My Gas Cylinder

Confused looking at the title?? Wondering what would be so special about a gas cylinder??? Then you have to read on to truly understand what makes this post special.
Post marraige, I knew that I should be taking up more responsibilities and own many things myself. I should get prepared for leading a new life, in my style. As part of this, I have taken a few vows. The primary one being -- never never contribute to the biggest demon of this country ... CORRUPTION. Now you must have understood the context of this post. :) It all happened this way:
I've been trying to get a new gas connection since a couple of months. While Bharat Gas and HP have turned down my request straight away citing lack of supply as the reason, Indane Gas ppl have responded positively saying that new connections are issued in the first week of every month.
The first visit: This day, after looking at the iocl website, I took all the documents mentioned there. However, the distributor wasn't impressed. He asked me for a ration card which was n't mandated at all. I politely rejected his statement and said that it isn't a requirement. Prolly he didn't expect the reply and started screaming. I boldly said "give me your computer, i'll show you what's mandatory and what's not". Obviously he denied. Then, I said, if you don't accept my application I'll call up your head office and take the matter forward. Surprisingly, he gave his cell phone to me arrogantly. I shivered a little initially not knowing what to do if this fails. But I was stern on not wanting to offer any bribe which that RASCAL wanted. However, I took his phone and started dialing the number. Prolly he didnt expect that and finally he said... ruk ruk, give your proofs and a person will come to your house for inspection.
The second visit: The inspection was done to confirm that I do not hold a connection already. Once that was certified, I immediately went to their office. I was turned down saying .. "arre.. your inspection was just done. why are you in a hurry. meet me after 2 days"
The third visit: "why did you come at 2pm? new connections are given only from 9-1" . I thought "one day your hand/leg will break in front of me and then i'll fix up some muhurat and then take you to a doctor"
The fourth visit(at 10am):"the printer is not working today. if you want you can come after 2 days" to which i replied "this is the fourth time I am visiting you for a connection." He said, "that's okay come once more." This time, I lost my temper. But if I quarrel with him, I was sure that I was not going to get anything fruitful. Afterall, I have to visit him for refilling my cylinder in the future. I said "hope it would be the last time." But the angry man in me tempted me to dial up the head office. And there I go .. i should have recorded the conversation then :) i've told them all that has happened with me. They've heard all of it and accepted their problem and asked me to visit once more and it would be done.
The fifth visit(today):Gud news .. i got it done. Of course with a warning "u will get it only if you purchase a stove from us and you have to wait till your turn for a new connection arrives." I said "we'll see"
So, this is how it all happened. Now, on this last day of 2009, I want to end the year by publishing this and expressing all the SATISFACTION that I've got after this achievement. Things in this country aren't that worse. They are just bad. And it's a responsibility on all of the citizens of this country to not make it worse.
Many thanks to my colleagues for sharing all the frustration I had each time. :)
Finally, I wish all the readers a happy and a prosperous new year 2010. :-)

Random things about me

I was tagged by a fan to post 25 random things about me.
The rules being:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. If I tagged you, its because I want to know more about you.
So, here it goes..
1. I am a patriot.
2. If I get even a slightest feeling of someone trying to corrupt this country, I get totally irritated. Should I have combined both 1 and 2?? :D
3. I am a foodie. Like to try new new varieties in food.
4. I love being an optimist. Nothing in this world should make my day down. So, I like to derive something positive about whatever happens.
5. Movies that I like to watch an infinite number of times.. Swades, Iddaru, Dasvidaniya, some other old Telugu classics
6. I wish I become a politician atleast for a short time in life.
7. I want to visit all the 28 states in India atleast once
8. I love to tease my wife :) tease .. on a lighter note please.
9. I like giving surprises. Sometimes, they are flopped becos, I reveal it to atleast one person.. bad at keeping secrets :(
10. Like to read biographies/auto-biographies of gr8 ppl in this world.
11. My childhood dream was -- not an engineer, doctor, astronaut etc. etc.. it was that I should one day build a movie theater(atleast my in-laws should have one) :D. Love to watch movies a lottt.. One day I watched all the 4 shows(4 different movies of course) .. that was a record in my childhood.
12. Feel very badd when I see my friends leave India.. of course they go for their own reasons.
13. Don't really like the company of ppl whose only aim in life is to earn money.
14. Like long-drives .. only if someone else is in the driving seat.
15. Wish there is a concert where Lata Mangeshkar and AR Rahman, both are on stage. I would certainly attend it. I think my list is becoming tooo random.
16. Similarly, wish Abdul Kalam, Jayaprakash Narayan, Kiran Bedi are together on stage discussing about something.. would certainly attend it. No .. i won't club both of these together :D
17. These days, I somehow started liking Sonia Gandhi's leadership a lottt.. love to be a similar personality.. ability to lead a BIGGGG party, being tough, being a good decision maker, powerful etc. (I am striking this out after seeing all that's happening with Congress Govt.)
18. Love to teach students. There aren't really good faculty in most Engg. colleges these days. Wish to fill the gap atleast part time.
19. Used to solve puzzles a lot ... but now, nooo time :-((
20. I wished I could have proposed to one girl(before my marraige please). I could have done that, only if she was't 3 years elder to me, did not have a boy friend with whom her marraige was scheduled to happen in a month at the time I decided to propose. :(
21. Like playing cricket, only when no one bowls me out.
22. Love to learn new things in technology
23. Wish I could have atleast one patent on my name. I love finding out new thigns.
24. Have a good business idea in mind. Would like to pursue it once I have enuf money. This is one of the goals that I have in my life.
25. Wish I could settle in my hometown Vizag in the near future. After a long day's work, it gives me gr8 happiness to drive all my family to the beach, play something in the sands and then have a sound sleeep.
Yeppp.... I've completed my list.
And I would like to pass the baton to Zana, Uday Shankar, Chakri, Ajoy, Naveen, Sheetal, Priyanka, Nandy, Uchint, Ravi Phanendra, Rammohan, Naiem, Pradeep, Sudha, Pavan, Chetana and Navdeep

A smiling story :-)

Today it so happened ...
I pressed the lift button .. and after waiting for a while the lift has come ..
It was almost full.. in the sense that .. if a person inside can move a litttttle, there's room for one more person.
Now, mee waiting outside the lift, with my eyes gave a signal to one of the person inside to move.
That guy, in his own world, did not catch my signal.
I was surprised to see that a girl(can definitely be rated 4/5) gave a similar signal to that guy to move.
But he didn't quite get it.
Then, the girl and me had our first looks towards each other ...... :)))
There was a litttttttttle smile on each of our faces signalling helplessness.
U should note that until now .. there were no words at all. I know this is obvious .. but made it explicit for someone whose IQ levels are low :DD
Ok .. next part of the story now.
As we both were giving the helplessness smile to each other, the lift door started closing.
It got closed 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% and thudddddddd 100%. It's fully closed.
All this while, we were just staring at each other.
And now meeee took the stairs and went down.
And there she is coming out of the lift at the ground floor. This time we had a full fledged smile and we both left office :-)

Independence Day 2008 - At School

I had a wonderful experience in my life for this year’s Independence Day. I wanted to do something different and kept on thinking what to do since a few weeks.

And then I finally got an idea. Actually, I was planning to do this for the last 4 years – since the time I left Vizag and shifted to Hyderabad. But then I couldn’t do it for some reason or the other. Finally, I made it this time. Lemme not hold it anymore. The idea was simple – Why not go back to school and savor those good old moments? Fantastic right.. So this is how it happened.

I headed back to Vizag on the 14^th evening. Reached Vizag early 15^th at around 6:00 AM. All that I had in my mind was that I shouldn’t go home and start sleeping J .. else I am quite sure that I’ll miss it for the 4^th consecutive time. As planned, I just passed time and asked my Dad to drop me at school so that I’ll be there on time. We usually have flag hoisting by a guest, an inspiring speech by the Principal, march past, few cultural activities etc. on this day. When I started, I figured out that the camera batteries aren’t fully charged. How stupid of mee. Then my dad took all the pains of stopping at each store on the way that was open early in the morning – spencers, more, reliance none of them had the required batteries. Finally I gave up hope about the photographs and with a dull mood, we started. This feeling didn’t last longer, once I had a glimpse of the school gate, all the sadness has gone and a smallll smile has come automatically.

Once I entered the school, after close to 12 years now, I realized that nothing has changed. It was all the same except that it was painted a little bit here and there. Library, laboratory, class rooms, the teachers, peon nothing has changed. I was there at the assembly area and I was a little disappointed that I missed the flag hoisting, but then, I just forgot about it and started enjoying the programs that started later. As the programs were going on my eyes started searching all around the ground for all the teachers whom I wanted to meet. As I could see one after the other, my happiness kept on increasing. Two teachers Ms. Josephine Clements and Joseph Sir recognized me, though not my name and there were no bounds to my happiness. For the rest, I had to introduce that I was their student and they taught me this subject. They felt very happy after knowing about my whereabouts. One teacher also showed me to her present students and said .. “Look children, Amruth is my student. He listened to me in 3^rd standard and he flourished in life. Do you also want to become like this?” And that’s all .. no more words to express this feeling. I was glad to know that each of them had close to 25, 30 years of experience in the same school. There was one disappointment though -- A few teachers, especially my favorite teacher Ms. Daisy whom I thought I would meet, left the school. She was one person whom I thought would definitely recognize me even after these many years. She’s my Maths teacher.

As I was passing through all the corridors of the school, I could recollect some sweet and funny things during my childhood.

• This is my favorite one. My cousin and me, both good at maths used to count the number of “Good”’s Ms.Daisy used to write in our homework book. We used to count Good as 1, Very Good as 2 and so on. Whoever gets the maximum count would win at the end of the year.
• There used to be a teacher in our school. This gray haired lady used to SMOKE in the school. She’s an Anglo Indian. We small kids used to gossip a lottt abt her. Whenever one found her in the staff room smoking, he used to rush immediately to the class room and inform all of us – with a great sense of achievement. And all of us like big heroes used to pass the staff room or go in and ask some stupid doubt to another teacher so that no one would understand our intent. All this just to see how can she smoke.
• There were 4 houses in our school – Gandhi, Nehru, Shastri and Kennedy. I was in the Gandhi house. The captains and vice captains are chosen based on elections in which students from class 4 and above would participate. Until 6^th I think, I just voted based on how good the name of the contestant was. In 9^th I contested myself. In every election, the contestants used to distribute chocolates, note book stickers and used to ask for votes. But I thought that was incorrect and did not give any such stuff. I remember that I got around 5 votes in total. The school’s total strength was close to 2000 students I think. Of the 5, two votes were mine and my cousin’s. I am 100% sure. I just thought of who the other 3 were J
• I remember doing 2 projects at school “Volcanoes and Earthquakes” in Geography and “South Indian Temples” in History. For this, we struggled like anything. There was no Google at that time right.. so .. went to libraries and collected materials from news papers, searched news papers, brouchers and wat not, to make each of the projects 80 pages atleast. At the end, when we felt that we didn’t have enough number of photographs, we just used any picture – be it a small accident or a collapsed building – and wrote it to be because of some earthquake that happened in some year at some place. As it is the teacher wouldn’t definitely go through each and every page of all the 60+ students’ projects right J
• It was the first time in Fourth standard that we played Football in the PT(sports) period. The first time we had this, all of us counted the number of times we kicked the ball rather than the number of times we scored a goal. This used to be a lot fun. This continued for a few weeks also. J
• We had a Basket ball court as well in the school. More than basket ball, we used to play on the border lines that are drawn in that court. So, one can run only on those lines and chase any other guy. This was the game.
• In Ninth standard I think, dissections in Biology lab have started. That was the first time all the students(veggies, non veggies no one was spared) were given one fish and asked to cut it exactly the same way the teacher did. With that stinking smell and students shouting all the time, we finally did it.
• We used to speak a lot in Telugu in our school. To avoid that the teachers have come up with a card system. There used to be one card with “Do not speak in telugu” written on it. Whoever spoke in Telugu had it with them. Once he sees another guy speaking in telugu, he can pass it on to him. The person with whom it was at the end of the day will have to stay back till 6PM in the school or pay 5Rs. as fine. The rest should pay a fine of 50paise. We used to get dead scared once the card was with us. Luckily, I never had to stay late in the school.
• The second standard teacher, I still remember had a watch in her locket. She was the one who had actually taught me how to hold a pencil and have a good hand writing.
• The last hour every Friday was a CA(Cultural activities) class where everyone is supposed to do some activity or the other. I had a reasonably good fame as a singer at that age itself, I think.

I just hope that you would have already started thinking about your golden childhood days.

Godavari Trip

"A big thanks for realizing this unmatched outing, amidst our busy, digitally cocooned A/C lifestyle reminding us that we are humans and very well part of nature" is how one of our crew members has described it.
"23" of us have started the journey from Secunderabad. As usual, I started roaming in the train and met an old friend of mine unexpectedly. Had a chit chat with her for some time (she is married now ;-) so stop ur speculations). Felt very happy meeting her after sooo long. Thats why I always feel the train journeys are almost like a mini orkut.
Since all our tickets were booked at different times, we were scattered in the train. 6 of us in one compartment have started playing cards. That game was an interesting one involving a lot of speak-out. We got excited and started shouting. All of a sudden, the police came and gave us a warning "if this repeats again, first I will ask you all to get down in the next station and only then I will speak with you all. If you want you can call up any big shot and inform him." We stopped cards and slept off immediately.
The next morning, we reached RJY and then started off to Pattiseema, 25 kms away from the city. The bus was good. We were informed that at Pattiseema, we would be given "Raju gari Bungalow" for refreshing. So, I was under heavy expectations that it would be some sort of an old palace. After we reached there, to my surprise, that was a small house, with just 2/3 rooms and very few restrooms. So, it took more than 2 hours for all of us to get ready. Finally, our journey started. Many of us are new to each other. So, we started off with an introductory session and then the songs session started. Unfortunately, I had to start and I sang "Har gadi.. " in
Kal Ho Na Ho. Then, we played Anthakshari, Bluff, Housie etc. etc. We've reached Gandi Pochamma temple where they showed us places where many telugu movies like Trisulam, Bangaru Bullodu, Janaki Ramudu etc. where shot. Then we reached Devipatnam where we picked up delicious lunch and had it on the boat. After that, we saw Papikondalu and Perantalapalli where we saw a small waterfall. Next, we went to Kolluru, a place on the riverside of Godavari river, which I can never forget in life. Here are a few bamboo huts on the sand in which we stayed. We had a camp fire also at this place. The dinner was tooooooo good. In the night, we played musical chairs, passing the box, Mafia. This Mafia is one game to which ppl got addicted a lottttt. Believe me, we discussed what happened in the game even yesterday when we were having lunch. It was almost midnight when we slept. Early next morning, we walked for ~2kms where we had bath. Here is were I hurt my leg while playing in the water :-(( Later we played volleyball for sometime and then started our way back. Late in the evening we saw Mahanandi temple and then reached RJY. During the entire trip, there was no cell phone coverage. So, no disturbance at allllll. :-D

Journey to BITS

Last week, I had gone for my MS project submission at BITS, Pilani. After the project submission, I took a tour to see a few places around.
In short this is how the tour happened:
I started of to Delhi on Tuesday. From there, I took a bus and reached Pilani at night. Had my viva on Wednesday afternoon and after that I roamed around BITS. Thursday, I started back to Delhi and reached ther in the evening. Friday, Saturday I took a tour to Jaipur, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Mathura(called as the Golden Triangle). Did some shopping at Delhi on Sunday and reached Hyd. Sunday night. And now I am in office :-)

This time for a change, I am just writing down only the best moments @ BITS. And here they are:
A wowwww feeling when Mr. Yashwardhan Sharma, the person who took my viva said "Good work. Thanks for the presentation" indicating that my viva is done and I can get out now :-)) No more examinations noww...(with a hope that I will pass in the project).
Dean Natarajan Sir and Director Raman Sir said in the orientation session "all we need from you is not donation, we just need you to inform your companies what a BITS student is and what he can achieve. Ask them to recruit our students" wahh... kyaa baat hai. This shows how dedicated they are in their professions. They dont need any money... all they need is a bright life for their students... what an unselfish desire. I regret for not doing my bachelors from a premium institute like BITS.
"Is there any discrimination b/w an on campus and a distance learning programme in BITS?", a student asked. Prof. Natarajan said "there are students on campus who sleep even now(the time was around 11AM) iun their hostel rooms. They hardly attend the classes and exams. Are they not distance learners??" The hall burst into laughter. The Prof. continued .. "It is not the location which matters to BITS, it is the amount of study mnade and fyi the syllabus for on campus and off campus is one and the same."
Had a wonderful cup of coffeee at the BITS hostel after my viva is complete and then started roaming around BITS in the evening with K.Shekhar's songs turned on in my iPod. Will upload the photos soon. Wondering who this Shekhar iss??? ade .. mana Shekhar Kammula... loaded Anand, Godavari and Happy Days songs before leaving. :-DD
Thats all for now. Will be back with the photos.

First day back in Hyderabad office

My first day at office started late at around 11AM. Got up late, unpacked luggage etc. and then started to office in a drowsy moood. Everyone was surprised to see mee that day... no one knew that I was coming back. And ppl ran to my cube to grab the chocolates. Even before i could send out a mail to my group, half of them were over.
I settled down after a while and started looking at my mails. I found that there is an ops level meeting scheduled that evening where we get to know about all the updates about our projects. It's almost lunch time when I finished checking my mails. This time, for a change, I had lunch with all the Chicago ppl now here in Hyderabad. I stood in line for taking the lunch coupon. To my surprise, I took out my Motorola AMEX credit card and gave it to the caterer. Immediately I realised that I was soooo stupidddd giving that in Hyderabad. Then, I quickly kept it inside and gave him cash. :-DDD I got used to swiping card sooo much.
Jet lag, heavy lunch and then what else ??? took a small nap in my cube. After chatting a little, finally the time has arrived for the meeting. This time I was a little nervous. Usually in this meeting, the head of our ops, Nirmala, announces BRAVO awards for extraordinary contributors. I was waiting for one such since 3 years in Moto. Never got it till now :-( I was hoping that my name is called atleast this time. The meeting started with the updates on whats going on @ Moto. After waiting with a lot of patience, finally the awards part has come. Our project was announced. Nirmala started reading out names. My heart beat doubled. tension ... tension .. tension ... I was patiently waiting ... the last name was called and it was not mine. :'( Felt very depressed. And then she said ... "wait wait.. there is one more name .. sorry for missing itt..." heart beat tripled now ... The name was finally called and it was not mine again :'((((( Was totally upset.
And then, she finally said that these are team awards for successful projects. Now follow the awards for individuals who've contributed significantly to the projects. The names started again. In a depressed mood, I was listening partially. And then she said ... "Aaaamruthhhh Raaaaaajjjj" ... was shocked to hear that. Stood up and walked over. I stood there and my manager started praising me over there. "Raj has done a wonderful job in the Network Addressbook project, ramped up quickly... blah blah blah..." Tears started in my eyes... was able to control them though. He was praising me in front of the ops head and in front of a huuge gathering. Finally a shake hand and thank you from Nirmala made mee flyy. I went back to my seat and started staring at the certificate. Felt really really happy. Finally, after 3 long years, the sweet little BRAVO award was announced for mee too.