Recollection of three incidents... one triggering the next :)

(1) - Better change to IT industry sir...

I had to rush to attend a talk. I crossed the road and wave at a couple of auto rickshaws before this auto driver stops. He seemed to know the particular auditorium and I hopped into it. The auto snaked it way through the Bangalore city traffic encountering traffic signals every now and then. In one such long red-signal, the driver started talking to me.

Are you basically from Karnataka sir?
- nopes, not really. I am from Tamil Nadu.
Oh, then you speak better kannada...good.
- actually I have lived here for close to five years.
hmmm, so what do you work on sir?
- well, I am an engineer, working on electronics.
oh, is it. My son also got into Bharat Electronics and will be into software. Why dont you also try to change into IT sir?
- why so?
If you are ten years experienced in SW, you can earn little less than a lakh rupees per month. You cannot be in any other industry
- hmmm yes, you are true, but I like it.
Its not what you like sir, its which work gets you the max money.
- ok sir, I will try.

I get down and pay the fare. Walking back from the auditorium after the talk, I was pondering on what the auto driver was telling couple of hours ago, that I remembered my communicator chat conversations with a freshman @ HCL and he was in fact asking me some difficult questions

(2) Pay, Onsite, Offers...

That I am into this electronics HW field now, what should I learn on?
- Its mostly applying what you have studied in college, you have to go understand the higher perspective on the go...
Oh, fine fine, can you suggest me any books?
- Read the 'High Speed - Black Magic' book. (In fact many of us have kept the book down after reading few pages).
Tell me which field in better - HW, Firmware or software applications?
- In terms of ?
In terms of pay, onsite and of course job opportunities.
- All are good.
You are in this field for six years, how much do you earn?
(I close the communicator chat - In fact my father asked me this only once in all this six years)

(3) Return paths can be anyway,

My hands feel the thick engravings of a fresh one-hundred rupee note. With a ruffling sound, I take the note from my wallet and paid my dinner bill. Smiling at Gandhi back, I was forced to recollect this young man with a smiling face whom I interviewed. It was my first experience of interviewing people for electronics HW job. The whole day, I was meeting people mostly from the power electronics background, a field that I had no hands-on experience. I was literally tired after 3-4 hours of this. Lastly came this resume came and came this guy. He was one year elder to me working in Bangalore for a French company. He was good in explaining the projects. Good.
Then came the time when I saw some specific eda tool in his resume which he claimed he knew. Probing a little in I figured out he has not worked in the tool at all...ok fine, he might have been good in analysing the results. So one final question on high-speed current return path and the reply left me completely aghast. I felt like kicking that guy. Politely I had to reject this candidate.

By first incident, I was surprised by the extent of brainwashing that IT has done to the society. By the second incident, I felt how much our system of education has trained people to focus on money alone. The third incident I felt how much our IT and education system combined has left people totally waste.

We all want to earn a better living and never yearn for one !!!

...of tapes, reels and spools...and of zeroes and ones...

Twenty years ago, having a tape-player / recorder at home was very rare. I still remember my early childhood days when we had a JVC player and a dozen cassettes. We still have 5-6 of those tapes (26th Grammy, 30th Grammy, two 90-min selectively recorded collection in Tamil and Hindi, Michael Jackson's thriller and one English rock) and hearing to them is a classical experience which any digital surround system cannot provide.

Anything materialistic in this world should wear off with time and so is our aging process and anything that is opposite to this rule is not relished to its core. Had we been youth all sixty-seventy years, life would be boring isn't it? Those that do not wear with time cannot have an emotional quotient attached to them: we all say 'sweet sixteen' as those days cannot be re-lived.

We are experience the digital-wave which empowers us to store huge chunks of data and provide easy and efficient access to them. In this era, we are surrounded by a wild stream of information that forces us to ignore and not to appreciate the real content. In fact, this wild data is hazardous. The computer monitor is ever bright, the FM stations are vibe with energy round the clock, the internet lines are buzzing with data streams but we should not forget that it is hazardous if we enslave ourselves to these.

It rained...

A sudden drop in the temperature this morning, I woke up at 4.00 am to a mild breathlessness in me. I thought of those two people whom I knew only by their names. My friend also woke up around that time hearing to my wheeze. He had the same thought running in his mind too. Surrounded by a pod of grave silence, our minds were wide awake with a cacophony of thoughts.

Suddenly the clouds rained with a roar, drenching the dew damp roads…no thunder, no lightning, it just rained its soul onto the earth. It rained its way into the gravity of the silence, roaring into our thoughts, shattering them and created a void within.

The rain not only penetrated the soil, it penetrated into me and restructured my priorities, my view of life and my love for it. Like a tap closing, the rains stopped in twenty minutes. An hour later the sun rays pierced and made itself felt through the fog. I know for sure that the Sun will shine…shine for me, my friend, and those two never met acquaintances.

Slow and steady...is more dangerous in this case!!!

I was a middle-school grader when I started hating medicine. My doctor had prescribed a yellow colored pill that use to take the life out of me every time I took it to my mouth: it smelled like hell. After that time, I never encountered that yellow-colored item in my life.Ten years had passed when I came out of house to start my career. From then on every time when I use to come to Bangalore from Coimbatore, I would exactly wake-up to an exact situation experienced decades ago.This was not in my dreams...

It is reality: I wake up when the bus crosses the Bio-con factory area on the outskirts of Bangalore. The whole atmosphere in the area is filled with pungent medicinal smell that poses a severe health hazard. This seems a very small issue when compared to the recent swine-flu epidemic, but this is slow and lethargic.

Swine flu is nature's adjusting technique, but the health hazard posed by irresponsible discharge of effluents from the pharma industry is whose adjusting technique?

Right ecosystem nurtures…

My mom gave a plant to me 18 months ago saying ‘Let this plant divert you from the ever bright computer screen and work pressure to the reality of life’. The plant came all the way from Coimbatore to Bangalore adorned with only five leaves. Now the plant has around two dozen leaves! One more lemon seed found its way from my grandma’s backyard three months ago… Just after a cuppa lemon tea, I put the seeds in the pot and it got buried under the thick layer of humus on the top layer. We were closed for the weekend following May-1 for a span of four days. I sprinkled some water and bid good bye to my plant family comprising this indoor plant and a money-plant plus a croton. Post long weekend, yesterday, I noticed a centimeter long shoot from the edge of the pot. The lemon seeds have germinated. I like the way they have grown; straight pointing to the sky…
My plant family has one more member to its group… :)

My new baby

I am in race for my new baby....I mean a new board that I have started designing. It is a real thrilling experience. It is a digital video board, lot of challenges :)
20 weeks from now she will be ready to be born...
After all Boards and babies are the same...you design them and you care for them.

Grown out of junk stationery

Too bored in the company…Suddenly an idea
Why shouldn't I clear all the crap in my draw? Nice thought.
Piles of papers, data sheets, magazines, application notes and white papers…Ooof… I am tired segregating them. Finally it is done and I ended up with paper clips.
I played with them and now they adore my cubicle walls
Looking at them, I feel them as odd creatures which have suddenly grown from junk.

In an effort to save my beloved

Today was the hectic day.
Tring tring: A phone call conveying that the electronic board is hung.
In-situ explanation by the team member: “I heard a spark and I turned off the system”
Immediate conclusion: Power – Ground short
I suspected capacitor damage surge current / ESD
I wanted to restore the small cute baby to life: I de-soldered the capacitors.
Hope this would bring her back to life.
Nope :o(
Still EEPROM was in system: It was healthy
My cute girl’s processor is gone.
Indeed very sad to admit that she was not given the basic ESD care.
Hope this is the first and last of such errors.

Reminiscing sweet memories

I am hearing to the song clips that used to be telecasted in Doordarshan (The Govt owned TV channel in India) when we were young. The desh raag, Mile sur mera tumhara and many more... These have switched on the play button of the sweet memoir video :) Not only me, almost all my friends feel the same. It would have been more nice if I had got the video clips of the same

Life: fast forwarded...

Waking at 8:10 today morning, the entire life was fast forwarded ; The entire 1 hour starting from 7:15 to 8:15 was compressed in just 15 minutes. I was in the bus stop at 8:30. Though I missed my bus (route-20), I boarded another bus which came next. Really fast that I could not believe myself when I felt that I was going to office at 8:30

Amusing human psychology - 1

There are people who would be friend only if you praise them…I am bewildered by such people. Since because a person has wealth, you can’t bend yourselves to their wishes or agree to what they say… this is another category of people which I am seeing right now in front of my eyes. Really amusing human psychology right! These people would do anything to show off their importance. You need to be careful with such people.