How was your day ?

I hate this question, I hate this question almost as much as I hate managers who don’t understand code, so here’s my answer:

6:00 AM: Get up, must exercise today, looking more and more like the Indian uncles at work.

6:01 AM: F**k it, I’ll go tomorrow.

8:00 AM: Get up, check email / rss: new Harsha Bhogle article!, score. The day’s only gonna get worse from here.

8:10 AM: Shower / Shave / Leave for work.

8:30 AM: Get in, promise yourself that’ll you’ll get some work done today.

8.31 AM: Facebook! Joy of joys: 33% of desi friends went camping and feel “re-energized” 25% of desi friends went to an AR Rehman concert that “rocked” 20% of desi friends went to a potluck where the food was “yummy” 22% of desi chicks got married / engaged to rich NRI dudes 4 years older than you (at this point you promise never never to turn into “that” guy).

8:40 AM: Check work email: good day, broke only 3 things in production, maybe I’ll get a bonus this year.

8.50 AM: Try to organize yourself like the white guys: use post its!

9:00 AM: Status meeting: Repeat what you did last day in different words and thank God your desi manager doesn’t understand words longer than 6 characters but is too proud to admit this.

9:20 AM: Check the papers: damn that Maureen Dowd is a fox. Friedman is too bullish on India for his own good. The Economist continues to make sense. Read Harsha Bhogle article again (aah – heaven).

9:30 AM: Check work email: damn it! idiot chick who joined with you got promoted. Curse silently and update your resume. Search for jobs on Linked In for 30 minutes.

10:00 AM: Realize that you don’t have any new skills from the past year. Promise yourself to actually complete something and “show them”. Start coding

10:15 AM: You’re in the zone now. Headphones, Code and you, this is like a Basketball, the Playoffs and Ray Allen.

10:30 AM: Future ideal son in law on iyengarmatrimony.com comes by your desk and says: “Dude, you didn’t come to the AR Rehman concert did you ? It rocked!”.

10:40 AM: Nod and listen politely while thinking of interesting ways of mutilating the person in front of you.

11:00 AM: Now, back to the zone: Get an hour of work done.

12:00 AM: Lunch. Plan “exit strategy” to become “king” in India. Real estate baby, that’s the shit.

01:00 PM: Design meeting. Should have read the design patterns book. Promise to do this and contribute from next time.

2:00 PM: One on One with manager you don’t respect. Feedback not good: you should speak up more and interact with your colleagues more. Your attitude is wrong. I think: “F**k you”, nod politely and smile. Another person to short when I start my hedge fund.

2:30 PM: Check e-trade, damn it! RSU’s won’t vest for another month.

2:40 PM: Code baby Code. Pandora, Code and Me – the holy trinity.

3:40 PM: Coffee with real friend. “Really da ? ***sys isn’t hiring, dude, how will we go home man ?”

4:00 PM: Log onto chat. Aah, best friend from India is on support duty for his company and has found proxy!. Whine, bitch, moan and curse for the next half hour about state of the world.

4:30 PM: Ping pong. Show the chinki’s whose boss. (they are btw).

5:00 PM: Make sure manager sees you coding while he walks out. Yep, you’re sure as f**k getting a bonus this year. Damn it feels good to be a banker errr sorry coder.

6:00 PM: Desi Uncle passes you by on the way out, invites you to daughter’s Tamil Association of Santa Clara recital. Promise to go. Promise to kill yourself after.

6:30 PM: Get home. Shower.

6:50 PM: Dinner in front of TV with room mate

8:00 PM: Start reading design patterns book, promote me now!

8:15 PM: Stop reading design patterns book, workaholics are losers anyways.

8:16 PM: Need to do something else constructive now. One game of Halo won’t hurt.

10:30 PM: Reenergized baby! Now that it’s out of your system, you can focus.

10:36 PM: Must watch Jackie Chan movie: drunken monkey on cable. Good times.

12:15 AM: Ahh nice. You too shall be disciplined like the Chan from tomorrow.

12:30 AM: Sleep, but not before mentally updating your people to f**k list when you start that hedge fund …..

Damn you Facebook, damn you.

‘Sup dawgs ?

Random facebook rant: like most of my posts this applies to nouveau riche Indian MS students:

* Don’t for God’s sake post football scores as your damn status message, we all know how to use google and we know you’re a real fan but still

* Don’t tell me what an awesome weekend you had while seeing Big Sur, seriously dude, what exactly was *so* awesome that you just have to brag about it

* Do not pose for photos, you are not a model

* Do not take fb quizes please, please and don’t recommend I take them EVER

* Level of wannabe-ness = no. of fb status updates *after* getting a job / no. of fb status updates *before* getting a job

* Yes, you’re hooking up with random hotties in clubs, we know we know, great job! you’re awesome!

* You also have white friends, wow!

* Don’t go “camping”, order pizza and update your status saying what an appreciation you have for the great outdoors

* Don’t assume people who aren’t active on FB are losers, they’re probably doing more productive things with their time: like studying yield curves

* In short, don’t use facebook, use email.

* Add me on Facebook!

Sage advice

Sorry for the delayed post, I’ve been away — a combination of extra work and well laziness. Today is superbowl Sunday but more important it’s the third day of the India South Africa cricket series, [match summary: India have their backs to the wall and need to a decent performance to avoid defeat, highly recommend you try to watch it if you get a chance] which brings me to a recent article I read on (my home page and) the greatest site ever — cricinfo.

It’s about a young fast bowler — Abhimanyu Mithun who’s close to being selected for the Indian first XI. This is the piece of advice that really caught my eye — ‘whatever you are it is because of cricket, cricket is the ultimate, focus on the game, all other things will come, but start focusing on other things and everything is over’

Forget cricket, this advice is *extremely* applicable to our [Indian engineer with MS in US] lives as well. Every year you see hundreds of guys get their MS degrees and think they’ve cracked life, given dollar rupee rates, and the fact that India is likely to grow faster than the US for the a while it may be wise to keep updating that resume and doing that extra project, unless Irfan Pathan / Munaf Patel / or S. Sreesanth seem like good career models to follow.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbisaacs/ / CC BY 2.0

Yeah you won, so ?

It’s award season folks, Nobel prize season, Barack Obama won for well … he won but swades was also represented by our very own Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. A bit about our hero, he studied in India, went abroad and you know thirty years later won the big boys best science fair project.

Awesome! Congrats!

This is a nice piece about saar—

The part that bugs me is this: “Do these people have no consideration? It is OK to take pride in the event, but why bother me?”

Look, I don’t think emailing this guy is right, I don’t even think India or Indians taking pride in what he’s done is right, and if you’ve actually emailed this guy just cos he won well ….., having said that, Mr. Ramakrishnan given his awesome intelligence could use such things as spam filters to block out unwanted emails and quietly go about his day but no, wasting a couple of hours deleting unwanted emails from mistaken but likely well meaning people is such a hassle. If nothing else you got your undergrad degree in India sir, a little class wouldn’t kill you. Yeah people emailed you, so ? you win the noble prize everyday ? if you don’t want to reply don’t, but you don’t have to whine about it.

Nobody succeeds without a little bit of luck and acknowledging you’ve been fortunate to study abroad while plenty of unfortunate (but no less capable) children back home would have killed for the chance to do so would have been nice but then you’d need perspective for that. Why why why can’t we produce math nerds with a touch of grace about them.

Give Ratan Tata or Sachin the damn Nobel prize, at least they’d say the right things.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hmk/ / CC BY 2.0

What did you do last weekend ?

Study after study says that public speaking is people’s biggest fear. Personally, I’ve never understood that, I have no problem standing in front of people and making an idiot of myself, they’d figure out just as much within 20 minutes of talking with me anyways, no, my biggest fear is questions, not small talk-y, how was your day – fine questions, those pointed, piercing questions that people ask you in private like – what’s your gpa ?, you don’t understand design patterns ?, you haven’t worked with API’s before ? or you’re 24 and you can’t run a 10k ?

Like a Wasim Akram yorker, I expect but am still unprepared for the following question asked of me every Monday: “What did you do last weekend ?” and exactly like Wasim’s yorker, this question’s danger is in it’s focus, if it were “How was your weekend ?”, I’d provide a polite fine and go back to thinking about why Arsenal can’t put the ball in the back of the net, no — this question’s danger lies in the “What”.

Here’s the truth I didn’t do anything last weekend, I did my laundry, watched sports (EPL / IPL / Champions League / Champions Trophy / anything involving a ball), went to an Indian restaurant, studied a bit, and made up for work that should have been done long ago. That was my weekend, that’s my answer, unfortunately it isn’t an acceptable one. Most Indians in California travel approximately 9.8 million miles every weekend, most geniuses I know have been to every tourist site in California (thrice), and give me a condescending smile when I say “nothing” to their favorite question, followed by “I went hiking last weekend”.

I’m not even going to bitch about it, there are people starving, the global economy’s still in not so good shape, and I get paid far more than I should, I’m lucky and I know it, so I’d be a major douche bag to whine about something as trivial as this, BUT! I want to make a case for doing nothing over the weekend, here it is …

• It costs nothing. Yeah, I’m cheap, sue me, I’d rather save a little more, take it home and spend it amongst family and friends at Sadguru (best restaurant in the world period) than get my picture taken on some damn beach and put it on facebook to prove how popular I am.
• Hiking is overrated — you didn’t go to wildlife sanctuaries in India but you’re SUCH a nature lover in California ? Coder Pleez, how’s that sleeping bag ?, my bed’s pretty damn comfortable.
• Personally I find it relaxing to sprawl on a couch and watch the game with a coke in my hand rather than stand in line with 67 other people for food.

Again, you want to burn rubber on weekends, be my guest, just don’t rip on people who don’t.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/studiosushi/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0