Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Plight of a Valiant

'Robert Frost:Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me'

Ever since I have been scribbling these notes, I have been wanting to write some thing about the 'family'. Some facts, fun and hurting. This post is purely about a person who I have tried to understand but failed to do so. A person who come into the daily life routine, disrupt the normal way but leave his mark by a smile or a glance that talks louder that any words he spoke. My late uncle, Ajith, whom I lost for more than a year now.

My family is not particularly a small one. Dad has six brothers, all of them are married and most of them have kids of their own. Some of them even live near by and some far. Grandma (mom's mom) has 4 children of which my Mom was the eldest. Uncle Ajith the second child followed by aunt Sujatha and Pradeep Uncle.

Every time I used to come to Kerala from Dubai for those summer vacations, I used to see Uncle Ajith in the house. I did not think much of him and to be perfectly frank was scared of the guy. He was some what an arrogant fella who used to show his command over me. But over the years, even though we had less number of visits from him, I came to know what kind of a personality he was. The sufferings he had undergone.

Having had a primary education from a navy school ( grandma and grandpa were working there ) he had great command over the English language. He used to study very well according to Mom and came up first in the class. The ill fortunes started when grandpa, as I hear, hit Uncle every time he came home. The tortures along with the transfer to a bad government school changed his life forever. I still do not know to term courage he showed at the age of 8 -10 when he took grandpa's scooter and drove off to see the festival called Thrissur Pooram from Cochin as praise worthy or genuinely stupid.

His friends did not help him either. Having friends is a great thing. It's sort of a soother and a morale booster. But having friends how stick with you because of your money is a misfortune. He trusted who so ever came to him and nothing stopped in helping them in what ever ways possible. Even if that meant he get into a fight, he would do it. The boozing also did not help.

Mom helped him in getting to Dubai and procuring a job there. With his excellent communication skills he had no issues with the job. But his ill fate followed him there too in the form of friends. After leaving Dubai, he even went to Bahrain but it did not help him either. After settling where my Aunt lived he had a quiet life. The roaming was reduced to the minimum, no boozing of any sort. He was trying to get his life together. He was over 50 and did not marry (no one could predict he was that aged just looking at his face). A self made man, even used to cut his own hair with such patience and accuracy.

My locality was the place where he would lose himself. There are guys who actually would do anything to get a pint and my Uncle knew many. Seeing him come home all drunk would be scary for me as I did not know how to react. He used to play Bookworm in my PC for hours only to come for the meals. I thought he liked isolation, being all by himself. Made him speak less, act more. Only if he could convert those skills into something that his loved ones could look upon. He could have got grandpa's job in the navy (after his death) but could not do so because of the family problems he had.

When I was older we shared a healthier relationship. Talked about stuff. I tried to be close, understand his point of view. Uncle was intent in being fit all the time and those gym talks would be fruitful as well as informative.

It was a dark day when we realized that he was no more. Ending his life by his will, like a message to everyone who hurt him in one form or the other. Rest In Peace ...

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Reverse Mapping !?

I was asked to construct a macro in Confluence which actually worked as a custom RSS Feed Aggregator. The tags inside the feed had to be ordered according to the number of times the tags occurred in the xml file. The macro is written in java and I used Rome for the RSS feed reading/ traversing operations. Now the problem came when the list of tags had to be converted to some kind of a map structure which had the ordered set of tags in accordance to the number of occurrences.

Now as you know the map has a key value pairing system where the key will be unique. I managed to iterate through the list of tags converting it into a map which has the tag name as the key and its number of occurrences as the value. The problem arises when you try to reverse the map (ie the keys as the values and vice versa). Same number of occurrences overwrites the previous entered key. The solution that I thought (do not know whether it was the best on) is to translate the key with a value of a list of all the tags. This had some operations (iterations) but it did my trick. This was when I noticed that Java being a vastly used language did not have anything called a Reverse Map (at least I do not know of one ).

What I did (just an example):-
Tag list - ['work','work','fun','java','work','fun','misc']
tag to occurrences map - { 'work' -> 3 , 'fun' -> 2 , 'java' ->1, 'misc' -> 1 }
occurrences to tag map - {3 -> ['work'], 2 -> ['fun'] , 1 -> ['java','misc'] }

Sorry for the Python like analogy. The numbers are Integer Object types.

I guess the reason why Reverse Mapping is not implemented (please correct me if it is in fact implemented) is that the map takes Objects as the key / value. Then the value Object must be traversed before its made into the key. I think the check whether the Object is iterable is a solution to this. May be the rule should be if the value Object is iterable, then iterate it and translate the iterated values as the keys. Or just check if the Object is a List or a Set (simplification maybe) and if yes then iterate. Anyway I think Sun should consider implementing something like this.

Comments are welcome.

Monday, January 21, 2008

The Return

I had a 10 day vacation. Off to my home place. Its been 4 months since I went home and this time I had to attend 2 weddings. Stoney AKA Achayan got married on the 12th of January and Vineesh got married on the 20th. I flew to Chennai for the first time by Deccan. This lousy flight had all things that an average flight must not have. The engines gave so much sound that I thought I was inside a car. The stewardess were not what I call 'GREAT'. The pilot was a foreigner and therefore did a good job in handling the plane. Unni was waiting at the airport to receive and to lead me to his flat. The weather in Chennai was okay. It was after I reached the flat that I understood that Ranjith was to leave for Australia again the next day( the day on which we were supposed to start to Kottayam). After having some chit chat with Balu, Unni and Ranjith we went to sleep.

The next day after having a late lunch ?(at 4:30 courtesy Ranjith) we left to Kottayam on a train after me and my good friend Sajith had a beer. In the morning we reached Kottayam and then started our onward journey to Achayans. At about 11 am we reached the place only to be received by Anish and Mithlesh. Jayasurian and Pradeep were also there. After spending some time with Achayan, going to Pala with him I had a sleep. I was awakened by Bimal who with his uncanny tone of voice and deeply theoretical dialogs amazed me. Man .. was this guy messed up. After arguing about pre marital activities and co habitation we went on to have some good time talking about normal stuff. In the night we had 8PM Dry and went to sleep.

The next day after buying the present we went to the church to see our batch mate get married. After the wedding the rest of the gang came. The lunch was extravagant. Lots of stuff to eat. I have been only to those Christian weddings a few times and I tend to like the non vegetarian items served. After the lunch and very hour of chit chat we started our journey. This time the guys were intent on going to Kumarakom. Kumarakom, a famous tourist attraction, was quite far away and we took about 3 to 4 hours to reach our destination. The boat hiring prices were high and we felt that the guys offered much less for that amount of money. We then left the place and went back to Cherthala were we slept on just 4 mattresses.

Early the next morning I felt to my Sis's were Mom and Dad came. After watching the mallu movie 'Kadha Parayumbol' and after enduring the riots that my baby niece made inside the theater, I slept at my Sis's. We even witnessed a minor accident. A bus, without any provocation, crashed into a Maruti denting it's side seat.

The next week was silent for me. Just home cooked food, nice TV programs, movies on the mallu channels. Lots of fun, the 'Everybody loves Raymond' style. I had my return flight from Cochin to Delhi via Bangalore.

Earlier when ever I went to the bus stand, I would see someone I knew. Even when getting on a train I would find some one or the other. But now times have changed. I managed to see 3 people I knew when I was waiting at the terminal lounge. I even saw Meera Jasmine, the famous south Indian actress. To say the least I did not expect a plump woman with full of make up. She was better looking on screen. I also heard that Mohanlal was also there. I reached home after taking a cab at about 1 in the night. And now I am back to work (or rather back to blogging).

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The Manali Trip : Redux

After posting the previous post I had it put in my Yahoo IM. To my surprise, I got some comments and even some personal messages about it. The first thing my good friend Srinath asked was 'Haven't you blogged about the Manali Trip?'. Thats when I realized that I forgot to blog on something that was one of the best things that happened to me. Why do we go out and enjoy for a while ? Escape from the normal life, seeing new places, exploring new horizons, meeting new people, making more friends, and understanding that even though we have a hectic schedule we are capable of enjoying those simple things in life. Thats what this trip gave me. The chance to look life from a whole different perspective. And I like the new me.

I do not intend to write but to point out some things that made this trip great.
  • It was damn cold there and I practically froze my a** .
  • All the people (7 of them excluding me) were great and I tried to connect to them. Sharing ideas, laughs, displeasures and all those kind of feelings actually made us close. And for once I felt I was NOT a non Hindi speaker.
  • Those people in those skis fell so much times that after some time it stopped being funny.
  • We up to the topmost point of a mountain. My feel got numb, when coming down my hands and budd got numb too. But it was a great feat. We (Me Arora and Vineet) pissed on top of the hill and had some solid OLD MONK.
  • Manikaran changed my perspective towards Sikhs. I loved the place. Not because it had hot springs. But because the service that they do to the people who come there and have food. The idea of you also a part of this and you are entitled to play your part in it by serving the people who come there. I also appreciate Swati to be doing the Seva. Gitesh and me helped those people move some huge jars and that felt great !
  • For those cold nights and the comfortable Rajai.
  • Dumb Cherades. It was crazy stuff from my team (Sardar, Swati, Arora) , but was great in a wierd kind of way.
  • The park trekking, crossing the river, stepping on shit .. the list continues
But the feeling of being in a group is something that you will not get unless and until you participate. Thanks and enjoy the pics posted in Google Picasa. A slide show will be on your left hand side.

Monday, January 7, 2008

A Unique Experience

This past Saturday was one of the most eventful Saturdays of my life. On the previous Thursday I was asked to come to the office on a Saturday so that some applicants ( company prospects) could be interviewed and selected. I was under the impression that I will have some person along with me when I conduct the interviews. I still do not get why my PM chose me (there goes one most for the unsolved mystery list). I thought 'what the hell ? I went through my grad without studying crap .. Of course I could do this.' . I did some initial investigation, prepared myself (though not throughly). The topics were RoR, Ajax, Php and other minor stuff. We were looking for people with a growth potential.

Then came the Saturday. I reached the office by 10:15 (15 minutes late) and found that it would take another 30 minutes to get the people in and started. I browsed for a while and then I was called to check the first victim. Details /data is hidden for privacy issues and the fear of me getting killed.

The first guy was kinda scared. He was shivering a little. So was I. It was my first experience handling one interview. I had been the interviewee, but never the interviewer before that.
He was okay with programming I suppose but was kinda fed with information. I had always felt that the primary education in my country is spoon fed. There is no much of practical knowledge. The questioning ability of children/students is not taken into due consideration. Say mathematical Integration- why is there integration? Why do we do it ? Whats its use ? If we do not know that then why the hell do we learn it ? Isn't it kind of useless ? I believe in practical knowledge than theory and have tried all my life to understand rather that gulp it down. I felt for this guy because he had been gulping it down and not trying to identify the taste. He was not able to answer the why question though he knew how. He thought of the problem in a 'C' kind of way and tried to get Ruby syntax for it.

The second guy was okay. He had the general knowledge but was asserting that he could develop. He kept saying that after every answer. Gave me the feeling that he was desperate for this job. I had to suck out the answer from him by giving clues and pointers. I have always thought that to remember stuff it is very important to link them to each other. If there's no link then it becomes a lone node, a 'dangling pointer' which is very difficult to 'garbage collect'. This guy had that kind of a problem. I associate this with experience. When you meet people who are intellectually exceptional, we tend to follow their steps, tend to understand what they do, try to think like they do and sometimes we just get the knack of things. With proper guidance and company this problem of associativity could be alleviated. Reading also helps. Then your motto becomes 'Google is my best friend!'. I gave him the green signal but he did not go far.

The third guy was one of a kind. When I entered the room I see this guy sitting and giving me one of those grins along with a solid handshake. Pride is a good feeling once it is under control and you don't hurt other people. Its one of the seven deadly sins too. After asking this guy some personal things, I came to understand that this one was overcome by vanity. Confidence in abundance can do a lot of harm. He answered my first question with such arrogance that I felt overcome by ego myself. Ego is a wild horse and if not saddled could be very harmful. I made him think a bit with a simple mysql question and he kept on arguing that the answer he gave was right. I had him think and modify the answer twice but still he did not get the answer right. It is not the wrong answer which intimidated me, its his approach that the answer he had written was right and needed no modification. I tried being cool and calm( although people who know me would say I am the opposite). In his CV was written that he knew Java. CV is the only thing the interviewer has when he conducts an interview, and therefore he is entitled to ask any question that is consistent with the CV (As I understand it). I started asking some questions with respect to Java( simple OOPs stuff) and he says that he has not done anything in Java. I ask him that why he had written Java then and he gets pissed off. To tell the least I was also very pissed off. But I tried to keep myself calm. Then I asked him to give the same answer with respect to PHP. He says then that PHP is not an Object Oriented Language. I was quite taken aback by this answer and asked him who told you that PHP was not an Object Oriented Language. He kept on arguing and this time I did not leave it either. Finally he stands up and says 'You do not know anything about PHP and I am done with the interview'. Opens the door and when the HR personnel asks him to wait says ' I am done, I am going !'. I tell my colleague what happens and he pacifies me. If the person who had undergone the interview is reading this, I tell this to you
  • Vanity is a killer. Kill it before it kills you.
  • An open mind absorbs more than a closed one.
  • Listen to the damn question before you attempt to answer it. It is difficult but its something you must have done during those school days.
  • Read at least some thing about how to attend an interview. You need it more that anyone !
  • There are limits to pride, aggression, self confidence and rudeness. If you cross the border line, you will be totally F**KED all your life !
  • Please learn more about PHP and Mysql Dude ! There are at least a billion people better in this than you are.

After this episode I was also mentally stirred. I did not expect a candidate to run off. After lunch the HR tells me that there is another candidate waiting for me. I try to concentrate and pray to god not to screw this one too. I enter the room and I see a person who is twice my age. I get instantaneously stunned but I keep my composure. I kept on telling myself to give him adequate respect (at least to his age). I ask him some initial questions on Ruby On Rails and after having an unsuccessful answering session he says he is not prepared to answer any RoR questions. I consolidate him and move over to MySql. I ask him if MySql is an RDBMS. He thinks for a while and then says he is confused. Then he breaks down. He says he has not prepared for any sort of questions and that he wants to go. I become practically stunned again. I think 'Why God ? Why me ?' . I ask him to assert his decision and he sticks with wanting to leave. I find him to be desperate and tell him to wait while I call the HR. The HR calms him down and at last he leaves.

When I tell this to my PM, the first thing he says is 'Why are you scaring them off !?'. Did I scare them off ? Did I ask some thing unnecessary ? Did I be rude ? Did I get aggressive ? Did I try to be commanding ? Its hard to evaluate oneself. Third party is the best to evaluate. I would be keeping all that I have learned in mind when doing this exercise again. I was asked if I wanted to another interview after that but I was full and said that 'not today anyway !'.

I will be flying home and then to a dear friend's wedding. I certainly hope Ill improve during the next set of interviews after I return.