My Million Dreams :)

Scorpio....

2010-10-02T08:48:00.001+05:30

Moved on…

2010-01-25T11:51:00.001+05:30

Before posting any article I just take a look at the blog site. To my surprise the last article I posted was titled “2 Years” and talks about my journey with ADITI Technologies in short. Well what an irony, the next article is titled “Moved on” and I am writing about my departure from Aditi.

I have moved to Thoughtworks. It’s been close to 2.5 years I worked in aditi and then I decided I need a change. And so I am here. It was a good time there, good friends, good work and above all a good work culture with freedom. I feel I have utilized it well, the tenure at aditi has transformed me from just being a IT worker to a Thought worker and that’s why I am here :)

One good thing I inculcated in my previous company was the habit to “read” (thanks to the mobile BU). IT world is transforming like never before. Almost every month there are 10 companies releasing new products (based on my feeds subscribed in Google Reader), and there is so much around that if at all we are not aware of them then we are backward in this fast paced industry. Hope I will get some time to read these in the new concern too in addition to the new technology I will be learning.

Let’s hope for the best!

2 years…

2009-08-21T17:06:00.001+05:30

It’s been 2 years since I joined the current working organization. I thought I will just jolt down some memories…

20th August 2007 :

My first day was like this…

F3 –> Yahoo Messenger –> Outlook Configured –> Manoj –> Uday –> Vijaya –> Functional Spec –> BASYS

It was really good. I was excited to be there. Not the old, monotonous and boring work :) Nice work culture I felt, very independent, space to breath. I was happy. Traveling to office reduced from 10 Kms to 8 Kms and that too on the less congested road of the Bangalore, certainly a healthy change.

To be Continued…

You’re Beautiful

2009-07-26T10:37:00.001+05:30

I have been listening to this song from past many days and just awestruck with it’s simplicity. The song goes like this…

"You're Beautiful"
My life is brilliant.

My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was,
F**ing high, And I don't think that I'll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.
You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.
But it's time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.

View of Golden Temple

2009-07-20T13:14:00.001+05:30

This is an awesome piece of Buddhist Monastery.

Federer Vs. Roddick

2009-07-09T15:16:00.001+05:30

There are some ordinary things in life which touches your life and teaches you something in the simplest possible way. It was a Sunday evening and I was watching the Wimbledon match between Roger Federer and Andy Roddick. It started at 7 PM IST and went till 11 PM. Both the players were awesome, hardly any mistakes and playing very consistently.

But one thing which strike me was the calmness and the humbleness of the Roger Federer. There were putting in so much of effort but hardly showing joy on breaking the serve or earning the deuce point.

In the entire four hour match, hardly Federer was able to return the service of Andy Roddick. But to my surprise, he never expressed any anguish or even frustration about that. He tried it and just kept on trying.

This was absolutely stunning! You got to have control on your emotions and the way of expressing.

iPod Shuffle

2009-06-20T11:30:00.001+05:30

Recently I was given an iPod shuffle from my company. Before that I had never used any Apple product, but I had read a lots of review and seen the demo of those awesome products.

If one company takes 2-3 years to create these kind of products then it’s worth to wait for them. iPod shuffle is so small and sleek that one would love to use it. All controls are in the earphone… huh.

I could not have imagined this before or anything like this before. Just amazing. Especially the Voiceover feature is great, when you are listening a song and you can find out the artist name.

Hope I will buy my iPhone soon. :)

Some time away from the busy life schedule...

2009-05-09T14:22:00.003+05:30

Trip to BNP

2009-03-22T15:32:00.006+05:30

Taking a day off from your schedule and visiting some place like National Park is really fun and exciting. I would like to share some pictures i took there from my cellphone.

Sometimes these cell phones are also very handy in a place like this...

An everlasting Impression

2008-11-29T11:58:00.004+05:30

There are many times when we come across one thing and it creates an impression which lasts for whole life. If I am asked to name a few, they would be the prayer my school English teacher taught us to pray before Tiffin break, Chapter 9 of “Physics book which was on Heat and I still remember the definition... (I was in Class 9 and since then my love for Physics started) and many more…

During my engineering days, I started reading fiction books apart from my academic books. I almost remember the books I have read till now. Out of those books read, one of them which has created an everlasting impression on me is “The Alchemist” authored by Paulo Coehlo. Till now I have read it thrice but on a similar occasion and the occasion is when I feel I am low, depressed, lost against someone/fate etc… In other words, when I am not “Nishant Verma”, the most optimistic person I feel I have ever seen. This book fills me with joy, jubilant and gives me mammoth power to fight against any odds. Yesterday once again I finished reading that book and felt I should share some good lines from that book.

Here it goes…

“It’s the simple things in life that are most extraordinary. Only wise men are able to understand them.”

“When someone sees the same people every day they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life. And they want the person to change. If someone is not what others want to them to be, the others become angry.”

“At a certain point in our life, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world greatest lie.”

“Principle of Favorability: When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. And that is called Beginner’s luck.”

“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them or that they will be unable to achieve them. Our hearts become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever or of moments that could have been good but were not.”

“The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”

“The darkest hour of night comes just before dawn.”

“When you possess great treasures within you and try to tell others of them, seldom you are believed.”

How to make your presentation "Rocking"????

2008-11-03T17:45:00.005+05:30

I have been looking through few videos of Steve Jobs demonstrating Iphone. And I was highly impressed... Oops not by the Iphone but by the way Steve Jobs presented it. It was really very effective and impressive. Personally I was very impressed by the way he used the words to emphasize , to infuse interest in crowd etc... Let me come straight to the point; There are few tips which I noted down and can surely improve the presentation which we give.

1.Set the Theme
a. Basically a big picture.
2.Create a headline that sets direction of meeting
3.Provide Outline for presentation
a. Boundary
4.Clear transition in between the topics
a. Or link the transitions to make sense
5.Demonstrate Enthusiasm
a. Varying your pitch
6.Use words like “Amazing”, “Extra ordinary”, “Cool”, “Revolutionary”, “Re-invent”
a. These words enforce power in the presentations
7.Sell an experience
a. Use numbers meaningfully like 120 GB is sufficient for a people to carry songs for a journey to moon
8.Use Video, Demos
9.Rehearse , Rehearse and Rehearse
10.Add value to presentation by sharing some ideas or experience

Orkut...

2008-10-04T18:10:00.011+05:30

I heard about it as a platform where you can make friends, share idea, keep in touch with your friends etc… Oh yes, you guessed it right, I am talking about none other than SNS (“Social Networking Site”). So when social networking site came into picture, enthusiastic about it I got myself registered into it. I am talking about ORKUT (named after the Turkish creator who is a Google employee). A smash hit in Indian market. I think almost all school, colleges or company which is invaded by internet has their presence in Orkut. So what we generally do is get ourselves registered into it, add friends (whom we meet daily:)), update profile and photos (more required when you are onsite:)), get added to some community (where you don’t know what to do :)), make profile colorful. So apart from bonding with your friends it also gives you canvas to advertise yourself:). Wow man! Now this is called technology. Truly Impressed! Apart from this, we also browse through some of the profiles who are not friends or sometime not known to us but they are friends’ friend. I don’t know about you people, I have a category for them “wish they were friends”:). Now the only thing which compelled me to write this blog is to share such one friends’ friend profile which was just awesome. I really liked the way "People" have expressed their thoughts...

Main aur Deepak aksar ye baatein kiya karte hai...

2008-09-29T10:52:00.008+05:30

CEOs in making...
I, Deepak and Ashutosh are very close friends since college time. Some 8 or 10 months ago we decided to meet every weekend to talk about ourselves, new technology, whether MBA will help us or not, can we open a company and many more questions like this… Basically we were trying to finalize a regular hang out place.
There is a place in Bangalore which is very dear to me. It’s the junction on St. Marks road near Thomson (looks like an IT company) opposite to Bishop Cotton Girls school. Now don’t try to relate the words “dear to me” and “Bishop Cotton Girls school”. Let me answer your question here as to why I liked that place? When I was searching a job in Bangalore some 3 years back, I used to sit there with one of my friend (who had joined by that time) and used to discuss when I will get a job, seeing people driving cars I used to think when God will be generous to give me a car and so on… And looks like God actually listened to my wishes… I got job and after being in job for little more that an year I bought myself sweet little car :). Now it’s almost one and a half year to that incident.

Well it was just an out of context story. But I thought I will share because this is the place where we finalized to meet on every weekend. To our good luck we found one Café Coffee Day (CCD) at Lavelle Junction near to our designated place. So generally we used to meet at that junction and after completing our first round of talks we used to walk till CCD to have coffee and snacks.

Now the interesting part is what we generally discuss there. We (myself and Deepak) used to call it CEO talks :) … We used to discuss things as if we have a big corpus of assets behind us or as if we are CEOs in making. We never think ourselves less than Pradeep Singh (my employer) and Jerry Rao (his employer):). We generally discuss launching a software company (as we are from that background :)) which specialize into testing. And we also discuss how we will approach the clients, what all benefits we can give them, who will be in board of directors etc… Fortunately or say luckily we don’t spend time thinking about the name of the company :). In between these talks or rather discussions we notice that girl sitting next to us (in CCD) is wearing nice dress. Or the girl behind him who is smoking is really nicely carved :). So then the talk used to shift from company or rather entrepreneurship to “girls”. I used to talk about some girl in my company who really looked nice yesterday. Or he used to talk about someone who went to onsite. Now finally when we get tired looking at the same girl or finished talking about almost all the girls we like, probably it’s time to ask them for bill. In between we continue ordering. Trust me CCD is an ideal place to take someone out on a date. Oh man, even venturing into a CCD kind of place is not at all a bad idea for business. They take a hell lot of time to get your ordered items. By the time you ask them bill and they will get the bill, you will forgot what all you had there. :)
Today we are again going to meet there to discuss about the presentation on “Entrepreneurship” authored by Subroto Bagchi :). It’s up to you to find out who he is in case if you don’t know him. I will try to inform you guys in case we get to see some sexy babes out there in CCD :).

Hope this time Shivendra Bhaiya will not find many bugs in the post. :)

People prefer to be Strangers :)

2008-09-19T18:15:00.005+05:30

Who like to be stranger? I am sure we often read at-least one news paper; In that we read almost all gossips, read all possible columns which contain information about our country and sometimes outside the country. And the variety of people which we encounter in newspaper range from someone in our city who might have met with a road accident (whom we don’t know) to Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi who represent India on political front. To our surprise, we are not satisfied with this and we extend our boundary to people like Barrack Obama, Britney Spears and many more… If you ask yourself about this that why you are reading about people whom you don’t know, I think you will get the same answer which I got and it is “I am a responsible citizen so I should know what is happening around me and it’s my interest ”. But I am sure we will not have answers for this?
1. Do we know who sits next to our cubicle in office?
2. Which state he/she belongs to?
3. Is that state affected with the recent flood? How are their family members?
4. Who lives next-door to us?
5. What all festivals they celebrate?
6. Have we ever shared sweets in our festivals?

I think you will again get the same answer which I got and it is “we don’t have time to look into all this and we know our team members”. But one question which remains unanswered is “why we prefer to be stranger”. I am working in an IT company and there are some 6oo people working in it. But I hardly know 100. What about the rest 500? Where are they from?
I remember I had the same discussion with my friends like Deepak, Purshottam and Dilip who works in different companies and there also they face the same environment. If we admit true, we are often interested in knowing more about the opposite sex. Can we be friends? If she is good looking, can I ask her for a date and many more guyz question along with this…
Can we actually do anything about it? Not sure because this doesn’t depends on you only but on the people whom you are approaching.
Again the question which comes to mind is “Why to know everyone around you?”, “Will this really make any difference?” I have often heard about “vasudev kutumbakam”. Will this idea of knowing each other will make us more attached to people of different caste, creed, sex and language? I don’t know. Then will this saying of “vasudev kutumbakam” be ever true?
I don’t have the answer for so many questions but I believe that yes if we try we can make some difference. We can help people build trust around each other, share shoulders in our pain and grief, share sweets in our festival celebration. I know this is like a drop in ocean but collecting these small drops will only make ocean someday…. I am tired of this optimism of mine but I am in love with it! :)

Special Thanks to Kishore for sharing his ideas with me .... :)

My Million Dreams :)

2008-09-15T15:46:00.002+05:30

Few days ago I was standing in my balcony (getting the feel of fresh morning air) and from there I could see some tall Eucalyptus tree in Lalbagh(Botanical Garden in Bangalore). This is the time when nature is calm and mind also tends to be in sync with the nature. But instead of having a cool and calm mind there was a low priority thought pestering me that I am 26 now. If I consider today’s situation where the average life of people is somewhere around 60, I have almost lived my first half :). I clearly remember it was a Sunday morning because I remember one article in “Times Life” about the people who attained great heights at their young age.
That article triggered a thought in my mind "why I am not there in the list". This really sounds as a foolish question but somewhere I was saying to myself that I could have been in the list if I would have pursued any of my dreams… Yes “pursuing a dream”; it sounds quite weird to some and very ambitious to others. I found out that the only difference between people who made into the article and the people who could not make is the “desire to pursue their dream”. Humans are generally gifted with a talent of risk measurement and safe playing, which sometime rather many times have stopped us to fully utilize our potentials. So what we generally do is do a hell lot of risk analysis and end up marking that dream as un-realistic one :( . And I would term this entire thought process as “rational thought process”.
I remember my old days in engineering college where I spent my four good years of my life. Whatever I am today I credit most of my success to my formative years in that college. That college, friends, lecturers and almost everything has left an indelible impression on my mind. I remember I fell in love in my 3rd year with a subject called “operating system” and I used to discuss the concepts with one of my close friend Deepak and towards the end of discussion we would often end up concluding that someday we will create our own operating system :).
I went to watch a movie in Inox (multiplex in Bangalore) with my friend. The movie displayed a group of people playing songs and I got fascinated by the way the band was playing guitar and I thought I will buy one. Very next day I went to a shop in Brigade road and bought a guitar for myself. Day after I went to a training school in Jaynagar to enrolled myself for a course. I went to classes for about 2 months; classes were only on weekends for 2 hours. After 2 months I realized that the timings are conflicting with the timings of my morning shows (which I didn’t wanted to miss because it costs only 100 rupees :)) and I felt the timing was trying to create an unwanted bindings on my independence. I concluded that the passion for anything needs to get gelled with the burning desire to learn otherwise it often ends in failure and leaves one disappointed. To my good luck, one day I was seeing the interview of Mr. Narayana Murty (Founder of Infosys Technologies) and in the interview he said he had the same passion for piano and bought himself one but could not learn. I discussed this interview with Deepak (he also had bought a guitar in the meantime :) ) and we found that we (Nishant, Deepak and Mr. Narayana Murthy) have something in common. So we concluded that someday even we will make it big like Mr. Narayana Murthy :). Sometimes I curse this optimism of mine but I am in love with this. By the way that culprit movie was “Life In Metro”.