July 16th, 2009. The last time I posted. About 5 months ago. I could make excuses and say I was busy, had a lot of work, and what not, but I know that’s not the case. Been a roller-coaster of a ride since July, a ride which has redefined the way I look at life. I stick with my policy of not discussing personal life on this blog, but hey guys, I’m back. Or something like that.

Its hard to believe three months have passed by since I last posted. Been stuck with work, and there’s been a awful lot of progress on that front. An eventful three months it has been! .

Spent a month and a half in the US on a company project in April-May 2009, and quite a a lot happened on the tech front, revolving around the US trip. Here is a chronological account of what transpired on the tech front.

I was pondering over buying a music player, that could have a backup of my music collection. Thought about the Creative Zen Vision, and even the Ipod, momentarily, but then had a brainwave. I really liked the Nokia 5800 for its music capabilities, and for the screen. The money I would invest in a standalone MP3 player would be better invested in a device that has GPS + Video + Audio + Internet connectvity + a touch screen, all for around Rs.5000 lesser than an Ipod Touch. True, I’d lose out on disk capacity, but then the prices of memory cards are falling like mad. Keeping this in mind, the Nokia 5800 was duly purchased, before I flew off to the States.

I was casually looking up Amazon one day, when I came across a Western Digital 2.5″ 400GB external HDD on offer, for $70 only. Needless to say, it was purchased. With that, my storage has finally exceeded 1TB.

The latest addition to my computing arsenal is an IBM (Lenovo?) Thinkpad T400, which technically is not owned by me, but by my company. Nevertheless, work now happens on the Thinkpad T400, with the Dell XPS primarily used only on weekends, and is a strictly personal laptop now.

Windows 7 has been preordered, the $50 and all, so I’m really looking forward to the October 22nd, and cannot wait to get there.

June 14th happened to be my birthday, and all I had was my ‘trusty’ Nokia 5800 for taking pictures. Turned out crappy. Very crappy. I really rued not carrying my Olympus FE-20, which would have for sure given me good pics. A couple of weeks later, the Nokia 5800 was duly exchanged with my brother for his Nokia N82, and that seems to have done the trick. I’m back on a top-notch camera phone, the phone features of which I’m hardly using, leaving my Nokia E63 to do that job.

I guess this is a good enough post to announce my return to the blogging world. More to come, hopefully.

First, we had slum-dwellers protesting against Slumdog Millionaire because Slum Dwellers were not dogs.(What? weird? ‘SLUM-DOG‘, get the drift?). Obviously, some serious brainfart is getting the thrill out of this..

Even better, now we have this new protest.

I did not even know there was Hair-dressers association in India, forget the fact that they had a problem with the word ‘barber’.

As an aside, there were supposed to weekly candlelight ‘protests’ against 26/11, when I last heard of it. Are they still on? Or have we found better stuff like the above to protest about? Priorities, people?

I’m not even starting about the Mangalore pub case…

Join me as I sing, pseudo patriotically, somewhat ironically…

‘Saare Jahan se accha….Hindustan Hamara…’

No, wait!

I’m sorry for hurting National sentiments by singing the line above. I agree that these actions are a reflection of my current frustrated state of mind. I fully withdraw this post, in case anyone’s sentiments are hurt and they threaten legal action.

There, an unconditional apology in advance, lest the media or some Tom, Dick or Harry does sues me and forces me to apologize, like the NDTV case recently.

I feel a lot better now. God save us!

Change, they say, is the only thing thats permanent. I was beginning to find my earlier job very monotonous. The same old train journey, the same old people, the same old office, the same old lunch, and the likes. Much more importantly, I was getting absolutely no time to myself. I was beginning to live a life that was becoming mechanical, not to mention I was not enjoying my earlier job even a bit.

Thankfully, an oppurtunity came by that allowed me the freedom I needed. It involved me leaving Mumbai, and get myself the much needed ‘me’ time. I know its too early to say it, but I’m liking whatever my new job has thrown at me until now. It looks very promising.

Besides, I’ve moved out of Mumbai. I’m a staunch Mumbaikar, and a proud one at that. However, the place is simply too crowded right now. Adapting to the new place is tough, especially considering I’m used to the ultra fast Mumbai lifestyle.

Considering I’m practically doing nothing post office hours, expect more posts on the blog in the immediate future.

This post should technically have been the first post this year, rather than the rant on upgrading the mobile phone. But, the whole mobile phone upgrade confusion thing happened.

Looking back, an eventful 2008, both personally and professionally. Learnt a lot of lessons in life, learnt to deal with pressure much better. Finally got my irritability levels to a manageable maximum.

From my experiences with people around me, both direct and indirect, I’ve realised many things about life. Many things that had caused me a lot of grief and pain, which I was needlessly taking in my stride, rather than nipping it in the bud.

No one cares if you’re going out of the way for them, as long as the work gets done. Hard learnt lesson – never expect anyone you went out of the way for to go out of the way for you. Expecting someone to accept you the way you are is too much to ask for, but expecting you to understand situations is logical. Why? Because you’ve built a reputation. A reputation, that no matter how hard you try to shake off, comes right back at you. I’ve been a victim of such situations. Why? Because I cared. Cared too much, more than myself. the ‘must happen at any cost’ syndrome affected me too.

But now, I’m back, and better than ever. Partly because of all what I wrote above, and partly because of this…

Dear All,

Today, my tenure of two years and four months with Reliance Communications, as a part of the Information Security Management Team comes to an end.

This experience has been thoroughly rewarding, and has helped me gain valuable knowledge in more ways than one. Your contribution and assitance to help me carry out my tasks in a timely and orderly manner to gain this knowledge, is deeply and graciously appreciated. Without your co-operation, I perhaps would not have been able to complete my duties and responsibilities satisfactorily.

Also, I would you like to take this oppurtunity to apologize for any distress or discomfort I may have caused to anyone via my thoughts, words or actions. Please be assured that such actions were either completely unintentional or circumstantially influenced.

Thanking specific individuals does not appeal to my conscience. To be succinct in conclusion, I would like to express my profound gratitude to each one of you for making my experience at Reliance Communications thoroughly cherishable and rewarding.

I bid my valediction, with the sincere hope that most of our experiences and interactions have been symbiotically beneficial.

Yes, yesterday was my last day at Reliance Communications. I am HAPPILY jobless again.