Aman's Blog....

I am writing this after finishing the packing of the bag. It has been a really upsetting day since the starting of it and I am still in a very bad and upset mood! I just finished tea and I even forgot to put sugar in it and didn’t realize it at all because was thinking about tons of things. With a really killing headache, painful thumb, twisted ankle(today only) , burning eyes , I guess its fairly okay to declare today as a real damned day! Oh yes, I didn’t have lunch, breakfast this morning as well and also didn’t have dinner last night too but that’s okay, not feeling like eating at all and won’t die too if won’t eat! In the morning itself,while getting down to the reception after receiving call that my pick up has come, I rushed over the stairs. It may sound stupid but I had a feeling that something is going to happen and it did when I lost balance over the damn stairs and ended with a twisted ankle. I guess I can blame eyes for that since they were burning already so I may have n...

Yes, my (unexpected) break is over and I am leaving tomorrow. I believe, this time I shall be gone for some longer duration since there are couple of programs lined up for me. To make things more spicy, all of them are hectic but I am looking forward to take over one specific program which is very hectic but for me but will be a giant step ahead in my technical skill set. There are some programs that I have set up for me which I need to finish and start delivering ASAP and I am working hard to do so too. I hope that I would be able to stick to my plan. I am having a really bad headache at the moment so won’t be going more longer. Besides headache, thoughts have taken control of my mind and its thinking too much and too deeper at this moment so its better that I go and get lost in my own dreamland(or whatever it can be called). But before leaving, I would share this awesome piece of poetry from Mohsin Naqvi which are striking in my mind like a hammer at the moment, Kuch dinon ke liye...

Its happens so many times that people don’t realize that even when some one doesn’t say anything, he may still have some things just over his lips and within his heart. He may not show but may be feeling bad, hurt, upset. I guess, we normally don’t bother unless someone tells us so and at times, even after someone tells us so! I have just got this text message which does explains it perfectly that there is always a little that is unseen or unsaid, present in few of the most commonly said sentences. To call it little would depend on how much that person is important is for you and how well you understand him/her? But the message nails it right on the spot! Have a read, There is a little truth behind “ just kidding”! There is a little emotion behind “ I don’t care”! There is a little pain behind “ Its okay”!   Yes, it may be just a little but its there!

Well, that’s a perfect title for the post since its actually late night and I didn’t plan to write it at this moment but tomorrow. But since I am not feeling sleepy, I thought, its better to write it down now only and use tomorrow’s time for something else. Songs are playing in the ears through the headphones and its really quite(shouldn’t be surprised about it though)! What the heck I am doing here, you may ask? Well, nothing actually hehehe. Anyways, since I am here now so let me tell you about the last week’s travel. It was a really hectic week if you ask me! If you have read the last post, I have mentioned it there as well that the entire week was really really tough. Though it was superb in the regards of the audience, contents and discussions which did happen in the entire but still, I am not sure why, after this module, I feel like dead! The module contains tons of things to do, discuss and even possible, demonstrate as well. In this program, I didn’t have any machines left fo...

I just got back after finishing a very hectic session. Because of the nature of the module and also because of the special audience attending, the whole week went into it and I couldn’t write anything. Things were really busy and tiring. There were lots and lots of (good) discussions which did happen in the entire week, something that I always look forward to have in the session. If you are a speaker, that’s the best sign to tell you that things are going great and your audience is not sleeping because of you being boring :) . Fortunately, it never happened with me and this time also, delegates did show great interest in the entire module.  Though its always very exciting to have highly deep and technical discussions but there is just one problem, once you are done, you feel like dead and that’s what I felt too most of the times! But that’s a very little price to pay compared to see the smile coming on the face of the delegates when they understand something! Anyways, that’s not th...

Why it is so that when someone leaves this world, then only people start respecting, loving, caring about him? Why when he is alive, no one even bothers about him, about his existence? I fail to understand almost all the time that why such a small thing is so tough for many to understand that its not important to put flowers on someone’s grave twice a day when you haven’t even bothered to ask him that how is he when he was alive? Thanks to such hypocrisy, many people live their entire in a forced solitude and even face a very sad death! And you know what’s the worse part, it doesn’t just happen to common man(it happen to a common, ordinary person for sure mind it but its not limited to him, that’s what I mean) but also to those who are legends! People, who have created history from their work! Nand Lal Noorpuri is one such legend who has given so much to Punjabi literature, Punjabi community but its just so sad to see that he never got that kind of respect, that status which he truly ...

I just got back today morning after attending AIOUG’s 2nd user meeting Sangam. It was certainly very good to attend it since it brought one of the best and most respected Oracle guru, Jonathan Lewis to India for the very first time! It was a 2 day, highly technical event where lots of very hard-core oracle related knowledge was shared by Jonathan Lewis, Francisco Munoz Alvarez , Mark Rittman , Iggy Fernandez , Vivek Sharma and Murali Vallath . As like always, this conference gave lots of oracle professionals a chance to grow their professional network as well. Though it was really long and tiring two days( we used to start at 7.15am and would get back by 11pm something) , still it was a great experience for many reasons! Last year, when Sangam happened for the first time, me , Amardeep and Ankit did plan to attend it but unfortunately, I was at Hyderabad at that time and was busy in my work and couldn’t go and since I didn’t go, Amardeep and Ankit also cancelled the trip(it was hap...

This is just a quick post to say that I shall be leaving today with Amardeep Sidhu , Ankit Goel and Neeraj Bhatia to attend AIOUG ’s annual oracle conference Sangam which is happening at Hyderabad this year. If you are also attending, just come and say Hi! I hope it would be good two days of Oracle and just Oracle :-) . I am not presenting this time so I would have plenty of time to attend my favorite sessions and meet my friend, Francisco Munoz Alvarez and one of the best known Oracle guru’s in this world, Jonathan Lewis . Its time for me to get going and do the last minute checks for ticket printouts and everything else. Next stop would be Hyderabad!

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...