Previously,

Chapter 1 : MyDC

Booom….disaster strikes. On the very first day we (the new batch) landed in Hyd DC, a fire broke out in one of the server rooms. Many development projects were critically affected by it. So they had to transfer all the folks in that floor to our training labs, which means no training for us. It was quite a deserving break for us. After the rigorous grilling for 6 months in Mysore, a month of no work/training  is not a bad idea. I even took all the leaves i accumulated in Mysore and used it to go to home and thats when i flew in a plane for the first time 

That day morning i called up my parents, told that everything’s going as usual, had food; no class; in room; watching tv. Bought tickets from travel desk after breakfast; Post lunch left the DC to airport; Took flight in the evening; Reached Cochin in 1.5 hours and finally reached home at 7:30PM or so. My parents where so dumbstruck thinking whats happening, didnt we talk to this guy in the morning and he was in Hyd at that time, how the hell is he here now  ? Lols.

Anyways lets go back to Hyd. The training was delivered in B12 (Building 12) and guess where we were staying? On the 5th floor of the same building, how cool that can be ? Ground floor consists of training labs and rest 4 floors were for guests; 1st floor for VIPs,2nd and 3rd floor for ladies,4th and 5th for guys. All this means, i didnt had to wake up before 8:30 to attend our class at 9. In that 30 minutes, i did all my morning chores, went to FC and had breakfast and then came to class on time.

Classes in Hyd was really a joke. None of us knew what the topic was, nobody had proper access to the actual servers where a fully functional product is running. So we were kind of beating around the bush with some PPTs all the day. Exams were conducted in such a lazy way that, if you didnt copy, then thats a crime.

Hyd DC as such is nothing compared to MyDC, so am not gonna describe anything about that.

Night life in Hyd city is comparatively better compared to Mysore. The best thing or the best experience i would take away from Hyd is the “IMAX experience”. I was lucky enough to watch Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince in IMAX. Wow what a hall, no words to describe it. Its the largest hall i have ever watched in and the sound experience there is undescribable. Right now i just wish that i was in Hyd when Avatar was released (Dear Readers, i drafted this post last year, hence the releasing time of Avatar is “right now”, kindly excuse).

Other than the usual outings to malls and few spots i didnt have much of an experience in Hyd. Soon the training was over and so once again it was time for me to get posted (ho finally). Folks were tensed on knowing their posting location and people were running here and there almost loosing all their nuts, and me? I dont know, for some reason i was very relaxed and was watching TV in my room. May be i just didnt care where i was getting posted to. Finally the postings came and i was posted to Chennai.

I had an option to opt for Pune DC which at that time was more attractive (partly because of Chennai’s weather and because Pune seemed to offer a better career path). But i chose to stay in Chennai as i can be with my family as and when they need me, after all am here all because of them only. This decision turned out to be good later (that part of the story will be unraveled in Chapter 3), which yet again proved to me the validity of my working principle of life.

Everything happens for good and a reason

So next stop Chennai…(continued)

I went to Infy Mysore Campus, called as My DC (Mysore Development Center) for training, 2 years back. MyDC is really a place to be. Once you enter it, its like you are touring a foreign nation. The standards and the facilities you get there are over par with any other institution in the world, which earned it the deserving title; “best training campus in the world”. MyDC has (now) two GECs(Global Education Center) where the actual training happens. GEC1 was huge in its time, and is only dwarfed by GEC2 which came quite recently. Both the GECs combined can accomodate 25,000 trainees at any single point of time, ya you read it right, at the same time. I cant even describe the facilities available in GEC2 because that will be like a dedicated post for itself. The interiors of GEC2 is like that of a palace, thanks to Infy’s spending nature on infrastructure, which is why employees pockets are always light .

Enough of GEC, lets move on to other places in Mysore campus. Next comes ECC (Employee Care Center). Now this again is a huge building which hosts the following facilities.

1. Super Market
2. Indigonation Store
3. Book Store
4. Saloon for gents and ladies
5. Doctor & Clinic
6. ICICI Bank
7. Laundromat
8. Table Tennis
9. Gym
10. Steam & Sauna
11. Bowling Alley
12. Badminton Court
13. Pool & Snooker
14. Carrom
15. Music Room
16. Aerobics  Room
17. Squash Court
18. Six out door Clay Tennis Courts
19. Out door Basket Ball court
20. Out door Valley Ball court
21. Open air Swimming Pool

Phew that was long isnt it .Well ECC is truly a place where all trainees yearn to be but not always cant be. I myself was not even able to go to ECC even to buy the basic stuff like toothpaste, soap for quite some time due to the rigorous training.

The training they give there actually grills employees, it tests your ability to grasp too many things in the shortest time possible. In Mysore my days where a minimum 15 hours long, ya 15 hours of study in a day. Classes used to start at 9 and due to the tiredness from the previous day, will be late to wake up as usual and hence will miss breakfast most of the times and in addition, going to class from hostel is like a 2km walk, which is mostly covered by running, as late entry in class is not an option. Then we have the normal class till evening and after that its either assignment or studying for next days exam. Exams there are like university exams, each and every exam is important, you have to score a consistent top score to save your job. Second class is not an option there, First Class is the minimum pass mark, so you can imagine the effort which needs to be put. I have wondered many times, if i had put the same effort during engineering, i would be some where else.

Accomodation: When i was doing my engineering somebody told me about Infy hostel and its facilities. Its like a 3 star hotel room. You have AC, LCD TV, 24 hours hot & cold water, kettle, iron box, electronic locker, house keeping staff to clean your room and what not. But only when my training started i realized these are something which i wont be able to use anytime, because after a loong 15 hr study, you wont have the energy to watch TV and in the morning your priority will be to get ready and get to GEC and not to do anything else. So yes its a really (damn) good stay, but you wont be able to enjoy it beyond a certain limit. Infy hostels are said to be the largest of anything of that sort in the world. It has 100+ hostel buildings, which can accommodate all the above said 25,000 trainees in single and double bed rooms.

WTH, from what you have told me till now, MyDC sounds like a horrible place, i think you told me that its a “place to be” so whats up with all these hardships ? My dear friend, hardships will be there always, if you are able to manage your time well, you can squeeze in some fun and for others we have Multiplex. Its the most favourite place of many folks. Infy screens 2 movies (1 hindi and 1 english) every weekend and the best part is, an employee can watch any no.of shows for free, just that he/she has to wait in a que and take ticket himself/herself. Now when i say “que”, it can be really long, as long as 2 hours waiting for a decent flick and even more for hits. But people still waits (even i have done) because that is some experience you dont want to miss. After all waiting in que is not such a bad thing to do. You have a  comfortable lawn and stone pavements everywhere and if you have the right gang or friends, you wont even know how 2 hours flew away.

Apart from this what else do you have in Mysore? In the initial days i used to go out to the city with my friends and later i brought my bike from my home to MyDC and there after it was total fun. Me and my best friend used to go to all sorts of places in and around Mysore. We have gone to Chamundi Hills, Sreerangapatnam, Brindavan Gardens, Mysore Palace, Zoo, and numerous other places. We even went to Blore and Coorg. Waiting and watching for the Mysore Palace lighting fr0m Chamundi Hills is one of the “memorable” thing we have done in Mysore. Had i not met my “best friend” there Mysore wouldnt be a major turning point in my life, let alone that, Mysore would be as good as hell to me.

Thanks to all these, I had the “best of the bestest” time of my life in Mysore. I would give anything to get that time back.

6 months of rigorous training (woahh 6 months!!! it was that long???never realized it before) and finally i was all set for posting and thats when management decided that we will have to go to Hyderabad for another training. I didnt have much of a choice other than going there. So i went to Hyd…(story continues)

So there goes the Mysore chapter. how was it, kewl exciting, total bore boooooo, ya whatever,….let me know. do share it down here….

Well, they say, third time is a charm 

I promise that I will be regular from now onwards. An update a week is guaranteed. If I do not deliver this, then pls pls pls feel free me to bash me anyway you feel seem comfortable.

Ok now that i have done my apologies and new promises, let me tell you what’s gonna happen. Am gonna start that series which i had promised,err…,close to an year back , starting tonight.

So wait and see…

PS: what do you think? will i keep my promise (at least this time)? share your thoughts below…

First of all as i told, am doing my new work as a software engineer in Infy. So let me start from there. I have decided to tell the story across posts so that i dont have to rush through 1+ years events and happenings in a single post.

So sit back, grab a pack of chips* and enjoy the reading .

*Munching on chips is a very bad habit and it should never be practiced. If you are having a habit of it, stop it completely.

Its a simple question, the answer is also very simple and sounds logic to me. Please dont think too much and make fire by “burning your head” .

Before giving you the answer, let me explain a bit about how i stumbled on this question. I got this question from a movie, “The Edge”, starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin. Its a decent film of a billionaire and two other persons who are lost in the woods and trying to make their way back to the shack. In between they have to survive the rough nature and few bear attacks. The way they kill the bear is simply marvelous, i mean they kill a “man-eating” bear with bare hands and primitive weapons made with wood and rock, now thats survival.

Any way, there’s a part where Alec Baldwin is really pissed about loosing a rescue helicopter and then Anthony Hopkins asks this question. There Baldwin has given a beautiful performance by getting more angry on Anthony. Infact we would also feel its a bad time to ask some tricky question, but yet we would like to know the answer. But what they realy show is, as Baldwin is pissed about loosing rescue helicopter, how Anthony Hopkins is keeping cool about that situation. That really adds to his character, he doesnt over react to anything, he likes to face any situation.

So lets get back to the question. “No matter what we do”, you think, “we cant make fire from ice”, right? I mean we cant burn it, its condensed water. We cant hit it with a rock and expect for a spark or rub two ice blocks and expect them to light up. Then what’s the answer ???

Here goes the answer. Anthony says, “You take it in your hands and mould it into a lens and concentrate sunlight with which you can make fire”

After a little research in internet, i found this can be done practically, although not exactly as Hopkins said. Here are some images.

What do you think about this idea ? If you had any other idea while reading then please share it below.

I asked “Why the hell are our roads like these ? Where to the f**king road taxes we pay go to ? “. For that my friend Lijo answered. He said, “Hey this is not a broken road as you see. Its actually a part of a big project that our government is running”. We all wondered what he is talking about. Lijo continued,

“We all know that Kerala faced a severe water shortage few years back. After some studies its told that Kerala has very poor ground water reserve. Its happening so because the rain water flows to rivers and seas as soon as they fall. So these “guys” engineered a plan to collect the rain water. They told if we make pits on the surface of earth it will collect water and wont let it flow away, instead will seep into the crust, which will solve all the problems. And our government found another brilliant way to achieve this. Instead of making new pits they let the road suffer serious damage, this will collect the rain water and do the rest of the trick. In addition this method is cheap and practically doesn’t cost a “paisa” to the state.”

We all burst into laughs at his rubbish (by the way he did it knowingly) yet logic joke. Isnt it people ? This might be a possibility for the pathetic roads we have. Even if it isnt the reason, is it due to this we are now having plenty of water ? You decide whether it has any logic or not.

One fine day he decided to take a rikshaw to bank. Its not so far, he asked the rikshaw-wala whats the fare and he replied, “Pachees rupya saab”. Uncles said, “nahi nahi, theess rupya dega”. Rickshaw-wala, “Nahi saab pachees bas hai”. Uncle finally agrees on the rate and went to the bank.

For those who are not well in touch with hindi, heres a small reference: pachees-25, theess-30, pachaas-50. My uncle thought the rickshaw-wala was asking for Rs.50 for a small ride and he had a good deal with bringing the rate down to Rs.30. But actually the guy was asking for only Rs.25.

We all had a good laugh hearing this. Theres one more story from uncle. So after he has been in Delhi for about one month, when he returned for a family function, my cousin asked him whether he learned hindi and replied yes, a bit. So as a test my cuz asked him to tell the hindi of a number and he randomly selected 137. My uncle paused for a minute and the replied, “its ek-so-sainthees” (hey me too not sure about the exact hindi, but something similar to that). We were all amazed at this and asked how did you manage to learn all those numbers with this short time ? He said, “Who learned its the door number of my house which am staying and thats the only number i know in hindi”. We all burst into laughs again.