2011 in my view!

Hi Guys,

I was thinking of writing a post about New Year celebrations for the past one week. Just then, I visited the archives of my blog to see what I have written during the past two years. During 2009, I had been writing a series on Holiday Activities and I wished my readers at the end of a series. Last year, I was in Chennai and I was busy as I underwent In-plant training and so I didn’t write any post for nearly 20 days.

So, what comes into my mind as I think of 2011?

Personal Life

First thing is my carrier. All these times, I had never felt myself as a matured guy and I had a sort of childish attitude (which I enjoyed very much). The final year of my Engineering began and all of a sudden I felt some pressure. I had responsibilities and I had to work for it (the same was the case for most of my classmates). July and August went past very quick and we worked the way we had never worked before. For some the next few months were sweeter and for most it was bitter. (read my interview experience here). Hope, they will get better opportunities for the wait. Personally, I am expecting 2012 to bring in more good news.

Blogging Life

As far as my blog is concerned, I have written 79 posts (including this one) this year. It is 20 more than last year (last year it was 59). Sometime in the middle of the year, I changed the URL of the blog and it lead to little confusion for some time. Towards the end of the year, I rebuilt my photo blog and introduced it again. It has received a very warm response and I am very happy about it. After a long time, I have added 14 photos this year and I am planning to do more with the photo blog. But, I was not able to expand the number of blogs I read drastically, though I read a few more blogs now. I am thinking of expanding my subscriptions this year. Many of my friends started to blog, but none were successful in continuing. Everyone stopped after writing one or two posts. Blogging requires passion.

Cricketing World

The next thing that comes into my mind is Cricket. It could be divided into four phases. In the first phase, Indians were facing huge expectations. Everyone wanted India to win World cup in front of the home crowd and the players exhibited brilliant team work and the dream became true. The second phase was the dullest IPL ever. Players didn’t have time to rejoice and they came back for IPL. People were exhausted and not many cared about it. The third phase was a very bad period for India. They went to England and came back without a single win. Probably India’s poorest performance in the recent times. The fourth phase was West Indies touring India and this series created waves just because of expectations on Sachin’s hundredth ton and it never happened. Now Indians have already lost the first match against Australia. Let’s see how Indians play in 2012.

Indian Politics

This year state elections were held for 5 states and there was of change of power in many states. In particular, in west Bengal a three decade rule came to an end and in Tamil Nadu, people closed the doors for a very corruptive government. Later, Anna Hazare stormed Delhi with his fast and pressured the government to introduce Lokpal (read my post on Support Anna Hazare here). The most important thing was that youngsters were very eager to participate in this movement. Now, there are lot of confusions and controversies over this movement and government’s attitude. Let’s hope 2012 will bring in solutions. There were lot of people’s movements and politicians creating controversies for their benefits.

That’s what I remember right now.

Wishing my readers a very Happy and prosperous New Year, I sign off this year’s blogging activities.

Happy New Year 2012!!!

Karthi

Working Conditions in Industries!

Hi Guys,

Life is just mysterious. It is difficult to find out reasons for some questions. I and few of my friends are going to various industries at various places. We have been wondering a lot of things in our mind.

One of my project mates underwent In-plant training in one of the well known public sector industry last year and now we are doing our project in a leading private sector industry that has won lot of awards for quality and is well known for concepts such as employee involvement and empowerment.

First thing my friend said was workers were very liberal there. They had association and unions and they used to stop the work even for the tiniest of problems. If 8 hours was the shift time, they used to come to work late and then sit and play with cards or sleep and enjoy the time. The work carried out is less. Here, relaxation is only when there is some gap between change of work or after feeding a job in the machine. If the shift time is 8 hours, they stand for 7 hours, excluding the lunch time. We guys were not even able to stand for 3-4 hours and we find a place to sit (there will be no place to sit inside the modules).

When we were observing a process for our project, we found out a friendly operator and we were speaking with him. He has finished his ITI and he said that he was working there for 2 years and he is not yet a permanent employee (he said that even some workers with 20 years experience are not yet made permanent). We were asking about the work times and he said it is shift based and they have just four days leave per month (only Sundays or they come to industry on Sunday and take comp off on some other day).  He said he receives something around 4.8k per month. We were asking about the chances of him joining another industry and he said the condition is same everywhere. The point to be observed here is that the industry racks up hundreds of crores of profit.

Another friend of mine is doing his project in an industry at Chennai and he says the working conditions there are much worse. They have recruited labors from Bihar and the surrounding states. This is because they don’t know the language, so they work without talking. They work like anything for 10-12 hours for just 3k per month. He says that at least our people used to complain about the works, but those people work like robots. They finish a job, their hand automatically moves to the next part.

He says that there is not even a place to sit in the industry. Their main objective seems to be production. The worst part is that there is no water nearby to drink. Those labors work without drinking water. This industry too sells the product at double the manufacturing cost and all goes into the owner’s pocket. My friend was saying that he was going to suggest the manager to adopt better working conditions on the final day of his project.

The first day I went there, I was struggling to walk back to home. Now, my legs are adopted, though the pain is still there. If you are someone who complains for minor problems and hate to go to college or office on Saturday, know that there are people receiving lower salary and having worse working conditions.

Happy Reading!!!

The Whole Truth - Book Review

Hi Guys,

I am going to write about the novel ‘The Whole Truth’ written by David Baldacci. I seldom read books written by less known authors and I took this book from library to just go through in my leisure time. I started reading the book and after reading the first few pages, I decided to read the full book.

David Baldacci has penned the thriller so interestingly. Though the story is revealed in the beginning itself the curiosity of finding out how things are done adds interest in the mind of a reader.

The novel is based on a concept called Perception Management. Perception Management is the art of creating a truth or story out of nothing and making people believe that it is true (you can find these types of things being used frequently with the help of Social networking sites). Perception management firms are organizations that specialize in creating truths in a large scale.

The protagonist of the novel is Shaw who performs the dangerous jobs of finding out crimes and preventing them. He is permanently slaved to Frank, because he shot Frank when he tried to arrest him years back. Shaw loves a girl called Anna Fischer. Anna is a genius and works for an organization called The Phoenix group in London. The Phoenix group works for betterment of people and its leadership is unknown. Its base is believed to be Arizona.

Meanwhile, Katie James, a two time Pulitzer winning journalist is doing a poor job of collecting news for obituary as her second Pulitzer affected her mind. She is trying to find a way back and in a particular instance, she is saved by Shaw.

David Creel is an arms dealer and is one of the richest persons in the world. As the business is quite dull, he plans to create a Cold war. So, he approaches a perception management firm and together they create a movement called Red Menace, a movement that is against the Russian Government, because they are torturing people. But Russian Government denies it and is trying to find out who created the fuss.

Meanwhile, Anna Fischer doubts the involvement of Russian Government and replies to a blog that doubts the same. The blog is a trap. When the place is traced, they search who runs the Phoenix group. It is not run by an American as said. A mob enters the building and demolishes the building and makes an appearance that the Russians did it.

Shaw is affected and wants to take revenge. Katie wants to revive her carrier and Creel wants to resurrect his business. So, who wins the race forms the remaining part of the story.

A very gripping novel, that is not to be missed if you are a fan of thriller stories.

Happy Reading!!!

Through My Camera Lens V2.0

Hi Guys,

My photo blog was dormant for a long time. Today I sat around for 2 hours and worked with my photoblog to create a new look. I hope you like the style.

I will be updating the blog as frequently as possible.

My photo blog's URL is http://karthicksdays.wordpress.com

I have added it as a page too.

Happy Viewing!!!

Current Education Standard in Government Schools!

Hi Guys,

A few days ago, I was travelling in a bus on a 3 hour journey. I was one of the last passengers to board the bus and hence had to sit in one of the few available seats. I was sitting nearby two friends and later found out that they were teachers in government school. It seems they work in different schools and became friends during a training session. They were discussing about the happenings in their respective schools. Mostly the first person spoke and second person listened.

First they were discussing about the quality of education. It seems they are really interested in teaching and their colleagues were not interested. He said that the school conducted no meetings for setting the class timetable, deciding ways to improve education. Meetings were conducted only to find out how to spend their leisure time and how to enjoy the work. They never cared about the children. The only time when the children were taken care of was when the teachers had quarrel among themselves. After a week or so, when the quarrel settles, the children were left uncared again.

They were appreciating the newly setup syllabus. Till now, I have only heard the views of the private players on the equitable education system, which they say is very poor when compared to the old standards. But, these teachers were saying that it was really good and particularly the colors and pictures created interest among the students. They were also saying, the teachers were able to learn a lot from those books (OMG – so what’s the standard of teachers?). They were complaining the stand of the new government of the education system and said Education Department should be self run like election commission (?)

One of the friends was saying that he had no guidance during his young age and hence chose a wrong field and so he is guiding his students properly. He also said that he along with a few of his bright students form a group and goes to their respective villages and creates awareness on education. A really good teacher, I thought.

After this their discussion turned into various topics on writing exams for promotion, attendance, internal conflicts. I just plugged my mobile’s headphone into my ear and became isolated for the remaining 150 minutes of the journey.

So, what do you feel right now?

Happy Reading!!!

Dropbox - the story of the digital storage service

Hi Guys,

It has been a long time since I wrote a post in my blog. I have been thinking of writing this post about Dropbox for a long time and I never got the time to do it. I read the article about Dropbox in the November issue of Forbes Asia magazine and it was an interesting article.

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox is a digital storage service that has 50 million users around the world. Dropbox was developed by Drew Houston. These days, the concept of Cloud Computing is so common. You keep your resources in the web and use the resources at any place with the help of Web. Dropbox provides the cloud storage for you. Dropbox provides you a free 2 GB storage when you sign up. You can upgrade the storage to 50 or 100 GB by paying monthly or yearly rental.

How did Drew Houston get the idea?

Drew Houston was a code geek right from his young age. At 14, he signed up for a beta version of online game and began rooting out security flaws. So, the company hired him. He has worked in 5 projects before starting Dropbox. His mother wanted him to be normal and tried everything to make him normal. But he spent most of his time coding at the MIT. By September 2006, he completed his MBA from Phi Delta Theta at the MIT.

His idea of Dropbox was formed 3 months later when he was travelling from Boston to New York. He planned to work during the four hour ride, but forgot his USB memory drive and had no code. He immediately started to build technology for syncing files on web. Four months later, he landed in San Francisco and got $15000 from Paul Graham of incubator Y Combinator. He spent 20 hours a day reverse engineering all the computers and understanding the concepts.

They presented Dropbox at Y Combinator event and it attracted investors. By 2008, it had 9 employees and 200,000 customers.

How did they attract Customers?

They used the right advertising strategy. They used Google Adwords. It sucked them $300 for one signup. It was not working. So, they turned their small customer base into sales people. They give 250MB of free storage for each referral. One quarter of customers still come to Dropbox in this fashion.

How I started using Dropbox?

I saw an article about Dropbox somewhere and started an account some 5-6 months ago. Recently when I was having lot of important stuffs, related to my higher studies I needed a backup device. My DVD drive was not working properly. Even if it works properly, I can’t keep on replacing files. USB drive was a good option, but then I was afraid of viruses. Just then, I remembered Dropbox and it is just amazing. I work with all the word documents and excel sheets inside Dropbox. It gets updated in web as soon as I save the file.  Now I have no fear of losing the files. 2 GB space is more than enough for me.

Interesting facts from the article

In the article, I read a few interesting facts about Dropbox.

• Steve Jobs wanted to buy Dropbox, but Houston was determined not to sell the company.
• Its revenue in 2011 was $240 mn, despite the fact that 96% of its users pay nothing (they use the free 2 GB storage)
• Dropbox has only 70 employees.
• Everyday 325 million files are saved to Dropbox.
• Dropbox’s main competitors are Apple (iCloud), Google, Microsoft, YouSendIt, IDrive and conventional email.

Happy Reading!!!


External Links
Dropbox: Inside story of Tech's Hottest Startup - Article on Forbes
Join Dropbox now - Click here