So how was it overall

I won't make big claims on this experience. What I felt is something personal. And every volunteer that I interacted with felt it was worth their time to say the least. Oh yes there were people who showed up for a day and disappeared too. To each their own.

Yes the facilities are basic and many westerners were surprised that we had to wash clothes manually or the fact that you don't get gloves and usually bring them yourself if you need them etc etc. But if you take a look at these places they are very well maintained, extremely clean and hygienic. The food provided was always plentiful and included a healthy accompaniment or some fish/meat at least once a week. Just step out of the premises and you see and smell the alternative of the life many of these people faced on the street and what the sisters provide is a 100x improvement over that.

There is no religious angle to the work being done here. Greater than 95% of the men here were non Christians. Yes there are pictures of Christ and Mary all over the place but no one was forced to the chapel or any other Christian practice. There is a prayer before meals in Bengali that everyone recited together. I actually only met on Christian patient during my time here.

I was fortunately not the only Indian. There was a student from Kol who was volunteering too. And there were a few NRIs. But I've been told its usually all foreigners. Maybe it is because this is a Christian organization. I hope that non Christians are also volunteering at other places. I would definitely add this as a thing to do along with travelling. It will give you a very different perspective on your life and how privileged you are.

At the very least these few days have broadened my understanding of a few more things on life. How much and in what way can only be measured by my actions in the rest of my existence.

My experience at Nirmal Hriday

Nirmal Hriday is the home for the dying and destitute. This was the first place that Mother Teresa had opened and the beauty is that this was an abandoned hindu temple. Such a beautiful act to support a beautiful cause.

I had heard some horror stories of Nirmal Hriday and was apprehensive about it to the point of being scared. The stories are right from the severity of illness seen here to the type of treatment given to these patients. But since I was here and got assigned to it I felt I must give it a shot.

This place opens up for the volunteers at 3pm and you are kicked out at 5pm :) I later heard that the morning shifts are more gruesome for obvious reasons.

The patients here are mostly old men (again women are in a separate space) who are either completely paralysed or have some mental disability or other serious illnesses. I would say luckily I didn't encounter a terminal case while I was here.

So what do we do here? Again just about everything. You help them change their clothes, help them walk around for exercise, give them their meds, feed them, take them to the toilets, cleanup their sheets etc if they wet themselves in their beds etc. You cringe a bit on the first day but after the first hour you just do what needs to be done. I never saw a volunteer shy away from doing anything that was needed to make the patients comfortable.

I was informed by a fellow volunteer who has been coming from Germany every year for the past 15 years that the severity of patients at Nirmal Hriday and Prem Dan has reduced over time. Hopefully that is a reflection of improving times in India and Kolkata. There were about 30+ patients here during my time.

My experience at Prem Dan

Prem Dan is a home for the elderly and disabled and is located around 3km from Mother house. All is us walked it out. Was a good way to get to know someone new and wake yourself up.

So what do we do here? Just about anything that's needed. People with medical experience help in the dispensary, others clean up, wash clothes (no washing machines here), shave the fellas, give massages, empty their pee bottles, serve tea, lunch etc, feed those that can't do it themselves and clean all the vessels for the next serving. The female volunteers take care of the women in the house. It all good hard work and the old fellas are really a mix of all types of men. A simple how are you will get them talking. Sometimes you just be with them and listen to their stories.

There were around 150+ male patients here during my time. We start at around 8-8:30am and are done by 12:30pm. Most people would take the rickshaw back to their hostels. You can be sure your body with squeak a bit on the first day, after this routine :)

Signing up

You can sign up for volunteering every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 3pm at Sishu bhavan which is a walking distance from Mother House on Bose road itself.

The process is to show up with a xerox copy of your passport and the original and attend the orientation. Then you signup for one of the many houses to work at. Yes you provide your preference and the dates. You also have the option of working g only mornings, afternoons/evenings or both.

Since I wasn't familiar with many of the places I let the sisters decide for me and was assigned Prem Dan for the mornings and Nirmal Hriday for the noons.

You are invited to join the morning mass at 6am at the Mother house after which there is a simple breakfast  of tea, bread and banana for the volunteers. After this we all say a small prayer and head out to our locations by walk/bus/metro etc. And yeah there is a wonderful little thank you song sung for you on your last day. It definitely brings a smile to everyone's faces.

Thursdays is the day of rest and there is no volunteering. Was confused why a christian organization didn't have Sunday as the day of rest. Lucikly on my first Thursday there was a retreat that I really enjoyed. They do it twice a year so was kinda lucky.

And yeah NO PHOTOGRAPHY on any of the premises, not even during your breakfast with other volunteers at Mother house. The sisters remind you that you are here to serve and the people here aren't animals and deserve their privacy and dignity.

Volunteering at Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata

In my time travelling I have encountered two great volunteer organizations that have left an impression on me. One in Ladakh where volunteers spend the cold winters as house guests and teach at local schools and another in McLeod Gunj where volunteers spend time helping Tibetan refugees in whatever way they can. At each of those encounters I was always impressed by the fact that tens and hundreds of people from all over the world show up and dedicate their time towards worthy causes. And we are talking serious time here, weeks and sometimes months. I have always wondered if I could be such a person.

Over the past few years volunteer tourism has caught on big time and I have eagerly tried to learn more. People working in Africa, South america and anywhere possible. One of such searches got me onto the volunteer page for Missionaries of Charity. I've been to the place before but oddly enough never heard of this thing. The volunteer program seemed straight forward and hey I've always #hated# Calcutta so it made it even more challenging. So yes I wanted to do it.

The experiences people have written about on-line encompass the entire spectrum. Some talk about the lack of empathy towards the admitted and others give near gory details of how severe the patients are there. Honestly this scared the shit out of me. Heck I still cringe and shut my eyes while I watch Hannibal all alone :'( So that made me second guess if this was a good idea.

But reading more about Mother Teresa recently I felt this would be a good place as any. I have always agreed to the notion that its easy to give some of your money as donations and "play your part", but if you can you should try giving some of your time, which is usually more difficult to part that money, and see how much difference it makes to the people you help and almost certainly yourself too. So with that selfish thought in mind I booked my tickets to Kolkata.

Private space

It helps to write down a few memories here now and then

Coz I never know when I'd want to relive them

While you may read my words never utter them to my face

Just remember this is my private space

Let's kidnap happiness

I want to kidnap happiness
Would keep her with me for long long while
I wont ask for a ransom
Nor would I want to give her back
Coz whatever the price
Happiness is worth much more than that

I bet you dont believe me
But trust me I've made the plan
Its gonna go down pretty soon
And I believe that I can

But happiness is so elusive
Its something so difficult to find
It usually doesn't come alone
It has a person it would bind

So if this rhyme made you laugh or smile
You got some happiness on you there
So now I gotta kidnap you for sure
Trust me love its nothing personal
Its happiness that I am interested for... fair?

The fact that you came along
Is just a small bonus for me
It may not make you happier
But am full of glee

And hey kidnapping was the last option
I tied to lure her with love
But alas she rejected all advances
Saying she ain't available rite now

So yes I want to kidnap happiness
Coz to find her I took a lot of time
I want to kidnap her
And just keep her to be mine


Now wipe that grin off your face :)

+1

angels

I believe in angels too ABBA

Why blog?

I blog 
..at times to write my mind
..at times to waste some time
..some days to vent my fury
..some days to be judge and jury
..some days to share my views
..some times to show I care
..some times to show off my wares
..to make you envious of my travel
..to spark some curiosity in your self
..to find someone that agrees with me
..to get your attention and your smile
..to remind you that I exist
..to remind you that I can speak
..to remind myself that I have a voice
..at times coz of a broken heart
..at times to pretend I'm smart

..with hope that my words make a difference

..with a prayer that it at least makes some sense

..because it shows I'm free

.....because I still don't have a gun on me!

And yes I also can blog for a prize... see the mega haul landing page 

Hindsight 20-20

Just felt the pinch on writing off an investment made over a period of a year. 
Lessons learnt? To be more impulsive I guess or maybe the lesson is ... Shit Happens! Wipe it off and move on...

SCMM 2012

Coorg - Of all the trips why do we remember this the most

We decided to try out the B52 hangout at Jayanagar that Friday night with our dear friend Siddharth. We tried out some funky stuff out there and the chicks (although gender wise males) out there complained to the waiter about us. We sobered down with a fresh pint of our beloved Kingfisher and were deciding on what can salvage our otherwise mundane weekend. Somhow we arrived to the conclusion that we needed to head out and at around 11pm we decided that we would head out to Coorg. The minor technicality of not having any planned conveyance or a hotel booking at a very popular weekend destination was not something that we lords of the B52 world were bothered about. And thus it was decided that we will head out to the Bangalore bus depot at 6.am sharp and catch the very first bus heading in the direction of Coorg.

Come Saturday morning.
Frantic calls between the three musketeers at around 7am managed to get us to our favourite Udupi in Kormangala at around 7.30am since breakfast and more importantly food dominated our schedules. We just couldn't head out without bribing our digestive tracts. We reach the bus depot at a leisurely 9.ooam and lo and behold the first bus that would have taken us to coorg was suprisingly missing from its parking slot. Only after boarding the next bus at around 10.00am did we realise that the first one had probably left on time. Oh well this on was going to reach us to Coorg within the next 6-7hrs, the conductor promised. I don't call the reasons but we were nowhere near the destination around 4pm. ... 5pm... 6pm... Ah finally at around 7 we reached a bus stand that was supposed to be Coorg. Damn.. was this it?

We picked up the local tourist brochure that, scrambled from somewhere, and frantically started calling the hotels.. the lowest priced ones getting preference of course. No luck. Next were the guest houses.. No luck there too. Were we actually going to spend the night on the streets?

One last call. A home stay ... and bingo we got a room there or that's what we thought. The rickshaw left us at the gates of the PG.. far far away from civilization and we entered the house to meet the lady who ran the PG. So when she lead us to what looked like an unused garage shed we were a bit confused. There sat 4 beds and 2 "rooms" nothing else. There was a geyser she said. Great!!!

We decided we weren't gonna come back there the next day unless hell froze over... and did Satan have plans for us. The subsequent evening was the reception of a local politician's son... And of course all the good hotels were booked out. Of the handful of places there was just one left that had a room available... so we took it.

Enter into the room and something was amiss. Was it just us or was there an unbearable stench of ammonia in the air that evening? Four beds lay out there in the room and bath attached. God it stinked. But we were too tired to go out on the hunt again. And the lovely PG lady had supposedly had a tab larger than 2 rooms out here. So we decided to brave it out. I bet the #breaths/second had drastically dropped that night.

Oh finally it was the morning next. The morning gods demanded their darshan at the bathrooms. Open the bathroom door and we finally realized where the ammonia emanated from. Now what? Laughter and a fucked look filled the rooms. God did the few years we spent in the US turn us into the high-nosed, culturally confused, fake-accent speaking, pseduo americans? exactly like those that we just so hated? NO. Two of us braved our civilized upbringings and managed to clear our tracts out and have a bath. The remaining one though had tracts with ethics and they simply refused to cooperate in inhospitable conditions.

We managed to get the info that a bus left out to Bangalore in the late afternoon. We got our tickets and were hanging around the bus stand. Unfortunately we weren't done. The third guy now had to give his darshan to the morning gods that he so insultingly skipped this morning. Helter skelter we ran and managed to find a guest house that lent us their rooms for a few hours with a little discount.
Ah civilization at last... Clean bathrooms... we were blessed. Even the ones that didn't need to use the facilities did. Come evening we headed out to the bus stand and got on our way back to Bangalore.

The three musketeers have had many trips since then. Some had 5-star hotels and some had exotic locations. But of all of these this first one really stands out in our memories. We don't know why but we know that we will always have it in our hearts. Whereever we head we know we can brave the elements and overcome the odds. We proved we were 100% shudh DESI after all!

Best Wishes Madame

To a wonderful person.

You walked down the aisle today
With a smile that said it all
Towards the luckiest guy in the world
May the journey be full of love and joy
Full of happiness and things that keep you smiling
For you may never know, but I'll say
Your smile is the only thing good in this world anyway

Wishing the latest Mr. and Mrs. a wonderful life together. And ofcourse dont forget to name your first-born after me :)

Work Experience

Time and again work experience seems to pop up in the most unrelated of contexts, and sometimes relevant as it may seem there does not seem to be enough time to go ahead and layout everything that I have actually worked on and experienced. So I thought I'd just take a trip down memory lane and put things down in black and white. Just for personal reference of course.

1. Church - Altar Boy: Probably the first thing that any Catholic boy does in his life. I still remember the first time I did that. I was with a friend Kenneth in Irla and goofed up quite a bit. I especially remember how many times I actually stood up aside the altar when I wasn't supposed to. But well managed to get through that.
Unforgettable Moment: Goofing up

2. Boarding School - Choir, Altar boy, Cleaning up, Sweeping, Mopping floors etc: While at the boarding school at Boscos we did it all. Cleaned up the whole place, cleaned up the playing fields, washing our clothes and god knows what else. We did it all and we showed up in style at the school. Boarders kicked ass when we came along at Boscos man.
Unforgettable Moment: When one of the boarders went berserk! Also remember making those giant cutouts for our late night chill outs.
Cant forget all the great s.d.b. priests and brothers that we met. You guys simply rocked.

3. School - Hockey Team player: I was in the hockey team during my school days at Don Bosco. Played the defense quite a bit and people said I was pretty good.
Unforgettable Moment: When I missed the penalty shot against St. Stanislaus Bandra, while all my friends in the boarding looked on. We also lost the match so that was the pits. Also remeber bro. chris whacking me in the shins with my own hockey stick during my first match. Damn that hurt.

4. Internship at ABB: This was the final year project during my BE and we managed to squeeze into ABB for this. Thanks to some of the wonderful people out there that helped me realized that the journey had just begun.
Unforgettable Moment: When the department head told me that my project was the only real world project she had seen all year. And also when I realised my work may not be used by the company in production :(

5. Engineering College - Placements: Helped out with going out to a couple of companies in Mumbai to come out to the first ever placements that our college had.
Unforgettable Moment: When one of them accepted.

6. Engineering College - Debating: We kicked some ass while debating at Agenls's in our final year. I think it was pav and anna on the team with yours truly. Of course I was just the stand-in :)
Unforgettable Moment - Winning. Yippieeeeee!

7. PA, US - Serving, Cleaning, Mopping up etc: This was at University Park, PA. The first on campus job that I had was at the central eatery. We did everything. We had some early morning shifts at around 6.00 am where we went in and sliced frozen bagels etc for the morning rush. I did fries, burgers, burritos, salads, club sandwiches, sodas etc. Man I cant even remember all the places I served. We also had the late night shift on Sat night where we cleaned and closed up right up til 1.30am in the morning. Phew.
Unforgettable Moment: Cleaning up puke. Yuck!!!

8. PA, US - Serving tapes to Cray: Yeah for one day me and a friend served up tape drives to a Cray supercomputer, that was on campus, so that data could be transferred onto cds. Yeah baby.
Unforgettable Moment: Seeing a supercomputer in person :)

9. PA, US - Working with the big guys: Got a job on campus for a cool 16$ an hour, which was a record, that was to code for this handheld computing project for the department of health in PA. This was under the supervision of a defense building on campus.
Unforgettable Moment: The look on the sys-admin's face when he realized I wasn't a citizen of the US of A :)

10. PA, US - Biochemistry?: My first assistantship was with the Biology/Biochemistry department. The lady out there wanted someone to do work comparable to re-writing LAPACK in 2 months :) That didn't work out.
Unforgettable Moment: Realizing that I was given an impossible task and that I needed to find another assistantship asap. Peed in my pants.

11. PA, US - Civil Engineering: My primary source of income during my education was through a graduate assitantship with the Civil engineering department. I wrote Visual Basic programs for a professor there. I interacted with the hardware equipment manufactures for a month or so to understand how to integrate their stuff into our program. It was super to see that thing up and running.
Unforgettable Moment: Interacting with Dr. H. - super guy.

12. PA, US - Volunteering: During my free time I volunteered with an organization at the local church. The basic work there was simply interacting with differently-gifted children.
Unforgettable Moment: A kid that I was interacting with for nearly a year underwent a brain surgery, it was really big risk that the parents just had to take. After he was released from care and came back to the sessions he pulled me to the nearest ABC chart and started telling me A for apple, B for Ball. That moment I can never forget.

13. PA, US - Thesis: Phew man. The toughest professor in Wireless Networks at the university was my guide and he sure as hell knew what he wanted. He made sure I worked my ass off and well I managed to satisfy his requirements.
Unforgettable Moment: My first thesis proposal going in the dustbin. Then my thesis experiments running on multiple computers and me collecting and understanding the data. And then of course Graduating, Yipee!!!

14. PA, US - Start up1: Yeah baby. Quantum Bio Inc was launched sometime late in the winter of 2002. I interviewed with Lance and the crew out in the Chem labs at Penn and was bought on board. We got our rented office and moved into it sometime in the middle of Jan 2003. And boy was it fun. We actually took the comps and printer from the chem building out to the incubation centre, yeah we did the loading and unloading, and also pinched some CAT5 cables and stubs in there too :). Then we headed out to Office Depot and purchased the cheapest tables we could find and hauled them back to the office. We then assembled them ourselves, yeah! Then we layed out the Ethernet cables to main switch board and also punched in the pins ourselves. We then setup the network with a MacOSX PC serving up as the server. Each one of the 5 guys installed a different flavor of Linux just to test the code on different versions while we coded :) Damn we even had our code for the common copier, that was billed against us. Of course we managed to get the admin account for our consumption :)
Unforgettable Moment: Damn everything was unforgettable man. I still remember the guys next door who were into precision instrumentation and measuring. That dude bought us beers a couple of times just to break the ice. Cheers buddy.

15. Back in Bangalore: Working at Sun was awesome. Was part of a really great team. The people gelled well and things were great. The lead was super.
Unforgettable Moment: Seeing a real world angel :)

16. Start up2: Working in a start up is always the tops for me. So I quit my job at Sun and moved out to Gurgaon on a whim.
Unforgettable Moment: First two weeks at Gurgaon, man the dust is still coming off me till now. The other thing that was rocking was the ability to do whatever I wanted to do and push it forward, and of course the ability to talk to the founder directly and frankly was priceless, well at least for me :)

17. The giant: For reasons best known to me I needed to get out of Gurgaon. Microsoft offered me a job, along with 2 other biggies, that seemed to be a really great opportunity and I am currently here pursuing it to the fullest
Unforgettable Moment: Making those right now :)

Other experiences
a. been a class prefect in school :)
b. fund raiser
c. Master of ceromonies @ family parties and couple of corporate events
d. Horse riding
e. ...

So that in short is the experiences that I have had the pleasure of having, ofcourse not everything is covered here. Sound interesting? Now that I have this written down I wonder what I should tell the next person that asks me this question, any suggestions?

Mr. & Mrs. Lobo

One more of the gang has bitten the dust. Lester Lobo has gone down fighting on the 12th of January 2008, to a worthy and beautiful opponent :) Wishing them the very best of times together as a married couple.

Here is the toast I presented to them at their reception (publishing only the important part!)

May every sunrise be in her arms and
may there never be a sunset that sees you two apart
may the most melodious thing you hear each day be her laughter
the brightest thing you see be the twinkle in her eyes
the most fragrant thing you smell be her presence
the most tender thing you touch be her embrace
and the most sweetest thing you taste be her kiss


ps. I searched everywhere and couldnt find anything suitable so made this up. So its original and copyright is reserved by the parties here.

Hit me!

Am looking forward to 2008. And if you are gonna be a part of it watch out for this space. The gut feeling is that this year is gonna rock my socks out. Why? ... well keep reading this space for that all through next year.

oh sweet 2007
Enjoyed myself in Gurgaon, saw probably the best idea in the Indian startup space and interacted with some really talented guys all through. Found out the do's and don't of a startup all over again, got me reminiscing about QB all over again. Then came off to join what I think is probably the best opportunity within MS and other MNC's. Professionally have pushed forward on the technical as well as behavorial side, but am still a frank jack :) Amazingly I still keep running into people who think I should keep my mouth open rather than shut.
Personally the year has been beyond comparison. Dad's health has improved beyond our wildest wishes, all thanks to the new entrant to our family, my sister's son Joshua Thomas Sequeira. Many of our childhood friends too had kids, actually all of them had kids this year and the building in Mumbai was having the "good-news" all through the year :)
And ofcourse the other things like new friends and revisiting some old ones. Some beautiful conversations and some gorgeous smiles and all those little things made life a bit more interesting. It all made for a smacking year.

Now bring on the next 365 baby!

Shooting Stars and Diwali

Well that theory about the wishes and shooting stars sure as hell didn't come true for me. I guess that works only for American citizens... hehe.

Well its that time of the year again. For some time now the sound of loud explosions does not cause fear and the smell of our desi gunpowder is all over the place, right from dusk till dawn, yeah it starts at dusk! The stars are outnumbered by the festive rockets and lightning flowerpots and smooth harmony persists in the mass hysteria at your friendly neighborhood sweets shop. Everyone is headed home to spend time with family and the mood is all so cheery and happy. Everyone's purses are being emptied by their parents, children, siblings or a long lost friend and no-one is complaining. Its pouring in emails and everyone's "online status" reads a greeting or two.

So I too am headed to join in the celebrations and here's wishing all of you guys a very Happy Diwali. Be it my friends from Andheri, Matunga, Vashi, State College, Bangalore, Gurgaon or Hyderabad. Life has taken me many places but I'd swear by the sweat on my brow that there is just no place like home, especially during festival time.

ps. so what if I am a Christian, the sweets are just as delicious for me as they are for you ;)

Shooting Star

Guess what! Saw my first shooting star yesterday night, in hyderabad. Made me realise that its never too late for anything to happen in life and neither is anything impossible. Yeah I did make a wish, a small one.

Species LandLord Invertebrate

Out of the necessity of travelling outside Mumbai for my job I have always had to rent out apartments for my survival in various cities. Now that I am in Hyderabad I have come to the conclusion that where ever you go the genus Landlord Invertebrate is a direct descendant of the greedy overlords that our ancestors thought were slayed along with the dragons.

Here are some of the peculiar traits of these species. I hope that these will help you identify these specimens and stay clear of their path.
1. Greed - While this is a feature of every animal I have to say that landlords are way more greedier. I have been working for the past 5 years in the industry and even I cant expect a 10% increase yoy every year. That combined with the inflation rate that is at least 5% every year how can anyone expect a rental increase of 10-15% every year ? That too without any maintenance being done on the property.

2. False Claims - Every freaking landlord advertises his house as near a school, hospital, grocery store, IT park and mall. They will always say that this is just a stones throw away, while the reality is that there is stones and muck everywhere on the way to these places however close they are from the apartment. More ever once you occupy the place you can forget anything to be repaired by this species. They will always say that it will be fixed but if you wait for it to happen you might as well be without it. Yeah but if you say that you will fix it and cut the cost from the month's rent you can at least expect a quick reply from the species.

3. Sexual Discrimination - I have always noticed that the rentals for single girls are always better, cleaner, cheaper and aplenty. And in 100% of these places the landlord always likes to have a "friendly" conversation with his tenants on a daily basis.

4. No Bachelors or Family preferred - This is the most irritating problem that is hampering me from enjoying my bachelorhood. These specimens always prefer families as tenants for whatever reason. Bachelors are seen as rowdy creatures that don't need adequate housing. Now weren't they bachelors ever?

5. Pesky Rules and Regulations - Now if you manage to find someone who doesn't mind having bachelors as tenants then that specimen comes up with his list of rules and regulations. No friends, no drinks, no smoking, no girls, no loud music and the crap continues. Now you charge us such filthy high rentals and still feel that it is your prerogative to decide on how we live our lives. Gimme a break.


To all the creatures of the Landlord Invertebrate species I wish you all the harm in the world. May you face extinction and may your life be as miserable and as crappy as the things that you do upon your tenants.

Remember that your existence is because of your tenants and not the other way around.

My middle finger to you all!!! @#$%^!