The Homosapien thought..

Today I was having this weird thought.

Why are we humans named as "homosapiens"? Didn't the nomenclaturist / the person, who is supposed to give names to the human species, think of something before naming our spieces ? From homo habilus to homo erectus, all the known evolutionary species associated with humans starts with a "homo". Dont take me to homo erectus. Will write about that some other time.

This raises a huge question in my find. Are we all born "homos" and we get conditioned to become "hetero" so that there might be that one lucky couple which gives rise to the "heterosapiens"? So in the future we may have a movie aptly titled "Planet of the Homos".

I seriously wonder what happens when we meet aliens. When they ask us "What is the name of your species?", are we going to reply back to them saying we are HOMO sapiens.

Or have we already been visited by aliens ?

I guess we have already been visited by aliens. No, I am not supporting the Seed of Life on Earth theory but just randomly guessing that this naming issue is the work of those bast#$d aliens. They might have camoflouged themselves as the group of people working on choosing a name for the human species. And they have chosen it as homosapiens.

At the end of it I don't know why the martians or the dumbass scientist named us homos. But I do know for sure I am straight as a "ganna" (sugarcane for those who can't ...).

10 years down the line ....

I was having a discussion with Suman (my partner in crime and business) as to what will be the scenario of companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro. The rate at which these companies are recruiting people and training them in "IT", I guess we will be able to match the strength of Indian Army. From what I observe, year after year, WITS (Wipro Infosys, TCS and Satyam) has been recruiting a record number of graduates. Wipro kicked off with its campus initiative called WASE. Infosys is tying up engineering colleges. This has become a boom for the engineering colleges as the tie up will ensure that the engineers are "employable" when they graduate. But what I see is the loss of quality. I believe that in quality and timeliness of work lies customer satisfaction. A streak of innovativeness goes a long way in building a good relationship with the client. But with the kind of work these companies are taking onto themselves, I sometimes pity the engineer who is supposed to work on them. From what I see, standard maintenance projects for banks and billing and network maintenance projects from telecom companies is the main source of revenue for the IT companies.
WITS is now claiming to provide end to end solutions. They say that they are a partner in business of the client and understand what the client needs exactly. I agree to a certain extent with this view but these companies have no clue at large. There are managers in the system who take a project and execute a project in any manner. These companies claim to be SEI CMM - 5 and a 6 sigma certification. But from what we have seen from the inside, its all a hogwash. There are too many processess and very less of actual engineering. Engineers are meant to solve engineering problems and provide better solutions each time for the same problem. Here I see there are very few real engineers at work in these companies. Freshers who get recruited from engineering colleges are promised some work and are put in something else. I cannot understand how can a person from electrical department of a REC get into embedded software system group and how does a person interested in Operating systems end up doing SAP. But some how the managers are able to execute a project and deliver "production quality code" to a client. I pity the client too.
I have seen many people on the bench, wasting away like vegetables. Instead of that, if these guys are allowed to work on some projects of their own choice and are allowed to interact with professors from IITs and IISc, they can develop something new. Who knows the next Google can come from Infy bench.
Looking 10 years down the line, I see a lot of people having the same exact skillset and balance of power tilting to organizations in the demand and supply game. I believe that every engineer has to read up and get to know about the latest developments in his / her field of interest. 10 years down the line, if you are not distinguishable then you will be a nobody. This article I guess will help you more to understand about the importance of stuff 10 years down the line ..

--Vishal

Restart Blogging

After a long time, I have finally decided to start writing my blog. I have been reading up blogs by Himanshu Bhat Sheth, Guy kawasaki, Scott Adams and Rashmi Bansal. It seems to be interesting. So let me see as to what all can I think and blog about from now on.

Currently I have diverse topics to write on that vary from my personal life, tesch stuff, my readings on the net and about my work life.

I am not able to decide as to what should be the first topic on which I should be writing.
Hey I can write a film review. It shouldn't be that tough. So let me see.. umm...I saw Tararumpum and Namastey London last week with my girl at E-square.

So here it goes.

1> Namastey London : Unforgettable movie (Big pun intended). Plot revolves around discipling a young girl whose thinks she is British by nature. She hates everything that is Indian. Her dad tricks her to India where he gets her married to a Punjabi guy. The girl is unhappy and goes back to UK with her parents and her husband the night of the marriage. The girls parents are happily deciding to hold a grand reception for the newly weds when the girl throws the bomb.

She declares her marriage to be null as there are no legal documents to support it. The guy is devasted. The girl feels sorry for the guy and tells him that she is love with a British guy. And the guy tells her that he will wait till she gets married to this guy. Many incidents happen, the girl and the guy get close to each other. And finally when the girl is at the altar to get married to her prince charming, she realises that her true love is in fact the Indian guy.

Apart from the song "Ye veeraniyan" there was nothing good about the movie. Although the movie experience was great (My girl was sitting close to me arm-in-arm and smiling all the time :) ). Although the movie had some funny scenes like
i> A prospective groom is extremely influenced by "saas bahu" serials and repeats major pharases thrice and turns his head each time he says it.
ii> Vir Das, a standup comedian, (also a prospective groom) tries to make use of statistics to find compatibility between him and the girl.
iii> Rest were not that great but good for one time laugh.

So finally I can say that this was a passable movie. So if you haven't seen this flick, don't worry.

2> Tararumpum : My girl is a Saif and Rani freak. And if the two are there in the same movie, I have to watch it no matter if I was having a heart attack. The movie tickets were booked for the 1215 hrs show. So I woke up at 11 pm (Actually she came and whipped my ass and asked me to get my lazy bum into the bathroom). We reached the theatre at 1205 hrs. Lo behold. The parking was full at the theatre. I managed to find a small parking lot nearby, parked my vehicle and rushed back before her temper got better of me.

We managed to enter the theater in the nick of time. It was the silhoutte of Saif on the screen. The sound was loud. And all the girls were going "OOOOOohh ..Saiff". Even my girl goes weak in the knees for Saif. I wonder if he is actually that good. And so began an ordeal that lasted for 3 hours. Its funny feeling. I usually see Hollywood flicks which don't usually cross the 130 min barrier. But Bollywood!!! They need 180 mins to tell us that one should plan for the future but enjoy the present too. Are we fools or what ? By the time it was intermission, I had the feeling one has when he is drowning and can't swim back. His only hope is that someone pulls him out to safety or the water level recedes before he dies. The movie ended with fianlly and I was happy.

There is nothing more... Oh yes I lost 240 bucks watching this movie।

Useless I say !