Small World!!!

you might have heard of the news of a global banking giant outsourcing its IT work to some IT giants...yours truly is part of that much talked about deal and has now landed up in chicago...

when it comes to planning trips, this trip beats all the trips i have done/planned so far. my trip was rescheduled and redirected at least 14 times... I was asked to travel to Ann Arbor/Chicago/Troy/NJ and even Netherlands. even now i am not sure of this is my final destination. guess nobody can beat my account when it comes to planning and strategies,,,was almost sleepin throughout the flight... reached here in one piece... US looks the same... no no havnt been here before... same as in same as the movies :p

checked into a hotel and called up my close buddy after wasting some quarters at the public call fones... it turned out he too was staying in the same hotel. he hadnt written his hotel name in the addres…he came down to the lobby, we met, we hugged, we talked, walked and talked... 4 years of engg together at CET, 2 years of working together at Mumbai, and a year and a half later, we both are working from the exact same office for the exact same client, but on behalf of two different corporates... this world sure is a small place!!

first day in Yankee land was pretty much as expected... huge buildings, huge automobiles, awsome babies ;_)

funny part of the day was my first US MacDonald purchase...

me and my teammate from bangalore went to one MacD outlet for our lunch... poor guy is a vegetarian and was intimidated by the chicken dominated menu... i decided to play the good Samaritan’s role and approached the MacD counter with my best possible yinglish accent "Ma'am, doo yuHaav anyything in vegggitarian?"... The lady gave me a blank look as if I asked her something in Mallu. I tried again... This time in my normal accent "Do you serve vegetarian burgers here?" She gave me a look (which I have reserved for my veggy friends) and asked "Vegggittaaariaaan? sorry, we dont have"... I went back to my team-mate and passed on the sad news to him... we both proceeded to the SubWay outlet and finally got a veg and a non veg sub...then we went back to MacD to get some fries and coffee... 1 medium french fries is some 1.23 $ and they had an offer whcih said 2 french fries for $2. In the meanwhile, I wanted to call my friend, and I had noticed a public call booth which said "Local calls for 50cents". I had 2 quarters with me and no 50 cents...So wanted to convert those two quarters into a 50 cent. Keeping all these things in mind, I went to the MacD counter and placed my order...the conversation which followed went somewhat like this...

Me: "2 french fries and 2 coffee please"
Counter Lady(CL):" You want F-R-E-N-C-H fries?"
I was confused. I thot may be I asked for 'italian' fries or sth... Not really understanding what she meant, i nodded my agreement.
CL: "That makes it 2$ 84 cents"I was confused again as I knew the price of coffee was above 1 $. But anyways paid the amount and kept quiet. A minute later they delivered 2 packets of french fries. But no coffee...
Me: "I'd ordered for 2 coffee also"
CL: "Waaaaat? coffeeee?? noo sirr... u only ordered FRENCH fries"
Me: "Ok..fine...give us 2 coffee also"
While she instructed her coworker to pass me coffee, i pushed my 2 quarters to her and asked "Could you give me a 50 cent?"
She was damn confused this time and said..."No sirr... its not 50 cents... its 2 $ 46cents..."
Me: "I know...I know... This is separate...I will pay that later"
She was finally happy to understand what I wanted and said "Oh...i now understoooood... you want sepppperaaaate... ok ok..." she placed her hands on both of the coffee cups and said "1.23 and 1.23.... This is 1.23, and this is 1.23" What she understood was I wanted to pay for the coffees separately :_(

What more to say, I just dumped all the coins and $ bills I had in my hand and asked her to pick whatever she wanted, and returned with 2 coffee cups and not really convinced as to whether to be happy or sad about the fact that I myself was acting the part of the foolish indian whom I have seen in so many movies...

So thats how its going. Have been coming to the client office for a couple of days now... got a laptop today... installed some software... work is yet to start... may travel to Troy next week... catch up with u ppl later…

Bangalore (01:35 AM) -> FrankFurt (12:00 PM-02:50PM)->Chicago (12:00PM)

About Me

This is how a close friend of mine described me:

“
Intelligent..funny,.Wild nd crazy..A perfect blend of an innocent lookin face and ‘not so innocent’ sparkling eyes.. A lill bit of sensitivity hidden behind a massive ego.. At times smart..Mostly shy.. All in all 10 on 10 to a sweet ‘gud 4 nuthin’ frnd.
”

Thank you my dear friend... :_)) you made my day, week, month....

Shortcuts

They say there are no shortcuts in the long journey called life. However, using keyboard shortcuts is an easy way to gain a techy image at the workplace. I guess ALT-TAB is the mother of all keyboard shortcuts and the once used most often. Your primary aid to move away from that Anna Kournikova site to the development environment when you see ur manager approaching. Then comes the big brother of ALT-TAB that is ALT-SHIFT-TAB, to move in reverse order. I guess this one is handier; less frequently used and is less popular. An analogy between these two and the famous siblings Mycroft Holmes and his younger brother S. Holmes won't be completely out of place. Use WIN-TAB to move through the taskbar items.

WIN-D or WIN-M is inevitable when you have a 43 windows open and still want to open that pic you saved on your desktop. Incase you want to un-minimize all the windows you just minimized, WIN-SHIFT-M is what you should try. ALT-F4 or CTRL-F4 to close the application or the document is also widely used. How many of you use ALT-SPACEBAR-X to maximize the current window? Or ALT-SPACEBAR-N to minimize the same... In fact, ALT-SPACEBAR-C is a faster and more economical (in terms of hand/finger movements) way to close an application. Even CTRL-W closes a document.

Invoking the menu items comes next. Like ALT-F for File menu, ALT-T for Tools menu and so on... Its easy to migrate from menu to submenu. ALT-F-S saves your document and ALT-F-A opens the 'Save As' dialogue box. You can even remember key code sequences... say ALT-D-F-F will put an auto filter in an excel sheet. And if you want to insert a page break in your word doc, just finger in ALT-I-B and an enter.

SHIFT-F10 is as good as right clicking and ALT-ENTER opens up the properties dialogue of a selected item. CTRL-TAB does the document shift in tabbed applications like FireFox. CTRL-PAGE DOWN and CTRL-PAGE UP travels through the sheets in an excel file.

F1 is universal for help. I heard these days, even those people drowning at Miami Beach call out F1 to get bay watcherss' attention. F2 renames and F3 finds again, whats already searched using a CTRL-F. Even WIN-F opens the file/folder find dialogue.

Fiddling around within a document too has many key codes. CTRL-S saves docs in most applications. CTRL-RIGHT ARROW and CTRL-LEFT ARROW jumps words. CTRL-HOME takes you to the top of the document and CTRL-END to the bottom. CTRL-B and CTRL-I to make selected text bold and italics respectively. As you know, CTRL-F is for find and CTRL-G opens up a page find or a line find dialogue box.

Ok... now comes some key cuts which are not so short but are faster considering the time you spend in figuring out where the mouse is, then swirling it violently twice to figure out where the cursor is and so on. Hit WIN-R and you get the Run prompt. Now if you key in 'winword' and hit enter, MS Word opens. 'iexplore' will open up IE and if you want the windows explorer, use 'explorer'. But then, its easier to use WIN-E to open windows explorer. From the run prompt, there are other codes like 'notepad', 'mspaint', 'devenv'... And if you ever want to open services under Administrative Tools, keying in 'services.msc' in Run prompt and hitting an enter is all that you need to do.

Now a long cut. CTRL-ESC opens start menu. (why not WIN key?).

Time for me to hit WIN-L to logoff...

(This was just the tip of the iceberg... pls do chip in with your fav shortcuts...)

F2

An address change...
http://e-comp.blogspot.com/

Life

Often, if you can go out with a broad smile and a warm handshake, the world will greet you back with the same. Generally, people everywhere are good natured and what you get back depends on what you offer. Sometimes, all it takes is a couple of days to kick start a long lasting friendship. People tend to make a much stronger bond with the ones who share their toil during a tough period.