Holi-Missing my wife ,family and friends

It was holi yesterday (one of the most important festivals in our part of the world) and instead of playing holi all day, enjoying special delicacies, meeting family and friends … I spent the day working like a donkey,watching football at a pub in the evening (my next blog topic) having meal paid by my colleagues from NCL(they are rich guys ;-) ,they have loads of money to sponsor).What I missed was traditional celebration ,the special 'HOLI' menu ,meeting friends and family ,but what I missed the most was my wife and the special food that she cooks (not only on Holi but always).I was so busy yesterday that we couldn’t even talk properly , I called her in the evening when she was almost asleep. After spending Holi and Diwali away from my family I can sum up my feelings in the following lines which I have copied from the famous song chiit ayi hai by Pankaj Udhas
Tere Bin Jab Aayi Diwali,
Deep Nahin Dil Jale Hain Khaali
Tere Bin Jab Aayi Holi,
Pichkaari Se Chhooti Goli
and also the following lines
Toone Paisa Bahut Kamaaya,
Is Paise Ne Desh Chhudaaya
Panchhi Pinjra Todh Ke Aaja,
Aajaa umar bahut hai chhoti,
apne ghar mein bhi hai roti,
God knows when will I stop chasing the paisa(read Pound) and be content in the simple 'roti' that I would get in India. This was the third holi (three Diwalis as well) that I have spent in the UK and every time I spend an important festival here I make a resolution that I will be spending this festival in India next time, but that next time has still not come. Last Holi my wife was with me in UK and we celebrated Holi in proper Indian style.We didnt manage to get gulal or bhang but we did manage to get all the important ingredient for special Holi menu. We had prepared pakoras a day before Holi (as per the norm) and on Holi we prepared malpua , Dahi Bada and the usual non veg stuff (muh mein paani aur aankh mein ansoo aa gaya).
I have been running after money (which I have lost in stock market) and career (which at times I think is heading nowhere) for the past few years, I have ignored my personal life, health, family friends for the past few years. I have ignored my wife ever since marriage and she has suffered the most. In the last seven months I have spent just 8 weeks with her, not sure what am I getting doing all this, and not sure what is driving me to this country again and again. I think its high time, I need to take a call decide on my priorities.
God knows why have I become so nostalgic. Anyways, belated happy holi to all. May this festival of colors brighten up the dull atmosphere all around.
HAPPY HOLI

Thai Dinner-With an English Touch ;-)

Last week we were working very late in office (a normal routine) and we decided to have dinner outside (Free ka chandan ghis mere nandan).As always we spent more time deciding the place and we came up with usual options Indian restaurant, Nandos(A big hit amongst us desis),pizza. I wanted to try something different and hence I wanted to visit a Thai restaurant (not sure why) but not many in my team were interested in having Thai food. Finally they ended up being there on my insistence (I am the BOSS , na na...I had to request/plead everyone) but everyone (including the veggies) were very pleased with the food served. My choice clicked with my desi teammates and the monkey was off my back. I was very worried before the meal was served as my teammates would have killed me if the food was not to their satisfaction but their acceptance of my choice brought me more pleasure than the food that was served to me (even the chef would not have been so happy about the food as I was). As you are all aware its recession (sorry for using this word) all around we were working on a very limited budget that day. All of us used our mental calculators to come with an order within a 10£ budget and Yes ! (ya hooooooooo) we were well within our budget. At the end of the meal each of us guessed the exact amount and finally I came up with the closest guess( Not because I am better than others in calculation but because I was calculating he bill all the while ;-) as I had to claim the bill ).Finally our British banker Mr Shan did the honors of paying the bill.
Had a very long day today (Its only Monday :-( .The day was very hectic and poor me I didn’t even got time to follow the news updates. We were working very late and planned to eat outside today. We were having a discussion on the cuisine and restaurant that we planned to target tonight. We had almost zeroed in on a Thai restaurant when my manager asked us if we were interested in joining them. The answer was an obvious yes (cashless transaction) ,still out of curiosity (read 'keeda' which I always have) I opened my mouth (few would have said not againnnnnnnnnnn) and asked my manager where are we planning to go and the answer was Thaiiiiiiii :-D. We were still having discussion on whether to join these guys or try our tried and tested Gulshan restaurant (where we get free pakodas as an incentive) but the temptation of having a cashless transaction (also because of few dal badloos) clinched the deal for Thai food.
We ordered loads of food today as we were not under no budgetary constraint (as our release manager was paying the bill) and hence we could try much more option. We spent a lot of time comparing the two menus but we could not come up with a winner, few of us preferred today’s place but few were of the opinion that the earlier place was good. To conclude this we will have to try the places all over again (which means late night working again) and we are short of time as our execution ends very soon.

Recession- How does it affect me

Being an avid news follower (I can read and follow news 24/7 hence my wife tells me to change my profession and join ndtv) at times I think whether things around us is so grim or is it hyped by the present day media to increase their profitability and market share.I am not an economist and hence I would not be able to comment how bad things are but one thing is for sure that I am being effected in more negative ways and recession has surely arrived for me. Its recession time for me becauseeeeeeeeee
a) My company has changed working hours from 8 to 9 hours a day which I could not even dream of in my worst dreams a year ago.
b) All our leaves stand cancelled (shhhhhhhhhh it’s officially not declared to avoid media attention) till March 31st
c) The exchange rate in UK :-D has come down from 91 (when I arrived for the first time) to 72 (present day) and hence my onsite savings have gone down by 20%
d) My share market investment have crashed like a pack of cards and I am left with no money(at least for the time being) left and I back to 'hand to mouth' days
e) My wife had to spend so much time to get a job as there was hardly eny company recruiting
f) air tickets have become expensive as the load factors for airlines have decreased and hence I have to now spend extra rupees than what I used to spend few months ago.
g) I did not get promotion this March and have to wait for 6 more months to get promoted
h) Wherever I go the discussion is around the gloomy news all around, talking about recession has become everybody's time paas. Everyone comes up with a company’s name which is handing over pink slips to its employees
i) Project parties have become rare, earlier we used to have parties at the drop of a hat but now we have to cajole our managers for weeks to have a simple team meal (with limited drinks :-( )
j) the entire one hour news is full of sad gloomy news full of job losses and bank failures and even a news follower like is getting sick of all this

I hope all this ends soon and I can start enjoying news 

Time Management- I need to learn

I started blogging only few weeks ago and I thought I would be writing on a regular basis but I could not because of lack of time. Hats of to the big shots !!! (good time management) who manage to take out time and update their blogs in spite of being a lot busier than what I am. I will try to be more regular in writing blogs even if I am very busy as I find this medium to be very exciting as I have the freedom to express my opinion, I am in this lonely place away from my family and friends and usig this medium I can express what I feel even if people are not interested in listening.

I am leading the test execution for the AIT phase of the release and the last few weeks have been very hectic. As with any phase in SDLC life cycle the current phase has been very hectic with the usual drama and nasty surprises coming along the way. I had thought that my stay in UK would be a relaxed affair but that has not been the case and I have been spending more time in office at onshore than I did at offshore this time. I had thought that I would go to gym regularly ,read books , prepare for my ultimate dream , eat healthy ,but things are happening in diametrically opposite ways :coming back home late ,not getting time to devote time on things that I had planned for. Living on junk food (my fridge is full of ready to eat Indian curries).

I think I should stop cribbing about not having enough time every human in this word has 24 hours and it depends on us that what we make out of it. Like the old cliché says 5+5 is what you make out of it.Hence I should change my lie style and I should try to squeeze in all activities that I had planned for. When others who are much busier than me manage to do lot more than what I do so I should change my though process and should never say that I am very busy. I should do proper homework on time management. Google, here I come searching important tips on time management.

Falling Sick in UK-Nightmare :-(

Its great to stay in a well developed country like UK where you have proper facility for almost everything but I would always say that there are a lot of drawbacks as well and of them being the healthcare facility that you receive. The health service in UK is run under the aegis of NHS(National Health Service) is free (you need to pay for few things as well) but my experience ( and experiences of few of my desi friends) with NHS has always been bad. First of all there is so much procedure (read bureaucracy) involved in visiting a doctor that the person will die (or almost die) by the time he receives proper treatment. If you are here then you should register yourself with one of the GPs(General Practitioner) and the doctors in those GPs will see you only if are registered with the GP. Else the only other option is to go to A&M (Accident and Emergency) and as the name suggests you can go there only in case of some emergency. Even if you go to a doctor with cough cold etc and ask for an antibiotic then the answer will be a strict NOOOOOOO as they prescribe it in rare cases. The doctor will say 'Take rest and you will be fine’. You will fell so irritated hearing that and would like to reply back saying 'If I had to become fine taking rest (without any medicine although I have high fever) then why have I come to you??????'.Last year my wife was unwell and it took me (us) almost a month to register at a GP and even registering her at a GP did not help a lot, she got proper treatment only after we reached India. I was unwell this week and thanks to my in laws I talked to a doctor back home (via phone  ) and he suggested me few medicines and I was pleased that I can now get well. To my utter dismay the chemist at the shop declined to give me those medicines as I did not have a prescription  although I said that my family doctor has advised me and I take these medicines regularly. I then had to go to the A&E and I was lucky enough (or may be there was some divine intervention) that the doctor issued me few medicines. I am now feeling much better and I thank the doctor as he understood that a desi cannot get well taking rest (he needs medicines to get well. A lot of these doctors (although many are from Indian Sub continent) have not heard about a lot of disease. One of my colleagues (a British) had typhoid after visiting India and none of the doctors could find that and they could understand the problem after a lot of hit and trials (by the time she became very unwell) and she always says ha she could have got better treatment has she been in India as the doctors there could have easily diagnosed the problem.

Whenever I am in UK I just pray to god that I don’t fall sick as I know that the treatment that I get here will not be to my satisfaction. I have only two options when I am here either I stay fit and healthy or I leave my self at the mercy of these able medical practitioners who don’t understand a desi’s psyche.

Budget- 2009

I don’t know how interesting this topic would be, but I thought it’s not necessary that we always discuss interesting topics, at times we should look at topics that are important rather than being interesting.

It was budget (interim) day today and not sure how many of us followed it. I am not going to paste the budget here as we can get the details from any of the websites instead I am trying to interpret the Good, Bad and Ugly aspects of this budget.

If I have to sum up the budget in one line then I would say that this budget is more of talk and less of action. This was anticipated anyways as this was an election year budget ad also an interim budget and not a final one, but the only disappointed that I have is that they should have done something more for the ‘aam aadmi’ the very base of the party in power.

They have allocated money to the rural sector which is good but the drawback is that all these have been done keeping in mind the election and not the core issue of helping these people. Also the government has increased the budgetary expense for NREGA Plan the flagship program for UPA but the problem is that all of us know how poor the implementation of these programs are.

The government has planned to start few new IIMS and IIT which is good and also the budget for mid day meal has also been increased. The easiest way to have inclusive growth in our country is to increase the outlay in education for 10 consecutive years and see the transformation that it brings.

Seeing the economic climate the government could have come up with new ways of increasing employment which would have helped in sustaining the GDP growth but instead the government has left everything for the new office bearer. There could have been a relief package (on lines of something prepared by Obama Administration) and tha would have fuelled growth and employment.

Hiking defense budget by 35% is the best thing in this budget, I just hope that this money is used as in the past years the MOD has not spent the money allocated to it, the reason being that no one is ready to sanction new defense equipments because they feel that it will haunt them when they are out of power.

One starking fact is the Fiscal deficit which has reached 6%, the next government will have a tricky situation to follow as it has to come up with some out of the box solution to bring down the fiscal deficit else it will directly effect all of us because if fiscal deficit is high then it will effect the bond yield and also RBI will not be able to decrease the interest rate and if all these happen then it will draw all of us in the vicious cycle of inflation, recession etc.

I just hope that the next few months pass on without a major hiccup and the next government that comes to office looks that the plight of ‘aam and so aam aadmi’ and comes up with a budget that helps us come out of these difficult times.

My First Blog

A latecomer in blogging community (but I am am always a latecomer), my Mom used to say that I have eaten the last roti left on the ‘tawa’ (called pichli roti) and hence things strike me a bit later. I am a very talkative person (called loudspeaker by my colleagues) and I can talk non stop for ages (but not as much as my wife when she is angry:-D (Darling don’t kill me if you read this)) hence I am very surprised at my self(ye to hamesha hi hota hai ) that how did I not get addicted to this tool where I can speak volumes on topics of my interest even if people are not interested in listening. (which happens a lot of times)
I always wanted to have a place where I can share my thoughts and my experiences, learning on various topics. Now that I have joined the community I will be a regular writing on a lot of interesting topics. Amitabh, Amir you now have tough competition from a new kid on the block, others keep watching the space for exciting articles to be posted .