Aman's Blog....

So I am probably very late in saying this but better later than never, right? And since it is still January of 2014, I believe it is okay to wish everyone a very happy 2014 still :=) . A very happy and prosperous 2014 to you, the reader! May god makes this year a really good one for you and fill it with just joys, happiness, success and good health for you and for all of yours nears and dears. I hope the year has started of well for you. If for some reason, you think it didn’t, don’t worry, it’s just the starting of the year and I am sure, as the time would move on, things are going to get better! Oh and before you are going to ask why I got so late, I am doing many things(writing this post sitting at Yangon(Myanmar) when the delegates are doing their hands-on lab) and despite that I wanted to write about many things, I just either forgot or thought to do so later. Hopefully, I shall be more active over my blog this year-at least that’s what is the plan!

Today, one of my friend, when asked by someone that how is he, replied using a short poetry. When I read that poetry, it just appeared how beautifully, truth about life of an ordinary person is depicted via it! Have a read, Havayein sehme hue charaghon se keh gayin thin ke, Aane waali rutton ke aaghaaz tak! Tumhare naseeb mein roshni ka koi safar nahin hai! And its translation in English, in best of my understanding, is given below Winds told to the nervous lamps while leaving, That till the commencement of the subsequent seasons, You have no luck of seeing any lights! So true, isn’t it!!

I have got a lot of emails and few have asked otherwise too that why there are no frequent updates coming up on my blog? Have I become lazy or blogging just doesn’t interest me anymore? Well, the answer for both the questions is a big no. Neither I have become lazy nor I have lost interest in blogging. The only reason for the less updates is that there is just too that I try to handle and manage, now after my dad has gone to God. And when I have a little time, something happens that just makes me occupied completely. I shall be getting back to my blogging regime and hopefully, this post should be the ice-breaker. I am sitting at the Chhatrpati Shivaji International airport, Mumbai and am en-route to Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International airport . I had started from Chandigarh in the morning and the travel from my home to Chandigarh was pretty much uneventful. Everything was fine, I took the bus and then the auto and finally reached the airport. The flight was also...

It’s that time of the year when the “meeting of  minds” is going to happen, yet again. The location is at Hyderabad and the venue is Sangam(meeting of the minds) , annual Oracle conference arranged by All India Oracle Users Group . Just as like the previous conferences, this one is also a star-studded one with just so many world renowned Oracle experts coming from all over the world- Arup Nanda , Syed Jaffar Hussain , Gaja Krishna Vaidhyanatha , Murali Vallath and many many more! So IMO, this is not a conference that you want to miss! And guess what, yours truly is presenting there as well. Yep, my abstract about What’s new in RMAN of 12c got accepted so if you are interested to know about RMAN of 12c, do come on 8th November! So since it’s 11 days and counting before the event to start, if you haven’t done already, do register and hope to see you there!

It’s a great relief to see that people have appreciated you and the efforts that you have put in the work. That’s the same feeling which I get, almost every week, when I am able to finish my session on a good note. Nothing is more satisfying to see that the delegates are able to understand that particular module, which we have finished in the session, in a little more better way. There must be satisfaction and interest in whatever you are doing and if these two factors are there, you are always going to like what you are doing-like me! That’s the same what happened this week as well. I had come to here, Kolkata, straight from my last assignment which was at Singapore. The session at Singapore got concluded on a very good note but I was really concerned about this current week. The reason for this was that the module which I had to take on this week is probably the most toughest ones to deliver. And on top of this, the delegates that were expected to come, were supposed to be all ve...

Today was a tough day, a very very tough day for my family and me. It’s a special day when for my dad, prayers were supposed to be done at temple. In less than a month’s time, that date is going to come when my dad was taken by god to him. I try to pretend all the time that I am very calm and composed but the fact is, I miss my dad so much, more than anyone can imagine and know. My mom told me few days ago that today, I must go to temple some time and pray at temple for my dad. I am in a session right now so I mentioned to the delegates yesterday that I shall be coming an hour late for the session, which they kindly accepted. I bought some stuff required for the prayers yesterday evening itself. I asked my guest house cook about any temple near by and he did mention to me about one too. So in the morning, I took a rickshaw and started for that temple. It wasn’t very far but it wasn’t an appropriate one as well. I asked the rickshaw puller to take me to some other one and he did take ...

I was going to post a song but before that, I just read the following lines and I changed my mind and decided to share them first. Don’t worry, the song is coming as well-very soon. In fact, not one but at least 2 songs are there in my list from a long time that I want to post. Anyways, have a read of the poetry first, Kitaabon Ki tarah bahot se alfaaz hain mujh mein, Aur Kitaabon ki tarah hi mein khamosh rehta hoon! And following is the translation of the same in English, Alike books, so many words I have within me, And alike books only, I stay quite! This is the 2nd one, Kaash woh laut aata kabhi mujh se yeh kehney, Tum hote kaun ho mujh se bicharney waale! Following is its translation in English, If only he ever had returned to say this to me, Who are you being separated from with me! Awesome isn’t it! It’s time now to come back from the poetry island and get back to the real world-in which I am scheduled to travel for work from today. T...

There are many things which when get done, you feel really happy and more than being happy, you feel contended. I felt the same on this 31st August when for the very first time, an Oracle technologies related conference, finally got scheduled and successfully got completed within my state Punjab. This was a mammoth task since never before, such kind of event was organized before at Punjab. I want to express my gratitude to the team of Al India Oracel Users Group( http://wwwAIOUG.orag ) – Murali Vallath, PS Janakiram and Satyendera Kumar for making it possible. Satyndera Kumar travelled all the way from Hyderabad to speak at the conference along with the other speakers – Rohan Walia, Jitendera Chittoda and Shekhar Gulati . I also presented two presentations of mine at the conference. In addition to AIOUG, I also want to thanks a ton to Lovely Professional University and its entire staff, especially Mr Mandeep Singh and Mr Naveen Juneija for making this event possible. All the arrang...

I am sitting at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport right now waiting for my flight back to home. It’s still 2 more hours before the boarding would start but thanks to the stupid staff of the hotel. who didn’t let me do a 2 hour late check-out, I had to come at the airport VERY early. Anyways, I just read an awesome piece of poetry which just made me recall a lot and at least I can say, what is said in the poetry is completely applicable to me and my life. Have a read, Waqt leta hai karvatein naa jaane kaise kaise. Umar Itni toh nahin thi jitne sabak seekh liye humne!! And it’s translation in English is, Just how many different twists and turns this fate takes, Why life has taught me so many lessons already when I am still so young! It is so often said that life is a journey and in it, you always learn and improve yourself. But trust me, at times, life and fate both make you learn lessons about topics which you never before knew did even exist! PS: I know the transla...

It’s been a whole month since I have written anything here. Though there are three sessions that I have finished since the last time I updated my blog and I wanted to write about all three of them, for different reasons but some how, I got struck in many many other distractions, tensions, whatever you want to call it! No, I am not going to mention those things in this post and thinking about it, probably not in the near future as well. But yes, I shall mention about the sessions, briefly, in this post before anything else. I deliver mostly very senior level sessions, where the modules talk about quite a bit of fancy tough. Since I like this oracle database stuff so very much, its not a problem. What one thing that is very hard to tackle, for me, for probably anyone who does even the least amount of public or any kind of speaking, is the handling of the people. Its tough to make people listen to you and when the audience is more experienced and if I may say, filled with pride, the job...

I am sitting at the airport right now waiting for my flight to be announced. Actually, waiting for my flight’s boarding gate to be announced because I reached on-time but thanks to the stupid Air-India, the flight is delayed for more than an hour. So there is no gate announcement done yet and I have about 3 hours to spend waiting before the boarding would start. This past week has been a mixed kind of one. I had been on road for 4 weeks before I got a week off and I really really wanted to get back home as soon as possible because my mom wasn’t well at all in the last week of my travel. By the time I reached home, she was a little better but again in the last two days, she was having issues while eating anything. Any time she was having something, she would be feeling restless and nausea was there too. Fortunately, yesterday she was a little better and I am so hoping and praying that she is going to remain fine. The next 3 days were spent preparing and writing about two technical art...

I have finished my this week’s session today. If you are a regular here you would be aware that I was traveling to Cambodia the last week before coming here and how tough that entire trip was! This week also was not of any difference. Though the module that I had to deliver this week was the one which I knew already but it is such a kind of module that every time when I step in the room to deliver it, I feel a chill in my spine. The reason for it is that the not only the module is very tough but also that there is a LOT of the content in it and because of these two things, I have to speak a lot, at times even without taking any breaks for a very long time. And this happened in this week as well. The level of complexity became even more higher because of the delegates that I had in my session-very experienced and techie group! But that’s what make the module interesting as well because if the delegates are not able to understand what you want to convey to them, your interest dies and th...

I am sitting at the Starbucks right now. Just had a cappuccino along with a sandwich. It’s still 3 hours more before I shall be boarding my flight. As I said before, it’s going to be a long and tiring day and may be that wasn’t enough, the check-in staff played a practical joke with me as well. I specifically asked for “no emergency seat” and guess what I got? So I spent the last 2 hours sitting upright and it’s again going to be happening for another 5 hours in just a while. I am just not sure what do because I know the flight would be full and it wouldn’t be possible to change the seat because not anyone else also would be so willing to exchange his/her seat with an emergency one. I shall try for sure but I am not keeping very high hopes. Before I ordered my coffee, I walked around the place for almost an hour. I am sure a lot must have changed here but still, it appears the same to me, just like what I saw when I came here for the first time. And that was even the first time for m...

It’s been a long time, well 3 weeks is not a small time I would say. I have finished all of my sessions today here at Cambodia and at the end, I shall say things went okay. Though there was a small sudden issue that came up which did spoil my mood but still, overall I would say things went fine. I was really very worried as there were four different sessions that I had to deliver and out of that three were completely new for me. That was a big challenge and on top of that, I am working on a very important writing project which is time bound which is running parallel with my day-job. You can imagine from this that I had two weekends and one public holiday here with me and in all of these days,  I was in my room either writing or preparing for the new modules. Though the sessions are over today for this trip but the writing part is still pending, a lot of it! I am working on it very hard and trying my best to get it done as soon as possible because there are many other things which I...

Note: I started writing this post when I was at Singapore, two weeks ago, on the weekend when I had some time free but then I got caught up in tons of things and this post left uncompleted. Now, as I am done with the session for this week, I have completed it. About this session, I shall be writing about in another post, hopefully. I don’t get to say this very often that I felt really relieved and felt that I have achieved something but after the end of this week’s session, I believe it’s not going to be true if I would say that it was just an okay session and I didn’t get a feel of accomplishment after the end of the week. I have been at home for about 4 (or may be even more) weeks because the programs of mine were not getting confirmed and it was some how required too as there was a lot of travel that I had done in the past few weeks so a little bit of relaxing time was just about right. But what I was scheduled to do after that time out was actually very tough and it was sendin...

I have just come down to this place(for the 3rd time) and now, sitting all alone in the training room as it’s lunch time. No, not really going for lunch cos have no mood for it. It was a long travel to here starting from Delhi to Malaysia and from there to Phnom Penh. There was nothing unusual about the travel as such. Yes, I had to come here this time via KL and the reason for it were two.One, I didn’t really go to Malaysia and just did a transit from the airport  and second, I don’t choose my travel routes but my travel desk does based on the cheapest fares that they can get(even without caring that flying for 5 hours and then further 2 hours is far more tiring than flying for 3.5 hours and 1.5 hours for the same destination via Thailand) . The flight of Malaysian was okay and was far far away from their so-called marketing statement “MH stands for Malaysian Hospitality “. I have just started the session and it’s a very tough session. I shall be posting an older blog post soon ...

I am just being so upset at the moment from the way things are going on. Not sure why, I am just not having a good feeling about almost everything. Just don’t know why the times are so tough and just for the record, “when the going gets tough”,it’s a good song to play but when it’s for real, being in tough times is not a fun-at all!

It’s been three days since I have come back from my last session in which  I had encountered an earthquake as well. Except for that, the session went absolutely fine. I met some of the most amazing delegates and it was a very big coincidence that there were 4 delegates whom I had met already in some other places. It was a very VERY fun filled 5 day long week in which there were lots of laughs but also there were many many technical discussions as well. But I am so glad that the session went really fine. Though I haven’t seen the formal feedback yet but I had been told by couple of the delegates that how much they liked the session and this short email that I got after about 2 days says a lot IMO. Hi Aman, Now I don't have fear from RAC. Thanks a lot for clearing concept of RAC. I don’t think anything else is needed to mention that the class went okay! I am so thankful to all who came and also said so many kind words! It was a pleasure and honour to meet you all and I really...

Yep, and it came all of a sudden today when I was with the delegates in the session. I am delivering a very tough and advanced session BTW at the moment and the delegates are really good both professionally and personally! Today, two of them took me out for lunch and there we met one delegate who was in my session 3 years ago. Also, there are two delegates out of which one was in my session 2 years and she immediately spotted me and very kindly mentioned in the room that she was very happy when she came to know that I am the instructor for this tough course and also added that I am really good, which was very kind of her to say! There is another delegate who attended my presentation a year ago and told me today about it! So overall, it’s a great session going on, tiring but really good! Hmm I think I have missed the point of the post. Okay, so we were in the room and one of the delegates was actually standing and explaining a concept. We were all sitting in front of him and were list...

Yes, it’s been quite some time since I have updated my blog. Last time, I had taken this much of leave from updating it when my dad passed away. This time, fortunately things are not so bad but still, some how I am not able to have a mental status to sit back, write and update it. Even now, when I am writing this post, a weird kind of uneasiness is there inside me. May be I am just being mad or may be, it’s just some bad time frame. Am not sure what it is actually but just know this that I am not in a good state of mind. I am not really able to spend time (quality) on my work, on doing any research or as a matter of fact, any thing productive. I know I must pull together myself and start doing my work and I am going to get back to business very soon.