Jack of all trades, master of none

When the movie was released on 2005, I was in the last few days of my college life. That time, I had a notion that I would not find the movie much interesting. Besides, it employed a new one from Deol khandhan, Abay Deol. And he does not have the good looks of our traditional heroes also. So, I skipped it that time. But when I watched his last year's release 'Manorama Six Feet Under', I decided to watch his other movies also. And Ayesha Takia is another reason, she portrays every character so well. I should really appreciate her work in the movie, Dor. Still, I did not find the opportunity to sit for this movie, mostly because the DVD shoppes in my locality in Bangalore did not have it in stock. Sometimes, I was in short of time to watch it in a movie channel. But, after coming to Japan, I got a chance to watch it(through broadband). It's simple love story but with different approach. A rich father's son(Viren) goes to see an unparented girl(Aditi) to respect his ...

On the 3rd of November, I had a trip to the Toyota City along with my friends. Toyota City is the headquarters of currently world's largest automobile manufacturer, Toyota. As the day was a Japanese holiday, we had planned for the tour quite earlier. We were informed that the tour is conducted everyday by Toyota management & is absolutely free. But I had always a question of why, why a powerful business house like Toyota would conduct such a free trip! Anyway, we left very early with the idea of reaching the Toyota City through a single journey of subway. But alas, we had to change three trains, two of them being the Meitetsu trains. And it was only then when I really got a first idea of the outskirts of Nagoya City. Toyota City is about 45 mins of journey from the most of the Nagoya city subway lines. I should mention the nearest train station in fact, as we did not find any train line directly linking to the Toyota City from Nagoya. After we got down at the Toyohashi station,...

The very first question that came to my mind after watching this movie was 'What did the director want to convey with the story?'. It seemed that our director had not put enough efforts to make the abducted girl feel that she had been kidnapped! Our villain(khal-nayak), in fact has to give her the bad news - 'Maine tumhe kidnap kya hai'? What a poor guy! And when the billionaire papa-the-great came to the rescue of his daughter, he forgot all the law & order. He was thrashing traffic, robbing money, doing everything to turn himself to a full-fledged criminal! I wonder nowhere in the movie anything was shown about the police activity against this criminal. And how a poor boy(who stays in an orphanage) came to learn driving skills at such a little age? He drove a Merc to get his injured pal to the hospital. Another thing was that the director had not given importance to the details. It could be easily noticed if the two persons who played the villains were compared. ...

It has been almost one and half months since my last post. To tell the truth, boredom has become a dominating part of my life at Nagoya. Yeah I know I have works to do in office, I have to prepare the meals, I have to wash my clothes myself, I have to do every single thing that I did not use to do back in India myself(except the office works). To gain a control over this boredom, I found only thing, I told my inner self - 'Sleep, sleep a lot Raj'! I din't have any other choice. The idiot box in my room always shows me the chat shows, base-ball matches. Oh, I hate these chat-shows. The gang of some non-sense Japanese always discuss some miserable topics, ranging from their daily life-style, how they take their doggys for a walk to every other thing that any sensible person will find less interesting. I really sometimes wonder whether these people have got any other work to do! Anyway, it seemed that boredom has gained the resistance over the sleep-pill also. Though I am not ...

At around 7:10(local time) in the evening, our flight landed in the Central Japan International Airport Centrair. This airport is in an artificical island, one of the five such offshore airports in Japan, pretty cool huh!! Imagine yourself in the middle of sea! The time we started to do immigration formalities, problems started to show up their presence. The most annoying was the language problem. Neither the immigration officer was able to understnd my English, nor I was able to understand his Japanese! Fortunately, my friend had a little bit knowledge of Japanese. So, we managed to finish the formalities somehow. One very funny thing is that the Japanese refers the foreigners as 'aliens'! So, the card we were supposed to get from the Japan government is 'Aliend Registration Card'. Anyway, everything was systematic there. For an example after the customs check, I was waiting in front of the exit point for my friends. But one official came to me and asked me to take the...

In the early morning on 23rd Aug, we landed in the Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok. The airport carries a totally different look than the Indian airports & I got surprised to learn that this port has less number of domestic flights than international ones. I found almost all of the major & minor international airliner logos inside the port. We were waiting in a long queue for the immigration formalities. And suddenly I saw a flash of someone who seemed pretty similiar to side-actress Neha Dhupia. I mentioned 'similiar' a she was using a glass & was too whitish. Then my friend also enquired me of the same. She was accompanied by two others, seemed to be her managers. After sometime, our guess became true when she removed her glass. Why does a person need to use a sunglass inside an airport? I am sure the UV rays will never get the chance to penetrate through the airport walls. Anyway, after all the formalities were finished, we boarded into the Thai Flight to Nagoya. M...

So, the packing of goods were in full swing. I must say, a cumbersome work! Still I somehow managed to finish that. I had a mid night flight on 23rd Aug. I left 545(the house number I used to dwell) for the airport very early to have reserve time to tackle unforeseen last moment issues. That was my first visit to the new Bangalore Airport. I boarded in a Vayu Vajra(Volvo AC dedicated airport shuttle). And believe me, the journey was so much comfortable. I don't know why people do not use this service often. It's quite economical too compared to other options available. Anyway, as I said earlier I left home quite early, I found none of my team members present at the airport by the time I reached there. Gradually, they started to show up their presence. One by one we had finished all our boarding formalities. Finally, we were on board the Thai flight. Though I had flied a lot of times earlier, this one was my first international flight. Thai Airways, being a luxurious one, lack...

The day I started working in SRA India(Indian arm of Japan's Software Research Associates, Inc ), I never thought that I world become an onsite team member in just one and half years. Because, the branch was very small & it was very illogical for a novice like me to think of an onsite tour that time. But the fact was that they would make you do your work in almost Japanese style. The very first day I started coding in SRA India, I was told that the Japanese were simply put - perfectionists. This simple word had a very large inner meaning. The code that you wrote should be totally bug free, robust, modifiable without introducing regression etc. The first project I was assigned to, it took a hell lot days to prepare only the detailed design(Java Doc) for a very tiny function, every molecular level detail was described on that. But somehow I made myself adjusted to such work environment. My performance was good in my batch. And in one day, one of my managers told me of an onsite a...