Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts

Let me first tell the reason of my high unavailability on the blogs in past one-and-a-half month. I was on internet but most of my time was eaten up by the “Tours and Travels”, “Hotel Bookings”, “Bus and Train Schedules” sites. I was apparently on India tour and was travelling most of the time covering all modes of transport (by road, rails and air):

Aug 22: Pune – Bangalore: Infy Transfer
Aug 29: Bangalore – Delhi: Indigo Flight (One rupee ticket :P). At Pravesh’s home
Aug 29: Delhi – Rohtak: To my home
Sep 2: Rohtak – Chandigarh: With mom
Sep 6: Chandigarh – Delhi: For Delhi Airport.
Sep 6: Delhi – Bangalore: Indigo Flight (One rupee ticket :P).
Sep 20: Bangalore – Kochuveli: With Parents. Charge with Nithanand.
Sep 22: Trivandrum – Kanyakumari: Parents saw the giant ocean waves for the first time.
Sep 23: Kanyakumari – Bangalore: The train saw around 30 UNO games we played on the way for 9 hours continuously.
Oct 1: Bangalore – Goa: A failure!
Oct 2: Goa – Bangalore: A success!

And on the cards is: Bangalore – Trivandrum: Sometime in October end.

In all these movements across state borders, I have even forgotten to give my new phone number to some of my friends. Let me finish this one quickly!

If things continue to be like this, I am afraid I need to put a “Where is Rathee?” gadget on this blog (inspired by “Where is Tom?” of “Ask Tom” fame).

Though most of these tours and trips were nice experiences in their own sweet ways, but the last one: “Bangalore – Goa” deserves a special mention here because of its link to a much bigger picture. Let me try to write separately on this in my next entry.

As if the consistently crashing stock markets are not enough to irritate you and send a chill down your spine.

I usually don’t sleep while commuting in the bus. But yesterday was a one-of-its’s-kind day.

I boarded 6 PM bus from Infosys. At 6:45, we were hardly 1 km moved from the original position (Am talking about displacement (the vector), not distance). I usually sit on the first seat because you get space to spread your legs in front of you :P I looked back and found everyone “dead sleep”. So I too tried to sleep. Luckily, I succeeded somehow.

Why “Luckily”?
Because, that bus was so wrecked, the seats were not in good shape (no head rest) and the engine was roaring like anything. Traffic all round. I tilted myself against the glass window and slept. What I last remember before sleeping – we were at the entering foot of the "Wakad Bridge" (flyover). Slept for about half an hour when sudden brakes by the bus driver left me awake. When I woke up – we were still on the same flyover.

Now when I was awake, I put on the FM to my ears. Wow! All the radio stations (including our very own Vividh Bharti) were airing Himesh Reshamiya Songs. Did I have a choice, what frequency to tune?

At around 7:45, struggling through the rush, we caught an almost clear road. But… there are days when, whatever you do, however you do, you can’t escape the "so-called-luck" following you. We stopped at every Red Light on the way with a halt time of more than 60 seconds at each of them, all the way to AFMC.

The problem is – How to extricate from this? I am not able to find a personal solution for this problem. Should I change my route? Should I change my timings? Should I get a PMPML bus pass, and stop traveling by Infy buses. I will have a flexibility of route and timings in that case.

I just can’t imagine my plight when the most awaited “Commonwealth Youth Games” is round the corner. The traffic is going to go worse.

The only nice thing that I did yesterday was: Got my eyes registered for donation. Got to do more exercises now :P

Ah! this is going to be my fastest blog ever.

I have to take PR301 certification (it's Infy's internal) in this month only and damn! I am not finding time to prepare for it.

If any of you is not aware, let me tell this: "Infosys Employees have to undergo a certification process in order to get a role change (promotion)". Yeah! that's true. Those who fail to clear the certification exams for their respective roles and the tenure in Infosys do not not stand eligible for the role change process, or their promotion process is derailed. Here are more details (official announcement): Infosys employees to undergo certification for promotion

Every year an infoscion has to take at least 2 certification exams - one technical and one domain. The certifications also play a role in the annual CRR (Consolidated Relative Ranking) process. This year its PR301 in technical bucket for me. Four advanced courses:

> Advanced UNIX - Kernel Programming

> Advanced C Programming

> Advanced Oracle Tuning

> Advanced Database Tuning

Hell! I haven't worked on "C" for a long time now and adding to the my misery, it's the advanced course - Variadic functions, locales etc... which I have no idea about. Plus, the passing % has been raised to 70%. Earlier it used to be 65%.

I am having completely packed days in office - no time to study for all this. The weather here in Pune is at its best currently. No time to enjoy that even. Past 3 weeks were completely soaked in work. Scripts being released to production almost every alternate day.

Somehow, I have started preparing for PR301 - after reaching home. But I am not happy with the pace. I get just one hour to study at home. With this pace I won't be able to finish all of it till June end. I am getting just 6 hrs of sleep everyday. I think I need one more hour of it. But I want to get out of this state of despair, quickly.

Note: I managed to write this because I have set a data load script running and I know it would take 8-10 minutes to execute. This is a superfast blog entry. So, sorry for the spelling / grammatical errors, if any.