Enough of Fooling around..

19 March 2013. Today DMK pulled out from the Government, Sonia Gandhi is furious on her natives playing kiddish games with India on not returning the Marines, India has just won the 3rd test match at Mohali, with a dream 3-0 Win against Australia, Akshay Kumar (Guruji) is the highest Tax payer in 2012-2013 in Bollywood, Deepika and Ranbir are getting back again in GF BF wala game, My boss is on Leave... All this is not important... 19 March 2013 is important because today I realized, (ok someone made me realize), that I should do serious blogging. and Today on this very day when I am sitting in my office chair, with the year end pressure piling up along with my credit card bills, when I am frustrated to the limits after spending awesome night in Bangalore, where I had the most delicious chicken hyderabadi at MG road. here I am again in Chennai, the city which I dislike to my core. Today I promise myself that YES, I will take my constitutional right Of article 19A to the next level and start blogging with the same seriousness like that of Manmohan sigh's when he said "hazaron jawabo se acchi hai meri Khamoshi.."

Only laundry knew how scared i was...

How does it feel when one of the most ambitious or important project is given to you? great doesn't it?
i felt the same when i was asked to make the presentation for TANBOF (tamil nadu bus owners federation) which was a pool of the biggest customers for ashok leyland. it was a huge platform to showcase the talent and i took it with open hands.
i worked hard on it and made it in a day. since the timeline was strict and we were supposed to present in within 3 days.
this Version 1 was heavily censored and i was left with just 3 slides.
I worked again and the next day made a better one. this was appreciated by all and it got the approval from the AGM. i felt great and was preparing for tommorow.
now here's when the Shit happened.
The next day i woke up at 7:30am instead of 6:30. got ready and went to the bus stop to realize that damn i was late!!!
luckily my roomate dropped me to office on his bike. It had started, i was getting phone calls from every one, colleagues, managers, senior managers and AGM. crap, i was a fool to be late on such an important day. i was supposed to present it to the board by 8:30.
i reached office at 9:00. there was a big commotion at my work station, just like after road accident you find mob giving their explanation about how the accident might have happened.
well i was already nervous. i went to my system and started copying the presentation to the shared system. it was taking hell lot of time since the ppt was heavy. I DELETED it in the middle of the transfer...and hell broke loose.
I Neither had the presentation in my system nor in the shared system.. !!!
F%^&$ed
I was sweating, numb, physically i was still but my thoughts ran wild from my parents to my Executive director's table. on one side the ED was shouting at me before kicking me out and on the other i was standing at the doorsteps of my house explaining my parents why they kicked me out...
the fear of loosing everything on a beautiful day is beyond the reach of any man to explain and i was experiencing it.

Control Your Life

I was at Landmark and i was going thru this book on self improvement in which the writer had shared some real good points of how to have control on your life..what he meant to say was how to get things under control and make the most out of what we have..

I would like to share the points which he highlighted.


1) Relax and be more productive
2) Remember that the peace is already within you
3) Save your breath and keep your sanity
4) Build your brain power
5) live with passion
6) Practice patience
7) Be a better jugular
8) Honour the precious peron inside you
9) Keep the track of energy reserves
10) Chose activities that bring you to life
11) Ask for help
12) Take a sabbath
13) Go out in to nature
14) Enjoy music for Peace,creativity and healing
15) Make the mundane sacred
16) Nap to awaken the genius within you
17) Just do it- and shed those bad habits
18) Do what you can, not what you want
19) Focus on making small changes
20) Understand what saving time really means
21) Give up perfectionism
22) surrender your resistance
23) Learn to say NO
24) Live in rhythm of time
25) Take time for simple pleasures
26) Choose wisely Time or Things
27) Take time to get organised
28) Make your Mind youe ally instead of your enemy
29) Exaggerate the negative
30) Reframe that problem
31) Ask yourself " am I having fun yet?"
32) Cultivate gratitute
33) Walk with a positive attitude
34) Listen to your heart
35) Medidate
36) Build your heart intelligence
37) Be a source of kindness
38) Learn forgiveness
39) Judge Not
40) Gaurd against Gossip
41) Be a good listener
42) Communicate honestly
43) Watch those assumptions
44) Put Love into actions
45) Find meaning in your life.

These 45 points are the crux of peacefull controlled mind and happy life.

FULLY AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION

Recently i was working on a project which involved installation of a fully automatic transmission for commercial vehicle. To me it was exciting that it was rare that we were using this technology for commercial vehicle when it is not used in passenger luxury cars in India. Usually it happens that a technology when tried and tested in passenger vehicle segment enters the commercial vehicle.
so what is fully automatic transmission. when there is not clutch and gear arrangement, it is called fully automatic vehicle. everyone must have experienced how tiring it is driving a car through a market/ heavy traffic jam in peak hours, we change gears like mad. clutch gear clutch brake clutch gear...... hhhh... ultimately driving becomes a torture. Fully automatic transmission (F.A.T.) is a boon for the above situations. In FAT vehicle you dont find a clutch or gear stick, it contains only accelerator and brake. the gear box is intellegent enough to change gears as per the gear requirement based on the inputs from engine and speed curve. There is a hydraulic coupling instead of a clutch which makes the gear shift smooth and noiseless. The electronic chips see that everything is as per the requirement.
so for a layman FAT is just like driving GEARED HONDA ACTIVA instead of HERO HONDA KARIZMA ZMR. see the difference.

So why such expensive technology in commercial vehicle? thats what i asked my boss.
Commercial vehicles are used to make money, the owner doesnt look for fuel economy but fuel efficiency. similarly the owner finds that putting a FAT reduces the driver fatigue, increases the life of the transmission system, reduces cycle time and thus makes money..
Its a fect that on an avg every day there are 80,000 gearchange in a commercial vehicle, just imagine 80000 times the whole gearbox is stressed, strained and fatigued. fully automatic transmission eliminates this problem since the hydraulic clutch and automatic gear change make it possible to minimise the damage to the entire energy supply line from engine to tires.

in short FAT is THE THING for applications where there is very high gear change density, for our commercial vehicles in areas like mining, city bus application and tippers.

self motivation

"..the Lamp begins to die which has no oil in it.. no matter how much you try to keep it burning.."
how true. life is just like this lamp and Self motivation is the fuel that keeps it going, more the enthusiasm self motivation the brighter you shine giving light not only to urself but to everyone around you...
Self motivation can be defined as a collection of various ingredients and being positive is the most vital. Being positive is u can say the stepping stone to self motivation. Life is full of ups and downs happiness and sorrow getting and loosing... but the person who looks at everything with an optimistic view nothing seems to go wrong, he finds the reason to rejoice even in the darkest moments of life.
self motivation also comes out of being happy and content. satisfaction is thus one more important part of self motivation. I have known people in this world who cry over unnecesary things.. they have everything yet they are cursing god family friends for something or the other...the key to come over it is simple.. appreciate what you have and bring out the best in you rather then crying for what you never had.

life my friends is simple.. its we who make it complex.

be self motivated, admire yourself for your positives be the biggest FAN of yourself, why would people love you if you dont love yourself..

so pull up ur socks and enjoy each and evry second you live this divine life..
remeber " Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath away"

my visits to S.J.A.

its great to be back to the school where i spent thirteen years of my life, where i learned the basics of life, where i made friends, where i became what i am today.
no doubt that St Joseph's Academy is like a temple to me and teachers there are my god. i have always felt pride in flaunting that i am an Ex josephite and would love to continue that. i have always felt that no matter there are schools like Welham's , St Georges, the Doon school in dehradoon but SJA is different and better from all of them. the reason which i had was that we are humble, we have attitude which is in the perfect quantity, we dont shy out helping the poor when we are in crowd, we have the values which make us human enough to understand the pains and pleasure of those around us. we have a heart. we are not like those rich snobs studying in the most expensive schools in the nation, we are far better.
recently i got the opportunity to be back to S.J.A. but this time not as a student but as a guardian of my niece who is in first standard. thanks to recession i had a little prolonged vacations, so i made it my responsibility to drop and pick her to the school.
i cant explain the joy to go back to the same place where we skinned out knees, played football, participated in extra curricular activities. to make it better the same teachers who taught me in junior school still recognized me... the feeling cant be defined...i met "AYA" didi who used to take care of everyone in the KG garden.
i really missed the OLD buildings which were replaced by modern, bigger blocks. the place i missed most was the HORSE SHOE the open air theater. it was the best place of junior school. the new stage where the historic PETER PAN was staged made me remember the "HIMBAHULLA PETAR PAAN" the "WHY DANCE" and my dance partners..nostalgia flooded my thoughts.
today i see my childhood in tanishqa, my niece. i wish she turns out to be a gem of this jewel box, and prove to the world yet again that JOSEPHITEs RULEz

Ragging Days...

Requisite ragging
“4 students suspended in Graphic Era University, 8 girls suspended in Dehradun institute of technology, disciplinary committee on 20 students in Institute of management studies…..”
The same old story every year, it’s the new academic session and it shows. Every year there are number of cases where the seniors are either expelled or suspended from the college as punishment for ragging the new students. I don’t know what these kids are up to but seriously I treasure the “ragging period” when I was in first year of my graduation. I was an average kid not too impressive, one of those who are fun to rag, and so it happened I was one of the sought after fresher, seniors loved to “rag” me.
When I took the admission in D.I.T., I was very scared of what ragging is all about, all the stories which I heard from my friends and newspaper incidents made me wet my pants every time I imagined myself running nude in the campus, being beaten up by some drunk seniors, doing stuff conceived by devils. I think it was one of the reasons that I didn’t choose any far away college where I would have to live as a hosteller (ragging in hostels is far worse then for any day-scholar).
It was here, my mom who knew what all I was going through, (I didn’t show the fear, but parents as u know we can’t hide anything from them) told me that ragging is not at all that bad as it seems, in fact it’s the only time to know your seniors, make friends, and be open and bold. The more you run from it the bitter it gets. So just enjoy these days and gain confidence from it. But keep in mind they are your seniors and you have to spend rest of these years with them, don’t misbehave or insult them, its you who is joining them so always remember treat people the way u want others to treat you. These were the golden words and they helped me come over my fear and anxiety.
Soon I began going to the college. The college administration was taking all measures to keep the rowdy elements away from the first year students but it didn’t carry on long. Soon the blood thirsty seniors found their victims and started the junior hunting safari. I avoided places like canteen, dhabas, sunset point where the probability of being ragged was high. Moreover being six Feet, 90 KGs and having thick beard I was difficult to distinguish. I looked like one of them. It was after 17 days that I was ragged. I had shaved as I started looking professor rather then fresher and also the teachers asked me to do so. I got in the college bus and took a window seat. Soon the bus was overloaded with students, both seniors and juniors, and the series of INTRO started followed by Hindi movie songs and “DIT KI JAI” slogans. Every senior got hold of two or three BAKRAS and made them do funny acts which ranged from begging in the bus to acting like the bus conductor. All this time I looked out of the window pretending I was least interested in what they were doing. I felt as if someone was staring me, I dared looking at him. Suddenly some one started singing “kajrare kajrare…” in one of the most pathetic voice which made everyone burst with laughter; I stole this time to look at the person who was staring me. He was in casuals carrying travel bag, one of the senior who caught the bus from railway station, a final year student my super duper senior. He seemed one of the most wanted types. I quickly turned back towards the window not to look back at him. But it was too late… he caught me.
“which year?”
It was no use lying now, if I said 2nd year and he found out that I was a fresher it would have been disastrous.
“First year SIR.”
“Branch ?”
“Mechanical SIR.”
“SAALE itni der se senior khada hai aur tu mast baitha hai, bahot bada aadmi hai tu….”
“sorry SIR, I didn’t know you are a senior” I said as I was getting up to give him the seat.
“don’t try to be oversmart, ok take this bag put it on the seat and remain standing. Give INTRO.”
I gave INTRO for the first time and after every mistake I was asked to start all over again. After many tries when I got it correct, I was asked to repeat it in Hindi. I don’t know what fun it was but it sucked. After I finished with the INTRO, I was asked to sing a patriotic song. As it was 17th AUG 2005, there were patriotic songs everywhere. I sang “VANDE MATRAM”. I was soon asked to stop as it became unbearable for the seniors.
By this time we had reached college,(thank god).
“Aage se seniors ko ekdum seat de dio warna roz gana gana padega. Waise tu mera branch junior hai isliye zyada kuch nahi kia. But mind you don’t try being oversmart.”
This was how it all started and I met mohit sir one of my fav. Seniors. After that incident I came into the limelight. It became a routine to sing in the bus, shouting out loud “seniors are always right and juniors are always wrong”, running after friends with sheet holder and drafters yelling “dhishkiaauuu dhiskiaauuu”, abusing vehicles and trees, dancing on the tables and proposing senior ma’am. It was fun and quality time with seniors who never tried to be rude since we were always polite. The time flew fast and it was our fresher party. Again this was the best college event I ever had. Total masti and enjoyment. After the freshers everything seemed monotonous same classes, boring college bus, no breaking rules, and all places accessible. Sure I was missing my “ragging days”.
It was during those days that I made good friends seniors as well as peers, I enjoyed every moment of college life and realized that I am no more in the school. It helped me become mature and compatible with other people.
I feel ragging is an integral part of college life and it should me taken lightly and maturely. Of course the seniors should stay in limits and the juniors should remain obedient.