Last working day in 2005
Today is the last working day for the year '05.
This has been one of the most eventful one for me.
Took possession of my new flat.
Got married to my longtime childhood love.
Received "Best Player of the tournament" in the inter account
soccer competition in Cognizant. Had never won such an award on such a big platform. Received the award from Chuni Goswami (Ex Olympian, and a renouned soccer player in the country).
Left Cognizant to join Accenture, a company that I dreamt to be a part of.

Inspite of all these positive events, one event that I dont like is relocating to B'lore leaving behind my parents back home.

Looking forward to the new year to make a positive impact in my project work.
Couple of friends(partho and sandy) have planned to tie the knot with their respective love (mahasweta and rima). So being a part of those events are in my list.

Lets see, how the year 2006 unfolds.

Last year, I forgot to mention, my dear friend mac (arindam) married his childhood sweetheart mum, who is also a dear friend of mine. Gr8 to be part of that occassion.

Most importantly, last year will always remain afresh in my mind as the year when I started to officially document my dull and monotonous existence in the form of blog.

Well guys....all for this year....have a wonderful year ahead.

Bangalore in news, but for all wrong reasons
Bangalore, it seems, to have fallen in love to make the headlines.
Its making news...but for all wrong reasons.
Just when the BPO incident was going hazy in the minds of people and media, this new terror attack gives the city all new focus. The terror attack signifies the importance of this city in context of India's image and its new economy.
After all, the IT outsourcing boom that India is riding on currently, Bangalore in a way signifies it. Home to most MNCs, and to important companies like DRDO, HAL etc, institutes like IISc, IIT, IIM etc, this is a sensitive area, indeed.
There is an urgent need to raise the security level in the city, though I feel that the kind of attack the terrorist are known for, like firing blindly or suicide-bombing, its very difficult to prevent it.
Even, forces like Scotland Yard could not prevent it in London, recently.
The world is no longer a safe place to live in....its a hell out here.

Kolkata...I miss you
Its been one month since I have left my beloved city.
And already I am missing her.
Especially during this holiday season, when kolkata looks absolutely wonderful.
The golden rays of sun makes every thing much more appealing.

I miss the misty mornings of kolkata. Just at the break of the dawn, amidst the dense fog, you could find the doodhwallas rushing away in their bicycle having completely wrapped themselves with whatever they could. Aged morning walkers strolling with monkey caps and lathis in their hand.

Maidan, is full of tiny cricketers, practicing in the nets while their parents wait outside with their kits and tiffin. Some are so small that its unimaginable how they grasp the ball with their oh-so tiny hands.
But we are a sporting nation and we all have the dreams of becoming sourav ganguly one day...rather their parents have.
During this part of the year every one is in jovial mood, which spills over to the office cubicles also. Every one is in a mood of party or outing.
Talking of outing, kolkata has ample of them...starting from victoria, millennium park,planetorium, nandan, rabindrasadan to belur math, dakshineshwar. Though they are out of the city, but one can easily reach them through trains or bus.
Most people make a plan to go for a outing on these places during the weekends. Specially during this holiday season.
Circus is another event that takes place in the city during these days. Park Circus is the place where big circus camps. Kids have a blast visiting these places with their parents.
I also happened to visit circus with my father every year when I was a kid.
Talking of new year time and not talking about park street is impossible. Park Street is a place I love to visit during these time, probably for a dinner at a good old restaurant or just for a walk down the very well decorated streets.
It feels great here.
Memories haunt me....staying away from kolkata during this time of the year is difficult...but I have to cope up.

Love affair with the web
It was probably the year 1999, the dotcom boom was in its brightest days.
I was studying in college, appeared the part one exam, waiting for the result. Meanwhile started the GNIIT course which I had halted for the exam. The 3 rd sem has just started, and we were into the web centric curriculum (NIIT used to call its much hyped course curriculum), which were just launched. The course had web designing concepts and other server side web technologies.
It was during this time I got hold of a magazine which published a special issue on the success stories of the people who all have made it big in the dotcom arena.
It featured names like Alok Kejriwal(founder of Contest2win portal), Neeraj Roy (hungama.com fame), sabeer bhatia (ofcourse you know about him) and many others.
I read each one of them, there were some persons who used web to sale all second hand goods, set up the office in a small corner room at his house's roof. And he made millions.
Lot of such inspiring stories, lot of interesting and creative ideas, and lot of entrepreneurial skills.
I was greatly inspired and told all these to my very close friend sandy (sandip).
He was also highly excited and we thought of plunging ourselves in the deep ocean of web.
We learned the web skills pretty first before our course could teach us.
At that time not any of us could think of buying a PC, which used to come at around 50k.
So we spoke to a nearby cybercafe, which were a rage at that time (every one wanted to start a cyber cafe business along with a pool board, i dont know what was the common between them).
We told him that we will use the PC without net connection during the off peak hours at a lesser rate than he charged for surfing.
It was OK for us...and we started to design and make our mark.
Greatly inspired, we completed the site, it was a portal. Got the idea from rediff.com (which at that time was not as popular).
Just at that time we happen to see an job ad posted on the NIIT notice boards, which states that pugmarks.com (a renouned web designing and hosting comp) wants people to work on a part time basis. We thought that since we were still in college and no degree to show, hence we can show our site instead which will impress them and we will get to work.
Next day, we both went for the interview with a floppy containing the site.
Reached there, it was in camac street, was not a posh building, but when we moved inside the office, we saw there were some 3 machines lying, 3 persons on them. The picture of most dot com companies at that time.
But the person whom we went to meet was not there. Waited for him and after 2-3 hours of waiting finally managed to get hold of him.
He asked us for the CV....we forgot. Never thought of this.
He just stared at us for some minutes, baffled, how can some one come for an interview without a CV? We were into bits and pieces.
That was the first time we went for a job, we thought some thing of a part time, which we could do while studying. Never thought that we were going for an interview.
He was a nice guy, spoke to us very politely and told us to finish studies first.
Gave us some tips, I will remember that day.
We never went there to get a job, we went there as we wanted to do some live work on the most happenning thing in our life at that time...the web.

I finished college and the dot com bust happened. Lot of companies no longer exist.
The names that featured in that magazine were forgotten.
However the web kept discovering itself.
Still now it is a fascinating world out there.
I am still fascinated by the web and the technology that binds it. It is still the millennium's best discovery.
Currently I have a passion....microsoft's much hyped dot net.

Sign off from Bang4
Bang4 episode ended for me, I am moving to Bang3 from tomorrow.
Getting into a new project there in dot net. The project has 3000 resources working in it in and around the globe.
Lets see, what challenges it has in store for me.

p r a b u d d h a . d a s . g u p t a
He is one person I want to meet, desperately. I have a serious crush on this man, his work. I truly love them.For some of you who are yet to understand what I am up to....well...Prabuddha is one of my favourite photographer and he is one of the world's renouned photographers who has taken India's phtographic excellence to the rest of the world.
He operates out of Italy, Delhi, Goa and now from bangalore.
And so u know, accenture is not only the reason why I am here in bangalore.
I am desperately seeking this address:
#15, 1st Floor,
12th Cross Jayamahal Extension,
Bangalore 560046,
India.

Any help in this regard is dearly welcome.
Prabuddha is truelly a master when it comes to photographying with the black and white medium. I also like his colors for some of the ads like VAMA.
His shots are graphic, strong and bold.
But, how can any one forget his books "Ladakh", "Women" etc.
Get hold of these books to know what I mean.
If you can't, visit his site www.prabuddhadasgupta.com instead.
However, advice you to visit it not from office as it contains nude photography as a section, which might be miss understood by others.
Very few understands the difference between porn and nude as art.

Well for now, savour some of his images (i prefer to call these "images" rather that "photo").
(Images to me are complete pictures ,well framed, well composed where as photos are snappy shots).

















[Disclaimer: Images shown here are a part of www.prabuddhadasgupta.com. They have not been altered or modified in any way.]

Want to be politician? Join Indian Cricket instead
Dada has been named out for the next test match between Srilanka.
Shocking news....
Why???
No, not because he is not included in the side...
shocking because Indian Cricket is coming of age...
Again...you are wrong. Coming of age, not in cricket, but in politics.
Politicians beware, if our selectors want to make their career in politics, you all better try finding some alternative careers.

Dada has been one of the finest cricketer of all times, a great leader. Yes he is out of form for many a days. But he was slowly but steadily getting into the groove. But selectors thought the other way.
I dont think dravid can ever reach the height that dada reached. He will always be remembered for the tiger in him which changed the attire of the indian cricket team. Just imagine the time when dada took over the captaincy. India was written off by all cricket pundits. Remember we were the runners up for WC in his captaincy. Hats off to him. Dravid, its due to those good work that you benefit now.

I dont want to talk about the decision much.
But I have few questions, did any one find any thing special in Dravid's captaincy?
I have a serious question on greg's capability and credibility, this is the same person who along with his brother is remembered for the famous underarm episode agaist the kiwis.

I only hope that his exile will be for a short period and he will be back.
Till then, I dont think I will find time and interest to sit in front of tv to catch a india match.

A bus journey
At this moment I am sitting in Bang4 which is located in Sarjapura Rd, very far away from my place. So like most people I also come by office pick up.And the journey takes 1 hr.
And for me this is an early morning bus ride round the Bangalore city.
7:55 A.M : The bus took off from J.P.Nagar(near to where I stay) .
During the journey I could see the innumerable company buildings which bangalore boasts. I could find Convergys, Airtel, AXA, Wipro, SGS,Intel and lot of others. Innumerable company buses make the traffic that much slow. On my way I could see the big "sutlej" and small "swaraj mazda" of many companies. There are some companies who have their owned buses like Patni, Satyam, Infy, TATA ELXI etc. The company logos imprinted on their body.
During that hour, the city bus stops are crowded with office going people. All showing off their company ID cards. These are the status symbols.
The difference that I found over here over kolkata is here office timing starts pretty early at around 8 a.m, while in kolkata the office timings are from 9-9:30.
There are not many companies having as elaborate bus service as over here, mainly because the companies are well placed in one area of the city (Saltlake Sector 5) which is well connected with the rest of the city through public transport system. In Bangalore companies are spread accross the city. Bang2 have a residential flat just beside it. This could never happen in kolkata.
So coming back to my journey, even in such early part of the day the traffics are very slow moving. So many big buses and so narrow are the streets.
During this journey, we need to go through the infamous Hosur Rd, where life stands still.
After struggling through these roads, we finally get into the Sarjapura rd which is less crowded and finally reach office at 9:00 a.m.
Just before we reach, I could see the grand office of Intel, I simply loved the ambience that it has created. Looking from the bus, it seems like our Kolkata Airport, sprawling campus. Gardens, fountains, huge parking area. It also reminds me of massiveness TISCO, where I spent one year of my life.
9:00 am: Get down the bus and start a new day @ work.
I would also say that Bang4 facility is also good. Much bigger and better than Bang2.

All through the journey we were entertained by good collection of songs by Radio City 91 F.M.

Finally a weekend...
Well after a full week's office its finally a week end.
I am still struggling to get into the early morning routine which I have to follow due to the office bus. By the way I missed the bus today. Came by an auto sharing with one of my friend.

I submitted the first timesheet in ARTES (Acc specific time reporting tool), had some hiccupps, but managed. I called up Marina, she is one of the contact from Avanade group of which I am a part. This group is a Microsoft Technology specific group working in Acc. MS has 10% stake in it with Acc aquiring 90%.
She told me to meet her on monday...and that is in Bang4, which is quite far from my JP Nagar.
Got to know that the bus starts from JP Nagar at 7:55 a.m.
So from monday I need to awake much early.
At this moment, I can think of having a decent weekend.
My packers and movers might also be landing in this weekend.
Lets see!

Call Centres
In Accenture, we have BPO activities going side by side with IDC.
Just bumped into one of the BPO bay area today. What my first impression is they are the most cool looking places as per the work area is concerned. Colorful bays, even colorful gals and guys.
Long haired guys with ear rings, italian specs...woolen caps which remind me of the monkey caps worn by english football fans. They get the best looking flat Dell PCs maan....where as we are left with normal PCs.
But what I think they have a tough job to do....if not tough still strenuous. Attending calls one after the other is not anyones cup of tea.
When all the world dont look at them with much awe...I respect them for making their monotonous work that much enjoyable by various other ways...be it by decorating their bay colorfully (some bays looks as if there is a b'day party happenning right now...with balloons and etc) or by dressing coolly (some even come in track suites).
I think its a party every day for them...this is what I think we call "enjoying work".

Start blogging from office
Got the system set up today...had a lot of forms to submit to the finance.
Installed the AOL...my ID is biswajitkumar.

Induction over...joined IDC
Joined IDC (India Delivery Center) after gruelling 2 days of induction.
Induction was hectic....reminded me lot of work to be done before I finally settle down at accenture.
Today stepped into Bang 2 (accenture calls their facilities as Bang 1, Bang 2...Bang 4). Went and came by office bus....and as I have heard, got the taste of the roadways on B'Lore. Pathetic to say the least. Well still some time to settle...have not got the machine till now.

Lets see what the future days has in store for me.