MONSOON MOODS !!

I like my hometown the most during monsoons. Sometimes it arrives early, during the month of late may but most of the time it is in June. Few days ago, something made me think of those days. I have put it down in words. Share your experience as well.

Many silver clouds, hang loose from the pale sky, a strong wind fiddles with them so high.

A feather, cornered by the wind in the backyard, jumps up and down, left and right.

Like it’s overwhelmed with joy and careless about the surrounding.

A bird concerned about its kids, fly’s hurriedly to its nest.

A man tilling the earth, singing the song of happiness and joy.

Women planting the saplings, humming the folk tunes.

A young girl, runs to collect the washed clothes let hanging to dry.

A light flashes across the sky and a big thunder.

2 little school kids, stick to their mother, under an umbrella, waiting for school bus.

It rains slowly, then heavily, and then drizzles and then it stops.

The sun peeps through the screen of clouds.

The smell of the wet land, the dew drops on the green leaf, shining like pearl.

A silent cool breeze, a dry dead leaf detaches from the tree and comes down

Wobbling and dancing, like its celebrating its detachment and freedom.

It falls on to running stream of water gushing towards the fields

It floats, wobbles as it goes along the stream.

A spider fallen from the tree, trying to stay alive, jumps on to the leaf.

Isn’t it amazing how a dead leaf, filled with joy can yet save life?

The question lingers in my mind, until I see

The lone, almost dead rose in garden, is now swaying with beauty acquired from the water drops on it.

A rainbow decorates its background, like a crown.

As I watch this, my heart overfills with joy of just being in between these wonderful things, with so much of happiness and mostly LIFE.

SEA - LINK - TESTING !!

I don’t write much on testing though I thoroughly love my job as a tester. For me testing is something more to do with my instinct to find defects and not theoretical at all. So it’s difficult to express it in words. Well, that doesn’t mean that I don’t use the available tools and methods. I do use them, but I am not too conscious about it when I apply them to my job.

Ok, that’s my 2 cents of philosophy on testing.

I got this habit of flipping news channels on tv while eating my king sized breakfast. Its more to do with starting the day watching the smiling, fresh beautiful face of news readers and less to do with the actual news that they blurt out at supersonic speed.

However, this news ignited that thousand volts bulb over my head. Guess what? It is to do with testing. Nay, not really. However, I tried my best to link it one way or the other. Believe me, I am good at this.

Well, to the topic.

Headlines: Rajiv Gandhi Setu inaugurated. Massive traffic jams on day one.

Wow. How many times have we come across a website, massively tested and on the day of production, boom. A massive traffic brings the entire server down. Now, that’s why we do the performance, load, stress, strain and whatever related testing.

I am sure the engineers designing the sea link would have done all the tests N number of times, but did they fail to involve the Mumbai traffic department to estimate this scenario wherein there could be a possibility of a traffic jam up to 3 kilometers on day 1?

Well there could be several reasons like, many of them got up this morning and got their car straight to this sea link only to be there and enjoy the moment and the monument. However, this scenario should have been well thought off prior to the inauguration.

What’s lacking here was the collaboration.

When we test an application or software, it is so much important to collaborate with different departments and stakeholders. As a tester it is not only important to have your imaginations in creating scenarios , it is also important to get inputs from other departments, directly and sometimes indirectly associated with the software or application.

Like a detective who builds scenarios by getting inputs from witness, forensic experts, background of victim, near future plans of victims and much more.

So, let the imagination flow, even if it goes beyond the scope of application and more importantly, keep the mind open to take as many inputs as possible from people around to build a strong scenario and fool proof application.

Headlines: A boat gets STUCK in between the two pillar of sea link

The police boat carrying nine gets caught in a fishing line between two pillars.

What? Well, that was my first reaction as well. They were all rescued with the help of helicopter.

2 points.

• 1. Again, there was no collaboration. The fishermen blame that the pillars are too close and their boats cannot pass through and might hit the pillars. Wow, this is a serious issue. The engineers have failed to collaborate. They were perhaps concentrating on more important things like wind, choppy waters and hard sea bed. But imagine the consequence of a boat hitting the pillar !!!

So, when you are given the responsibility to test a major application, don’t get all excited and narrow your mind to look at important scenario, but in addition to that, also look at the simple scenarios that could lead to major disastrous consequences.

Simple rule : Simple scenarios can catch big defects.

• 2. What about the security testing? How could they even allow the fishing line to be in between the pillars. As a matter of fact, imagine a boat crashing into sea link pillars. Well, must be very very strong pillar, but seriously, I would think twice even before allowing the boats to cross through. If that was absolutely and inevitable then they should have got a safety wall around the main pillar itself, thereby reducing the impact. I hope they have got it.

Also, consider the cost of getting a helicopter to rescue, every time some boat gets stuck down there.

So, you don’t have to be an expert to understand the security risks. Just build the simple scenario to break the security. DO NOT underestimate the simple security threat. It could cost more to have that risk than to totally eliminate it. A little bit of mischief while testing is better than millions of dollars lost during production. J

Headlines 3: Sea link named after Rajiv, Sena wants Savarkar’s name

Hmm. Very good. Common man’s money ($325 million) and 2 poltical parties fight for their names to be promoted. How neat? There were 150 engineers, 4000 workers, working and having 3 meals hanging from the wire at their work place. Why don’t you talk about them? Aren’t they the real heroes?

That was my first reaction. Why on earth should someone’s name be used for a sea link? Just say, ‘Bandra-Worli sea link’, you morons.

Well, I don’t have any gyan to take from here into testing.

By the way, do we do name testing? You know, to check which name suits best for the product. For example, if a new product is invented or being produced. Then, one can give it probable names and get the response from the consumers. Alpha & Beta Name testing.

THE MOON WALKER - We will miss you

An adolescent screamed, I ‘Got to Be There (1972)’.

He told his nation who the number 1 was with, ‘Ben (1972)’

He shared his love for music through ‘Music and Me (1973)‘

He charmed the world with ‘Forever, Michael (1975)’

When he came ‘Off the Wall (1979)’ we had little idea about what was in store.

He thrilled the world with ‘Thriller (1982)’ and the world went crazy.

Everything was not always good, but ‘Bad (1987)’ did very well.

He wanted the world to know that he could be ‘Dangerous (1991)’.

He was now almost ‘Invincible (2001)’

A tribute to, undisputed ‘King of PoP’ who ruled millions of heart and inspired many.

A short life filled with professional highs and personal lows. Another ‘Shooting Star’ fades away as quickly as it had risen.

There can never be another MJ.

‘The thriller has gone but the thrills he shared will go on for generations to come.’

‘MY xyz’ 2 ‘OUR xyz’ - Being GLOBAL !!

It’s not the first time that I had written/shared my views on this topic. You may want to have a glance at one of my previous post, ‘Enough of Patriotism’, written on August 14th, 2007.


In fact, I started with commenting on of my colleagues blog and ended up posting this here, considering the size.

Clash of civilizations, religions and faith is what we see today across the longitude and latitude of this beautiful planet. From media termed, ‘curry bashing in Oz’ to the incident in Vienna that paralyzed Punjab for more than a week. All in the name of faith, caste, color, creed and religion.

The only question in my mind is, ‘Have we stopped looking at the big picture?’

Burning trains and shops, bringing down the entire state to halt, and for what? Does this help the humanity? Is it a solution?

I love Tamil movies. In fact, nowadays I watch more of Tamil movies than any other language. I love listening to hindi\sufi and English music. I enjoy watching British comedy.

Does that diminish my love for the birth place? No. I like watching our folk dance (yakshagana, from coastal Karnataka), I like the food, I like the people.

And yet, sometime while travelling in train, talking to relatives and few times in office, I had come across people who make fun and demean others faith, language, culture and way of leaving. South bashing north, north bashing east and so on.

I have always preached, Global citizenship and being the citizen of the world, instead of just being the citizen of one nation and fighting over it.

It doesn’t mean that I am less patriotic or that I don’t love my faith, culture or community. It only means that, I respect other culture, community and faith as much as I love mine and would never compare them.

Though many of my friends don’t entertain this and we end up in serious argument, I encourage this debate, because at least, it opens their mind and ignites them to think on different lines.

The entire world is going global. Either the boundaries are going to vanish or we will dig a grave for ourselves and end the civilization. Someday, some other civilization is gonna come up and read about us in their history book, “Once this planet was ruled by the self pro claimed, most intelligent species which was so intelligent that, it dug its own grave of ill faith, wrongly interpreted religious belief, line of controls and catastrophic human destructions and now the grave stone reads “the super dumb species that ever existed on this earth’”

Let’s share the common values. The perfect example is IPL. Most of the Indian players couldn’t imagine playing along with Pakistan players (IPL -1) in the same team. Look what IPL did. Most of the KKR fans were supporting Shoaib to pick up Mumbai Indians, Sachin Tendulkar’s wicket. Now that’s global. This is one solid reason the IPL is a successful story today. What does this mean?

It means, that there is hope. Things are changing. People are changing. The old narrow mindedness will not work. The world is sending a strong message to the extremists. Either you broaden your minds, soul, and extend your arms to embrace change or ignore the message at your own peril.

Some remember the past wound and wait to avenge,

some see beyond the wound and embrace the future.

What a P and What a J ?

One of my blogger friends mentioned about her friend getting all cranky. Guess what, none are spared. In my house, almost everyone gets cranky every now and then.


I don’t blame them or myself. It could be due to heat and dehydration or the girl at the balcony of the opposite building who appears and disappears in matter of seconds.

When we get cranky, we compete.

What’s the competition?

Fight for the best PJ cracking cranky.

PJ meaning poor joke, peculiar joke, pathetic joke and nothing near to perfect joke…

Perhaps, it depends on the person who cracks the joke and the person who cracks his head hitting against the whateverin the vicinity after reading/listening to it.

So, here are few of those cranky once.

Well, the first one is obviously mine. I hope you have got your head as well as monitor insured.

Anyway, both ways, I will remain brave, until I see loads of bloggers holding various house cleaning items. rotten tomatos and eggs, in their hands, looking for me in Pallikarnai. Here it goes.

There is a 2 line space between the question and the answer. That is the time you got to think about the answer. That is, if you are cranky (job less) enough to do so.

What do you get if liquor barren  Vijay Mallya meets the fastest bowler Bret lee?

You get Malyalee.

How would you call Tamanna, after that scene in Ayan where in her brother gets killed?

She would be called Tam, because her brother (Tam) ‘anna’ got killed.

Why is marraiges banned in Taliban ruled area?

Hey common yar. Because ‘Tali’ ‘Ban’ned

Why should you NOT butter your boss?

Because, if you ‘Butt (h)er’, you are obviously in serious trouble. Now, hope I am not in serious trouble?

In ‘Ayan’, why Surya takes such a long time to find out about his friend who turns foe.

Simple. ’Surya tube-lights’ and bulbs. Dan tada..

If your head and monitor are in good shape and if you are not looking for me, then I will try to re collect few of those which I cannot re collect at this moment, and post it later.

If you don’t want me to post additional cranky one’s, hah, there is nothing really you can do.

Ok, I will spare you with one Sardar joke which I had recently cracked.

“Why did a Sardar go to doctor every day?”

Because, he is Sikh yar.

No offence meant. To sardar’s who are looking for me, I know I am Shitty, oops Shetty. Hope that helps. Thanks

Escape>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ok, Are you seriously thinking of thrashing me? Then consider this, “DONT MESS WITH ME FACE”

BOOOOOOOOoooooooo.

HOW 2 ‘ROB A COP’ !!

I had to write this post. I HAD TO, because, I had to.

Ok, now that sounds crazy and some of you might have closed the page before you read this line.

If you are still reading, then, let me assure you that, ‘you are as crazier than me’ :)

This post is inspired by a post from my fellow blogger. It was something to do with ‘Ways to get caught by ticket checker or traffic cops and pay fine’

However, in this post, I am going to explain, “How to ROB a COP, right under his nose, face, whatever.”

Before, I begin explaining the master plan, have you ever come across ‘Walking, talking DATABASE”?

No? Then read this carefully, “You could be one of them.” :)

Alright, we know a guy. In fact he was my friend’s college mate. Every time we meet him, the only thing that he is interested to know is, “Where do you work? What is your salary? What technology you are working on? Etc etc etc….”

Once this query processing is done, it’s time for statements like, “Hey this guy works there, he earns this much salary, he/she is getting married. He/she got a car. He/she is going with this girl/guy or guy/girl, respectively and irrespectively.”

Once this is done, he comes up with the most irritating part. Comparison. “So you are earning so much, but he is earning much less or I am earning quite more. Etc etc etc…

That’s why, we call them. ‘Walking talking DATABASE’. In short ‘WakTakDB’

Anyway, we don’t completely hate him, because he is such an innocent guy. His circuit is built that way. Can’t help. Moreover, he gives us information pertaining to our ex girl friends, ex boyfriends, friends who have turned foe, foes who are now friends. Aka Khabari.

If you are wondering, “How does this guy ROB a COP?” then keep wondering, because, this guy has nothing to do with my master plan. :)

So why on earth (or on my blogsite) am I writing about this guy? You will know before I finish. I promise.

I am going to narrate a tragic story. If you can figure out the master plan, then congratulations.

During our engineering days, my friends had come down to Bangalore from Manipal, to work on so called, “mini project” (wonder why they keep that name. Its funny, you know what I mean :)). So, I was doing my engineering in Bangalore, therefore I joined my friends, to give them a pleasant company to go around in Bangalore. One of the guys spoke to his relative to give the first floor to them for a month.

Unfortunately the mini project never started due to several reasons. The owner stayed in the ground floor, so he would always enquire about us. Therefore, every day morning, we get ready like we got to go to company on project work, all in formals. Go to Majestic bus station. Wait till 4pm and then come back at office time, looking tired.

At the month end, it was time to wrap up, pack and leave Bangalore to join their college. The mini project was somehow done in the last week of that month. Only one out of the many friends was left out to go in the end. I decided to go to home town along with him.

We went to his bro in laws house and got an old kinetic Honda. Drove it all the way to the room in which these guys stayed. Shifted all the beds back to the place we had taken it from. I had a huge suitcase and my friend was carrying equally heavy suitcase. We removed the front grills of this vehicle to accommodate a suitcase in front his legs. I was holding my suitcase on my lap, balancing it from one side to another.

We had to reach back to his bro in laws place to give back the vehicle and board the bus. We had 1 hr to do so.

After pushing the vehicle and dodging the heavy evening traffic we reached a place, which would be our last traffic signal before our destination. We found ourselves right behind a huge truck waiting from the traffic signal to turn green (which in fact was not visible to us because of this truck). The vehicle began to move and we followed it.

Guess, what?. Very soon, our night mare turned to be a reality. We were stuck at the junction. The truck had jumped the signal. The vehicles were honking and dodging us from all sides. We just stopped there, not knowing which way to go. All the people, crossing us from all sides, were cursing and spitting on us.

We looked like bunch of monkeys, just arrived from forest and unaware of whatever was happening in the concrete jungle. We couldn’t balance the bag anymore. One of the rider shouted,”look, your father is coming”, with a huge grin on his face. I wondered why he was so happy with our helplessness. Before I could look at what was he referring to, a huge smoked, black thing came rushing towards my head. I ducked. It landed right on my friend’s cheek who was riding the deadly kinetic Honda.

Only after, the thing came in front of our vehicle, I realized, it was none other than our famous traffic cop, whose white clothes is no more white. The first thing he did was, removed the key and took it to his base at one corner of the road. I got down and started pulling my bag towards him. My friend was balancing his bag on kinetic Honda and pushing it towards the cop along with me. Again, the traffic opened and again we got showered with curses.

1st question all traffic cops ask is, “DL?”. Please note that he doesn’t even look at your face when he is asking this question.

No answer from my friend. I went numb. I couldn’t hear anything though the noise was deafening.

2nd question, “Papers”?

I was thinking,” yeah paper’s. We were fortunate to get this vehicle till here. Do you expect papers for this?”

This is when my friend came out of the shock that he had, when 3 kilo hand had slammed his face. He said, “sir, sir. This is bro in laws bike sir. I am form manipal sir. Student sir. Please sir. We have bus to catch in 10min sir. Please sir.”

Cop.”No no. Nothing doing. Pay fine.”

My friend, with great pride.”HOW MUCH?” ( Little did my friend know that, I had just one 10rs note and some coins. My friend had none in his.)

Cop looked up. This is the first time he looked directly into his eyes. “300″

Suddenly, out of no were, tears rolled down my friends eye. I didn’t know what to do. I was in fact confused. Was he really crying because of helplessness? Was he acting to gain some sympathy? Was he feeling the pain of that slap only now?

I had no clue. I still don’t have any clue.

The cop, waited for some time and declared, disinterested. “Whatever you have got, put it in there.” He pointed at the mobile pouch he had on his bike.

I collected all he coins and the note in my pocket and slipped it in the pouch.

Hearing the noise made by coins in the pouch, our cop shouted. “Do you think I am beggar? Remove those coins idiot.”

I removed them and placed in my pocket. Little did he know that, I had removed all the money from the pouch and placed it in my pocket.

Finally, we reached our boarding point. Returned the bike. Very little money in pocket. Only enough to buy a bottle of water. We needed money after going to home town to change buses. WE didn’t have any. We didn’t know what to do and suddenly out of nowhere, a BMTC bus comes and stops very near to us. Few people got down and few got in. One of them who got down was familiar. Guess who?

Yeah right. ‘WakTakDB’

We almost fainted. Yeah baby. This is the right time, right place. Can’t be any better.

However, he was very good to us, because he was not at his best. We borrowed Rs100 and thankfully, our bus arrived within 5 min.

So, that’s the story. I don’t know if you can repeat this, but we feel proud even today, for Robbing a Robber under his nose. :)

What crap….? You must be thinking

I know, I know. I warned you..

2 LOSE & NOT 2 B LOSER !!

Some win, Some loose to win.



“Mom, What is more important in life? Losing or Winning?”


“Of course winning, son. Else, no one would respect you.”


Most of us would have got this from our parents, teachers, friends, guardians and whoever. We hear about all the people who have won. When we sit in a gathering, every one speaks about the winners. In your family circle, the winner, your cousin, your sister, brother is the most spoken about. Does that make you a loser?


Well I used to feel that way and many of you agree that you too at one point would have felt the same. However, I had a belief.


A belief that, winning is not as important as loosing. Winning is just a collection of loses which teaches you valuable lessons. Nobody talks about the amount of pain, grief a person had to overcome to hear that magic word, “winner”.


First thing that one needs to know in life is not winning. First thing one needs to know is ‘LOSING’. Losing badly. Second thing one need to understand is that, ‘you might lose, but you are not a loser”.


SRK puts it in a better way, “Sports teaches you to lose but not to become a loser”. Even before the tournament started, the fans burnt effigy’s over controversial moves. Experts criticized the owners. Deccan chargers charged over them in the first match, Royal challengers challenged their existence, Dare devils scared the hell out of them. The world poured all its filthy comments on the team, management, the players and the owner. They lost. They kept loosing. Some close encounters, some terrible loses.


People who had 1 milligram knowledge of cricket were suggesting the shots that should have been played, the ball that was not of right length.


Did that make them losers? No. They went on. Like true professionals. Picking up the remains, sweating and practicing every day hoping that someday, they would be in a better situation. That’s the trait of a true professional. Result? The last two matches. Out of nowhere, they successfully chased the highest total in IPL this year and in their next match they out played the last years IPL champions, Rajasthan royals. Now, that’s what I call loosing but not being the loser.


Similarly in life we lose. People don’t speak about you. People don’t ask about you. Let’s remember on thing, “we might have lost, but we are not losers”.


I would like to end this post with a thought from Theodore Roosevelt. This is posted in SRK’s blog (really inspiring and motivating) as well. I loved it. I simply couldn’t resist posting it her for you,


It is not the critic who counts;


Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,


Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.


The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,


Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;


Who strives valiantly;


Who errs, who comes short again and again,


Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;


But who does actually strive to do deeds;


Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;


Who spends himself in a worthy cause;


Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,


And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,


So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who


neither know


Victory nor Defeat.


Note: For those of you who obviously think that I am advertising my favorite actor. It’s easier for me to say, yes I am. But not an actor, a good human being with wonderful thoughts.


God bless