas like ‘resource utilization’ and you have the picture complete.

One would’ve thought these design schools would attempt to do something to correct this anomaly. But they are happy producing 10 graduates per year. This way, their brand stays intact.

The admission criteria for IDC reads like this:
Any Branch of BE/B Tech or B Arch or B Des (again from IIT Guwahati) or NID or 5 year BFA graduates. Bottom line – they are IIT.

What’s more, in practice, from whatever I could observe, quite a number of these students in these PG programmes are those who did their UG in IITs. Talk about in breeding. The criteria for NID is even funnier – they have some stupid age limit funda.

So even if a self-taught designer aspires to get hiself formally trained, he has to by and large look for avenues outside India. Fortunately unlike these elite schools, there are plenty of scope to further one’s study in Design in universities overseas.
Only that you need vitamin (M)oney. So these NIDs and IITs neither have the numbers to drive out the ‘on the job trained’ UX designers like me nor are they willing to embrace and train folks like me who are in thousands.

So for now, IITs and NIDs are content to supply designers to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Never mind that design, at the end of the day, is a practical profession where what you do is more important than and independent of where you come from. Those who don’t believe me please visit Taj Mahal in Agra. And no it was not designed by the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, I’m afraid.

At the end of the day, if the value of design and innovation has to be instilled to corporates, its much more sensible to teach it to management graduates than hype about some D schools. After all, MBAs are the ones who call the shots in business, for right or wrong reasons.

So talking about D School ruling the future helps the publishing industry and the recent design school grads to get a better salary. Bbut for the average designer in an IT service company its Same Shit Different Day and for the industry it’s Same Shit Different Designer.

mahaa janangale

Dil Se paatu keppom nu Raaga site ponen. First song - Chayya Chayya. No issues.

Now, try the second one listed, i was astonished. Then the third one had me shell shocked. How come AR Rahman had composed brand new songs 8 years after the movie got released?

UPDATE:
Clarification 1: “maha jaanangale” vandhu Goundamani style addressing Clarification 2: Raaga has updated the link. Previously they had some crappy DD of the 80’s style “Sangeeth karyakram” music in place of Dile Se Re and Ee Ajnabi
Clarification3: I thought i’ll have fun at the expense of Raaga. (namba buthi apdi)
Oorai kooptu mike pottu sollalaam nu nenachen. Namma prabhu is theeviramaana gaptun fan.
Thappu enga nadanthaalum ‘thatti’ kepaar.
so he’s thattufied a mail to raaga and they’ve removed those songs.
Good job prabhu!

How many times have we read about the need to plan ahead, to really think long and hard about where we want to be in life, to dream about the future and have the guts to realize your dreams.

Here is a simple question. Where do you want to be next year?

My suggestions
Sit in a secluded spot and think about where you want to be next year. I am sure you will be there with no hassles whatsoever if you follow the guide attached below. What’s more, i promise you can do this without affecting your job too.

I am not some cheap dumbo to claim royalty for this, simply because it’s not my “creation”. The credit goes to a genius whose name i honestly don’t know. Lot of foresight, determination, dedication has gone into preparing this i tell you.

This is being published in public interest - with the sole intention of increasing individual productivity, thereby corporate productivity and thereby increasing the GDP of India.

Here is the guide. May all your dreams come true!! :D

Hi guys

How are you? whattzup? Me’s doing fine here. Came here for a commercial shooting.
Weather is good. Rains now and then. Chill weather. Some nice places to see. Visited some historical places. This place has some history about our Gandhigiri err… Gandhiji.

The girls are awesome by the way! I mean they are really ‘free’, ‘open’ types.
Hope u get what i mean
But there’s one part i don’t like. I’m being made to stand up to 11 guys who attack you all the time. There is no protection at all. Nowhere to run. Man, thats real torture. The guys here are very bad. Not friendly at all.
That’s when i feel i should be done with the ad shooting and be back home. Missing Indian food, my girlfriend etc.

Taken some photos here. Hope to meet all you guys soon. Expect me in 2 months time.

Bye
XXXXX
(A BCCI cricket team batsman on the tour of South Africa)

As much as i liked to blog in tamil, i realised the practical contraints (friends and colleagues have font issues in reading tamil online).

cha! oru varungaaala ‘dubukku’ vai thamizh thirunaadu miss panniruchu…:D

Anyways, blogosphere is busy describing and defining ethics to be followed by HRs and IT professionals as defined by senior management in India. Whenever i get to read ethics and HR in the same sentence, i invariably ROTFL…its ivariably like this

Ethics(bad);

Ethics is a bad word and business necessities is the more appropriate term when some top companies,

1) of the days of 2001-2002 did not pay salaries to their employees for 4/5 months (for eg. Pentasoft). They dont try that now, simply because they will be out of business in one month. Again, business necessities.

2) expect employees to work their ass off till late nights/early mornings (All the biggies till date)

3) issue job offers, ask the potential recruit to put in his papers in his organization and then try to revoke their offer saying the project for which they recruited had been delayed to gain an upper hand in negotiation (has happened to me - been there, seen that)

4) force their employees to sign bonds which stand no chance of enforcement in a court of law.

5) retain the right to fire someone in a day’s notice (happened, keeps happening, fortunately not to me)

It’s a different thing that many people working there put up with all this and much more in the name of job security, debts to clear and last but not the least -”onsite” chance. Its their choice. they neither deserve my criticisms nor my sympathies.

Ethics(good);

Ethics is a very good word when some top IT companies,

1) want to instill a guilt feeling in their employees in today’s employee market in India.

So its a question of ‘who’ rather than ‘what’ which determines if an act is ethical or unethical. If an employee gets ruthless, he is conveniently dubbed “unethical”. if an MBA grad in the HR dept gets into the act, its invariably called “business necessities”.

Inspite of all this, i still think employees are bound to give their organisation proper notice and go out on a mutually agreed terms. Why you may ask?
Coz i’m one stupid middle class. Otherwise my “manasaatchi” will disturb me.