My New Lap Top

We had the kid's naming ceremony on Saturday. We named him Sachin.


We named him so because of the following reasons, not that we needed any. :)
1. Anju definitely wanted to name him after a Hindu God. Sachin, it seems, is a synonym for Shiva.
2. I wanted to have a name that is more contemporary than other godly names, such as Sriram or Shankar.
3. The obvious reference to a modern God of cricket. It seems he was named so because his father was a fan of Sachin Dev Burman.
4. We wanted a name that was not easy to misspell or mispronounce.
5. The meaning of this name in Sanskrit is Sat+chin = good mind, pure, existence, essence.
6. None of the Sachins I know are despicable. In fact, they are mostly of good humor.
7. We liked it. And so did the few folks to whom we suggested this.

Here's wishing Sachin greatness in his chosen field.

O Boy!

It's November 2010. When the month started, I knew that this would one of the biggest months of my life. No kind of preparation was enough for the days I just spent.

First and foremost, the announcement - as on Nov 7th, I am a dad. Wow! Yes, it feels great. Its a role change that has respect built into it. I mean, for most of us, a parent automatically deserves respect. And I guess I am in the stage now during the initial few days finding out why that is so. I am earning it now.

Time for some flashback. We were celebrating diwali. Shopping, sweets and firecrackers. It was Saturday night. I was feeling a bit (ok, quite a bit) sad as I had to go back to Bangalore after spending 10 days at home. The plan was to take Anju to her place in the morning, come back to my place in the afternoon and catch the train in the evening. Thankfully, the kid had other plans. And boy, was it timed properly!

We got to our bedroom at around past 11pm. But we werent feeling sleepy, either of us. I guess initially it was just because we wanted to spend some more time together, talking, as I was supposed to leave soon. But, within an hour, we had other reasons not to sleep. She was getting pains in her mid section. And the frequency kept getting shorter. The pains were getting more acute as well. I could judge that by her reactions, although she kept telling me that it was all right. After 30 minutes or so of this, at around 1 am, I coudnt stand it any longer, and thought I should get some expert advice. I went downstairs to wake up my mom. Even with her bad knee, she climbed upstairs, and after inspection, agreed that we should go to the hospital now. In the worst case, if it was a false alarm, we could just come back.

I got the car out. My father and sister were up by then. My mom and wife got into the car. We started at 1:20 am. We got to the hospital within 10 minutes, thanks to the less crowded roads at that time of the night. Once we got there, we asked for some help. Anju went inside the maternity block. Once she went directly inside the labor room, I could just stare at the slippers she left behind. This is all so sudden, I thought!

We had called her parents before starting. Soon, they came by, and the 4 of us were just talking for some time. I could hear somebody screaming "Entammeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee". It sounded like my wife, but I couldnt be very certain. She later told me that the delivery pain is like no other pain in the world. You can get delirious then, it seems. My mom asked me to come back to the waiting room instead of spending time outside the labor room, listening to the goings-on there. We were quite eager to know what was going on in there, but they there was no status update, much less them letting us in. At 3:40 am, a nurse came to us and said that Anju has delivered, and its a boy. We were quite surprised, as the parents were just telling me how the entire process could easily take a few hours, and in some cases, a few days. 2 hours is awesomely fast time.

Soon, the nurse brought out the bundle of joy. It was an amazing sight! I hadnt seen anything like that before. Its arms were quite blue. I guess it must have been the lack of blood circulation there. And the rest of the body was quite reddish and whitish. He looked like a person from Shimla with no tan at all. But, overall, it just looked quite beautiful. It was getting to be daybreak soon. So, no point in getting any sleep then. That was the first sleepless night I had.

We spent 3 more days in the hospital, and 3 more sleepless nights. Well, I did sleep for 2 of those 4 nights. But, the mothers, all 3 of them, couldnt really sleep for much time. Most of my time was spent fetching supplies - to the canteen or hotels to get tea or breakfast, or to the medical store or driving back and from home.

We were quite relieved, when on day 4, we were allowed to go back home. We got the kid to Anju's place, and every day, we get to see some new antics by the kid. Its such a fun time! :) As I have said before, I am quite lucky about the big things in my life. Thank you, God.

Where has all the time gone?

Another busy day, with a big list of tasks completed, and an even bigger list of tasks that should have been completed this day. Not unlike any other average day these days, I feel the need to multi-task quite a bit in order to get stuff done. And I suddenly ask myself, where has all the time gone? I remember quite distinctly, when we were kids, there used to be so much time at hand, including 2 hours of play time in the evening. I am hard stretched these days to even manage a day or two every week to spend an hour in the gym. And seeing the temporarily bulged shoulder muscles now isnt half as entertaining as time spent on the hot terrace during those days. So, where has all the time gone?

Is it just because we have too much to do these days? Longer work hours, compared to the school hours might be one explanation. And coupled with that, we need to think about a great deal of tasks to be done - both at work, and in our personal lives, such as family, finance and friends.

All right, past midnight already, and need to go to sleep now. No more time to blog, you see! :)

Nerd Storm

To provide an update on my previous post about IRCTC blocking my id, to be fair to them, they did it as per orders by the Indian Railways. An account that has filed a false TDR needs to be deactivated, it seems. My fault was a misunderstanding of one of the categories of filing TDR. I had selected an option that mentioned that the train was late by more than 3 hours. Of course, it was, by the time it reached my destination. In fact, it didn't seem like reaching there. So, I got down at an earlier station and then continued by bus. The misunderstanding here is that the TDR can be filed only if I had not undertaken the journey when the train is late by more than 3 hours from the originating station. And I found out from their customer care (they never answered my email, and I had to call them up) that to cancel tickets booked from a now defunct account, I can simply send a mail from the email id associated with the account. Funnily, I did  have to switch from English to Punjabized Hindi (hainji, haanji) to make sure the lady in Delhi understood me properly.

And now to why the subject is titled this way. Of course, there needs to be more than one reason for Nerd Storm. First, quite simply, I just got into a project, where the client's name sounds very similar to it. Secondly, and more importantly, they have given a clear direction to use all the latest technologies in the .Net world, most of which aren't even 6 months old: Visual Studio 2010, .Net Framework 4, ASP.Net MVC 2 and Telerik Extensions for it, as well as IIS 7.And to top it, I am not really conversant yet with AJAX, jQuery and LINQ. And to think of it, I am supposed to lead the way for the team on how to use these, and what best practices to follow. The best practice that I can recommend for now is to follow the articles, tutorials, samples, videos and demos on the official web sites. I also get sleepy in the afternoon these days, thanks to all the reading, which I am not so used to currently.

On the personal front, I am staying in the new flat all by myself. My wife is at her parents' place, gearing up for an important event. :) I am not permitted to say further on this topic for now. Being all alone and no one to talk to can be quite boring at times. This reminds me of what I read somewhere. Loneliness is different from solitude. Loneliness is when you are with nobody. Solitude is when you are with yourself. Most often, I shuttle between the two these days.

Certified Store Manager, and a fraudulent (it seems) online train traveller

And I am back. Yes, another posting within 24 hours. And I have cleared the certification exam that I wrote this morning. How many exams would have a passing percentage of 70? Well, this one had. And, I got 82%. Yippeee!! I am certified in the concepts of "Store Management" now.

I got a strange mail from IRCTC today. At first, I thought it was a spam mail. But, on second look, it seemed original, but just badly constructed. It mentioned about the TDRs (ticket deposit receipts) that I had filed last year. I had filed 3 of them, because I felt the Indian Railways owed me money. The TDR was approved for one instance for a ticket which I had not used to travel. The second one was filed since the train was late by more than 3 hours. I swear they had a category like that. They rejected this one, for some strange reason. And my reason for filing the third TDR was that they had failed to provide me blankets in a 3rd AC coach. I guess I selected a category of something on the lines of 'Others' for this one. Of course, they rejected this as well. So, eventually I was left with 1 successful and 2 failed TDRs. The emails (2 of them) that I got today was about these 2 failed TDRs. They mentioned the PNR (passenger name record) numbers of these 2 tickets, for which I had raised TDRs. They didnt mention the date of travel. But thankfully, as I had archived all those e-tickets, I was able to find out which date they are talking about.

The key part to these mails was that they informed me that my userid has been disabled because this was a "fraudulent activity". Of course, I replied to them today stating the reasons for which I had raised the TDRs. I hope someday I will get a reply to my email. I guess the odds are instead in favor of me calling their customer "so called" helpdesk sometime within a week.

Oh, by the way, when I try to login to the site, it tells me that my userid is an invalid one. Hmm. I tried going to their page where a new user can register, and they mention that my userid is available to be taken up. Who writes such code?! Of course, since I cant login to their site now, I cannot view my previous tickets or TDRs. Thankfully, as I mentioned earlier, I had archived those e-tickets locally. I wonder what other folks would do in such a circumstance!

My only concern in getting back this userid is to be able to cancel some of the tickets I have booked online. I already had created another user on their site, as they had a rule of only 10 tickets per user per month. So, I still have a way to book new tickets, but if I dont get this userid back, I might not be able to claim cancelled tickets. I still have roughly a month before I need to do so. So, I guess there's plenty of time to get things back to normal. Or, do I? :)

Re-another-turn

Another sizeable break (of 9 months, this time), and I welcome myself back (again). I hope I can be more regular from here on. So, what are the excuses, err, reasons this time? Let me just say I was waiting for an internet connection at home. At my new residence, that is. After 3 failed attempts of trying to get an internet connection at my previous residence, I did the only logical thing - shifted my residence. Well, not physically, but just a shift in the logical reference. Heheh.

But wait, it is not just a shift of residence from one place to another. It is also a very major shift from being a 'tenant' to a 'house owner'. That's right. I am, or rather we are, now the proud owners of a brand new 2BHK flat in Bangalore. A small step but a giant leap kinda stuff.

There was also another major role change at work. I have now been promoted to Technology Architect. This was something I have been aspiring to be for quite a few years. Because of recent changes in the company policies, the bar had just supposedly been raised for another 2 years, but I got thru sooner than that. Kudos to me. :)

Another role change is about to happen. But, as usual, I need to have at least one topic left to be blogged on another day. So, thats it for now.

Also, I need to brush up on the study material as I have a certification exam tomorrow. So, thats my plan for today, before I hit the sack in an hour or so. Well, more like half an hour by the end of this posting.

Hope to be back here soon.