Sunday, May 3, 2009

The fire.

The fire is something which drives Indians like me. Typically in life you want to certain things in life. Those things are usually more than one. Some are crazy and some are impossible for that time frame. Some you want to do out of whim , some you want to do because your friend is into it and some you want to do it because you think it will make u cool. But usually you don't pursue anything in life seriously. You just take up things that are inline with your environment at that particular time in your life. Say you take up engineering because its the time to do so.

But a time comes in your life when you are struck by a lightening. It just wakes you up. You have the same feeling which you will have when you wake up at 9 in the morning and realize that you have a meeting in your office at ... 830 . You have been sleeping. Its already late. Better late than never. This is the fire. remember this is not the passion. This is a realization that you are at the worng place doing wrong stuff. This fire may be fuelled by your passion for something. Suppose you always liked to paint. One day at the age of 30 you realize that though you have a rocking lifestyle its not what you should be doing. Then you pull up your socks and start doing it.

It does not mean that it will put an end to what you are doing. It will ask for a superfocussed effort from you to go towards what you want to become. Your list of priorities are so sorted out that the list is no longer a list. Its just one thing. At that time you will not care what your peers say. you will not care what the common sense says. The world starts becoming a movie where You are the director and you take things into your control.

I have been in this situation once when I was in engineering . I just wanted to change my life and put my career on track. The fire was so intense that I got right to the top from down the drains.
Life has become a drag once again due to my habits and karma. I am waiting for another awakening.As a piece of coal does not burn twice, I dont know whether the fire will work for me again. But I am not a piece of coal either, that I know for sure ;)

Is the Techie in me dying?

When I was in college, I used to think (and almost still think) that coding was the ultimate thing a software engineer can do. A software engineer is born to code and only to code. Whenever any senior used to say that he/she is taking up MBA, I used to ask why (WHY!!). The typical answer was that he/she was bored of technical stuff. My and some of my friends always interpreted it as "man I cannot really code well". I used to declare them as losers.

One of my team mates and closest friends, Rohit is an MBA aspirant. Once we were having an interesting discussion over a cup of coffee. I was basically puzzled why on earth did he want to do an MBA. The main thing is that i know that he can code well and is also materializing it well into success. The thing is that I just could not brand him as a loser because i knew that he was a really good coder. I kept on asking him why,why (like a suspicous wife asks a husband "Sacchi batao kaun thi woh").(Shit this blog was supposed to be a non funny one). He simply said "bhai MBA toh karna hi karna hai."

I always wanted to be a hardcore techie, like the one they show in discovery channel. The one who can just create anything they like.I know very very few people who have taken up the computer engineering course because they liked to code. Rohit is among them.

I am an Application programmer. I always was curious to know what goes on inside the system. I had taken up the course of device driver programming to understand the intricacies of the system. But it was hugely disappointing course. Though I became aware of the internals. There was still a huge question ,so what? It had not satisfied my thirst. Not even a bit.

I decided to learn the internals in a very detailed way so that maybe it will solve the mystery in my head. I wanted a break so that i can study. The break came when I went to my native place for a week. I was waiting for it since almost 2 bloody months. My day finally came. I sat to study it bit by bit. It was filled with memory handling, the internals of scheduling. My stuff, so I thought. Strangely after reading every part the question in my mind was "so what" instead of "wow, gimme more". It looked more like "Yeah we are Microsoft. we felt this algorithm was right and we did it."



Now I will be having 2 years of experience in some time now. Last week i was sitting idle and shockingly i got inclined towards doing an MBA!! The thing which struck me was that I read a book from IIM press abt entrepreneurs who made it big. One of them said that he did it beacause he was a bit unhappy that his father after doing a job honestly all his life could not manage to buy a 2bhk at the end of his career. I was thinking whether this will happen with me too. That thing came as a jolt to me. It was a wakeup call. I immediately messaged my friend saying "IIM todenge"

Lateron I was having lunch with my childhood frnds. I said I also wanted to do MBA like them. They screamed at me and said "You like techincal stuff na!"
Without thinking I said yes. My friend said she was doing MBA cos she does not like technical.
Aaaaaaargh not again.

I am seriously at my lifes crossroads and I still dont know what to do :(

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Lochaa???

Well my other blog named 'Outta Engg' is nice but somehow i tried to show that i am always funny. Though humor is supposed to be a chick magnet,there is a lot more i want to write and which does not fit in the 'outta engg' category :)