27th July 07 - MCDBA... 2 Yrs dream now a reality

This was one of the things I wanted to achieve professionally when I joined Sify. It has taken me two years to finish it. The exam was zapper. Aced thro 45 questions in about 90 min where in the total time for the exam was 240min. As I finished each question I knew the effort and money was not going to go waste. I knew I was inching towards the reality which had been so far only been a dream. As clicked End Exam the screen went blank.. it was completely white. Wild thoughts started to cross my mind.. has the system hung??!! That was the last thing I would have wanted here. I couldnt sustain the anxiety. I stormed out to call the lady incharge for the exams. She said this was normal and came to have a look... She was right. When I saw the screen now the image had changed. Only two words caught my sight.

Successfully......................... 928.

I didnt have to bother about the rest of words. I'm now an MCDBA!

Since then I've been having fun.. had an office dinner party and bowling session on Friday night.. (just after my exam) On Saturday couple of friends had come down from Singapore so spent the whole weekend with them.. was totally tied up as I was trying to show them around KL almost everything thats possible to be covered in 1 and a half days. Just had time to breath!!

There are reason for choosing this date for the exam. It was on this day three years back that I made my first constructive step towards making a career in IT. Cant forget that date as it also happens to be my only bro's birthday! I registered for the exam with Informatics. It was what that taught me to operate a mouse back in 1997. A group of guys were invited from our school to experiment with the new multimedia PCs that they then had.

Though Microsoft support for SQL Server 2000 might end in April next year I wanted to get this done. To me its a personal achievement. This was the first thing that was asked of me by my manager when I started working in databases as a novice. Now its time to market this certificate in greener pastures!

Preparing for the Final Assault

Its almost near and I cant wait to accomplish it. Its just two days away. On Friday I'd be giving my final exam for MCDBA. Its on Win 2003 Server. The two years wait will come to an end. The last three weeks I have been busy craming for this exam... browsing pdf, dumps, test simulators.. anything I can get my hands on to make sure things go my way on the exam day. I joined forums for quick help but they only fill my inbox with junk. No quality content!!

I have been through these kind of International Ceritifications for 5 times for 2 different brands, Microsoft and Oralce, in two years before this one. But each time I have always felt like taking the exam for the first time. Theres always this uneasiness and apprehension, as about future uncertainties. The money, rewards and peer attention are the driving forces for me to prepare well. So far no hiccups and I wanna get through this one too!! 27th July date was primarily choosen because of the sentiment factor I have with numbers and combinations. The history of this dates back to 3 years. Forget it.. no time to talk about it.

This has been the primary reason for me not replying to your emails, scraps or offlines. I will catch up on these after 27th July 2007. Got to go..

Free International Calls - Phone to Phone

I haven't used Skype before but found this ones cool. Its a Phone to Phone calling service. Tokiva is the service that enables you to make inexpensive international long distance calls on your mobile phone immaterial of where in the world you are. After you sign up with your mobile number you get a credit balance of 50 free.. With this I called my home (To India From Malaysia) and was able to speak for 5 min and 10 sec for free. The voice clarity is not that good the time I called but for a few friends of mine who used it say it was quite clear. I shouldn't be asking more for the free service! Tokiva also have schemes where you buy credit and use it to call. Use the link below to sign up.


Click Here to Register

An Inspiring Message

Looks like the Presidential Election in India is just around the corner and President Abdul Kalam has opted out of the race. The message below is claimed by many websites and email forwards that its by President Abdul Kalam but when I did a quick search in Kalam's official website I didn't find anything like this. I do not have proof to say that this was his message nevertheless its a worthy read for every Indian. Indians who have stepped foreign land will easily be able to relate to this message. I remember reading this sometime last year as an Email forward and it was truly inspiring. This is a very long message so read only when you are free. The bottom line is don't crib but act!

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam's Speech: A Must Read

I have three visions for India. In 3000 years of our history people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we respect the freedom of others. That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of independence. It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and build on. If we are not free, no one will respect us.

My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT. For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation. We are among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10 percent growth rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a developed nation, self-reliant and self-assured. Isn't this incorrect?

I have a THIRD vision. India must stand up to the world. Because I believe that unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic power. Both must go hand-in-hand. My good fortune was to have worked with three great minds. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space, Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him and Dr. Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and consider this the great opportunity of my life.

I see four milestones in my career: ONE: Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to be the project director for India's first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3. The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role in my life of Scientist.
TWO: After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be the part of India's missile program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its mission requirements in 1994.
THREE: The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this tremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy of participating with my team in these nuclear tests and proving to the world that India can make it, that we are no longer a developing nation but one of them. It made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for which we have developed this new material. A Very light material called carbon-carbon.
FOUR: One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were these little girls and boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three kg. each, dragging their feet around. He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients. In three weeks, we made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300 gram calipers and took them to the orthopedic centre. The children didn't believe their eyes. From dragging around a three kg. load on their legs, they could now move around! Their parents had tears in their eyes. That was my fourth bliss!

Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why? We are the first in milk production. We are number one in Remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat. We are the second largest producer of rice. Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert land into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news. In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?

I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is: She replied: I want to live in a developed India. For her, you and I will have to build this developed India. You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.

Allow me to come back with vengeance. Got 10 minutes for your country?
YOU say that our government is inefficient. YOU say that our laws are too old. YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage. YOU say that the phones don't work, the railways are a joke, the airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination. YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits. YOU say, say and say.
What do YOU do about it? Take a person on his way to Singapore. Give him a name - YOURS. Give him a face - YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground Links as they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs. 60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM.
YOU comeback to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity. In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai. YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs. 650) a month to, "see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else." YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 kph) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, "Jaanta hai sala main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost." YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand. Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country why cannot you be the same here in India. Once in an interview, the famous Ex-municipal commissioner of Bombay Mr.Tinaikar had a point to make. "Rich people's dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place," he said. "And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels the pressure in his bowels? In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that here?" He's right. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms. We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public. When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? "It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry." So who's going to change the system? What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbors, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand. Or we leave the country and run away. Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England. When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.

Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too....I am echoing J.F. Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians.....

"ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY"

Lets do what India needs from us.

The story so far...

Let me first thank all those who had a chance to visit this page. Special thanks to those who managed to write an email with compliments. I'd be glad if you could give some suggestions too.

Living in Malaysia has been a challenge for me in many ways. For the last 25 yrs I had never stayed away from my family. Life seemed so easy in Chennai. I had been "spoilt with comfort" back home. There was always someone to do things for me. I didn't worry or think about the efforts that go behind a wonderful meal or clean washed shirt. Not until I started washing them myself. The first time I did it I was thrilled to see the collar with no sweat marks... wow its magic I thought!! It looked like an achievement. Thanks to the intelligence of the Panasonic fully automatic washing machine because I didn't have to bother too much about the washing powder quantity or the water level. Nothing can beat home food.. unfortunately I cant have it now. But being a meat eater I could cope up with the cooking of the local night joints. Cleaning the room is still a pain in the neck as the cleaning lady comes only once a week. Room would look wrecked by the time she comes the next time to clean. Security is another matter of concern. All kinds of illegal activities happen here though the law calls for capital punishment for drug crimes. Bike snatchers and robbing at knife point are common. Prostitution is two streets away from the place I stay. You name it you have it at Brickfeilds.

But Malaysia is a beautiful place. Most of the cities are well planned with natural beauty. Kuala Lumpur especially has state of art infrastructure keeping intact the natural beauty of the country. You see big roads with green rocky slopes on the sides while going to work. I wonder if those slopes were drilled to lay roads. All kinds of popular cars are seen here. Nissan, Merc and BMW are a common site. In India I have seen only bikes being modified but here its cars... wheels brought out on the sides... the body lifted up.. flashy neon lights.. high sound engines. These vehicles command respect on the road! The temperature here is almost like India.. swings between 29 to 32. Interestingly it rains almost daily and of course no water logging. In a day you can see almost all the climate. Morning its cold after snowing as the Sun comes out only by 7:15am. It gets warmer as the day progresses and then rains during late afternoon or evening. The night is pleasant and that's when most Malays get active. KL Tower and Petronas Twin Tower are the unique standing structures of Kuala Lumpur which is visible from almost any part of the city. Interestingly when it rains the clouds cover the tall structures making them to go hidden... its a great sight. The pretty city is well connected with transport services like Monorail (unmanned elevated tube trains), KTM Komuter and Rapid KL (Bus Services). Taxi's are also cheap compared to the comfort you get. All the above are air conditioned. The place where I stay (KL Sentral) is the center point for all of these where people switch trains or buses.

When I first came here I stayed at one of the posh Condominiums at Brickfields sharing a room with a colleague. It had high profile Gym and Swimming pool, a mini theatre hall where every weekends there are movie screening, library and a Squash Court. Villa Scott also happens to be the guest house for many corporates. But I was rigid in my preference of not sharing a room with someone for many reasons. I decided to come out of that place in a month and now I'm staying at a not so clean localities nearby called Palm Court. I came here because most of the Indian office mates stay here. I feel like being in Chennai because anytime I come out I see a familiar face smiling and waiting to talk. I'm currently sharing the apartment with a South Indian mami and another Indian-Malay lady. Being the only male in the house I find it quite uncomfortable to move around. No cooking and no TV so Laptop, flood lit badminton matches and after dinner talks are the ways to spend time. But the apartment is quite clean and silent unlike other guys room. I realised that everything has their own advantages and disadvantages.

Other than the weekend window shopping at popular malls the places I have been here so far are

1. Malaysian Grand Prix 2007 at Sepang
2. Malacca (claimed to be a historical city)
3. Penang Islands
4. Kanching Falls
5. Port Dickson (Beach)
6. Genting Highlands (Theme Park & World class Casino)

There are more places to see here which I'm scheduled to visit in August. An old college buddy is coming from Bangalore with his gang of friends for vacation to Malaysia. Malaysia is celebrating its 50th year of Independence this year.

07 - 07 - 07 Grand Opening... Everyone's Invited!!

Yes its officially public now. It was just a while ago I messaged friends to let them know I too have a blog. I've always wanted to have one for myself after being inspired by a lot of people. Writing has always been a passion for me but I don't know what took me so long to say this to the world. Maybe sheer laziness.. in spite of having almost the entire day with high speed Internet and unlimited access to information I was not regular to blogging. Over the last 15 days I had used most my office time... I mean my free time... to change the appearance of the default page to make it looks like this. In the course of time I learned a bit of HTML and CSS styling also. Blogger's new design is a lot better than the old one. Its easy to edit and customize. I have taken a lot of help from other regular bloggers to redesign my existing template. I will be featuring their blogs on this page in the course of time. It has been a tiring but interesting experience.

So far what has been written is experimental. Now after making it public I'm committed to a regular and good content posting. Man lives on hopes and I have mine too.. I started this blog with a dream of making myself widely read and linked and this is the first step towards that. Laziness and complacency are some of the many factors that is going to affect my writing.. but with enthusiasm and ambition I hope to curb it. In fact it started bad... internet connection was cut off from my apartment by the Condo management for some stupid reason since today morning. Tried for the last 2 hrs fixing the broken line. A boy next door helped me a lot but those efforts didn't bear fruit. Finally decided to walk down to the near by Internet Cafe. This blog will contain ideas, views, memoirs, my musical compositions or anything interesting thats worth sharing, reading, listening or viewing.

I'm obsessed with numbers and their combinations and that is the reason for choosing this day to say post my first public post. 07-07-07 is numerically perfect date with triple appearance of the number 7. 7 hills of the Roman Empire, 7 wonders of the world, 7 lives, 7 notes in Music, 7 seas of the world, 7 days in the week, 7 dwarves, 7 sins... the list can go on to say 7 is magical. No.. I'm not superstitious. Just that this combination looks fancy!

The next few blogs will contain my experiences in Malaysia so far and about my life in general... Things that interested me and things I enjoyed in Malaysia, places I visited here, the reason for me sporting a beard, the only girl/lady who made me cry in life and more. Now none will deny that my life is an open book. Well for sometime this space will be mine and only mine. And till I figure out ways to refine comments I'm disabling the comment section. If you have anything to say you may mail me for the time being.