8 January

January the 8th is a very important day for us, Noni and Me. It has some history to it which is not the subject of this blog or the topic of this post! That reminds me, I have a place where I have written that up but never made it public. Maybe I should do that some time. We usually try to make this day special. As long as we were in Chennai, it was quite easy....

January 9, 2015 · 4 min · abishek

A Short Story Challenge

TL;DR You are right. Now get some popcorn before you start reading. Noni is a dreamer. Not a day dreamer (she is more realistic and practical than I am, in most things that matter) by any metric. But she seldom wakes up without a dream. I can probably count the number of days she woke up after a peaceful sleep. Her dreams are superb fantasy, gory violence or she is flying across the world....

January 7, 2015 · 8 min · abishek

Being Unique

There was a talk show where one of the participants mentioned this: “In order to be unique, I decided to have long hair. I pick my attire and vehicle based on the occasion …” and some more along those lines. I think this is quite sad. I don’t think uniqueness has anything to do with appearance, although unique people tend to have a strong sense of style : one way or the other....

January 3, 2015 · 1 min · abishek

Happy New Year – 2015

So, the new year is here. Happy New Year. The day has been fabulous to say the least. In that sense, the year has started off on a great note. The very first thing I did in the morning was a pending DIY worktable. The work is not complete, but is about 50% complete. And this is great, because this is what I want to do the rest of the year – do stuff myself....

January 1, 2015 · 1 min · abishek

B’day post

It’s almost a tradition now that I am writing a birthday post every year. This year, I am a little late for the post. I wanted to think through and reflect on the year that just went by and set goals for the year that is looking at me now. Staring at me, for I haven’t started anything yet! 2014: Last year was good. I had two targets for 2014. I achieved one....

December 25, 2014 · 3 min · abishek

India – Thanksgiving

Vaidy took about 6 hrs off his schedule to talk to us. And I feel extremely honored that he did that for me. I have a lot of lessons from him, some for the two of us put together. It is my job, now, to put it in perspective and apply what I could. Quite important! I couldn’t catch up with a lot of people though. I guess I underestimated the work involved in organizing a wedding....

November 28, 2014 · 2 min · abishek

India

Kuti got married last month. So I went to India to be present as the brother and to help organize the last minute stuff. The wedding itself went very well with a few WTF instances. The couple is very happy. And that is all really counts. I am going to write a multi-part account of my 3.5 week long trip. That is the number of things that I’d like archived for the rest of my life....

November 27, 2014 · 3 min · abishek

Personality test

So I came across Myer Brigg’s type indicator test when I was reading something on Quora. The geek that I am, I had to try it out first. I haven’t read up about it yet, but I felt the need to write something I noticed. And so here it is. This test is sorta like a psychometry test. I was told, during interview days just after finishing engineering school, that these tests were used to identify your personality, whether you were clear in your head or some such stuff....

August 27, 2014 · 1 min · abishek

suit-up

Last friday was the first time I ever wore a jacket. Not that the situation demanded one, but I knew it wouldn’t look too odd if I did. I always loved to wear a jacket, but given that I spent most of my time in Chennai, just wearing a formal attire with leather shoe would make you like you are over-dressed for more occasions. Mostly the folks higher up in the value chain got away with the jackets and us engineer folks generally looked best in our dirty jeans and some stupid tee....

August 24, 2014 · 1 min · abishek

Relief

It feels good, sometimes, to know that you were not the only one to make certain mistakes. Or that you were not the only one in your situation. Sadistic as it may sound, I think I just got to talk to another person who shares my story. While I wish him the best in his endeavors, I wish I had known him earlier or spoke more often. For a fact, when I told a few of my friends in Cognizant that I was leaving the company to research at IITM, most of them said – “you gotta be crazy!...

June 12, 2014 · 1 min · abishek