I now blog at Wordpress

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Look before you leap (subtext: Customer service is the differentiator, don't buy Worldspace)

Oh how I wanted that Worldspace radio - the promise of crystal-clear rock music of all kinds filling my room was a recurrent dream. At a measly 1500 bucks I could buy a receiver and a not so measly, but not bad either, 1000 bucks I could get a six month subscription. My brother already had a receiver which he was not using - so I took that and bought a subscription.

So you think everything was dandy - well not quite - Hours were spent in getting the antenna to face an exact 45 degrees in the exact south-east direction where their microscopic satellite apparently rests. Well that was not possible from just outside of my room, so I had to put the antenna on the roof (just above my room) - however antenna wire ensured that my radio had to be hanging in mid-air. Anyway I told myself - this is why they have customer care - and that is where the penny drops. Maybe the Airtel broadband guys have spoilt me with their free and great service, but in this case I reasoned that the need for a longer wire must be pretty standard with Worldspace given the directional constraints with its usage. But no, I have to pay for 'technical' assistance and also pay for the wire by the metre. They do not keep antennas with longer wires at the Worldspace showrooms so I have to get a third party wire otherwise. Anyway, I went ahead and asked for it and was told that it shall be resolved within 48 hours.

Right now it is 72 hours and counting - and this is after extra phone calls. What a waste of money. I guess this is why they sell the receivers so cheap so that they can annoy you with their customer service. They are not the only ones - my personal blacklist also contains - Reliance Webworld (Shudder at the thought of the days when I owned a Reliance - thank God I have an Airtel now). The good customer care people are Airtel and Dell. More as and when I think of them/deal with them.

Update: My Worldspace was finally fixed - another 4 days after this was posted. Time to face the music.

Leaving my job - a glimpse of Nirvana

I think there are two kinds of pleasures in life - the orgasmic pleasure and the nirvanic pleasure. Orgasmic pleasure emanates out of actively engaging with the material things in life while nirvanic pleasure emanates out of the other extreme - rising above the material things in life. (Though you may argue that both of those result in an eventual release which leads to pleasure). Now I am not sure if one is better than the other - but it can be safely said that orgasmic pleasure is easy to come by (though taken literally - not so easily for us engineers), while nirvanic pleasure is not. So how can one experience nirvanic pleasure? - the answer is right here - leave your job. No, seriously.

Today was my last day at work. Until yesterday I felt nothing - I thought it would be just another day at work. But I was wrong - yesterday night it started as I was backing up data from my laptop and removing personal items from my laptop bag - I actually started feeling nostalgic! guess even though I did not particularly liked my job - there were some things which I did (c'mon not the laptop guys).

The next day I had a last document to work on which I wanted to do well before leaving. The first thing I noticed was how I was doing that piece of work a lot more efficiently than I usually do. The second thing I noticed was how everytime someone talked about deadlines, deliverables and so on so forth - I automatically broke out into a Budhha smile - I was feeling lighter, euphoric - I was on the top of Maslow's pyramid all of a sudden, had broken away from the karmic circle. There was a team meeting on a client document - and I was full of ideas (i.e during the time I was not dozing/smugly smiling at my other team members). It felt great.

And as soon as I walked out of the office there was a bounce in my step I haven't seen in a while (I think the last time was when I was probably 10 and bought a springy variant of action shoes). I called up tons of people and shouted "Me is a free man !". I guess that was my glimse of nirvanic pleasure. So go ahead guys - leave your jobs. Let there be light(ness).

This one isnt really a post because it's a circular reference

I am writing again. About 10 months after getting my engineering degree, a week before leaving my first job, a month and two days after my first venture starting and more importantly more than an year since I made my last post. I have 15 drafts sitting in my Blogger account on random arcane musings on philosophical and practical stuff (some of which I have spoken about to my friends getting a "gyaan dena band kar" comment) - just a collection of thoughts waiting to be articulated which I refuse to do (or can't do because I will keep thinking what I have written is not 'right enough').
What does that say about me?
I tell myself I need time - which I am going to get when I leave my job, (I think I use to tell myself that in my final year at college as well) - but will I really ever have time? Considering I have already listed tons of things I will do when I have time. We will see how it goes. On that badly articulated, insufficiently pondered upon thought - I leave my readers (Why am I being pretentious - I think the reader count is currently one - myself - and perhaps a few blog spammers).

First Post

I am not much of a U2 fan , but I like them
I am not much of a writer, but I aspire to be one (among several other things)
Turns out I am an engineer, ekdum freshly made (today was my mtp presentation)
but truly i still haven't found what I am looking for.
So there, thats why this blog
a record from today about my travails as a person and travails as a writer
an effort to express myself more freely, an effort to not lose memories at the hands of time.