Aman's Blog....

Some times, it just feels so relaxing to know that tomorrow there won’t be any work and also, there won’t be any travel! If you are like me who does it so often and so much, you can imagine how relaxing it feels to know that, even just for a day, you won’t be on the road, running from here to there. In this kind of times, getting few days of relaxing is also a blessing! I was so much busy this whole week and I can’t really say that the next few days are going to be free either. There is tons of pending work around me and I somehow not able to keep up with it. The biggest bottleneck is that I don’t have a proper system with me where I can do all the testings and everything. For doing so, I must be present at the office or be at home. Both the options are not viable either as when I am in the office, I am not free and the nature of work I do, I must be interacting with lots of delegates on constant basis which leaves very less time for me to do something. At home, though this is not ther...

I am too small to say anything about these people! Just a collage of the who’s who of the computer industry who have changed for forever the ways, thinking and lives of millions in this world! True legends, true gurus! Thanks to Sidhu for sending me this pic! I always have believed in Steve Jobs saying “stay hungry, stay foolish” and looking at these legends, it just again strikes me that how much lesser knowledge I have! Hats off to you guys!

Its been a long time that I have put anything here beyond my travel and work related sagas . The biggest reason for it is that I am too busy in my work and there is nothing else that I am doing except traveling and working. So it makes a perfect sense to talk about both most of the times. But that doesn’t mean that I do work only all the time. I do spend a lot of time in reading and also to listen to the music. In reading, besides Oracle books( its just unavoidable that it wont be mentioned not for once even) I read poetry and that too, a very high quality poetry. There are many whose work I read but some stand at a very high position. S M Sadiq is one of those poets who are in my all time favorite list. If you don’t know who he is, I must say , you haven’t heard anything yet! I don’t know any poet who has written almost 35000, yes 35000 songs! Ahmed Faraz is one other poet whose work I admire so much! So today, just thought that would share few writings from both here. Obviously they...

Its actually my working week only and it hasn’t got a very smooth start either. The biggest thing which I find as a blocking factor being “virtual” is the absence of the physical presence of the delegates and not to know their reactions right at that when its important to know about it. Its a really important thing and if you do public presentations and/or seminars , you would be knowing that how much its vital and important! Anyways, I can’t do anything about it as its not something which is in my hands. All I can do is to try my best that all goes fine and smooth. I am trying my best to do so( I do it in all of my sessions) and just can hope and pray that my efforts bear fruit as well! Anyways, the idea of this post was not to mention my (usual) tension about the program but about a little happiness that I felt today so let’s move on to it. If you know me or have been coming and reading things over here, it should be a  known fact that I am not much into shopping for myself. It...

How good it feels to know that today is Sunday, a day for official no work and being lazy! Well, actually, there is Saturday as well which holds the same meaning but at times, you spend doing tons of work on Saturday as well! But am not sure, on Sunday, since morning that lazy feeling starts to creep in :-) . But unfortunately, for me Sunday means travel day only as its very rare that I have enjoyed both the days of the weekend as like a holiday. For me, its Saturday which is a no-office but still lots-of-work day as I have to prepare some times the bills and other stuff for my last week’s work, do some reading, study for the next week, do some other work which I couldn’t do in the whole week and if possible, take some rest too! So its really not a true weekend for me. I know I know its not good but I have no other choice at the moment. That’s how my time is divided at the moment and there is very less that I can do about it! Last week was mostly a quite one. Can’t say completely sin...

I am sitting here in the session, waiting for the guys to finish the practice session and am I sleepy! Well, all I can say is that I just had 2 cups of (yuck) coffee made from the vending machine, went for a walk in the corridor but still am not able to open my eyes! And its a bad bad , really bad thing to happen when you are in a session and you are the instructor :-( . I have been feeling so tired and sleepy from last couple of months a lot and I know the reasons as well! But I have no other choice at the moment to push myself to complete the programs assigned to me. There is so much of work that’s around me and I just am not able to find enough time to do it all. How so I wish that there would be either 30hours in a day or I must not feel sleepy and won’t sleep at all for a minute too! I can’t mess with number of hours for the day since for that, I would need to do a fight with god with whom I am already not having a very fine tuning so leaving that aside, I guess I should start wor...

I couldn’t get a chance to write anything in the past week. Even though I was not traveling in cabs, there was no holiday for me. I was doing a session through web-conferencing for few delegates in abroad. It was a grueling 5 days session and since it was not a face-to-face event, it took a lot to address issues than actually should have been. There were tons of issues that came on the first day itself about the non-clarity of my voice. I am not sure where was the issue actually though I was told that its not from my side but from was caused by the bandwidth at the participant’s side. Whatever may be the reason, there were issues almost in all the 5 days. To heat up things more, the module itself was so tough that even in a face-to-face session, it would have been so tough! Then for one delegate, the labs(hands on exercises) stopped working for no obvious reasons. Interestingly, those labs were working for others perfectly fine. Now, all the labs that we use are basically scripted and ...

WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!! Am I happy? I AM SOOOO MUCHHHH HAPPYY! I wish I could stand on the tallest building and say this as much as possibly loud in my best powers! We, India has done it and have given an answer to all those who used to taunt us for being inferior to them in the comparisons of airports. Yes airports reflect the country’s face and its that “first impression” which matters the most when one steps in any foreign land. I am so proud to say that now we have it now for all who would be stepping in India from our national capital New Delhi because we have our new international airport(terminal 3)   open for the world! Its the newest one in New Delhi but not the only best we have! We have similar sorts of airports in every major city of India and few of them like Hyderbad airport , has been given the best rankings comparing it with the world, see this news piece to read about it.   Yesterday, it was a BIG day in the Indian aviation history when our prime minister Manmo...

I should be happy since I am done with my program but I can’t be. In fact, I am really really upset because of my carelessness due to which I have forgotten my debit card in the ATM machine itself. How can I be so stupid to do such an act of foolishness? Thanks to my pure idiotic act, I spent the whole day at my bank filling tons of forms, signing them like giving autographs and finally got a relief from the manager that my card is locked! I must say thanks to that manager lady who helped me so much, sent the mail for locking my card with a highest priority set for it, gave me so many advices and suggestions ( purely free) ! Many thanks Ms Manager! I wished that I would be having a pleasant weekend since I am going to be in a traumatic week from this Monday, thanks to the so tough session, but “pleasant” doesn’t seem to be the right word for me, I guess. I didn’t eat anything in whole day in this whole “process” and to make things really interesting, its just so hot weather today and m...

Why it is so that people of this world like to just “get” only? Why it is so that all are just concerned about what they want, what they need, what’s their wishes, what’s their priorities? Why when someone is doing something for them, only then they consider that person’s worth? If he is not able to do at times something, why he is told that he is a no good, not needed and the least needed person on this planet? Why it is this that when someone needs something, then only they recall, even consider that the person is alive but other than that, it doesn’t even matter to them whether he is dead or alive? Why it is that people don’t even try to understand that its not the “asking” all the time, some times “giving” is also which is needed? There are so many incidents like this which I have seen all the time in my life. But right now, will just mention two. The most recent one happened just few moments ago and the other one, couple of days back.  I called up a friend just now to ask hi...

I normally stay in this hotel, The Elite whenever I am at Banglore. Though we have choices of couple of guesthouses here, but the issue is that those menu of those guesthouses are fixed. This means, you have to eat only what would be provided. The other major issue is that none of the guesthouses have any internet connection. Yes, you heard it right, there is no internet connection given in these guesthouses because of “company policy” . Not sure what kind of policy it is which demands that doesn’t let people who work in IT not having  an internet connection! Anyways, so this hotel is nice, can’t say the one where I stay is royalish one but its okay. There have another property about which I came to know today morning only which sounds like that “royal" one and I shall check it some time soon. Also, I met the owner of the entire chain and guess what, he is from Jallandhar, a city just at a distance of just one hour drive from my city, a Punjabi guy! Isn’t that nice? How did I...

I just finished my current session. I guess, this was the smallest number of delegates that I have got in my session. We did expect 16 people but what we got were just 5. And from that two, 2 guys had to leave on 3rd and 4th day since they had some official works. One another guy didn’t come after yesterday afternoon. I don’t know the reason since I never was informed that he is not coming. So today, there were just two who were sitting for the finale! Still, I must say that all the delegates were really nice , friendly and intelligent. I am delivering the very same module from the last 3 weeks and I must say, this whole month was a really tough one! I was very upset seeing my rating for two batches. Though there were very good comments, but the rating was not satisfying( at least for me) . Though I know that whatever rating I got, it was from those who were really really good guys still, I never get satisfied from anything than the best, yes that’s all what I want! I normally won’t sa...

Thanks to a stupid guy who asked a question but is not really ready to accept that he can be wrong too and also, not ready to listen what is being told to him, I am having a really upset mood at the moment. There is no coffee shop around, heck there is not even that coffee machine in this office too using which I could at least take a coffee. So overall, I am in a bad bad mood! And that’s certainly not good since I have a session starting in less than an hour from now. So I was just thinking what to do to make my mood go a little better. BTW, music didn’t help either. I had heard a very good song last night but  I didn’t want to hear it now because that song did make even the poet, Ahmed Faraz cry and I certainly didn’t want to have wet eyes right in the morning time. So the next best thing to music for me is comedy(yes its martial arts too but the situation’s demand was different here) . So I searched for some video by Peter Russell and I did find one such video. So here is that...

Well, that has nothing to do with the Red Bull or Red & White cigarettes or any other damn product which has Red in it. It is referring to my color of face at the moment which is red in anger! Don’t ask the reasons, I won’t mention here. Just thinking that why I am in a computer class at the moment and not in a martial-arts one where either I would had been kicking someone’s arse or would had made myself got some really brutal beating! Why? Because, that way I would had been cooled off! But have to face what’s there. I am in a computer, Oracle database class and I can’t do all that here. So better be quiet and just look for the day to get complete.   

I am pretty sure that you must have got mails from gals saying that she liked your profile and wants you to reply back(not sure if gals get it from guys too,anyone can confirm? ) with also mentioning that color and religion doesn’t matter or someone who would claim that he is son/daughter/servant/whatever of a very rich minister/millionaire/king of Nigeria and wants to transfer loads of cash in your account to safeguard it or someone saying that he/she has a sick son/daughter who needs to get medical attention and each forward mail would bring them one dollar/euro/yen/whatever! If the answer is yes, here is what a reply that you can send back to that person who has committed the sin to forward that mail to you! Please note, I am not saying that all the starters of such chain mails would be thug only. I mean, who knows someone might actually have got few millions transferred in his/her account or has find luck finding his/her love but since there is no way to prove or find it, let’s kee...

I got back home today morning. Though I shall be leaving tomorrow again for a long long travel but it just feels awesome to be at home. I am struck in some really grueling and tiring sessions from last couple of weeks. You can imagine how much things are tough that at times, I had a feeling to get out of the room leaving everything and everyone there only! But I can’t do it since its my work and its a challenge which I have to pass! And I can say with somewhat pride that I have managed to come out from those grueling sessions. Though the rating is not really that great( anything lesser than 95% is lesser for me, current is 90%)  but the comments were really good! So even though I am not truly satisfied, I shall live with it. Since I am in such sessions from quite some time now and would be in similar times for next couple of weeks too, the best place to revamp myself is home! I don’t know why, yesterday I had a very strong feeling of being lonely. All I wanted to do was to get back...

Few days back, I posted a post about a short story and moment of happiness . This was the day, when I was awarded ACE award by Oracle Corp’s Oracle ACE program . Here is my ACE profile . Today, when I am sitting here at Banglore, my ACE award reached my home. I couldn’t resist having a look at it so asked my sister to take a picture of it and send it to me! Well,I must say, it looks bloody awesome! So here are few pics of my ACE award, And here is my ACE profile page’s snapshot!   Its an amazing feeling to have this award, I must say! Read the above mentioned post if you are interested to know my journey to this point. I must say, I am really happy and having a feeling of proud that I am a part of such esteemed group. I shall be honest that I still don’t feel that I am worthy enough to be considered that great that I can be called an ACE! Its just so great to see that you are in those 280 names in this entire world who have got this award and I am the 2nd guy in India...

Well, its the working week for me and I must tell you, whenever its a week in which I am having a session, the blues are much more what Monday can bring and those blues stay with me for the entire week. These blues turn into worries when I am taking a session at a partner location and the client is prestigious. The same kind of story got repeated this week too where both of these things came together. Now, there is nothing wrong in this that I am taking a session at a partner’s location and there is always a great thing to have a really reputed client but the worse happens when the partner fails to deliver what it has promised and due to this, the client is upset. I really tell you that this kind of situation is something in which only if you are , you would understand its seriousness! Unfortunately, I had to taste the bitterness( even for a short time) right in the start of the week! What we do requires that we access some very sophisticated, Oracle database installed on some really...

Yes, the last week has been  a real grueling one for me. I have been into the training business from quite some time now and some do consider me a little experienced one in it now and I have handled some of the most toughest sessions as well. Still, there is always a time when you do realize that what you have done already wasn’t really so tough as long as you are not presented with something more bigger, tougher than it! The same happened with me in the last session. Though the guys were really good, intelligent, I can surely categorize the session among the toughest ones which I have handled so far and may be, I can put it in top 2-3 places as well. I have mixed feelings about the session if you ask me. I always believe that when there is a session, its the best when it involves the delegates completely and encourage them to get into discussions with me more and more. The more it happens, the more its clear that the delegates are in the session and are enjoying/learning the thi...

What a day it is(because its still not over yet)! I have been working since morning on my chapter and its still not done. I have got a lot delayed in the final submission of it since there are tons of other things happening around me in both, professional and personal side. If you are a regular here, you must have seen a post where I mentioned that  its going to be a real busy day and it really was! The good thing which did happen that all went well on that day. VERY few people know that on that day, how much did I work and how hard it was for me to manage everything since I was the only one who was there. Later on, my brother-alike-friend Aman(deep) joined me and I can’t tell how relieved I felt on his arrival. He was supposed to come with me right in the morning only but unfortunately, he felt really sick in the night and it wasn’t just a normal sickness but he got a fever of 104degrees and he was left unconscious. When I got a call from his sister, I immediately rushed towards ...