Aman's Blog....

If you have visited here before,you must have encountered few posts where I have mentioned those few poetic marvels of Ahmed Faraz . I am not capable enough to portray the greatness of this poet and of his work and I am afraid, I may something too small for him! If you have no idea what poetry is and who is Faraz, I would strongly suggest that you search for him on Google and read his work. His words can bring tears from the eyes of the stones as well! As I said, I have tried to compile some of my favorite ones from the ocean of Faraz’s work over here. If you are willing to read about them, use the search option over the right hand side. I have read again today few poetic marvels and thought would add them here with the translation for those who may not understand Hindi or Urdu. Like all the previous ones, these also have shook me apart and that’s the reason I thought to share it here. This is the first one, Wo mujhe roz parindo ki misaal deta hai Faraz, Saaf saaf nahin kehta k...

Its been months since I have got some time off. I have been working, traveling round the clock and there are so many times I just sit and think that when I am going to get a break, a long break when I won’t do anything except some work with Oracle, listen to music, be at home, get up late not worrying about catching a cab or an auto, not worrying or struggling to get the technical set ups done, not bothering about the module, not thinking about how tough it is, not requiring to be pist off on a bad food and many many things like these! Unfortunately, the answer to all of such questions, for the moment, is that I don’t know. I have been asked so many times that when I am going to quit this kind of life style and would adopt a normal person’s life. To be honest, at times, its too much for me as well to do what I do and on the rate at which I do but just like I said, I don’t know yet! There are certain things which are yet to be finished and as long as I am not done with them, whatever it...

This post was supposed to come few days earlier but somehow, I was too much distracted in doing few other things. So it didn’t see sunlight till today. I would be brief since there is so much of to do and its the last day of me being free. The last two weeks did pass very well when I met some very good delegates and also discussed a lot about Oracle with them. Though the portion of delegates being very good and a great amount of oracle related discussion remained the same for the 2nd week, it did start with a very bad note when I saw that all the machines, including mine were not working! Okay, not working is not such a big problem as it can be solved by someone looking at it and thus fixing it as well. But the worst nightmare started when even after doing the installations for about 6 times, nothing worked out! Even by the late evening, only 4 machines came up. Even my senior manager was sitting with me and was looking at the matter and doing a lot of work with me to solve the matter,...

Love letters are always special. There can be nothing more better than getting a note, however small or big may be it is from your beloved and reading it in the night all alone. There can’t be anything that can explain that smile which comes with every passing sentence and that shine in the eyes can make even moon feel ashamed too for that while! Love letters are as special as that lover who would send them. But I am not sure how any gal would react after reading the below kind of love letter? Read for yourself and try to find an answer. My Dearest, I am very happy to inform you that I have fallen in Love with you since the 14th of October (Sunday). With reference to the meeting held between us on the 13th of Oct. at 1500 hrs, I would like to present myself as a prospective lover. Our love affair would be on probation for a period of three months and depending on compatibility, would be made permanent. Of course, upon completion of probation, there will be continuous on the job t...

I finished my last session yesterday evening. Though I wanted to write this post last night only but then one, because of unsteady internet connection, two, being lazy, I didn’t! It was one of the best sessions which I had taken and I must say, I was really very pleased to meet the entire group of oracle professionals who attended the last week program. There were many reasons for the program being so good. The most important one is that all the delegates were very lively, friendly and supportive. Its always a pleasure to discuss things when the recipient end is looking interesting about it and is willing to hear more and more. If you are a speaker at any public conferences, sessions and/or an instructor, you must be agreed that seeing the enthusiasm in the audience is biggest motivation factor . Fortunately, the entire group was very much interested to know about oracle and were very keen to understand things. There were few delegates who already attended some of my previous programs ...

Well, not completely as I did get some sleep after I came back from the session. I am not so well so when I came back, all I could do was just to change and be over the bed! It took just minutes before I slept off. The whole body was (is) having pain like anything thanks to the fever. Headache was(is) there as well. Since Since it was a working day, I couldn’t get any rest despite that that this fever is there since last couple of days. Its tough to speak too because of the  bad throat ache and also it was tough to stand because doing so even for few minutes was making me tired like anything! To make the list complete of not-so-pleasant things, the lunch which I got was really really bad! I mean, that much bad that I even couldn’t figure out that the dish I took, what was it containing? There was no one at the stall to tell either so I just picked something about which I knew just one thing, it was a vegetarian dish! I had to drink water almost in every 30-40 minutes because the th...

How many times it has happened that you could say that you actually put the phone down with a smile on your face, appreciating the efforts of the customer rep and above all, the company whose customer care you happened to call? Let me tell you about my stats, almost never! Those who know me are aware about this fact that I am very fussy and if I shall call for a complaint or for some service request, I would have gathered all the facts about it beforehand before going ahead to make a call and if someone would still try to tell me some stupid logics about it, well, things wouldn’t go very smooth! And it has happened so many times that I had to explain to the so-called customer-care(less) that what does it mean to sit at that chair and how to actually help the customer? Some times people understand and some times, they give (stupid) arguments which make sense to no one except just to them! Anyways, that won’t ever end and fortunately, this small post is not about another such heated argu...

Its the 3rd of my so-called holiday and I didn’t even realize that I was on a break since I have worked more harder than what I do in my normal “working” routine. In my normal days of work, I work for about 10 hours and spend some 2-3 hours once back in the room, doing lots of stuff and then would try to get some sleep. If there would be a good movie coming ( like a martial-arts flick) then I would spend those 2-3 hours watching it and may be still doing the “stuff”! So that’s what I do in my working days and when it seems to be a holiday, I should be having this time for doing the “stuff” and watching movies and listening music sufficiently large enough, isn’t it? I mean that’s what the word “holiday” means that you are not going to do work but anything other than that! So based on this principle, let’s see what I did in these 3 days(today is the 3rd day) and for how long! Well, I have been extremely busy in writing chapter of my book(yes you heard it right, see on the right hand side...

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...