Brief history of time: my edition

  So it happens that the top management [Eric and Gerhard] visited our office and spent a lot of time interacting with the teams trying to figure out what is happening in their day to day life...I guess after our CR, the attrition rate is now a bit under control...we lost a LOT of good talent in the past year...we also got a lot of new talent...we picked up a significant number of engineering trainees from CDAC and one more place...I was part of the recruiting team that took their confirmation interviews...anyways...work is as usual busy...we keep accepting work hoping the cybersecurity team will grow...got a certificate of thanks for handling the work aspect in a healthy fashion...all those who got awards were invited to the MDs dinner party...so here is Jiggy Sir...as I affectionately call him...sitting in front of me...and while we were generally joking around about work and life...the MD visited our end of the table...apparently Jiggy Sir is a good cook and the MD remembered th...

Food at the fish festival is cooked right in front of you and the fish is always fresh.   There are almost a 1000 plus people who drop in to the festival in the evening every day of the three days that it conducted for...my friend Sharad and his friend at the fish masala stall that he organizes every year...this guy is a treasure trove of marketing experience when it comes to selling his product.  Some of the wares at the fish festival...i think this was stall number 1...i try to go every year that it is organized...Covid was tough on the fisher folks and this festival was conducted after three years this year...my partner in crime, my old school friend and me ate to our hearts content and took stuff home too.   

 Met up with Sameer and Ameya after ages...we all had a fun dinner...it was good to meet up...all three of us at the crossroads of our life...I know for sure that only better days are up ahead...this too shall pass.

  It is not everyday that one gets invited to dinner at the ITC...and its definitely not everyday that one gets to sit next to the country's top most scientist in particle physics analysis...kaka has built particle accelerators for the country amongst many other adventures in physics infrastructure...it was amazing to see his eyes light up decades ago when we were discussing quantum crypto :) A gem of a person having helped and steered so many careers in the right direction...I am friends with his son, an IITB grad, who was studying at IITB while I was working there...a brilliant mind who completed his PhD in chemical engineering and now continues his career in the US. I wish kaka and his family the best of the future. I am grateful that his son never forgets to find time for me whenever he visits town from the US.

With Milan and Sangram's families in Pune...all in all day well spent...the two would not give up on my airport appearance to "meet" Suril...until I started talking about their girlfriends in college...funny how that works eh :) Sachin, Milan, Nirav, Suril and self...as the tiger would say...aaj tum logon ki wajah se ghaas poos khana pada...had a good time overall...main topic of discussion was why I was "dressed up" and waiting for Suril at T2 in Mumbai...actually had another friend drop in from Ireland just before Suril's plane landed. With the gals from KPIT...meeting up after decades...we took the reason that our Irish friend was back in town to meet up for dinner...all in all a good evening...wishing all in the frame a wonderful future...! :)

  Nitin, Ganesh and myself treated the team for the December 2022 birthday celebrations at Little Italy, Pune...it was a good time...i realized that most of the team had never visited this place in the past and was quite surprised at how simple they expected the menu to be...all in all everyone enjoyed...as they say in the wild...the family that eats together stays together :)

To the city that I love...to my corner that I love more :) Downtown from my window to the world...! :)

 Spending time with family this Diwali...Took a lot of pictures at IITB only to come home to a bunch of bad sectors on the camera SD card!!! But was fun spending time taking those pictures at IITB...will do it again someday...posting my equivalent of heaven on earth...the IITB Library :)

  It is not every day that something this big comes around the corner...and that we cannot learn anything from it is pure stupidity...we've know from time immemorial that the wireless infrastructure is frying the planet not to mention our brains too...however we are turning the oblivious eye and are paying the price...it very simple...if you touch a live wire you get shocked...well there are trillions of atoms that carry this effect in a 3-d interferometric scenario...they all carry just a itsy bitsy component of the wireless traffic and warm up due to the nature of radiation...I've maintained all along that the planet heats up with our in-discretionary use of the spectrum...its a miracle we have not fried ourselves into oblivion as yet. On a slightly different but related topic the US and everyone else needs to learn to treat kids that are not their own with a little bit of discretion...you cannot torture children that belong to nature and then expect that there will be no fee...

When your best friend visits you in hospital not for checking up on you but for placing a selfie on the whatsapp group chat...!!! :) maleen...the brother i never had :)

  The loss of a gentle giant...an instrumental force in Indo-Japanese relations...Abe will be sadly missed...its so unlike Japan to report an incident of this magnitude...RIP Shinzo Abe. (1954-2022)

  Will the real tiger please stand up and say something for once everyone said...a lot of months later the cub grew up into a beautiful beast...lets hope he can lead this tiger family into the future as it should be for my lovely state of Maharashtra. Mumbai will probably change a bit now...new cabinet...hopefully a new team that actually listens to the pulse of the state...amongst the outgoing lot one charlie piper...dad had once met him by chance while he was with the economic offenses wing twenty two odd years ago...nice guy...will miss this guy. I hope the coming years are placed with a full effort to ensure that all corners of my state are heard and prosper the way they should...lets digitize the systems a bit more efficiently so that there is less headache for the common man...welcome back to the lead team lotus boy...lets hope you continue to serve with the distinction you have in the past...good luck and god speed.

While reading the book on Hemant Karkare I realized how much these terrorists are extremely wasted in their execution plans...since time immemorial, the neighbors have aided and abetted, fed and bred a lot of terror cells...now that their economy is on the brink no thanks to the economics intelligence wing allied probably with no such existing agency...we feel that there is a good chance for them to hand over all their terrorists and collect the prizes from the IA, Bureau etc...five million here...ten million there...it will add up to a decent amount given the number of terrorists there...it would make way for the next generation of idiots to pick up where the old brigade was handed over to the respective agencies and as always we thought about it...and then we laughed and laughed and laughed :) after all they wanted to export terror...now be forced to export you idiots...only to the respective agency that wants their heads on a plate...man is there anything going right in their heads ...

  Eleven years have gone by since he passed away...not a day goes by when I'm not reminded of how he went away...took eleven years but finally got some of the paperwork for the house in order...all thanks to a wonderful start to this process by his close friend and confidant at Nanavati hospital...I have come to realize over the years that its always only what impressions our friends carry of us that matter over time...one may stay...one may go away...but it always those whose lives we impact however small in manner that matters...he collected so much good will in his time...its difficult to imagine how I could even reach that magnitude of impact (even at the age of forty five today)...one comes to agreement with the fact that one needs to make a lot of money to maintain the house etc. that one inherited...something most people in my workplace will never understand...anyways...happy fathers day to all those dads in heaven who walked the walk to look over this little boy who needed ...

 

 My brother in arms visited after a break of 17 years with family this time around :)

The best part of the Goa vacation was supposed to be the air travel...but we took the road this time and boy o boy have they made the highways super nice...hats off to the Central, Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra governments...job super well done...one tiny suggestion the toll gates should not need slowing down a vehicle...it can be done at normal speed :) we also learnt that google optimizes stuff on its algorithm in a way that it decides for itself is a time saver route...while coming to Goa...we took some forest road that was in a condition that reminded me of Germany after the world war...someone please send that forest officer some funds for a road and a thank you...we did not see too much wild life...except the jungle warfare unit of the MLIRC on their exercises right in the middle of nowhere in the forest :) anyways...having a car in Goa is a boon...you save a lot on travel which would otherwise go through the Club Mahindra travel desk...my mom and sis always use the travel desk....

Ten years gone by already...another visit to the passport office...tried the tatkal option this time...went in "uniform" as maleen (my close friend) would say...went through the whole process in less than an hour and a half...and to beat it all my passport was printed and shipped the same day!!!! I have to hand it to the TCS interface with the passport office and the Mumbai Police...I have never seen such consistency maintained over 10 years in a government office...ye naya India hai...kaam bhi karega aur theek se ghar tak bhi dega aapka passport...I must say I am the proud recipient of the new passport from the Government of India...thanks for the quick processing. :)

  Oh boy...what have we done here...just to put into perspective, the comparison of the size of the two countries on this "golf ball" of a planet...never got the gist of this "plot"...the distance between Russia and the US is about 83 kms on the short side, given the king of Alaska gave away something that burns the poor Russians to date due to all the oil there...I didn't quite get why the NATO sacrificed the Ukrainians in this stupid chess game of "life"...everybody knows that the bigger state here is poised to encircle and starve out the smaller one into submission...the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis is just as big or maybe even bigger than the one down south in the afghan region...but here since it is eastern Europe or well almost...the dreams sold to the Ukrainians of a better tomorrow with the EU and NATO seem to have been the bane of the dreamers in today's time...i cant imagine what mother Russia would gain in here except a few trill...

  Since time "immemorial" i can feel an attachment to this place...its like i belonged here as a student but didnt really belong...! IITB has been one of those few places in my life where i have always felt at home.

  Taken on sis's iphone 12 :) With my pup...senior now :) Temple at home :) With my pup...by the front door.

 

As of April 2021, more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war. More than 150,000 Iraqis have perished in the conflict there. More than a 1,000,000 vets have filed for some sort of disability upon return from active duty...and more than 15000 NATO and US military personnel are in the ground because of the idiots who followed a bad leader. Some would even go so far as to say that it was an inside job...but then who knows. The Afghan countrymen and women are doomed to their fates because they are not united...generation after generation has been lost in the one war after another...the Pakistanis have no great credentials to show anyways...they found the worlds most wanted terrorist in the middle of their country...!!! The funny part of it all is that the Americans could completely blanket carpet bomb all that now troubles the afghans oppressors without remorse as they are technically no longer present in that country and the air...

Its not everyday that we get to hear that the pests have a "hold" of technology...in today's time drone attacks are a problem that we had foreseen a millennia ago when we were creating them and testing them...in the wrong hands and with a bad bent of mind these creatures can cause a lot of mischief...we need to understand a way to track these little ones locally...I had suggested to choms once that a simple way would be to listen in to the oscillators banging away in a local listening post...or well many local listening posts around the area needing protection...this is because the electronics guiding this stupid thing cannot live without the clock...and that thing NEVER stops :) the reason we were insisting on these things having a NAVIC interface with a credit card like packet processing response time was that we could track the ones that were genuine enough, to keep them in the air...while taking out all those without a proper UID...problem isn't that they cant be ...