Mayank's blog

I have been missing too many opportunities to blog about the happenings at my end. Infinite many incidents could have been a subject of my blog -

Last Friday, 20th January, 2006 (a very special day for me atleast) was marked by yet another colorful event for all the team members of Oracle Projects. This being the first Friday Curry of the year had to had something special and this time the speciality being - Red Flamingo theme (see the snaps in the photo album) and Pizza Hut's special snacks for the evening!

 

Don't want to write more ... so better see the snaps and enjoy!

Right now world premiere of Harry's 4th movie, based on the legendary series of the world's largest selling novel, "Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire" is being held at on the other part of the globe. And I am watching to it live!!! Yeah ... thats the power of internet! I really love it. Harry, Hermione, Ron, Hagrid and few others have arrived, right now Victor Crum is being interviewed. Emma getting the lougest cheer ... even more than Harry himself... no doubts on that

There are two major sequences I am really looking forward to in the movie -

It has been quite a while when I last blogged, and ever since then I had an urge to give words to my thoughts. Although there haven't been any "happening" incident in my life but as many of my friends think and believe that I don't have a habit of being still for a long time without giving them an opportunity for gossip. So I have given Rajat to come up with any hypothetical story to the feed the hunger of all my babble loving friends.

 

Now that I have so much time at my disposal that I have to find ways of killing it, so why not blog about what have I been doing during the past few weeks specially when I didnt had much of a workload at office.

 

Well firstly, there was an event - "Oracle Global Volunteer Days 2005" where I had an opportunity to participate and keep myself a bit busy. It was a wonderful idea to help people and bring smile to their faces maybe for few day atleast. I participated in a few of these events - Diya's Day Out, Blood Donation Camp and Oracle Sports day (Inter school - Under Privileged Government schools) are the ones to be precise. I had a lot fun in all the events, all that was possible.  Many of my friends were curious to know what was that was driving me to these events. Hmmmm... let me clear all confusions, it was not the pretty girls that you see in the webpage (here), neither was the wish for the GVD T-shirts (although, I ended up getting one in each event ). So what was it that was attracting me so much, to tell the truth - the feeling of helping others and the satisfaction, rather the pride you get when you do such work is definatly a driving force and it was what I have never experienced before. Although saying, infact writing all this looks too awkward but trust me it the same feeling I experienced and I will try my best to participate in more and more such events. Before I end writing about this topic I also wish to acknowledge the intense help and support from my manager, Rajnish and all my colleagues who were ready to share the official workload with me during the time I was busy at GVD. Rajnish has been really cool about my participation at GVD. I really wish to go and thank him personally but that would look too formal a gesture given that he is always like a friend to all of us.

 

Now that was it for three full days and some more days for the homework before the D-days but what did I do the remaining time? Hmmmm....thats an interesting question to ask - specially when I dont do any of the things that keep few of my friends busy. I don't smoke, don't booze, don't go to pubs or bars, don't have any other addictive hobby as the rest of my friends and above all I dont have "the full time consuming commitment" called girl friend which a countable number of my wingmates have (2 - to count them). So what the hell have I been doing? Well I have been spending my time at my office desk infront of my computer and for the rest of the time I have been running and lifting weights. I also have been trying to convince myself to start studying but till now all efforts have been in vain. Anyways I will keep trying till then you people keep reading and commenting ....

 

And do have a look at the photographs of GVD that I will be uploading shortly!

A long desperate wait for watching Salaam Namaste!

I have been waiting for time immemorial ... to the best of my knowledge the time when the songs were about to be released. Since then I have been downloading wallpapers, listening to the songs, reading music and movie reviews. Finally after a long long wait Yashraj films finally released this movie but no destiny had a something else in the store. House full at IMax and that too for the whole week, leave out weekends.

Almost everyone I know has already seen it, some in with their gang and some lucky ones went out with their gf. Some officious souls have been pouring over their remarks about the movie. To quote a few - "Ultimate fundoo movie, fully time pass yaar!", "Preity is looking hot ... wow". Others had yet another opinion - "More or less like Friends", "Hum Tum se topa hai". So ultimately I managed to get all shades of the opinion. And someone special infact asked me not to watch the movie at all. Saying that it wasn't so good and there was no point in wasting time and money. Seems like someone cares too much for my time and money .

 

But yesterday in spite of all the farrago opinions I finally made up my mind to watch it, even left office at around 5:30 to be in time for a 7:30 show. But still no luck for yours truly, and it started raining and has not ended even today as of now while I am writing this blog. More than 24hrs of raining with temperary pauses in between ruined my plans for watching the movie. But as the age old saying goes ... if there is a will there is a way! I finally resorted to the only option left to me. The option I never wanted to use even in the worst case. 

So I started watching the movie with like a zillions of interuptions and pauses, some sweet and some inevitable. Utilized my multi-tasking skills!

 

The first half was really nice and I sat here cursing all those who stopped me from watching the movie and blaming my poor luck. Atleast Arshad Warsi and Javed Jafri were superb throughout the movie, and Preity looked *~hot~* in the first half. And then the sad part came which I always hate, but still the movie managed to keep up the theme light and comic. Overall after watching the movie I finally conclude that the movie was worth 100/- bucks and if you really like watching Priety on big screen, like the songs of usual Yashraj films then it wont be a bad deal to spend some time while letting the movie makers earn their fair share. Now I have made up my mind that I will surely go and watch the movie again but there are multiple clauses to attached to it which I am myself not sure when all might be satisfied concurrently. The clauses are as soon as I get some free time, tickets become *easily* available and last but not the least it doesn't rain pouring water to all my ambitious plans.

 

Todays punch line - There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

 Just read an article driving attention towards the recent Yahoo's deal buying Konfabulator, a company which started the idea of making widgets, which are nothing but small programs that provides you with many useful informations like the weather, rss feed, cpu usage etc etc ... The list is never ending and is only limited by your creativity and imagination. Find the original article at - "Why Yahoo Bought Konfabulator". This article gives a nice insight about market and its probable future.

Having read so much about Konfabulator (yeah the name is kinda awkwards and funny ... but as Joey says "Ihe name kinda clicked me" ) I did some re-search, so put it simply - browsed through their site and tried my hand on this product. And believe me ... its really cool. The way they describe it is "Konfabulator - whatever you want it to be". The utilities available are quite nice but the looks are just awesome! And another thing which I liked was the cartoon series describing the company's profile and history. Usually we find big names and boring stuff in the website which provide information about the company - the usual "About Us" column  but I must say these guys are real cool and its the best ever way to narrate a company's history, atleast among the one I have read.

 

 

I cudn't refrain myself from posting some snapshot of the widgets I tried. Just have a look and to beleive it ... try it yourself. I too would try building some widgets sometime this weekend ... if time permits!