Party Time!

Y'day, we received yet another 'Party Time!' invitation mail for the next quarterly party scheduled on 16th of April. This will be the 4th time D.E.Shaw India is throwing an extravagant party in less than a year. That makes me think and 'research' why do companies throw parties ? From a company perspective, it shall serve well to show appreciation for its employees' efforts in some merry-making manner (Work Hard >> Party Harder :D ) ; and to celebrate together in a social rather than business atmosphere. This goes a long way towards making employees feel valued and helps them bond with one another, a good step towards team-building and improving morale. Also, Party time with co-workers can be fun, and a great opportunity to network and rub shoulders with those higher up on the career ladder. Company parties are a break from the day-to-day routines of work and can be a welcome relief - or a real stress inducer. Here at D.E.Shaw n Co, we generally have company parties at the beginning of every quarter where they declare results for the previous quarter. Plus the grand annual party, on THE day when they declare promotions and salary hikes and bonus pay outs :) . During my 'research', I stumbled across an article on the net saying "Dancing with D.E.Shaw".

Time does fly!!!

My last post was in the month of November'2007 and it has been around 4 months that I have remained dormant in my blog. This is really bad considering how much I would have loved to write. I surely would have loved to write about our amazing trip to Thailand during the christmas-new year time. But time just flew by. There is the saying that time flies by when you're having fun. Well, it also flies by when you're busy with work and leading your boring routine life.

In the meantime, I discovered that this blog has completed 1 year of existence in the World Wide Web (www). That sounds kewl!!!

The best things in life are free ?!?

One fine day, when I was checking out w3schools.com , i noticed its tagline 'The best things in life are free' ; which turned out to be an interesting as well as an intriguing topic. I put that up as my GTalk status message as well on that day. And I began to do some 'research' on this topic. It took me around a month to complete this blog post. Not that I was doing 'heavy' research on this subject....I wasn't getting much time to write with project deadlines n all around!
One of the global surveys revealed that the best pleasures in life come without a price tag. They rated pleasures derived from a long soak in the bath, an afternoon snoooze (which is my personal favourite :D), spending time with family and loved ones, listening to music, reading a book, enjoying a bottle of wine, spending a laiback day in a relaxed frame of mind ('An entire day to myself') etc gave them unmatched pleasures. BUT I don't completely agree to it. I would rather rephrase it and say 'Some of the best pleasures in life are for free!'. And for most of the pleasures in this modern day world, you need to have money! We Indians are a very emotional lot; being with loved ones, friends and family gives us most pleasure. And the happiness quotient for us lies in the fact that we want to make our near and dear ones happy and take good care of them. If that is done, we are happy. To have those precious moments and to do things that make you feel good, you need money, and I would not be wrong if I say that money buys you the opportunity to get the best things you want for yourself and to make you happy. Another point is that, to spend time with your loved ones you need to have free time, which in itself is an expensive luxury.

4 heavenly days @ kastlevista,blore

What an amazing weekend it was.... cudn't have asked for anything more!
I had been to bangalore on a 4 day trip, wherein we did all the things tat we used to do during our ps2(internship) days in blore.

gobars dood style arrival at mekhri circle to pick me up....gabaalaa lacha (not with macha)....800 ride...ghom driving...udki's bittar face....lunch @ IndiJoes airport road....tooo much chicken kada...plate full of deserts....thakur surpassing ghom baba in royal hogging....high spirits shopping @ spencers plaza....raat ko ek range session....koi load nahin....cheers mama....cheers mamu....dinner bfc's zinger burger...blowing garam rings...mazaa agaya...sunday lunch @ raaga's indiranagar....off 2 mg road brigade road...bowling @ amoeba...juntHa out of form....hippy barista mein lacha....desperate rc.....dinner @ fooodline...egg range dosHa...ille ille...ze ghom hugging every1 in d morning b4 leaving.....sick leave...early leave....work from home....timepass at kastlevista....mr bean's holiday.....lunch @ BFC parotha and butter chicken....one by three....Johnny Gaddaar at innovative....nHice...tuesday morning....schlum bugger semenem sheikh's arrival at kastlevista...insaallaah...alam dilhilla...schlum stories....kara's chicken @ home....final moments of kastlevista stay : cricket match @ bean bags....tats it...end of d story!

India Won Because They Refused To Lose!!!

Cricinfo : "INDIA WON BECAUSE THEY REFUSED TO LOSE ".

The inaugural World Twenty20 tournament has been exhilarating viewing. And on top of that Team India emerged out as T20 champions, courtesy : super cool captaincy of mindblowing 'Mahi'ya and the exuberance of youth!

As the adrenaline is running high with India's success at T20 WC , it's time to say again Chak De India .

And 'Success is the nicest thing to see', isn't it ? :D

linux at its best !!!

Yesterday, we had a tech-talk here about srp's guide to writing the best code in the world ever! Sounds funky and too technical rite?....but guys, don't worry i am not gonna impart 'gyan' to everybody by summarizing the tech talk here in ma blog.

The one-liner on srp's(Stephen Payne) t-shirt was something like this :

$ cd /home/etc/pub
$ more beer

Inspired by that, i did some "research"[:D] on the internet about funny linux commands and i came across a bunch of them. Hope you enjoy these commands as much as i did :

% cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans

% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% "How would you rate Quayle's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% Unmatched ".
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change operation go?^
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

% \(-
(-: Command not found.

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink matter
matter: cannot create

How's Life ??

"How's Life ?" , "watsup dude ?" , "kya haal hain bhai??" -- These are some of the typical chat/orkut scrap/facebook wall posts......And typical replies to them : "Life's gr88....me doing gud here...hows u doing ??" :D

Its been more than a month that i have made a blog post. And you could imagine how many of these kinda orkut scraps i would hav received and i wud hav written. This led me to dedicate a blog post "How's Life ??"
The sole intention of this blogpost is to keep my readers posted about my "How's Life ??". Well, life's been gud here in Hyderabad.Its been close to one month now at D. E. Shaw, which i would describe as a 'HoneyMoon Period' - the period of your job life when u have no work assigned to u and u'r paid to listen to presentations and technical training :) Now at the end of it, we hav been assigned our respective groups and given some mini projects to complete!!!