In this time I am getting introduced to a number of people, ideas and stuff in general personally and professionally through friends, conferences and just serendipity that excited me and in process are helping me get guidance around things I want to pursue in the short term atleast professionally:

Experimentation Platform: I had known about this for a while but I was at a conference and had a chance to see what these guys are up to. The idea of experimentation on live systems to drive change as opposed to decision made based on intuition or position is very compelling. I did have a chance to talk to a the presenter and maybe in the future, I will meet up with him to see some of the internal workings. I did not manage to swipe a Hippo though, maybe next time. Either way, while the idea of experimentation is not new but I thought because this is to be used for exisitig systems to drive improvements is novel especially because of the reluctance that we see to change something if it is not broken: I think this leads to a rut in companies.

Server Virtualization: Since my team manages a bunch of servers we are looking to improve performance and the overhead by looking at Virtualization and in the process I was looking the Hyper-V technology and the work done by VMWare and while I am not a computer science / hardware person, the whole idea of something running just above the hardware and then allowing multiple OSes running on top of the same hardware is very cool. In the demo, they were able to create clusters and entire data centers with failovers in less than 15 minutes As the hardware gets more and more powerful, I think that this is the future of the datacenter: the ability to virtualize all hardware to save on costs and energy. I think it was one of the things that I never thought i would be interested, it is partly the technology but mostly what can be done with it in order to enable cool things in operations that caught my fancy. I got into thinking how VMWare does it and how Hyper-V is trying to do it.

I also had a chance to listen to Debra Chrapaty and it was at around the same time that I was tinkering with Amazon's Web services and in particular their S3 Strorage service as a means to back up all my data and store it securely. The work around data-centers in a box, edge computing especially by Sun in the container and now other companies is very exciting because the price of hardware is plumetting and this is definitely the future. I will not be surprised if the next truck that passes by me on the road is there to help a company load balance because of a event in the area or enable communications for a emergency.

As I proceed in my course at MIT and my work in particular, I have begun to realize that my interests and career is going to be in building large scale infrastructure systems, processes to enable execution projects in the short term. I think that I am very good around getting a v0 in place, set up operations and foundations of a system and then handing it off to someone else to run it and move on to other projects. If you have ideas or thoughts or projects around any of this, I would love to have a conversation with you.

Enough about work. A friend who follows this journal said that my writing reminds her of Douglas Coupland and on her recommendation, I am currently reading Microserfs and it is fantastic and so funny and I cannot believe that I had missed it all this time. Now that I am reading it, I can see some of the similarities with this journal: and the abruptness and sketchy writing, the references to idealism in and trying to reason it to work that I do etc. While this is the best that I can do, I think that Coupland was just feigning a style to suit the atmosphere.

I do think that what he talks about in the novel: the quest to find ones identity especially in the software world is a very unique experience because software is all "fake" as in not a real thing that can be touched but the money it generates and the lifestyle and habits that come out of it are real and one has to be in the software world to understand that. I came in to this world from a non-software job and the pressures and environment that I was experiencing were very different. I think software in particular and IT industry in general have changed the process of "learning" and adulthood profoundly. I think that it sheilds the people from "real" problems that people face and perpetuate the adolesent experience. That is why I think that our offices are called campuses and P1 bug is something that does not cause any physical damage where as in automobile manufacturing a p1 problem would be something that affects the safety of the user. These are two entirely different paradigms but have the same connotations as far as the job is concerned. Software and Internet is particular is about ideas that are relatively easy to implement but when put in a large organization context, these ideas all of a sudden have to deal with "real" human problems: policitcs, emotions, timing etc. and therefore it is very easy to get cynical about the world. I struggle with this a lot but I have my own to let my steam out. In the same vien I would recommend the other book I am reading: How I left.. and the story is really fascinating. Definitely check out the site and the videos. This is much in contrast to Microserfs, I am seeing the power of global corporations and trying see how they can be leveraged for the greater good. Ambitious much?

While I dont think that I am going to change the world (yet :-) ), at the beginning of this year, before heading off to Mauritius, I had read a very interesting article in NY Times around how to plan a year. I did the exercise as mentioned in the article and one of the goals for this year was to upgrade the IT infrastructure of a non-profit that I volunteer in. Over the last few months, I worked with them and MS as part of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential program. We got into a program that enables them to get upgraded to the latest and came up with a plan that was just almost approved and it is so exciting. This work will be carried out over the summer by myself and a few other people and I am so happy to have achieved this personal goal.

This semester I am taking a class called Product Design and Development. This class is geared more towards Mechanical Products and there are times taht I wish that I was workig with a real prouct in the class instead of a service architecture that we are trying to develop. It is quite fun none the less and I am learning a lot. This is a class that I am struggling rigth now especially because of our product and some deadlines that I miseed.

I travelled a bit in the last month and it was fantastic. I am planning my a few other trips over the summer (time permitting) but lets see.

I am also trying to redesign my site to a new design. I upgraded my Movable Type installation to MT 4.0 and I am very happy with the performance on my server. Still haven't figured out how to do it on my new Mac and the right tools for it. One of these days..

So many more things. I am getting tired because this seems too self absorbed but that is the point right? Other notables include: Laptop RAM Upgrade, St. Paddys Day, DeepZoom, new cellphone, HSDPA hacking, mini-marathons, interviews for the first employee to our startup, violin lessons, friends leaving for other countries and much much more. As I told a friend the other day if I was run over by a truck tomorrow, I would have no regrets because I would have lived like there is no tomorrow and dreamt like I will live forever.

I will update this soon enough.

And finally I end with XKCD because I thought that this was apt for the this time:

I am taking a very interesting Product Design and Development class this term and it sucks that I cannot meet my team in person this term, I think that it would have really helped to get this thing jumpstarted. We are planning to enter the MIT 100k Competition this year because the idea is quite exciting.

I also came back from my stay in Mauritius and looking back I cannot see spending the month of January in any other way. I am in the process of following up on my trip and planning the next things. There are a number of things that I need to do in order to continue this. It is quite interesting since this is a long term project on my part and I need a few other things to be in place in order to sustain it.

As a part of this process, I am going to attend a conference on Recycling here and I am quite excited about it. It is kind of out of a fluke that I saw that there was a conference on here. I am hoping to make some connecitons and build a network to start a partnership to solve some of the problems I am working on.

I have been hooked on to emusic.com and am very happy with their service. I tend to avoid buying music on iTunes and it is annoying that the Amazon MP3 service is so limited outside the US.

Oh yes and I finally bought a Mac: Mac Mini and I know that it is underpowered but it is exactly what I was looking for. I use Linux and Windows on my laptop for work, play and school but needed a machine for the music, movies and since it is hooked on to my sound system, it is great. I don’t have to turn on my laptop for everything. So far I am very impressed by the experience and the general fit and finish of the product. I like the iLife products and they have done a really good job with the way it is presented.

In the same vein I got rid of my land based internet and am on a HSDPA mobile network for my internet. It is great since it is quite cheap and works pretty much everywhere. It is quite interesting to have broadband internet pretty much everywhere and not be tied to WiFi. I had tried WiMax before but was quite disappointed with its performance especially for "traditional" broadband applications. While HSDPA is not the greatest, I think that it is good enough. WiMax is annoying becuase of the stupid rabbit shaped modem. I have a tiny card for HSDPA and a USB controller also so it works well and is discreet also.

Since I moved to a new apartment, I am in the process of redecorating the new one with a help from a friend of mine. I am so excited to do this because it has been a while and I am using real tools to create new furniture. Ever since I moved into the software world, I miss my hands on using tools job that I used to have before.

This week has been quite hectic but I plan to go to the Gym again. I was a part of the company Gym last year but I kind of dropped of because of my other commitments but this time I have decided to pick it up again.

I am planning to travel a bit during the summer here. It is very handy to do it over the weekends and I have really not taken any advantage of the whole thing just because I have been so caught up with the university and all the other things that I have on my plate. I decided to take one less course this semester and therefore am taking it a bit easy. I realized that I was not enjoying the time and just struggling to move from one thing to the other. But ever since last semester when I started taking Violin lessons, I realized that I need to take a break from the constant work and all the projects. I do think that this time has helped me build up my resume and skills.

A very close friend bought the Honda Civic Type R the new one and the other day i was looking at it and saw some of the parts that I was involved in. It was kind of a blast from the past, because I was involved in the design and testing for these parts. I am very impressed by the new Civic especially the new iVTEC engine. That way Honda is a great company that has preserved its racing identity.

I have a bunch of things to update professionally and personally especially on my work in Mauritius and the future plans. I will be back here soon enough after a few things fall in place which I think should be there in next week or so.

So over the summer last year, a very close friend and I started a company and created a website and we did not really do a lot after we released it because we got busy with other things, I was checking the site the other day and was quite surprised to see that the site had about 20 odd users. Now I know that it is nothing but still was a bit of a surprise to me because we have not done anything at all. So now I am trying to work with my friend to see if we can do something there since the difficult part of building the service is done. If anyone who is reading this wants help with marketing a website as a side project please drop me a email, I would love to talk to you. This could look good on the resume and we can have some fun with the project. We are obviously very excited and passionate about our site but dont really have a lot of marketing skills. So any help will be greatly appreciated.

More later with some photos and the rest.

To understand what I am trying to do, you will need to have a crash course in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Management (I had to do the same :) ). Anyway all over the world, it is the municipalities, city and county councils who collect household and commercial waste from the streets. After the waste is collected, to save on costs, it is carried to what is called as a transfer station. Usually outside city limits or in poorer areas in developing countries, this transfer station is sort of a collection point for all the waste. Usually a transfer station depending on its design handles waste of a county or two counties. Transfer stations serve an economic purpose: The biggest cost getting waste to a landfill is in transport. In transfer stations, waste from different parts is collected, compacted in a bigger unit and then dumped in the landfill. This saves in freight costs apart from being able to build a better supply chain and logistics infrastructure. Apart from landfills, sometimes they have incineration capabilities so that the volume that goes in to the landfill is reduced.

In developing countries or poorer countries where there are no formal recycling programs in place, there is a fledgling recycling industry composed of recyclers (small or medium size enterprises) and people at the bottom of the social ladder. These people usually rummage through the garbage and collect things that can be recycled: metals, plastic cardboard etc. The recyclers then pay money (which is way below market price) for these goods. It is a very difficult life for these people who live endemic poverty, lack of opportunities and education not mentioning the obviously unhealthy lifestyle being exposed to waste without any protection.

They work in very difficult and unhygienic conditions. My project involves transforming one of the transfer stations in to a sorting and ewaste collection station. Currently the sorting work is carried out under the sun, we plan to put in place a mechanical sorting line with sorting stations and equip the sorters with protective equipment and a covered facility. As a part of this, I am working with the Ministry of Local Government (Environmental Division) here to design a small sorting center using my experience at factory layouts and installing machinery at Honda (where I used to work). We intend to open tenders for this project soon once the basic design specifications are in place. The plan is to have a mechanized conveyor system to with work stations on the side to help in sorting process.

The other side to this is once the sorting station is built by the middle of this year, we plan to put in place the first island wide ewaste collection center where people can drop in their ewaste or local municipalities can undertake collection campaigns and store the material in the center. We have built relationships with recyclers with the aim of getting them to come in to the center and take the electronic and electrical goods away for disposal, reuse, rework. We are conducting waste profiling surveys right to see what kind of waste people have in their homes. This way we transform (ir)regular and unstructured waste sorting in to something that is a bit more hygienic and build a sustainable framework around ewaste for the country which can then be replicated to other transfer stations here and in the neighborhood.

We as humans generate tremendous amounts of waste due to our economic activity. It is truly unsustainable. We are all made aware of this on TV and through commercials but experiencing it firsthand came as a shock to me. To put things in perspective: This tiny island which is a developing country and generates close to 1400 tons of waste per day and close to 98% of it goes to landfills. Think of it this way: an island of 1.1 million people generates waste to fill up 300 standard size tractor-trailers every day!!! This is not even a close to being the worst offender. Granted much of it is green waste which can be turned into compost but without proper facilities to handle these things, inevitably it ends in landfills with other not so green (pun intended) things. This is touted as being a paradise with a semi-mature ecotourism industry. My focus is on ewaste which is admittedly more toxic and has a compelling business proposition for both Government and Industry. In any case, I am amazed to see the impact of our lifestyle first hand.

Climate change and tackling it by being greener are here to stay. That said there is an unbelievable potential in Green technologies and plenty of money and economic opportunity around it. I think the potential to change parallels the IT revolution and we are at the very early stages.

Oil and Natural Gas futures markets are one of the biggest scams of the late twentieth century. Obviously the demand is much higher but so is the supply. People make money speculating the price of these commodities for the next month just take a look at the revenue and income figures for the sector. Our addiction to oil is hard to comprehend. I have seen the money it generates and the destruction it causes.

I do sincerely beg all of you who are reading this to do something to reduce your impact on the planet. I am not kidding. Please make it a resolve to do something this year to help in changing the situation in whatever little or big way you can. We used to have giant tortoises, Dodos and many many other species that have been completely wiped off. When you visit the natural history museum here you see the wildlife that was here all stuffed in sort of a eerie silence. You are shocked that it is not there anymore. After my visits I was quite stunned because it is the first time I saw something so beautiful that is no longer there just because of our activity. It is real over here. Maybe because it is so close and in front of your eyes or because being a small place you can imagine seeing a tortoise by the sea I don't know what it is but being here has made the problem real for me.

As far as this project is concerned, the next step is for me to go to Madagascar. I am really looking forward to that experience: there they run a computer refurbishment shop there and I am invited to visit them to see how used computers are being given to schools. I am looking forward to the trip not just for the "work" aspect but to visit Madagascar is very exciting. More on that some other time.

In all of this, I have to say I am completely grateful for my company. I usually don't mention my work here but I work at Microsoft (yes that one!). We get a lot of flak for a lot of things from a number of people. I used to contribute to Open Source and joined this company to see the other side and as I get older I can see appreciate both sides.

However, none of this is possible without the commitment of my manager and senior management of the company in particular. They have been extremely supportive and demonstrated a lot of flexibility towards my schedule and commitments. I have had several meetings with Microsoft Indian Ocean Island's Citizenship team and some of the work they do is truly awesome for a for-profit company. It is truly fantastic and humbling. I do think that it is one of the things that the company does so well starting from right at the top with Bill Gates and it deserves way more credit than it gets.

This has been exciting and very tiring at the same time. Exciting because this is something that is completely new but tiring because there are times when I wonder about the work and if it is worth it and if it will work out. Overall although it has been physically tiring it is a very enriching experience and has expanded my horizons both internally and externally. I suppose there is not a lot really that I can ask for. I am at the tail end of the first phase of the project and hopefully this will work out, I say hopefully because things like these need a bit of luck and some support.

The people are here can be best described in one word: gentle. Mauritius is very multi-cultural with significant Creole, Indian, Chinese and French populations and I have had a chance to meet and make friends with a lot of people. While there is a strong sense of identity and cultural backgrounds, the hospitality, humility and attitude towards life and what is important is striking.

Apart from the above, the beauty of this place is quite unbelievable. I have been a complete fish here: swimming in the ocean, doing a lot of wind surfing and just lying around by the beach. I had a few opportunities to relax and take it easy and just laze around in the sand. This is very very close to paradise. Please drop me a email if you want to see some of the pictures.

Because of this, one of my to-do things in life is to buy a speedboat. I absolutely loved the speed and the power. I suppose it touched a raw nerve being a guy, the way some cars do to some other people.

So much more to write here about life, personal things and some things that I realized while over here. Mostly because of the new people and friends that I made. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience and it is not over yet. The point of an education in my mind is to give you the right thinking tools to be a better person. You don’t need to go to college to be a better person but it works for me. I would never be able to do this if I was not at my university and for that and many many other things I am very thankful.

I started my second Masters degree in January. It was a difficult decision since I really did not have to do this and it is very expensive and initially it was very hard but it is quite amazing how we can adapt to a change in the schedules and environments. It is almost unbelievable that I am done with half the course now. It has been a very rewarding experience till now and as I go into the next semester, I am thinking about my thesis, graduation and maybe the next steps in the course. The course has stretched me in ways that are hard to put in words: the last two semesters were particularly hard and my grades were not that great either but it is OK, I dont think that I can try any harder. I go to the gym to be fit so that I have the stamina to take the course. This is the first time I am being forced to be fit for an academic exercise.

I was involved in co-starting a company with a very close friend and while I have mostly scaled back my work and don’t really do much other than routine maintenance because of the way my friend and I decided to run the business. Starting up something along with school and work was very challenging. I am happy though with the effort and the way it turned out. I am now ready to start a new one and hope to start one pretty soon.

This year was very challenging professionally also. I was very busy coordinating worldwide release of a major piece of software for the company. It has been a big success as far as the technical expectations of the platform are concerned. Personally, I think I have had to learn a lot of things around teams, operations and customers. I have always been in operations but running a service for internal and external customers was something new along with designing parts of a mission critical platform. It has been a learning experience and I am quite happy with the results.

Some of the things I learnt in the process led me to take on a professional certification and I am quite happy that I got it since it has been on my mind to do this for a while. In fairness though, I did fail the first time by a whisker (maybe one or at the most two questions).

In 2007 though, most importantly I discovered my spirituality. It is very personal and a very few people know about it for obvious reasons. In the process though one of the things I have had a lot of problem with was humility, forgiveness and compassion. This was because of a number of things but mostly my past and making peace with it. I realize as I get older and have more experiences, these are things that I have to constantly work on and struggle with. I am not very happy about that but if only it were that easy. It is past though now and I look forward to bigger and better things in the future. The transition in the mind set was quite challenging.

I have had this site in various forms for more than 11 years now (and counting) and it is bit of a tradition here to post absolute unique visits at the end of a year. I did not do it last year because I was not sure if I wanted to shut this down. So here are the stats for this year averaged to around 90 visits every day. Thank you for visiting my site and being a part of my experience here on this planet. I really appreciate it. Do drop me a line to say hi!

If 2007 was about inside, the next year is about outside. 2008 already promises to be very adventurous in terms of work, education and travel among other things. I shed the old and truly get out of my shell and out of the past. I am starting off by moving my apartment and then I am off to new places and new experiences. Ones which I am excited but also a bit scared about. I wrote about my grant last month and everything is in place with tickets etc. I am also going to Zanzibar as a part of this adventure. I am really looking forward to being in a part of the world that I am completely unfamiliar with. It is funny after living in a place with very little sun for a while, I am yearning this. I was never a beach person especially because my skin cannot handle the sun. I am looking forward to this though. I hope to update this with photos soon enough. It has been two years since I jumped in to the unknown moved to a new place and this is one more such move. As I mentioned in the earlier post, hopefully this will lead to something long term and that sticks.

Finally, this year, because of my meditation, I discovered my music and that along with design has come to define my spirituality. You can see my playlist online. This was the main reason to re-enforce my fascination of the violin and especially because it is so hard to play. I started taking lessons this year and am continuing to practice. Playing it has been one of the most rewarding personal experiences. And here is me wishing you a very merry Christmas and Seasons greetings: you can barely hear me play because my mic is acting up but I am not complaining.

This is my first Christmas here in this country because I was travelling last year and I am very fortunate to spend it with friends since my family visited me already and the schedules dont match. As I count my blessings, I wish you Happy Holidays and hope that you have a fantastic 2008.

My university has a Public Service Center offering fellowships for students wishing to use skills and knowledge to build grassroots community capacity and engineering solutions to real world problems. This all a part of the University's mission to use science and technology to bring about change in the world. The Center encourages people and organizations from all over the world to submit pressing problems "to address the needs of underserved communities". Essentially students have to initiate contact with local sponsors for projects that interest them or projects that match the students skills. Project proposals are then developed and students have to submit them to get the fellowships. It is quite competitive and a very tight schedule and requires recommendations, documentation etc.

I have always believed in the power of technology and engineering to bring about positive change and was immediately fascinated by the program. So over the last couple of weeks (months?), as a part of this program I spent a lot of time working with Dr. Bokhoree (Sanjeev as I know him) of the University of Technology, Mauritius. Sanjeev is Senior Lecturer in the University and is trying to design a sustainable living framework for Mauritius. Part of this work involves investigations in eco-friendly housing, environmental awareness and waste management strategy. As a part of this effort and subsequent conversations with him, we decided that my skills would be best utilized if I helped him design and implement part of the overall a e-waste collection program. This was mostly because of my Mechanical Engineering background and working with Honda. So after spending a couple of sleepless nights we developed a proposal that he was happy with and I submitted it to the PSC.

Today as a part of this program, I was offered a fellowship to work with Sanjeev and The University of Mauritius to design and implement e-waste storage centers in Port Lewis, Mauritius in particular and hopefully all over the island in the long term. Part of this work is to construct build a robust scalable system that enables rapid deployment of cheap, low footprint e-waste storage facilities. This private-public partnership fits in well with my work and interests and will be carried out in Mauritius. My experience with UNESCO here proved invaluable here and during the interviews. The results of this work will also be used for the development of eco-friendly housing there. Needless to say I am very excited about this.

While I still am looking at the agreements, my schedule and most importantly my personal commitments, this is a tremendous opportunity. This is a massive logistical nightmare also and it may not work out afterall because of my circumstance but I am happy to give it a shot. There were a few people that came to my mind immidiately after the email.. the people sending good vibes, prayers and luck, reviewing my proposal and giving feedback, wishing me good dreams. Obviously, none of this would be possible without Sanjeev and his commitment, exictement with the work and belief in me. I am truly humbled by it. My appeal with education, universities in general is because they enable me to be better a human being. You don’t need to be in a university to be a better person but for me it acts as a way to channel my mental energies. I am realizing that I can use it to build lasting relationships also. Watch this space for more.

If this works out, I am hoping that it will be just the beginning of my long term involvement with the University and Mauritius. I am already taking to my employer about this so it can go on after MIT and explore opportunities. Most importantly, I am hoping to build lasting relationships with the people and just have some fun with this. As I get older, I realize I get more pleasure not so much out of achieving my own dreams but enabling other people to achieve theirs.

In other news, work is in over drive. Planning, designing, influencing and having a bit of a laugh in the process. The bits I don’t enjoy, the school work compensates for it. Also, I desperately need a new lunch table, like Oscar Wilde said: "True friends stab you in the front" .. but keeping it real takes a whole new meaning on our table and I am at the receiving end of it.

I did manage to have some truly fantastic Serbian food and watch Death Proof.. there are a few signature Tarantino shots but it is quite a good movie. It has been a while since I saw a Tarantino movie and they are always good fun to watch with friends.

The last couple of weeks we had two fascinating lectures as a part of a course. We were introduced to the work of Prof. Joel Schindall who used to be the CTO of GlobalStar and it was awesome experience to listen to his talk about problems with GlobalStar and what they were trying to do as a business. We also had Dan Braha on talking about the structure of dynamics and visualizing networks. It is a art. Some of these classes are like therapy, they make you think, feel inspired and get a view of what other people are doing which is quite refreshing for someone as self absorbed as I am.

I need to clean my place.

I need to finish Freakonomics and return it back :P to the person who lent it to me.

I need to brush up on music theory.

I need to catch up on my emails. There is no way I can answer all the emails I get.

IronPython rocks my socks.

I need to finish up some of the unfilled application forms.

I have so many other things to put down here but "The most important things in life aren't things" and those are the bits that brought a smile to my face.

In all of this, I am trying to figure out my thesis. Thesis in general is a pain and I have mixed reactions to it because of the scope and my other time commitments involved but I am talking to a few people regarding topics. I hope to finalize it by the end of this year.

I did manage to catch Ryoji Ikeda couple of weeks ago and he was quite phenomenal. I did not expect it to be so loud but there is a reason why they had ear plugs outside the hall. It was really good and well worth it. It is quite incredible how some of his work is so similar to some of the photos I took when I was younger. Either way the highlight was actually talking to him in person. He just seemed so innocuous and nonchalant about it.

Work has been quite interesting lately, I have been working with a number of teams internally on innovation and research oriented work. So it is quite exciting especially when the product is so widely used and there is a real chance to make an impact on how literally millions of people do their work. Either way it is a challenge for me because coming from an operations background with extremely tight schedules to organizing and creating something with a team requires a completely new set of tools and thinking.

I have been trying to cut down my drinking drastically for a while now and I am quite happy that it has reduced to a trickle. :) It is quite unbelievable how quickly it can get out of hand especially with the culture and my friends here. But it is great because when I do drink now, I seem to enjoy it a lot more.

I actually received a call from a UNICEF’s tele-marketing department (gasp!) the other day. I donate regularly to UN related organizations but the other day a telemarketer called me trying to tell me about the great deals that UNICEF stores have for Christmas shopping. It was the definitely the moral dilemma of the day: Whether you should be angry that they called or should be glad that they are being more aggressive in trying to solicit help. I am still making my mind. But I want to talk to them and ask about how they figured this will work. I think people who want to give time or energy will give regardless and don’t really need any push or a personal pep talk or convincing. The lady was really nice so I think she was a volunteer also :). It will be a very interesting conversation though trying to figure out what they are trying to achieve.

Speaking of charities, A friend of mine is raising money for his charity by climbing Everest. He emailed first requesting donations by pointing to the site. The next day, he emailed asking if any of us had arctic-standard sleeping bags.

I am also quite busy designing a website for a very close friend of mine. Last time I did it with Joomla, this time it is going to be Drupal. I have to say I like Drupal’s performance and look much better. Only if they had the Wordpress themes so I won’t have to stay up all night trying to tinker CSS. I did hit a roadblock regarding the theme in general just cannot get a different design in my head.

Lately I am averaging about four to five hours of sleep every day. The funny thing is that I over sleep on the Weekend but weekdays I find myself awake around six in the morning no matter how late I slept the night before. And funnily enough I am not that tired. Quite the contrary. I suppose it has to do with doing things that you truly enjoy.

Also it is very difficult to believe that Halloween is just round the corner. All of a sudden yesterday I noticed that it was 7 in the morning and still dark and at around 6.00 we have dusk. I cannot even believe that time has flown by so quickly. I am still planning my Christmas and the break but there are a bunch of things happening as usual it will be last minute. I am currently trying to sync up with my family and their travel plans but it may be that I will have to go about it independently.

More stuff here soon. It has been so crazy over the last month or two that I have not had a chance to look back and ponder which is what this journal was supposed to help me do but it is not working.

It has been a while since I updated this. A bunch of things have happened. The last semester was a killer. I screwed up one course but really it was a waste of time. I can actually differentiate between that now and am seriously thinking about my thesis. I suppose over time, you get very choosy and it is especially important for my (any) thesis since I am going to be working on it for a extended period of time. This is my first time doing a thesis: the last course, I chose the "coursework only" option so was good and the undergrad thesis does not count I guess.

I had to make a important decision regarding a couple of very important things (including moving from my current place) in the last month but I am very happy with the way it has turned out. I think I handled it very well. Again something to do with not compromising and following your heart.

They are playing a Ryoji Ikeda work here next month and I am so excited to see him. It is funny that I just came across his act because of a random flyer.

I have been reading Freakonomics and it is quite a good read. I think it is more about lateral thinking or radiant thinking and can actually be used in those books. Quite interesting none the less.

It has been very hectic otherwise. The summer is already over and in the mean time, I celebrated my birthday. Looking back, the last year has been incredibly productive both professionally and personally; full of change and growth. It is amazing how quickly time flies. I think this time has focused my mind and enegeries on my strenghts and more specifically tried to hone my creativity.

I am completely hooked on to Facebook. It can be very addictive.

I did catch up on a few movies: specifically The Simpsons and the Bourne Ultimatum. I enjoyed the Bourne movie much more than the Simpsons. Also saw Good Will Hunting the other day for the first time and it was fantastic: could realte to the Irish-Boston connection; the accent et. al.

More later.

About eight months ago, one of my closest friends was going through a very rough time and wanted to start over again on his own.. After countless hours spent discussing and meeting up and working on his idea, we have a working prototype of our little project up and it is currently open for business..

Shigoto.eu is aimed at the Japanese community in the Ireland and UK, we are specifically aiming to be THE community site for Japanese people or people with Japanese language skills in the above area.

This is a not-for-profit website, mostly aimed at community building. We have no payroll and CTO is a honorary title because Senior Principal smelt too much of The Suits. We do aim to evolve in to a subscription based service to continue to pursue improvements and sustain the cost of operations.

To others, it is just another partially implemented idea on the Internet but I am incredibly satisfied with the effort. It is no where near perfect and most of it is off the shelf GPLed software but for me it is a great challenge to even do this because it meant that I had to lead and manage three lives simultaneously: working a full time job, being a student and building a non-profit. Of course that is besides maintaining some kind of a social life and keeping my sanity.

Starting up something is all about inspiration, risk, passion, leadership, optimism, hard-work, failure, team, networks.. how do you deal with uncertainty.. most importantly as far I am concerned: how you compromise. Till very recently, most of these would not be the adjectives that would describe me. I was not even close.

For me, this is all about making the most out of change. A lot has changed for me and this to me was about learning to channel my energies to something productive, learning to reflect, identifying and then playing my strengths, managing schedules, understanding what is important and learning to focus. I learnt a lot about perseverance and never giving up on a idea and also about being a bit less self absorbed. It is almost unbelievable that I can write about this now.

There are a number of things in the pipeline with the site. We have had some great initial feedback and are busy implementing it. It is not even close to being complete but it is open for public and we will continue to improve it. The experience has been unbelievable.

Right now I am just taking a few moments to enjoy what we have been able to do. In the long run, it may not work out after all but it's OK. I gave it my best shot. We had fun. I learnt a lot. And honestly, is there anything more that I can ask for out of anything?

More later.

P.S. 24 hours are definitely not adequate for my schedule.

I had a chance to listen to and interact with Jay Forrester for a System Dynamics course. I was taking a course taught by the person who invented the field. What I found more exciting was the way they are applying it in education. It is amazing to see the application of a tool in such a manner and as it turns out kids pick up these things way more easily that most adults. I can attest to the fact because to me it is counter-intuitive and I spend entire nights trying to figure out assignments.

Other notables include Jeff Hoffman and Tom Allen. It is almost a un-expressible to be interacting with these people not because of what they have achieved but because of their humility and openness. You feel in awe and humbled afterwards.

I have been incredibly busy with a number of things. Along with work, friends and all the things I have taken on, it seems like 24 hours is not enough but it has been that way for a while now. I absolutely love it.

The other day my desktop got fried and it sucks. I am contemplating buying a new one but transferring the data would be a pain. All my music is stuck there till I ressurect it but Last.fm kicks ass. I did notice ever since they got bought up, their algorithm was acting funky more than once. it is so easy to tell when the suits are working.

My little not-for-profit entrepreneurship venture with a very close friend has finally taken fruit and we are currently doing user testing and optimizing the platform. We are planning to release it to public later this month. We are very excited with the initial feedback. It is immensely satisfying to be involved in building something that other people find value in.

Especially since I was able to contribute even though I have so many things happening. This week, I went to my coffee shop as usual to do my readings and think about the project with my friend and we forgot to pay the bill and just walked out. I realized it and went back to the shop to pay.. while I was apologizing the waitresses said: you are a regular, we would have got it the next time. I promise to go into more details soon enough.Those long nights and the caffeine were not such a waste after all.

I had the chance to travel around a bit and some more travel is coming up. We are planning a small trip to celebrate our little project. However I did manage to catch MySpace by the amazing Prof. John Maeda whose work on Simplicity never ceases to inspire me. His work is the motivation for the current design for this site.

A picture that I particularly like taken not too long ago:

And finally I end this with a quote that is both memorable and jarring to me as a professional and more so personally. I am learning that human behavior and mathematics cannot be reconciled. I am having fun along the way though.

"The greatest sin that mathematicians ever foisted on human-kind was developing the differential equation: It is useless to develop a understanding of the real world because nature never takes a derivative. It is a completely theoretical concept and completely useless because there is no causality."

I am going to a exhibit by John Maeda .. the director of the Simplicity program at the Media Lab. I am really looking forward to it and should be good fun. I am very fascinated by his work.

I had THE hottest Malaysian Laksa the other day. I actually had to send it back to de-toxify it. It was both spicy hot and hot as in the tempreture.

I have been playing with Joomla a lot now a days. It is very easy to install and quite powerful. I have mixed opinions about it. I think it is not as "polished" as Wordpress. I agree that they meant for different applications but still Wordpress looks and feels a lot more polished.

The other day, downloaded a bunch of episodes of the The Wonder years the other day. You dont get those in DVD. When I got my PC, it had a 40GB HDD and I wondered I would never need that kind of space. But I have just about 4GB left now.

We have had fantastic weather the last couple of weeks which is very rare for this part of the world. I had forgotten what sunshine is. The picture below has been my library for the last couple of weeks and I am not complaining. So we went to a lake over the weekend and I enjoyed the Sun:

I will update this soon.

Blogistan (although I am not a big fan, that’s the funniest thing I heard last week on TWIT) is becoming a pain because I maintain multiple journals. Add that to school: I feel like I am living multiple lives. I am enjoying the school a lot: lots of challenges and lots of things that I like and some very interesting courses.

A good friend of mine is visiting me next month and we are going to travel and do some backpacking.. it should be very cool. I am organizing a few things and I am looking forward to that.

I actually had some decent (but very expensive) Indian food for the first time here. It really is a small world. I know it sounds tacky but it is true. I have three people from my university here now working and is there not a theory that the net has reduced it to five degrees of freedom? Or am I just making that up?

I did manage to see the world's smallest "exhibition" which really was glorified stuff on two shelves on the wall. They actually had signs from the main door of the city hall pointing to it and we were like WTF? Thats it!!.. that is a nice racket.. It was not even some exotic one in a million thing.. just shelves with some random jewelry.. It was quite funny actually.. they probably used more material for the boards and directions than the exhibition itself..

I had a awesome Wii party this weekend. Wii is so much fun especially with a few friends and some good music.. So here is a quick run down for a awesome Wii party:
1) Have about five to six people. I think four is ideal if they are into gaming but five to six is good.
2) Alcohol. Enuf said.
3) Lots of finger food: We had tons of wraps and the likes.
4) Wii Sports and Warioware should be good enough. I had Raving Rabbits too.. I like it becuase it uses the nunchuck a lot.

I know that I am not the only one who cringes when I hear the term Web 2.0? What the hell is that? Why do good people still use it? I am still getting used to the 1.0.. but I did enable commenting on this just to see how my db holds up (My host has a horrible history with MySQL and Movable Type).. I ready to be heavily spammed or the db falling over.

I have a couple of friends from Mexico in the course and we went out for lunch at Anna's Taqueria and ac cording to one of them, the food was "acceptable" which is obviously more than good enough for me :P.. I also went out with a friend of mine and had the "best jajangmyun on the east coast". It was really really awesome. I polished almost 3/4th of the plate..

Also I realized a few things about me and how I handle personal relationships. Working with teams inevitably means that you work with people you cannot get along with. I was a in a uncomfortable situation with a person in one of our project teams and it was almost enlightning how I dealt with the differences and I think it said a lot about me and the kind of environments, situations I thrive in. I think I strive for agreement and harmony in my relationships and if they are not there then closure. Some of it is very obvious but I realize that if one of them is missing, my balance is disturbed.

Come to think of it the food this time was really great and the weather held up except for the storm in the weekend.. And thats why I flew with Omni(!). One of the things that you notice with the staff was that they were so different and so friendly compared to the "regular" airlines. I don't think that they work full time so maybe they were extra polite and nice with the people but it was so noticeable. Also noticeable was the diversity in the staff. I have never seen so many non-Caucasian staff in a American airline. Our pilot and his staff were Hispanic too. I thought that it was awesome. Other than that the flight was thoroughly forgettable, except for the fact that I actually created a mind map for me. It is one of the things I learnt at the course as tool to understand complexity and approach complex systems. I knew about it from before but never really paid attention and it is a part of what they call as radiant thinking. Now I use it regularly for all our projects and work but ever since I learnt it, I always wanted to create one for myself. It was a very educational excerise. I may post it here some other time.
As someone said, the university does not teach you the courses, it teaches you a way to think.. and two months in to it I can already see the difference. It is hard .. A couple of months ago.. I wrote: As humans our greatness lies not so much in changing the world but in changing ourselves. And I am beginning to understand the meaning of it slowly, in my own humble way.

Work is crazy. Since they put me on this new project, I am having a hard time catching up to all the emails. There have been some changes in our team so it is a bit hard to adjust to all of it. But I am learning a couple of new things and shifting my focus away from Python and more into Windows Workflow Foundation in .net 3.0 ... Since it is a learning curve, it is even harder. On top of this, there is a certification exam that I have been meaning to give for a year now and it is this coming weekend.. and it conflicts with my plans for something else on top of that I feel so un prepared.. long week this.. oh well..

I am contemplating a couple of changes to this site. It has been around for more than 10 years now and I usually dont mention people or things and avoid personal things here but I am working on a new design and I wonder if I should write more personal things here.. got a exam tomorrow.. so back to studies..

It was great fun. I actually went to a party in LSE and I had to tell the bouncer that I was student. It was funny to be there because I had the opportunity to study there before and did not. I have to say the music was fantastic: mostly from Carribean / African, the DJ was great with the remixes and the alcohol was cheap. They gave out the lyrics of Ghanas national anthem and I sang it.

In this trip I was introduced to the Half your age + 7 years theory. Now I first heard it around the time I was sober and over drinks we had a great discussion about how scalable this is and its upper and lower limits. Our conclusion states simply: It is cool for a f(x) = (x/2) +7 for x > 21. Given x and y are ages of you and your date and x = max(x,y)

Work is getting busier since they assigned me to the new project. Ever since I came back in February I have been crazy busy with the number of things that I have to do: juggling schedules and deadlines because I am working with people in PST, EST, GMT, GMT +2, GMT + 8.

I tried to setup my clie for this but gave up and went old school with a academic planner. I will have to do something about it. Also, we are starting a very exciting venture in the coming weeks. It is something that I have never done and it is my first time to attempt this. This space will be updated soon.

In the mean time I give you the playa haters ball:

In all of this I managed to meet up with Diana, Brad, Soren and Nalin from Redhat the other day and it was fun. I was wondering how they would look at my current job but it was all good. We hung out at Christophers and then after a lot of deliberation went to a Karaoke bar. I have not been after such a long and it was fun. As much as I wanted to hang out and play video games after wards, I had to get back wake up early to help the team with our paper. It was good fun and I hope that I get to meet them again before I leave here.

I got my Laserpod the other day and it is great. One of the things I noticed was that it only has Red and Blue colors. I wonder if I can get a tinted glass and play around with it to create some other colors with it because it will be very cool to have more than the two colors.

School and work is keeping me busy. This will be updated over a long flight soon.

I used to have a small cookie on my website, a piece of text that said: “Just visiting this planet”. I used to pride on that being true in my case. This year I realized that I am only human.. with all the baggage that comes with being one.. unique.. just like everyone else. I am selfish and can be very cold, and sometimes almost obnoxious. It is humbling and a very difficult realization and I lost everything that mattered to me in the process.

Bill Hicks said: "Since when did mediocrity and banality become a standard?" while dogmatic belief is obviously unhealthy, I start 2007 a bit shaken, but with a bit more understanding of myself and a appreciation for the unknown. I am learning to take things with a pinch of salt, to let go a bit and just live the moment. To keep continuing to do that is my resolution. I do not give up that easily and learn relatively quickly. All I can to is try and be better and not repeat the same things again.. only this time my website will not have the cookie.

Work wise things have taken a different turn, we have moved to a different phase of the project. The company and especially my manager has supported me well through this transition. I will be doing things that interest me: developing models for our processes at least in the beginning.

Currently I am reading To Engineer is Human and it is a very good read and appeals to my engineer nature. I was hoping for a bit more technical book but it is fair enough and should appeal to non-engineers also.

I also read a couple of articles by Milton Friedman and came across the following video during the time that they announced the Nobel Prize and had a new found respect for Gramin Bank and Microcredit. I always believed in both but I thought that the video was fantastic; especially the way he makes his case..

I found a old VHS tape of one of my favorite shows growing up: The Wonder Years.. that is one show that I would buy the DVDs if they come out but till then I am going to burn the VHS on a CD and enjoy.

I am also looking to buy a new laptop.. I like the new Compaq ones but I used to have a Thinkpad that I lasted for very long. I need to get it soon enough it will definitely be the first purchase of 2007.

I also managed to catch the premier of Crude Impact and managed to meet up with the director. He gave a very interesting talk about his inspirations for the film. It is a very interesting film linking the human population growth to the dependence on Oil. It is interesting because it is kind of a paradox: usually countries with the highest birth rates and population per sq. mile have lowest carbon footprint and the countries with relatively developed economies have the highest fossil fuel consumption.

Bahrain has a new deputy PM, it maybe a testament to the fact that the country ran out of oil some time ago. Sign of things to come? Either way, it is a very interesting film and talks about peak oil and the changes it will bring.

Seasons greetings and such.