Random

Metallica was here yesterday. So was bhai on his bullet. Guess which of them i got to see. I did briefly consider going to see the band, but when i couldnt name any song other than Nothing Else Matters, i decided to leave them alone and stay at home. One concert, one live concert is all i'm asking of you, stupid Bengalooru! That, and a job, of course.
On the same day, i graduated to playing songs on the keyboard. Sun oye Metallica, you might have a lead, but its not going to take me very long to catch up. Twinkle, twinkle little star, i will rock you like you have never been rocked before! As soon as i figure out which finger goes where.

The job hunt is not going places. I alternate between telling myself i will be patient (its only been a week) and applying for a delivery job at the nearby Dominoes. Which i might not get, given my knowledge, or lack thereof, of the streets of this city. Its all 5th Cross and 6th Main and oh, how i miss names like Vainu Bappu marg and the 2 Senapati Bapat roads i crossed to get to work.

The kindle is back in action! A huge collection of ebooks has been discovered by the dude, and if only i didnt turn into such a complete wreck at the very idea of giving interviews, i would right now be deep into one of them. Or many of them, i cant pick! I want all! But, no. As soon as i am done with this post, i shall go back to K&R. Which is why you might find me rambling a bit more than prudent.

I dont remember when i last read K&R, but i have underlined and drawn stars and written things in pencil all over it. Most of those things i now know, so it makes me feel like the years have added up to something, after all. I may not have bought about world peace, or improved lives or even figured out what to do with mine, but i do know why *++argv works. And you cant take that away from me.

I am going to, today, for the first time ever, lads and lasses, get a car out on my own and go pick up the dude! Wish me luck, wish the car luck, wish Bangalore luck, but most of all, wish him luck!

This is it

It was today. My last day at work. My last review. Whew! Last lunch with whats left of the gang. Ate like a pig. Again. Certainly not for the last time! My last mail to all. I wrote two lines but L, M and Z blackmailed me into making it longer. The last time i went looking for a sensor. My last snack hour. Gifts! My last speech. Which i didnt give. The last ice cream t Naturals, its become a sort of last day tradition now. On our way back, i was asked for the nth time how i was feeling. And i said - it feels like someone else's farewell. And it did. I think its a kind of self preservation mechanism developed by the mind. Its like the mind has decided - yeh bahut bada patthar hai, apne se nahi uthega, chal side se nikal chalte hain. Which worked fine till we reached the parking lot and it was time for final goodbyes.

Instead of going all soppy again, i paste for you (but more for me) the last mail.



Hi All,

Everyone expects me to ramble (after all, one who rambles on Birthday mails can ramble on anything), so i'm keeping this short. The last 5 years have been good, and if the next place i go to gives me as much laughter and learning as this one, i shall be very lucky indeed.

Keep in touch and all the best.

Thank you all,
Vinaya



P.S. Gotcha! Turns out I cant be brief in writing, even if i wanted to. This is my second job, and when i joined 5 years ago, i wondered if it would be as fulfilling as the first. Induction went on for a month and at the end of it, i was more than ready to jump in. For my first "feature" someone (who shall remain unnamed) came to talk to me and started off with - "Do you know about hash tables?" I couldnt believe it was okay to not to know them, and i'm sure some of the disbelief showed on my face. Which he took to mean that i didnt know, and started explaining about hash functions and keys, (i imagine) mentally cursing the interview process. I hurriedly assured him i knew what they were, and that is how multihash tables were born. From there, there was no looking back. I played with threads, fought deadlocks (more of them self inflicted than i'd like to admit), set fire to devices, squashed bugs, (metaphorically) bashed people up (and had the most fun doing it), made people run all around the office, and generally had a violently good time.
Thank you all for the last 5 years, for the jokes, for letting me feel a part of the whole, for teaching me, for letting me teach, for laughing at my mistakes while telling me its okay, for making it easy and for making it fun. Also for making me write this.
But i do not thank you for making it so hard to leave.

Room with a view

There is this room type thing we have built on our terrace. It started out as a covered place where clothes could hang out during the rains, but has now evolved into a kind of an attic. I have had my eye on it for a very long time. Its basically just 4 walls and a roof but i can salivate just imagining a home in it. A bed in one corner, TV in another, kitchen in another and what more do you need? The "walls" have huge openings so its a room with a view! (So what if the view is the neighbour's balcony?) As i was saying, i've had my eye on it for a while. This time, the day i got home i decided i was going to sleep up there. Its crazy what my folks let me get away with. We cleaned up the mess (i.e. threw everything inside, outside), swept the place (i had stated to vacuum , but gave up after the damn cleaner took two minutes to clean one square foot. Which might be because the cleaner is almost as old as i am, but it has made me more or less give up on vacuum cleaners altogether), washed out the dirt (taking water from the tank and throwing it all around, whats not to like?) and put the mattress out to dry. All before breakfast, mind you.

That night was going to be the night. I was so excited, i laughed at mosquito warnings and weather forecasters forecasting rains. I went and curled up with a book and the emergency lamp (nope, no electricity either). No mosquitoes. I laughed some more. Finally when it was time to sleep, i shut the lamp and within a few seconds i had two insurmountable problems. Mosquitoes, which apparently wait until dark to attack, and i needed to go to the loo. There was no way i was going all the way down and coming back up, no sir. So that night turned into yet another night.

Tonight though? Tonight is different. Tonight i have an extension chord that is connected to an extension chord that bring electricity to me. Tonight I have industrial strength protection against mosquitoes (although the mild green light the repellent is emitting does little to inspire confidence), tonight i have a laptop AND a book to keep me company, tonight i have bed covers enough to smother all bed bugs. Tonight is going to be the night!

I hope i dont need to go to the loo.

Day 3 and 4

(Because i wrote about day 1 and two somewhere but cant find it now.)

Day 3

I am ignored pretty much all morning. Except by this new kid who comes looking for me with a question.

Kid: Is blah feature supported on xyz?
Me: (who has designed and coded blah not at all so very long ago) No, not at all.

Kid goes away happy. And then i start to think, why not? I open code, i look around, i dont understand, i try to remember, i cant, i try to reason, and that works. I realize I have misled the kid. I look around for him but there are too many new faces and all i remember is the colour of his shirt. After a lot of peering at shirts, i finally find the one with the right colour.

Me: I'm sorry, xyz actually does support blah. It doesnt support yabadabadoo.
Kid: (first looking confused and then happy) Oooh, i actually wanted to ask about yabadabadoo!

Just to rub my genius in your face, i give the right answer even when asked the wrong question. How they will survive without me i dont know.

Early lunch at kakas, i ate shrikhand! Yum! My stomach is turning into a bottomless pit. Or maybe a black hole, because everything i eat disappears. Which is the most awesome thing that could happen, i'm hoping it is permanent! I could be the slimmest pig in the world!
Knowledge is attempted to be transferred. From me standing and talking for two hours and a whole bunch of people sitting and sleeping listening for two hours*.


Day 4

Started late. I lay the blame on the Game of Thrones for being so damn interesting. Meetings. Lunch, where everyone agreed surprisingly quickly on the place and then went to another. Random reading. Review. Probably my last decent sized one. Someday i'll develop the courage to ask people to fix their indentation. Movie! In the interval L says - 4 people, and not one person had the foresight to read the review! But apparently the way we watch movies is pick a convenient time and watch whatever is showing. The movie was pretty bad but the company more than made up for it. And M probably immortalized the song Banao Banao by declaring it the song to be sung while running make. I laughed so hard at that, see, this is what i am most afraid of missing. The bad jokes and the shared laughter. I have been lucky enough at both workplaces, although in very different ways. We used to laugh like crazy even at the old workplace, but very rarely on geeky jokes. That sense of humour i have picked up here. What i'm saying is, i dont mind if at the next workplace i find my laughter over MIL jokes and baby food***, i'm open like that. Just give me people who inspire me and who make me laugh, thats all i ask of you, old man @ blue sky. Also, preferably not have the same person do both. I have found that i am very conscious around people who inspire me, laughing around them is limited.



* Obviously. If they'd listened for longer, they wouldnt have heard much. Unless i was far far away and sound was taking time to reach them**. Which i wasnt. I was close enough for them to throw tomatoes at. Or eggs, if they were so inclined. And though i would have advised restraint, i can see why they would be tempted. When they really want to hit me, when cleaning up my mess is taking over their lives, i will not be around.

** I really should make physics jokes. I'm sure there is something fundamentally wrong about that sentence, physics wise.

*** We are not there yet. Not even close ****

****You probably didnt need to know that. Sorry.

The end of an era

I'm in Pune to say goodbye to my job and i can see that it is going to be overwhelming. Especially since i have nothing lined up to go back to. Unemployment! Its strange, I certainly didnt expect that to take up so much space in my head.
I thought i'd document these two weeks, peppered with flashback of the past 5 years, but i dont know how much stuff i'll get to write about. The last time i tried that (at the end of another era), i didnt get past day 1. But here i am, foolishly making the same mistake bravely try, try and trying again.

Day 0. Left home for Bangalore Airport. Of all the airports i have been in, this is the one i call mine. Probably because the 6 hours my dad and i spent there once, waiting for our flight. We'd just fixed up my marriage, and despite the one thousand reasons to, neither of us was freaking out. We talked and sat and ate and walked around and i got to hear, for the first time in first person, a bit about the young man my dad had been. I dont know, does adult life so thoroughly wash off your youth, that even the wistfulness doesn't remain?

It started to rain on the way. The droplets started off by forming a pretty pattern on the windshield, but pretty soon were racing to the roof! Like kids released from the confines of a school bus, actually more like solders pumped up with, well, whatever good speeches are supposed to pump them up with, rushing towards the enemy, eager for a fight, eager for death. I got most terribly excited seeing that. I very badly wanted to know what happened once they got to the roof, but we were already late and i was already not helping and so i ate up my curiosity.

The flight got to Pune early. Bhai got to the airport early. I refused to get on his bike without a card bearing my name. Someday i'll make that joke one times too many and i'll get picked up with a card and flowers and then i'll have to die of embarrassment. Within 5 minutes i got a lecture from Bhai - why are you so dead and disinterested in all things technological and why do you need a job so desperately and why dont you do something interesting and if only i had the skills i'd make a million cool apps (and he would, poor thing and go mad in the process since he gets cool ideas on a daily basis). I told him i am willing to be his code monkey but he says that is no fun.

Home. And everything that implies. Parents. Bath. Grandparents. Dinner. Movie. And sleep.