Desi Fun(da)

Coorg - Of all the trips why do we remember this the most

2009-11-07T20:18:00.006+05:30

We decided to try out the B52 hangout at Jayanagar that Friday night with our dear friend Siddharth. We tried out some funky stuff out there and the chicks (although gender wise males) out there complained to the waiter about us. We sobered down with a fresh pint of our beloved Kingfisher and were deciding on what can salvage our otherwise mundane weekend. Someone we arrived to the conclusion that we needed to head out and at around 11pm we decided that we would head out to Coorg. The minor technicality of not having any planned conveyance or a hotel booking at a very popular weekend destination was not something that we lords of the B52 world were bothered about. And thus it was decided that we will head out to the Bangalore bus depot at 6.am sharp and catch the very first bus heading in the direction of Coorg.

Come Saturday morning.
Frantic calls between the three musketeers at around 7am managed to get us to our favourite Udupi in Kormangala at around 7.30am since breakfast and more importantly food dominated our schedules. We just couldn't head out without bribing our digestive tracts. We reach the bus depot at a leisurely 9.oopm and lo and behold the first bus that would have taken us to coorg was suprisingly missing from its parking slot. Only after boarding the next bus at around 10.00am did we realise that the first one had probably left on time. Oh well this on was going to reach us to Coorg within the next 6-7hrs, the conductor had promised us. I don't remember what the reasons were but we were nowhere near the destination around 4pm. ... 5pm... 6pm... Ah finally at around 7 we reached a bus stand that was supposed to be Coorg. Damn.. was this it?

We picked up the local tourist brochure that we had scrambled from somewhere and frantically started calling the hotels.. the lowest priced ones getting preference of course. No luck. Next were the guest houses.. No luck there too. Were we actually going to spend the night on the streets?

One last call. A home stay ... and bingo we got a room there or that's what we thought. The rickshaw left us at the gates of the PG.. far far away from civilization and we entered the house to meet the lady who ran the PG. So when she lead us to what looked like an unused garage shed we were a bit confused. There sat 4 beds and 2 "rooms" nothing else. There was a geyser said. Great!!!

We decided we weren't gonna come back there the next day unless hell froze over... Did Satan have plans for us. The subsequent evening was the reception of the son of a local politician... And of course all the good hotels were booked out. Of the handful of places there was just one left that had a room available... so we took it.

Enter into the room and something was amiss. Was it just us or was there an unbearable stench of ammonia in the air that evening? Four beds lay out there in the room and bath attached. God it stinked. But we were too tired to go out on the hunt again. And the lovely PG lady had supposedly had a tab larger than 2 rooms out here. So we decided to brave it out. I bet breaths/second had drastically dropped that night.

Oh finally it was the morning next. The morning gods demanded their darshan at the bathrooms. Open the bathroom door and we finally realized where the ammonia emanated from. Now what? Laughter and a fucked look filled the rooms. God did the few years we spent in the US turn us into the high-nosed, culturally confused, fake-accent speaking, confused desis that we just so hated? NO. Two of us braved our civilized upbringings and managed to clear our tracts out and have a bath. The remaining one though had tracts with ethics and they simply refused to cooperate in in hospitable conditions.

We managed to get the info that a bus left out to Bangalore in the late afternoon. We got our tickets and were hanging around the bus stand. Unfortunately we weren't done. The third guy now had to give his darshan to the morning gods that he so insultingly skipped this morning. Helter skelter we ran and managed to find a guest house that lent us their rooms for a few hours with a little discount.
Ah civilization at last... Clean bathrooms... we were blessed. Even the ones that didn't need to use the facilities did. Come evening we headed out to the bus stand and got on our way back to Bangalore.

The three musketeers have had many trips since then. Some had 5-star hotels and some had exotic locations. But of all of them this first one really stands out in our memories. We don't know why but we know that we will always have it in our minds. Where ever we head we know we can brave the elements overcome the odds. We are 100% shudh DESI after all!

Karan Thapar is still interviewing... news gods please help us

2009-10-19T00:55:00.008+05:30

Firstly it was purely by chance that I landed onto the "Devil's Advocate" programme on the telly. And lo and behold it was Karan Thapar interviewing Ambika Soni. I wont get into the content but the content of the content of the last 5 mins that I actually stomached to watch.

Karan asks one question... interrupts before Soni completes her answer. He rephrases the same question... again interrupts before she completes her answer. And this nuisance continues for the entire 5 mins, all this while he attempts to get an answer that he wanted to hear and not taking anything else in. In fact the very obvious eye rolling of the I&B minister was warranted for his childlike interview technique and she even went on to end the show stating that "you should change the format" of the show.

I have been bumping into Karan Thapar's interviews on the telly since quite sometime and I have to say the poor chap has only deteriorated with age.

Karan dude learn your basics.... an interviewer when asking a question needs to respect his interviewee and at the very least should listen and hear out his or her answer. If you can find faults with the answer or counter it with fact, do so. If there is backpeddling or display of uncertainty in the answers of your interviewee then sure, go in for the kill. But dude learn to listen. If you remember even the respected Mr. Jetmalani, who supposedly is your friend, nearly kicked you out of his house due to your distasteful interviewing technique. Some excerpts below - am suprised that complete sentences are attributed to Mr Jetmalani.. which Karan never allowed to happen

"Ram Jethmalani: Don’t expect me to calm down when you are crossing all limits of an interviewer."

"Ram Jethmalani: I am sorry, Karan. You are taking advantage of my hospitality. You are in my house that’s why I don’t want to tell you that. You are falling to low of every kind of standard of morals of an anchor and a television interviewer. You are taking advantage of the fact that you are in my house and that you are my guest. Otherwise, I would throw out somebody here."

And the ethical grandiosity of Karan

"Karan Thapar: Are you a man of character? Is this the behaviour of a man of character?

Ram Jethmalani: Please do not get into this kind of bullshit, this is not done. This is not the way of holding an interview."

What I can't understand is how totally incompetent people as yourself are around for so long man? Are we that starved for good media professionals? Or does just placing two fingers on your chin and holding a pen while questioning make you a superstar on the news circuit?

OK, now I don't want you to crib and say that I'm only being critical. I will also offer you suggestions on how to improve:-
Start with the Larry King Live show. Amanpour, The Doha debates (watch the arbitrators manage the debaters) and any of the anchors on the BBC News channel. Being an aggressive interviewer is good but being too aggressive and inattentive to your guest is disrespectful and makes for a pathetic interview- hasn't anyone ever told you this? god! please!

If you are as wise are your age you will take this constructive criticism and do something about it. If not I hope I stop being so unlucky while channel surfing.

PS. Knowing Karan's technique if he ever reads this I am sure he would have read half of the first sentence and then have posted a question on my comments section waiting for a reply, which again he wouldn't read beyond the first half of the first sentence and question me again... you get the picture...

IT's pun intended

2009-08-13T23:25:00.000+05:30

The Income Tax department has consciously turned IT savvy. I received my annual statement from the good folks well before the deadline to file taxes this year. And that too via email. And now I receive confirmation that my returns, which were sent in via the Indian Postal Service, have reached their offices safely :)
Nice work guys.. finally some good use of technology. The last link left is removing the need to mail the return and then its 100% certified efiling only. Eagerly awaiting that... and yeah while you are at it... can you get the next tax code passed through the bureaucratic hurdles so that I can attempt to save some rokda ?

Compaq tv commercial

2009-07-22T20:51:00.003+05:30

Seen the latest Compaq laptop commercials on the telly?

GuyA bumps into another guyB
Laptop falls
...[useless crap in between]
GuyA gives money to guyB
Laptop specs shown on tv with blabber with a low voice saying works after a fall
...........and ta..da... commercial over

Now what exactly was the point here? Was it supposed to cosmicly imply that the laptop was sturdy enough to handle the fall? Why not simply have a laptop playing a movie... falling down and continuing to play a movie ?
Which dumb ass made this commercial ? and were they actually paid for it ?

ps. wouldve put a link to the commerical on youtube but its so crappy i doubt the shameless ad team had the gaul to put it up there for the world to see.

Thing abt da man

2009-07-05T21:35:00.002+05:30

You need to know how to work the system... for the system to work for you!

Time for the Congress party to delivery BIG TIME!!!

2009-05-16T19:11:00.003+05:30

With a smashing victory in the general elections the people of India have given the Congress party a unique opportunity in this sordid era of coalition politics. With this majority the Congress has the opportunity to lead a stable and solid government in India for the next five years without having to succumb to the threats of its coalition partners.

By placing our trust in a single party the people have decided to give the Congress a chance to prove themselves worthy of this trust. Trust, which as we have seen over the past several elections has been very hard to garner and even more difficult to maintain.

I look forward to seeing Dr. Singh and his entourage earnestly taking up this responsibility, not merely as caretakers of the constitution but also attempting to herald a new era for Indian politics and India. Shaping laws that can bring to the people of India the rights that they deserve as citizens and to the country the prestige that it has rightfully earned by being a great global citizen.

Cheers Dr. Singh

Iraqi reporter shoes Bush

2008-12-15T20:55:00.004+05:30

While the shoe throwing incident today was indication enough of how bad the show has really gone for the Americans out in Iraq and Afghanistan there was one thing that one cannot deny ~ The fact reamins that had Saddam been in power the poor reporter wouldve been hung at sundown for doing the same thing.

Moment of Silence

2008-11-29T16:21:00.003+05:30

Take it all in.
Let it sink in our brown skin, into our veins.

Get angry. Get very angry.

Stay angry!

Our soliders cannot be called in to risk their lives for an inept and impotent political system.

Simply Sikkim

2008-10-15T21:34:00.014+05:30

It was a long time coming. After many failed attempts to move up north with our travels we finally made it. The place... a mesmerizing little state ... Sikkim.

Lets get it started
The three of us met up in Calcutta on the 2nd of October and proceeded to Bagdogra. From there we had a 4 hr cab drive to Pelling, a destination chosen for its close proximity to the Himalayan range. Well close proximity for viewing that is. On a clear morning you can see the Kanchenjunga from most of the hotels out there. We did manage to get a peek sightings from our room. But surely the best part of pelling was the waterfalls. Damn clean water that we just drank out of the stream and truth be told it was probably the best water we ever had.
Khecheopalri lake aka the wishing lake is another serene location to visit.
Interesting Fact: Though surrounded by dense cover there is no sign of foliage on the lake. The story goes that if a leaf falls a bird comes and picks it up from the lake.

Next stop Gangtok
Probably the only true city in Sikkim we landed in Gangtok via a shared cab, which are aplenty. We hung out at Club31 in the evening. Had a few drinks, chatted with some local guys, who were very helpful with how we should spend our time there, and just chilled. We had taken a room at 1200 per night. A bit overpriced but well.

Nathula Pass
The open trade border between India and China has not turned into a tourist spot. Frankly it is very disappointing to ride all the way out there and definitely not worth the pain. The journey is flooded with cabs all through the route and the scenic beauty is better enjoyed with them. Of course for the cheap shopper there are some Chinese goods shops en route. Beware this route is flooded with tourists.

Target 17000
Next we headed to Guru Dongmar lake. The northern most tip our our journey. We took a private cab at a hefty price to avoid the additional shared cab tourists and skipped Yumthang to head out to Lachen. We stayed the night at this quite non descript town that is suddenly becoming a one-night halt for tourists like ourselves. The rooms here are cheap around 500 per night if you book it directly. Most of the bookings however are done as a package deal right from Gangtok. The food too is about 50-60 per plate (non-veg). It gets chilly from here on.
We had a couple of pints at a local shop, felt more like someone's home/garage. Here we met two amazing guys. Chaddi buddies and all of 47 these two youngsters travel together on their bikes aka motorcycles every year during the Durga Puja holidays. This year they were biking out to Guru Dongmar lake. And yeah they live in Darjeeling... What a life right.

The next day we got up at 4 and headed out to the sacred lake. Be prepared half-an-hour mandatory stop at 15000ft that the army rightly enforces to ensure that you can take the altitude. Once you are given the clean chit you can move on. We were one of the two jeeps to arrive there by ourselves and had the lake to ourselves for 30mins, under the watchful eye of the army ofcourse :)
Interesting fact: The lake doesnt freeze in the chilliest of winters. Temperatures reach around -30C out here.

When we reached here the Jat regiment was manning the posts and luckily we ran into a couple of Army folks, Col Anoop, Capt Sharad and gang who were also visiting. We managed to rob some time off the colonel and its always memorable talking to an Army man.

Once we saw the number of jeeps rise up we left. Headed out to Lachen for lunch and then a long ride back to Gangtok.

RnR
After that long and hectic ride we decided to take a day off just relaxing. Yeah we need off days during our vacation as well:) So we chilled in Gangtok and just roamed around. Ofcourse with this day off we knew we would not be headed out to Bhutan

Stranded
Little did we know that our RnR would cost us dearly. The next day was Durga Puja and there were no cabs to be found. So we like true vagabonds decided to stay put and hang out in Gangtok. We took the local sightseeing cabs and enjoyed a good lunch at Tashi Delek, recommended by Col. Anoop. The food was great and we enjoyed ourselves just doing nothing :)

Rabongla
Next we decided to hit Rabongla, since Pelling was not currently ready for returning back so soon. The place seems enticing especially because it was completely covered within the clouds when we drove through from Pelling to Gangtok. We took up a decent hotel there 800 per night for a 3 bed room. It was a dainty little town with nothing much to do other than enjoy the fresh air. Best part no tourist spots and hence .. aha.. not too many tourists.

Namchi
Since Rabongla was all done in 1hr we decided we should see another place. We decided on Namchi. We wanted to head out to Kewzing from there which is a village tourism spot. Supposedly you get to live in a village and experience Sikkimese life first hand. But the Kewzing guys decided not to answer the phones. So we diligently called up the next best place. Later on peeking through our lonelyplanet handbook we stumbled upon the Dungmali home stay. Called them up and found a room available for the night... case closed we decided to head out there.

Dungmali Home Stay
Nestled a good distance away from the hub of Namchi the homestay is a cozy house of an ex phys-ed teacher and his family. Now this was a true find. Firstly the place is in expansion mode and will be building cottages all along their property soon. So we got there just in time. Second luckily for us quite a bit of the family was in for the Durga Puja holidays and the place was alive and bustling. Third the mountain on which the home is located is going to be a bustle of activity once the CharDham is completed (March'09). Fourth and the best is that you get an amazingly clear view of the Kanchenjunga right off their veranda and yeah we got to see it all next morning. Pretty neat eh! All in all serendipity and perfect timing.
The great company and conversation cut through the evening which was appropriately topped with authentic local cuisine for dinner.

The next morning we headed off to Calcutta via Bagdogra.

Calcutta
To be nice.. lets just say its better left forgotten.

Total Cost for a 12day trip per person: More than expected :)

When in Sikkim
* Be prepared for land-slide or a traffic jam
* Be ready to inhale gargantuan amounts of car smoke while travelling
* Be amazed at how clean the state is
* Be surprised by the presence of "clean" public urinals at all tourist spots
* Be ready to pay Rs2/- to pee at these public urinals (maintenance)
* Be ready to squeeze into a shared cab - or if you can pay a for an additional seat and have some space
* Be ready to see a lot of monasteries
* Feel like an ant in front of the mountains
* Be ready to be see more curves per km of road than anywhere else
* Be ready to weather two way traffic on roads that barely fit one car
* Be amazed at how polite the people are
* Enjoy the smiles by the cute little kids playing all over the place
* See more cops than anywhere else in India - and yeah... and yeah without the beer belly
* See the clouds below your feet or be within them
* Try to head out on a trek.. starting from 8 days onwards they seem enticing
* Breathe in 2-5% oxygen
* Be ready to be stunned by the beautiful girls who get 5/10 simply for their dressing sense
* The only thing more beautiful are the mountains
* Forget flat land
* And of course be in awe of the Kanchendzonga

Itenary
Day 1 (2nd Oct) Hyderabad-Calcutta-Bagdogra-Pelling [Flight and Cab]
Day 2 Pelling [sightseeing - reserved cab]
Day 3 Pelling - Gangtok [shared cab]
Day 4 Gangtok... Nathula Pass [sightseeing - shared cab]
Day 5 Gangtok - Lachen [reserved cab]
Day 6 Lachen - Gurdongmar - Lachen - Gangtok [reserved cab]
Day 7 Gangtok [just resting]
Day 8 Gangtok [sightseeing - reserved cab]
Day 9 Gangtok - Rabongla [shared cab]
Day 10 Rabongla - Namchi [shared cab]
Day 11 Namchi - Siliguri - Bagdogra [shared cab] - Bagdogra - Calcutta [flight]
Day 12 (13 Oct) Calcutta - Hyderabad [flight] - Back to work!!

Travel Logs

2008-09-14T13:31:00.006+05:30

Finally managed to get all my travel pics under Picasa. This covers all our leisure travel in India for the past few years. Time sure flies.
And here is how the travel log reads

August 2008 Chickmangalur (Karnataka)

April 2008 Pondicherry

March 2008 Goa

April 2007 Udaipur; Jodhpur (Rajasthan)

September 2006 Kufri; Shimla; Kasauli (Himachal Pradesh)

July 2006 Agra (Uttar Pradesh)

May 2006 Wayanad (Kerala)

May 2006 Kovallam; Kumarkom; Munnar (Kerala)

July 2006 Halibedu; Belur; Mysore (Karnataka)

October 2004 Madikere (Karnataka)

You can have a look here

Google Chrome is out ...

2008-09-03T00:23:00.003+05:30

http://www.google.com/chrome

And heck I like it. What exactly?
1. Minimalist UI ala Safari
2. No "menu" bar
3. Good use of title bar for tabs - saved space
4. Seems pretty fast or maybe that's just the late night broadband peaking up :)
5. Great address auto-complete - only pages that you actually typed show up
6. Maintains the firefox short-cuts
7. Simple blue and white theme is nice and soothing
8. Default page rocks - ulti cool use of history

Great to see engineers taking KISS seriously in this day and age of "features"

Road Trip - Chickmangalur

2008-08-21T10:08:00.008+05:30

Decided to take a long impending break from work this week. So I headed out to Bangalore to catch up with my good friends and travel companions. Considering that it was a long weekend we were really pushing our luck and calling up all the nearby locations for a room. Luckily we didn't find any and decided to take the advice of Bhavin's friend and try out a homestay kindof place out near Chicmangalur. Boy was it wonderful. A beautiful coffee estate nestled up in a small valley sufficiently far away from the hotspots. It is around 60kms from Chickmangalur but the roads are horrendous so be prepared to cover than in 90mins to 2hrs. Since a picture says a thousand words here are a few.

Chickmangalur - Karnataka - India

Btw none of us carried our cameras so these were from my phone cam. The trip turned out to be around 5k/person for the 2 days. A bit higher since we drove there. But the drive was beautiful especially since its around now that the paddy crops are planted and the variety of lush green all around could have given disney animators goosebumps.

But the highlight of the trip was the amazing food at the resort. Mangy food always rocks! esp the shevai with coconut milk was the best.

Salut

2008-08-11T22:02:00.005+05:30

What a wonderful sight for Indian sport. Finally a presence at the Bejing Olympics that we can be proud of

1. Virdhawal Khade - swimming
2. Saina Nehwal - slowly progressing along - defeated the 4th seed today
3. Bajranglal Takhar - 5th place in the Men's rowing
4. Abhinav Bindra - the gold medalist in 10m rifle - god the replay of our anthem playing in Beijing just killed me.
5. All our boxers and wrestlers - good show Biwani boys.

regardless of the results. these are the true heroes. amazing men and women with determination that supersedes any other. please dont even try to put our crappy cricketers in the same sentence/paragraph/page/book/volume. These Olympians are the heroes that we so desperately need.

Salut!

sn0bs

2008-05-08T07:54:00.001+05:30

Do I know you?, and more importantly do I really need to know you?

wHy?

2008-05-01T16:26:00.001+05:30

I blog because I dont own a gun!

Britain's really got Talent

2008-04-18T15:09:00.001+05:30

Last year this little girl, Connie, was just an angel and this year they have a young boy, Andrew, who chilled me to the bones with his singing of Pie Jesu

Britain seems to really have some hidden gems in voices of its kids. Wish the show was telecast here too.

Rediscovering Pondicherry

2008-04-08T21:35:00.004+05:30

I have been to Pondicherry 3 times before. Mostly spent my time at my cousin's house out there without wandering out into the wilderness of the small town. Auroville is probably still the only place to visit for an outsider in Pondy. Even after having been there thrice before I decided to chugg along with some friends out there. And as usual we did not think any prior bookings were necessary.
I caught the bus from Hyd to Chennai and I reached there a good 13 hrs later. We caught the local bus from Chennai to Pondy and reached there right in the middle of the blistering afternoon heat. After trying a few places some of us came up with the idea of trying out a resort and lo and behold we managed to land out at The Dune. Another classic choice. The place was just fantastic. Designed by a French architect, partnered up with a desi, the small haven has multiple villas and cottages each with its own theme eg. bangle house, doll house, white house and the list goes on. With tastefully designed rooms and a beautiful beachfront right in front of you there is little that could go wrong. Mind you though, with the open bathroom motif in every house, this is definitely not for the faint hearted either :). The ambience, food and location is simply spot on. The seafood is definitely below par but well I dont think Pondy is that big of a fishing town anyways.
All in all another beautiful part of India discovered, or for myself - rediscovered.

Check out some of the pics here.

Blog Statistics

2008-04-04T10:37:00.001+05:30

Since I have recently touched the 500 unique visitors per month, with time spent on site != 0, I thought I should post some usage statistics about Desi Fun(da)

Average #users/month (past 12 months) - 300

Most visited entry - Gori Chamdi - Readers Digest Joy

2nd most visited entry - Chroma Store

Search Engine - 100% users coming from Google

Best search term - guavus with 13.6%

Browser - 81% users using Firefox

Geography - 87% from India

Pretty neat ah - Check out StatCounter.com for more info on how.

A bit about the name

Desi Fun, da - A typical Bangalorean way of saying things

Desi Funda - Meaning Indian fundamentals

[ Desi ofcourse means Indian ]

LIC's new avatar

2008-04-01T23:01:00.003+05:30

If you know me, I must've given you a pep-talk on LIC. I simply adore this PSU. It does what a PSU is meant to do and does it to perfection. It has been providing returns to the average Joe, aka myself, consistently for half a century now. And to do it with unparalleled honesty and consistency in the public sector arena and that too at such a large scale simply deserves respect.

But the new face of LIC confuses me. The consistent ad campaigns and tv presence is kinda new and maybe something that is required in this day and age of nasty private sector competition (satire attempted). However this is not how the PSU blossomed. Its army of tin soldiers ie. LIC agents are the main propaganda and advertisement vehicle that has helped this company maintain its distinct lead in the insurance sector. Has the strategy changed? I sure hope not. And yeah keep up the good work... none of my policies have matured yet! So work hard too LICians :)

Dzire

2008-03-29T23:10:00.002+05:30

Take a look here
It looks like they took the front of the "heart" and the back of the "men are back" cars and stuck them together.

Maruti's latest Swift Dzire has without a doubt gone and dethroned the Mahindra-Renault Logan as the ugliest looking car on the desi roads.

Definitely not desired by anyone I know.

Yahoo Finance

2008-03-26T10:15:00.002+05:30

Yahoo Finance has finally revamped their stock ticker site.

Best Wishes Madame

2008-03-24T22:57:00.004+05:30

To a wonderful person.

You walked down the aisle today
With a smile that said it all
Towards the luckiest guy in the world
May the journey be full of love and joy
Full of happiness and things that keep you smiling
For you may never know, but I'll say
Your smile is the only thing good in this world anyway

Wishing the latest Mr. and Mrs. a wonderful life together. And ofcourse dont forget to name your first-born after me :)

Work Experience

2008-03-02T22:46:00.010+05:30

Time and again work experience seems to pop up in the most unrelated of contexts, and sometimes relevant as it may seem there does not seem to be enough time to go ahead and layout everything that I have actually worked on and experienced. So I thought I'd just take a trip down memory lane and put things down in black and white. Just for personal reference of course.

1. Church - Altar Boy: Probably the first thing that any Catholic boy does in his life. I still remember the first time I did that. I was with a friend Kenneth in Irla and goofed up quite a bit. I especially remember how many times I actually stood up aside the altar when I wasn't supposed to. But well managed to get through that.
Unforgettable Moment: Goofing up

2. Boarding School - Choir, Altar boy, Cleaning up, Sweeping, Mopping floors etc: While at the boarding school at Boscos we did it all. Cleaned up the whole place, cleaned up the playing fields, washing our clothes and god knows what else. We did it all and we showed up in style at the school. Boarders kicked ass when we came along at Boscos man.
Unforgettable Moment: When one of the boarders went berserk! Also remember making those giant cutouts for our late night chill outs.
Cant forget all the great s.d.b. priests and brothers that we met. You guys simply rocked.

3. School - Hockey Team player: I was in the hockey team during my school days at Don Bosco. Played the defense quite a bit and people said I was pretty good.
Unforgettable Moment: When I missed the penalty shot against St. Stanislaus Bandra, while all my friends in the boarding looked on. We also lost the match so that was the pits. Also remeber bro. chris whacking me in the shins with my own hockey stick during my first match. Damn that hurt.

4. Internship at ABB: This was the final year project during my BE and we managed to squeeze into ABB for this. Thanks to some of the wonderful people out there that helped me realized that the journey had just begun.
Unforgettable Moment: When the department head told me that my project was the only real world project she had seen all year. And also when I realised my work may not be used by the company in production :(

5. Engineering College - Placements: Helped out with going out to a couple of companies in Mumbai to come out to the first ever placements that our college had.
Unforgettable Moment: When one of them accepted.

6. Engineering College - Debating: We kicked some ass while debating at Agenls's in our final year. I think it was pav and anna on the team with yours truly. Of course I was just the stand-in :)
Unforgettable Moment - Winning. Yippieeeeee!

7. PA, US - Serving, Cleaning, Mopping up etc: This was at University Park, PA. The first on campus job that I had was at the central eatery. We did everything. We had some early morning shifts at around 6.00 am where we went in and sliced frozen bagels etc for the morning rush. I did fries, burgers, burritos, salads, club sandwiches, sodas etc. Man I cant even remember all the places I served. We also had the late night shift on Sat night where we cleaned and closed up right up til 1.30am in the morning. Phew.
Unforgettable Moment: Cleaning up puke. Yuck!!!

8. PA, US - Serving tapes to Cray: Yeah for one day me and a friend served up tape drives to a Cray supercomputer, that was on campus, so that data could be transferred onto cds. Yeah baby.
Unforgettable Moment: Seeing a supercomputer in person :)

9. PA, US - Working with the big guys: Got a job on campus for a cool 16$ an hour, which was a record, that was to code for this handheld computing project for the department of health in PA. This was under the supervision of a defense building on campus.
Unforgettable Moment: The look on the sys-admin's face when he realized I wasn't a citizen of the US of A :)

10. PA, US - Biochemistry?: My first assistantship was with the Biology/Biochemistry department. The lady out there wanted someone to do work comparable to re-writing LAPACK in 2 months :) That didn't work out.
Unforgettable Moment: Realizing that I was given an impossible task and that I needed to find another assistantship asap. Peed in my pants.

11. PA, US - Civil Engineering: My primary source of income during my education was through a graduate assitantship with the Civil engineering department. I wrote Visual Basic programs for a professor there. I interacted with the hardware equipment manufactures for a month or so to understand how to integrate their stuff into our program. It was super to see that thing up and running.
Unforgettable Moment: Interacting with Dr. H. - super guy.

12. PA, US - Volunteering: During my free time I volunteered with an organization at the local church. The basic work there was simply interacting with differently-gifted children.
Unforgettable Moment: A kid that I was interacting with for nearly a year underwent a brain surgery, it was really big risk that the parents just had to take. After he was released from care and came back to the sessions he pulled me to the nearest ABC chart and started telling me A for apple, B for Ball. That moment I can never forget.

13. PA, US - Thesis: Phew man. The toughest professor in Wireless Networks at the university was my guide and he sure as hell knew what he wanted. He made sure I worked my ass off and well I managed to satisfy his requirements.
Unforgettable Moment: My first thesis proposal going in the dustbin. Then my thesis experiments running on multiple computers and me collecting and understanding the data. And then of course Graduating, Yipee!!!

14. PA, US - Start up1: Yeah baby. Quantum Bio Inc was launched sometime late in the winter of 2002. I interviewed with Lance and the crew out in the Chem labs at Penn and was bought on board. We got our rented office and moved into it sometime in the middle of Jan 2003. And boy was it fun. We actually took the comps and printer from the chem building out to the incubation centre, yeah we did the loading and unloading, and also pinched some CAT5 cables and stubs in there too :). Then we headed out to Office Depot and purchased the cheapest tables we could find and hauled them back to the office. We then assembled them ourselves, yeah! Then we layed out the Ethernet cables to main switch board and also punched in the pins ourselves. We then setup the network with a MacOSX PC serving up as the server. Each one of the 5 guys installed a different flavor of Linux just to test the code on different versions while we coded :) Damn we even had our code for the common copier, that was billed against us. Of course we managed to get the admin account for our consumption :)
Unforgettable Moment: Damn everything was unforgettable man. I still remember the guys next door who were into precision instrumentation and measuring. That dude bought us beers a couple of times just to break the ice. Cheers buddy.

15. Back in Bangalore: Working at Sun was awesome. Was part of a really great team. The people gelled well and things were great. The lead was super.
Unforgettable Moment: Seeing a real world angel :)

16. Start up2: Working in a start up is always the tops for me. So I quit my job at Sun and moved out to Gurgaon on a whim.
Unforgettable Moment: First two weeks at Gurgaon, man the dust is still coming off me till now. The other thing that was rocking was the ability to do whatever I wanted to do and push it forward, and of course the ability to talk to the founder directly and frankly was priceless, well at least for me :)

17. The giant: For reasons best known to me I needed to get out of Gurgaon. Microsoft offered me a job, along with 2 other biggies, that seemed to be a really great opportunity and I am currently here pursuing it to the fullest
Unforgettable Moment: Making those right now :)

Other experiences
a. been a class prefect in school :)
b. fund raiser
c. Master of ceromonies @ family parties and couple of corporate events
d. Horse riding
e. ...

So that in short is the experiences that I have had the pleasure of having, ofcourse not everything is covered here. Sound interesting? Now that I have this written down I wonder what I should tell the next person that asks me this question, any suggestions?

Most successful Indian startup

2008-02-25T00:02:00.005+05:30

Arguably Zoho.com is the best online office suite out there. There have been reviews of it all over the place at leisurely intervals of this seemingly most successful and obscure of Indian startups. But this recent article in Forbes truly opens up the can of worms. All said and done Zoho can probably stake claim to being the most successful startup out of India, end-to-end, 100%. Kudos to that team in Chennai.

Mother of all quotes from the entrepreneur himself, Zoho CEO Mr. Sridhar Vembu
"You see, we don’t intend to sell the company, so there is no stock option plan, because it is meaningless."

Quote of the week

2008-02-08T19:46:00.000+05:30

"... The founding team should have that killer startup bug everythig else is secondary. And it never takes 20,30 or 100 people to make a product .. Just 3/4 good ones. ..."

Couldnt agree with these guys more. 3-4 guys is the perfect teamsize. Good enough to gel easily, good enough to hit ideas on each other, good enough to keep updated easily, and most importantly best size to take out to dinner every week :)

Best of luck Druvaa.