I don't know how to title it !

Few days back, One of the elite person in my offshore development center(ODC) got a mail from one of her friend, saying that , some purohit's wife is undergoing kidney transplantation. This mail containing all the details , was forwarded to all the teams present in my ODC.

The mail said that , the person who mailed us personally know the purohit and he is not in a situation to bear all the cost. Funds are being raised to help his family. As my team was present there, we too got a mail and my pl asked me to coordinate on the behalf of my team. My Pl said that he would like to contribute and I took the money from him and I told him that I will send mails across to ppl personally so that no one will know others contribution.Just to provide some privacy fellas !!

I wrote a mail regarding this and asked them to reply me back with the amount of contribution they would like to make, so that, I would give from my pocket and collect the money from them later. I know this is not compulsory and those who are willing to donate, can do so. I got acknowledgement for all the mails that they are read by the respective persons.I waited till the evening . I didn't get any. I thought they didn't have time to mail me back as they would had tedious day. May it be less or more, a contribution is a contribution.

Then finally , I sent another reminder the next day regarding the same . I didn't get any reply even then. It was totally dissappointing and I gave the collected money to the concerned person . The very same day , I had a argument with one of my roommate. He kept telling me that its a person's wish to donate or not and I can't have any say on that. I accepted that what he told me.But my point was , we all earn a decent sum every month and Rs 50 is not going to make a much difference to us and it may make a big difference to many. I personally know the worthiness of Rs 50 as I had been in that situation sometime back and I thank god everyday for making my life better.


Then came the xmas celebration.. and people in my ODC decided to celebrate it . Its always good to have fun @ work. Again,money was collected for decoration purpose . You know what , everyone were ready with their wallets. . . I was blank for sometime watching them and their excitement and their very readiness to give money. . . It was very real that , we are all captives of something that is negative. . .

Are We Selling Ourselves Cheap ?

I really dont know why this question pops up in my mind often? Why are we doing this? Are we that dumb to accept this offer ? Is money the only thing in the world that we want? Will there ever be some change in what we do ? 

All these frustrating comments are only after seeing things around me and my friends. I really dont know why all the crap work from developed countries are outsourced to India. It may provide money but in a long run, it rots our brain . When Indians hold 34% ,30% etc.. in NASA, etc etc . . . you need to know that potential of your brain . We have it enough to make jaws drop . Then why do we accept this? I'm talking about the projects taken up by IT companies . Only Few projects outsourced to us will be excellent to work on . Only few will get their hands on State of the art technology. Others, Slog !!! Slog !!! 

I'm working in one of the top companies in INDIA . Trust me , the work that I'm doing now doesn't need brains. Its so monotonous . Its not me alone , most of friends feel the same. Another funny thing is the billing of the project which hits skies for nothing. The work that I'm doing now doesn't need a Engineer ( Ahem... ahem..)  .It can be done by 10th std student with little computer knowlegde. Trust me , work like this is insult to our intelligence .  I dont know when this scenario will ever change. Most of us live by bragging about the client's name and employer's name. But, no one cares about the work profile which is rotting us. 

If Obama keeps his words about stopping outsourcing to India , I'll be more happy than anyone . No more dumb outsourcing . Let some big product development begin here and let us not be IT SLAVES anymore . Let us compete with them !!

Back to Bangalore !!

Long fought battle is won I should say !! and I'm back to Bangalore . 

What a feel it is to be back home in weekends , Same old downloads. Catching up with friends and all the missed episodes of Prison Break, Kyle XY , Heroes..... Trust me , this is Life which I want forever !!

Hope that "HELL" part of my life is over . Sometimes I thought , maybe I am justifying my name "RAM" (u'll understand this if u know ramayana !!).  I remember one of school friends who wrote me a testinonial in orkut mentioned "surely 'l go places ." I didn't know that sucker  had some prophecy skills in him . Since Jan 2008, I'm on the run. Today , I'm going to meet this fellow and send him to his great great grandfather's hood.

First of all the trip was Chennai to Trivandrum for my training for around 2 months . Though the training  was hectic , I had fun with friends and I cleared all the exams with ease and I was a pro in doing things there . I didn't know all these efforts would go waste . Worst day in the training was the day when we all came to know about our postings . There was around some 11 requirement for .Net trained associates in Kolkata. I got posted to kolkata and when I told people that I got posted to kolkata , I saw all the  weirdest expressions in their faces but I was ready for it mentally . I thought its another new place to explore . Came back to Chennai to be at home for 2 days after which I had to leave to Kolkata to start my career .This was the first time I was away from home and that too for long time (2 months) . Even my parents took some time to manage with it . They felt my absense at home very intense . Then came the another trip now even bigger stay  .

I met my friend with whom I planned to stay with in chennai airport. In 3hrs I reached kolkata around 10pm and took a taxi to guest house where we had to stay for some days . On day one , we were asked to wait for some 2 months get the work. I met few people who are all from southern part of India and I was shocked when I heard them saying "4months" "5 and half" "Mine is 6, I'm the senior bench ." 

One after one , ppl whom I stayed with got transfered . Trust Me !! I never prayed to god like that before . After completing my 5.5 months of bench , I was blessed with my transfer . Though many people came to my rescue , it was my cousin who was able to pull it off . I had to bother many people to get this thing done. So many nights I used to regret for bothering ppl over phone. Finally it was one thursday, I spoke to my mom for more than 30 mins that its all over and i've to be in kolkata for some more months and there is no sign of transfer. I was ready to take any crap project the next monday. I kept my mobile away and was having my dinner with my friends. Suddenly , I heard my phone ringing , it was some unknown number but it was from chennai . It was my sister saying that my cousin has called me several times and I didn't pick up . Then, I saw all the missed calls and some messages saying that I got my transfer letter in my Inbox.  Immediately , I washed my hands and ran to nearby cyber cafe and took print out of those letters and brought it back to room.Call it cloud9 experience or anything , it was amazing. I used to curse the sun for rising so early (4am) and brightening the whole room and not letting me have my sleep. First time, I wanted the same sun to begin the day very quickly . As time passes, change came !! change in wishes!! change in goals !! change in perceptions !!

I didn't get it when i wanted it the most but I got it when I totally changed my mindset. Later I realised that It took 5.5 months for me to learn patience.Some one is teaching me something which I didnt possess I thought."Betrayal by house brokers"," lose of money to those *cukers"," wandering for a place to live during last few days in guest house" are the few experience which greeted me with "Welcome to World". Its when I read the book "Who moved my cheese ?" . I had a sudden shift and sudden strength in myself but lasted for only few hours and I was back to being same old "Ram Sathish." 

I made some very good friends there. I learnt a lot from them. We were like a family there. I had so many happiest moments. Trust me I laughed continuosly for 20 minutes  which I have never done before in my whole 22years. Give me them as roommates again I can stay in antartica too !

Let me pen down one laughing session we had. Myself, Billy,Balaji ,shivaram, raghu were playing cards one night as usual. Billy broke into laughter watchin Balaji's new style of beard . There was nothin to laugh but he was not able to keep his lips locked. I was not able to control myself after watching billy .Balaji broke into laughter after watching me. Shivaram followed us. Raghu was the one who didnt understand what we are doing. Raghu was like " You fools !! stop laughing and play !!" Then we started laughing at him. Even if one stops, he gets the cue from other and will start it again.

When It comes to anyone's B'day , buy a gift, cut a cake , then comes one big speech from MrRaghu, future politician ( he speaks the way a politician speaks) and Raghu will let his poetry flow through our ears and then a speech in south tamil accent by Bageerathan. Myself,Arun and Kailash are good at pulling other's legs which we do almost all the time. I'll upload those poetry soon from my audio kitty.Many more write-ups will follow about kolkata.

Now, I'm back to south. Got my transfer and a project in Bangalore and going to chennai in weekends. Lets face the brunt and learn something outta it .

Finally !!!!

2007 was like an movie with an stretched climax for me . Writing the last post of this year , I shall be leaving to trivandrum for my training which was postponed from dec 3 . Hope 2008 is good for me . Wish me luck fellas !!

See ya soon... I'm happy that finally boredom is broken into pieces... thanks to blogging, music for keeping me alive..

HAIL DAN EGERSTAD !!!

Dan Egerstad, the man who was swooped by the swedish police for putting up 100s of passwords of enbassies all over the world . This man uncovered the security lapses and now being prosecuted for this stunt.Dan Egerstad said that he accidentally stumbled onto the problem and made passwords and other details of those accounts public to highlight the security risk.

He released addresses and passwords on a blog (http://www.derangedsecurity.com) from the list of easily compromised accounts, which included accounts from Indian, Pakistani, Uzbek, and Kazakh embassies and other government institutions. In fact, the list included 26 embassies and six consulates of Uzbekistan alone. Ten accounts belonged to the Kazakh Embassy in Russia, according to a technology-based website, techworld.com, that covered the story.They also included Chinese human-rights groups and one of Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama's liaison offices.

Egerstad says that the only officials who have contacted him from the embassies or governments involved are Iranians, including the Iranian Embassy in Stockholm.

"They pretty much said, 'Thank you.' The Indians, they were kind of pissed," Egerstad says. "No one wanted to talk to me except Iran."

Egerstad says the affected governments are merely those using software that is susceptible to the hack that he discovered. He says that after he accidentally uncovered the flaw, those vulnerable accounts were like an open book.Egerstad has stressed that he never actually opened the correspondence, so as to avoid breaking the law. He said he released the information to shed light on security problems to allow the groups involved to fix them.

"After they calm down a little bit and get over the first shock, they will realize I didn't do this to hack into their system or anything like that, I did it because they have a major problem," Egerstad says.Egerstad lives in Malmo, in southern Sweden, and describes himself as a security specialist who works for Danish and Swedish companies. But he also says the discovery did not even require much expertise.

These are facts that create different points of view.

1. Those who used TOR for communicating sensitive informations probably didn't read carefully it's homepage and all the warnings included. Building secure communication channels in government environments should be mandatory, but use TOR for this... excuse me, please, this is stupid.

2. Please note the fact, that most of the accounts were already used by malicious people - Egerstad discovered only top of iceberg.

3. Even he has intercepted traffic on exit node, and this is from ethical point of view something unacceptable, he didn't misused it and selected the best solution he could - informing governments of affected countries - and this could be considered as ethical approach. The fact, that except Iran nobody seriously investigated this issue. What a shame for more developed countries!

4. He posted account informations to public - another controversial move from ethical point of view. But, let me place here question: if you give out informations for free to governments and become not even "thank you", what will you do?

5. Egerstad showed only, than anybody can do the same - and have the same informations as he got, with no special and expensive intelligence. And because he published the details, lot of intelligence agencies may become angry.

FUNNY THINGS TO BE NOTED:

1. Most of the high-profile persons in the embassies had their passwords with their name and numbers 1234 which is so sick to hear . Persons of high responsiblity couldn't even care for password??

2. Iranian Embasy's account in tunisia had the password "TUNISIA" . Even 5th grade child would keep a password better than this...

3. When we dont have the brain to find out the major security flaws like this,... Why this ego not to negotiate with him to make it flawless when Dan obliges to fix it.

4. Dan's BLOG "www.derangedsecurity.com" was taken down few days before... where he posted how he did this and other security lapses...

5. Dan intercepted 5 TOR servers where he hosted some packet sniffers to get the information. some of the TOR servers all over the world was hosted by wrong people.

6. How come people hosting these servers without providing these encryption on the data not prosecuted [;)]

DROPPED r RESTED aren't the same ???

I guess few names that would've popped out of your mind when i say these few words "Dropped or Rested" . Ofcourse Mr. Ganguly and now, heat has turn towards Dravid... Now a few days after the shameful defeat at home by aussies (4-2) which would've been (5-1) had rain not interrupted the 1st ODI . Only one series Dravid was struggling out there in the middle and now he is being rested for the first 2 ODIs against PAK. It seems like history happening again. Ganguly was rested for first 2 ODIs against Sri Lanka a year and half ago and now this year 2007 ganguly striked back. I really have no clue on what grounds Dravid is being rested .. Its the euphemism that is used in India . . Dinesh karthik is dropped but Dravid is rested ... very polished way of showing the way out.

It was only few months back , he made a stunning display of his game with the willow and made the fielders patrolling the rope and in the end India won England at bristol by 9 runs .Dravid made 92 off just 63 balls with 12 4s and 1 six.. Its not even 6-7 matches he is being dropped for his non-deliverance. Didn't we know Ganguly 's willow couldn't sustain in the field for a 30 mins for a year. Didn't we give him a fair chance...Don't dravid deserve a chance ....A man who sailed to South Africa and England and won accolades for winning the series out there is now being sent out of the ship just because he caught up in the fog.


Sanjay Manjrekar said in an interview that Dravid is a selfless player.. Can't you see how true it is. He made his most runs at 3rd position and as to groom the team, he gave room for young players at the top order and finally came to the field at 5th or 6th position. How can a player be so consistent if gets in at 5th or 6th position. Well you don't have the liberty to swing the willow at this position as we have at the top order. Ain't he the one who stood and kept watching his team mates shotted by Srilankans in the worldcup. Being selfless , he lost his position in the team . How many of them would come up with the decision that I'm having a bad patch in my form so i'm not the right one to captain the team . Neither would you and nor me be so broadminded to be frank..Well that decision would've given Dada some guilt .. hehe....

Only two things i think i would like to say to vengsarkar.... guess what ???

1. "FUCK YOU !!!!!!!!!"
2. "YOUR SELECTION SUCKS BIGTIME !!!!!!"

THE DRILL IS OVER !!!

Its almost 5 months since i completed my last semester exam... lemme recollect when was the last exam. Yeah, its on may 11 2007.. Its already 5 months , still no mail or message from TCS . I still remember talking about time dilation and relativity. My friend used to tell me some stories even when u pass years in some parts of universe when u return back to earth, you would've passed some few minutes. I don't know how far this theory holds good but i realised for the first time, having nothing to do gave me the same experience. From the childhood, the word which brought smile on my face made me curse it . Can anyone guess the word ?? its "HOLIDAY" .. I can't take it anymore... June went away with some tours and class mates..Boredom was at its best when july started...

To break this monotonous life, i did join the Sutherland global services but it didn't stay long as i was having some issues like my health and my mom's health as she'll be awake till i reach home safely. So I had to leave that job which i did for some 20days and got paid. This life was more worse . My timing was 5.30pm to 2.30am . My residence is too far from the office so the cab driver will reach my area by 3.30 to pick me up and after the tiring working hours ,.. its 2.30 in the morning when i feel a huge relief . I'm always lucky to get the cab as soon as possible unlike my colleagues. My cab driver drops me on main road at 4.00am from where i have to take a small walk.... trust me.. its the fearsome walk which i ever had... not even when started to walk as a kid... All because of the 4-legged creatures wandering in the street... not one , not two.. its 4-6 having their conference at early morning 4am.. Every second I tend to run but fear that they have high population in my street .. one bark .. only one bark can unite them all and in no time they can marshall their troops and charge on me . This fearsome walk happened for some 20days. Even Sleep denies my invitation at that time then somehow will find it in 30-45 mins. When i get up, the time is 2.30pm . Guess what next? again cab driver at 3.30pm . So this was the routine for that 20 days.

Working there..
Gone are the days of fun !!
Gone are the days of sound sleep !!
Gone are the days of nice food !!


Then it was start of the August., Few days had cricket in it's slot.. It was INDIA v ENGLAND series.. Had some friends nearby so friends ,net,movies, cricket was the month of August'07

September , the month of unlimited action happening .. thanks to ICC . From Sept 9th to 24th it was this shorter version of cricket that kept me alive . Scintillating performances by the Indian Team added up some spice too... Here comes the most awaited journey to my native . I reached there by 23rd and was watching the INDIA PAKISTAN final with my cousin.I can never end this write up with out mentioning the last over bowled my Joginder sharma.. Misbah playing it straight off sharma .. Me and my cousin were shouting CATCH !!!!!! but it went for the boundary .. [:(] but the next one where misbah leans forward to flick it to the thridman I was expecting a boundary but it was mere luck to have sreeshanth under it. Alas, INDIA won the T20 world cup.. credits to yuvi.. Team was all over news ... it was nice moments which i didn't miss a second.

Then the month i was born came right away with out any delay, It was fun having my b'day in my native. This trip had many moments to be cherished forever. I was drowned in to phone calls 5th OCT. I reached home on 8th october . Its almost a week now.. its sailing smooth No heavy winds , Sky clear as a crystal..smooooooooth sailing !! I can feel that most awaited end to boredom . So there is only one month to go. It'll go well as there is some work to do.. some documents,taking license..n maybe a trip to visit my cousins ..


Being in vain, tangled in pain not because of being a swain ( j.k.) but being nothing for months..
Body was numb !! Thoughts were dumb !!

November brings some joy !! Its like a lonely swimmer in the sea smelling the essence of land somewhere and joyfully splitting the waters to reach there. Like the drug addict found his stash after a long time.

Maybe this long wait brought some good too. Made me think what i've forgot to give a thought, gave me a direction when i went astray.

WAIT IS OVER !!
WAR ENDS !!
HAPPY DAYS TO COME !!!