itsankur-blog

[itsankur-blog]

So much for being a star! on Flickr.

[itsankur-blog]

An initiative worth mentioning

I am quite a frequent customer at Costa's Coffee, esp of the store in the Great India place, Noida. Some time back, I noticed that they have hired some employees who cannot speak (as in speech impaired). I personally appreciated the initiative and gesture of people at Costa's India after seeing that. I thought at that moment, that I should write about it so that more and more people know about this.

There must be many such organizations in India who promote and facilitate employment for physically challenged people, but this was the first case I ever witnessed in India. This means a lot to the people who took pains to override the physical limitations and trained themselves to try to be at par with everyone else. We must have read or heard about such facilitation, watched movies and then appreciated and/or where touched by specific instances, but little gets done in the real world to promote employment for speech and hearing impaired people in the regular sector.

Last Saturday, I was with Sharad at Costa's again and decided to talk to one of the store managers. We were sipping our iced coffee and keeping a watchful eye at the proceedings in the store. I noticed the two employees leaving the store, who had served me before and who were speech impaired. After some time, when the store was a lil easy on customer inflow, I raised my hand for the manager. When he came, he was for sure waiting for me to complain about something. It was evident from his watchful face and his denial to my offer of pulling a chair and sitting down. I told him that we are regular customers and we noted that they have employed some speech impaired (and probably hearing impaired) people. He came at ease and answered in affirmative.

Ankur: So, tell me about this initiative, is it specific to this particular location or is it all-stores wide?

Naresh: This has been launched by our franchise, which operates all Costa's locations.

Ankur: That is Devyani International, right?

Naresh: Yes!

Ankur: So, how did this start?

Naresh: Not sure, maybe someone pressed the franchise to employ them

Ankur: No, it cannot be like that. I think may be someone in the management, felt a need for getting involved in such an initiative by promoting and facilitating employment for speech and hearing impaired people.

Naresh: Yes, may be something like that happened.

Ankur: So, is there any number specified for every store?

Naresh: Yes, every store has to have at least 2 employees

Ankur: I just saw them leaving the store. Was it the end for their shift?

Naresh: No, they have went to another location of ours, which is in Spice Mall, Sec 25

Ankur: Oh ok!

Naresh: We have been trained in basics of sign language so we can communicate easily with them

Ankur: Has it been any difficult for you or others?

Naresh: No, we have had no issues. And they are very good workers. One of them, Mohit, is very good at his work. It's good that they got a chance to work here. These jobs do not demand someone who can speak. We can get our work done without speaking. Maybe in sales, they cannot be of value, but here they sure can do what is needed out of their job

Ankur: Yes, I agree with you.

Ankur: So, is there any other location around here where you have other such workers?

Naresh: Yes, we have a store in Green Park, Delhi. That store has all employees who are speech impaired. The store manager there is Devashish, who knows sign language, and he is the one who trained us in that.

Ankur: That's good.

After this conversation, I thanked him and he left. Sharad wanted to leave for Green Park to check out that store. I was being lazy and decided against that.

I really hope that more and more companies/store owners come forward and open avenues for employment, where ever possible, for physically challenged people.

[itsankur-blog]

Tata DoCoMo Stand-up comedy ads

There has to be a forum or channel or anything which listens to complaints against advertising in India. I have a faint memory of such an organization where you can report advertisements, which are giving false information of any kind. What I am looking ahead to is, an avenue where we can report an advertisement with the reasons of - "sheer mental torture, absolute lack of creativity, and lack of everything but a big show of idiocy". A case in point is recent Tata DoCoMo stand-up comedy ads, featuring Ranbir Kapoor.

Not, don't take it against me, but my brain fails to process anything related to creativity or for that matter, fun, when Ranbir tries to tell, what good it could have been, if we were lions - we would have been spared the deliberations over deciding dishes over dinner, and simply could have killed a zebra and the family could have devoured the animal together. As a befitting (to the entire insane lion-zebra story) end-note, he says that "if the family needs to keep together, get a family plan".

I'll say **** you that silliness. Please can someone stop those ads from airing and torturing us more!

[itsankur-blog]

Shopping spree

I went on a shopping spree last night, on Sunday. It was not about clothes, shoes or like. It was all about books.

I planned to buy 2-3 books for reading in May and ended up buying 12 instead on my "to-buy" list.

Here's the names of the ones, I remember I bought:

1. The Kite Runner

2. A Thousand Splendid Suns

3. Tuesdays with Morrie

4. Breakfast at Tiffany's

5. Lord of the Flies

6. The Memory Keepers Daughter

7. Jane Eyre

8. The Great Gatsby

9. The White Tiger

10. A clockwork Orange

[itsankur-blog]

Friday

Had an awesome Friday night, with Ankit, Ashish, Kunal, Manas, Nikhil, Sandeep and Sharad at The Sports Bar, TGIP, Noida.

I do not drink as such, but I have become kind of occasional drinker, limiting myself to one beer. Nevertheless, that day, I went for a Carlsberg and a classic margarita :) just to give in to the endless requests by others for another drink.

The environment inside is awesome, good loud music, a giant screen with some sports going on (and that's why sports bar ;) ). The ambiance is really cool.

I also gave pool a try, and then threw some darts, with one going for 70 points and finally tried my hands with basketball with 4/5 score (basket/attempts) :D

Loved the Friday night

[itsankur-blog]

Sat...Arrr...Day...Loved...It

After a long time, Yesterday, yes it was Saturday just for records, had a great day. Had lunch alone in GIP, then met a friend at GIP. Hanged with him and then headed to Abhinandan's place for a trip to Dilli Haat with Abhinandan and Sharad. 

Rode Delhi Metro till Barakhamba road and then took an auto to Dilli Haat. The auto wallla got ready to go by meter but pulled his trick by asking us to tell him the way! He told that he will take 80 bucks if we don't use meter and in that case that idiot knew the way! What choice we had instead of agreeing to pay 80 bucks.

I had my camera gear with me for the second time in India and for the first time in NCR. We had a great time in Dilli haat, two more friends joined there. Met Amit Sehgal and his friends there. Savored Dimsums at Arunachal Pradesh's stall (Momo Mia). Rohit told of a nice way to eating Dimsums by immersing them in the kinda soup provided to us. I would def recommend you to try that next time - immerse the dimsum in that soup for 30-45 seconds and then transport that directly in one go into your mouth. Juicy burst :)

Abhi got a wooden sandook, on which he was doting for quite some time. It's an awesome looking piece with great detail of work on the box. Hope to post the pic sometime soon.

Headed back to Abhi's place, got beers on the way. Drank, talked, laughed. Then left at around 11 pm for dinner. Headed to search Costa's in Atta, failed to locate it, as it is no longer in Atta. Settled for Barista. Entered the shop at midnight and then had coffee.

Back at home, conversations start and continue till 5 AM in the morning, at which I decided that I should hit the bed now.

Now that's what's called an awesome weekend or for that matter an awesome day!

[itsankur-blog]

Good Friday

Yeah, today is Good Friday and a restricted holiday at my place of work. I thought once about taking a leave, but then decided against it, as I would have had nothing to do at my flat, other than watching tv and maybe dozing off. At least, the office keeps me glued to the web for random stuff.

One of the wasted days, when there's nothing to work. What's pity is that, I don't even feel like applying my brain to something else, which can be useful for my own sake - something like reading something good on web, trying my hands with some tool/technology I wanted to learn for quite some time or simply spending time reading some nice technical article/blog related to my line of work. 

I have noticed that, the zeal is fading away from inside. Most of the times, when I kill time doing almost nothing, later I feel that I should have done that or that. But, when it actually comes to doing something, I simply deny to so anything apart from random stuff, which amounts to nothing but simply wasting time.

[itsankur-blog]

Change

Finally, all of a sudden, I was relieved of my last role and assigned a new project, which is interesting and has a lot of scope to learn and unlearn :)

Looking forward to it...

[itsankur-blog]

Home...It is

For the first time, since I started working, I am enjoying a 2 week vacation at a stretch. It always feels good to be back at home - to meet mom and dad, to relish the delicacies, to spend time doing nothing else, but rest and rest some more.

It's pity that I don't get to visit home that often. It's always twice every year - Holi and Diwali. And sometimes, a random quick trip anytime.

I always make sure that, I have a handful of books with me when I reach home and I do make sure that I read as much as I can. I keep myself away from web -sometimes to test my will power against my obsessions and sometimes just to stay away from the clutter of web. 

Last time when I was here, I even finished a hindi book (my mom is an avid reader of hindi literature) - Joojh by Anand Yadav.

All in all, this vacation was much needed, to refresh my mind from all the shit which was flying around at work, to get away from some people I so much despise!

Happy Holi everyone back in India...

[itsankur-blog]

Language

As far as I can remember, I was always fascinated by two languages - German and French. For some unknown reasons, I wanted to be able to read, speak and understand both of these, since my school days. When I think back and think over it, and try to figure out the reason for my fascination, I think, may be in part, the love for German and French was triggered by my desire of visiting these countries. That may have been the reason. Nonetheless, I cannot be sure of that.

Last year, a friend of mine told me about a great language learning site, Livemocha. It's a great site for those like me, who want to learn a language, part for fun and part of being able to do basic communication when they actually visit the countries.

I started with a zeal and started learning Spanish (since I was in US for quite a long time, I wanted to learn this), but that zeal died down after 2 months! Everyday, I think of starting it off again, but I fail to do so, due to my hectic work schedules.

I hope and wish that someday, I will be able to read, speak and understand these languages...

[itsankur-blog]

This is inside Valley of Fire state park, NV. This park is an hour away from Las Vegas. I was with Ashish, and we were returning after seeing the petroglyph inside the park, when this biker caught my attention. I just stopped my card and used my point and shoot to capture this. This picture, as per me, captures the idyllic moments we have at times. 

[itsankur-blog]

Child and the knife

Was chatting with a friend last night, she knows my history, I mean about the wreck of my personal life. Like my good friends, she also asked me to forget her completely, get out of the mess I have created around myself. I told her that I keep thinking about her most of the time, to be very honest. I feel like cheated, which is true. I told her how I feel that God never listens to me on this front, and then she asked me a question

She: "If a child asks for a knife, would you give it to him/her?"

I:  "No, I would not."

She: "That's why God never let you have her"

I am not a big fan of this philosophy, but this take on that philosophy, really took me in completely! I mean, I was never able to actually appreciate or feel the idea behind the anecdotes on this subject, but I liked it.

[itsankur-blog]

South Beach, Miami, FL

[itsankur-blog]

Pronunciation

Way back in school, when I was in fourth grade, I had my first interaction with computers. That was 1993, I guess. Our computers teacher was a guy entire class was afraid of. Reason being, he used to beat. Yeah, it was not uncommon back in India to get a beating from a teacher. More on that in a separate post.

The one thing students often got a beating on was the pronunciation of "data". He told us that it is "de-ta" and not "daa-ta". I was lucky enough to imbibe that in my mind on first day. Many were not. And so it was not uncommon in his class, to see people getting slapped. 

Many years later, being in the IT industry, I come across many folks who say "daa-ta" and every time I flash back to my fourth grade :) 

[itsankur-blog]

Kristen

It's not that I don't like Kristen Stewart. I do. Nevertheless, in a different way. She can be sexy in her own unique way. But, the one thing which leads me to rate Emma Watson above her, when it comes to heroines of books, is the expressionless face of Kristen. You cannot fight over this, Kristen has been the same expressionless Bella Swan in all movies of Twilight series so far. And after seeing the recently released picture from Breaking Dawn part I, she proves that even intimate scenes cannot ask of an expression from her! If you don't believe me, why not see this.

When Kristen was on Jay Leno show, she had her charm and I love her there. But, for some unknown reason, she never ever shows expression on screen! I will not buy the argument that the movie demands that stone cold expression from her! Does the movie needs her stone cold face in a sex scene?

[itsankur-blog]

vogue:

Kristen Stewart Photographed for the February Issue of Vogue by Mario Testino

[itsankur-blog]

Ideas behind StuxNet

This morning, I read an article on Wired that some reports are now indeed relating some US national lab helping Israel in creating that deadly StuxNet virus, which may I say is so far, the Godfather of viruses (not in the sense that it was the first one, but it was the most deadly one).

Even since reports came out about discovery of that virus, there was speculation that US might have been involved with this. No wonder, media reports are now connecting specific government labs to this incident.

When the first reports were published in the media about StuxNet, just reading about the whole thing gave me goosebumps (in a positive sense). I felt so good that I took computer security and cryptography courses back in college. It all made such an interesting read. There is not an iota of doubt in my mind that this was work product of some super intelligent minds - and cannot have been created by a group of individuals without any backing of some high tech lab. Nevertheless, I would not like to comment on who was behind it, since we would never know, and I do not want to speculate. Nevertheless, whoever it was, they did what they wanted to. 

I am really waiting for a book and movie to come on this :)