Care, Share and Grow! : Personal

Been away for a while…

Saurabh Singh — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 15:10:34 GMT

I was away for a while now in the wilderness of the Himalayas.
I was out covering Leh, Ladakh and Kashmir by road (alas, not biking which I badly missed).
Ladakh is one of those places one should not miss and that too its journey via road. It has its own esoteric beauty
comprising of barren landscapes, rocky mountains stripped of vegetations, deserts and rivers. A must for adventure
trip enthusiasts.

Here are some snaps from the places I was at during this trip.

I wasn't able to respond to comments from people on various posts during this time. I will ensure all of them are
taken care of at the earliest.

Cheers to life!

New Year Resolution

Saurabh Singh — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 18:01:00 GMT

I am writing this post on the 1st of January 2008. It's a brand new day and hopefully a brand new beginning with lots of hope, expectations and ambitions being carried over my lean shoulders. I have been seeing the same day and night everyday of my life, but when it is the first day of a new year I tend to see it differently, or better said; force myself to see it differently of course with a tinge of optimism in it. With the onset of this new year I complete one year of my blogging experience and to be honest I loved it all the way. I am glad I could help some people no matter how less the number was and make change in the world how miniscule it may be...but I am happy and that's what matters.

Every year-end I spare a few hours for introspection, I sit down all alone in a secluded place and look back at the entire year...on various aspects of how my life was touched upon in both good and bad ways....but at the end of the day I end up with no grudges because I always feel whatever happens it happens for a reason and the reason is always rewarding and enriching....every experience teaches one some lesson and makes one prepared for "what come may". It's funny how people find ways to keep themselves going forward but that's a hidden agenda of how nature keeps the momentum going.....one has to move on and prepare oneself for what is coming ahead than holding oneself back with what has already gone by.

I have lot of expectations from this year for some very personal reasons. Let's see how far I can reach in achieving them. There are no new year resolutions for me; in fact I never make one because my free-will always tend to break it and go against my determination just to make a mockery of how undetermined I am. And I say this with my bitter experiences in the past ;-)

Wish you a happy and prosperous new year 2008 ahead.

Cheers!!!

My turn will get over too...

Saurabh Singh — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 02:35:00 GMT

[Non Technical]

Recently I got an extra responsibility to be an On-call engineer for IIS/ASP.Net support for one week apart from my daily work schedule. And I never realized what toll it can take on me until I took over it.

Basically an On-Call engineer has to be available during the Night hours for the entire week. S/he is just a backup, reserved in case a Critical issue comes in and no one is around to take it. So its like passively working 24x7 for a complete week. Remember it's an extra add-on after one's office hours.

We have very limited number of Engineers in support during US night shift hours and weekends, assuming that call/case volume will be very low during this period. And when an incident case is opened during this time and no one is available to take it (assuming all the limited workforce is already occupied with work on other cases) the call goes on to the so-called privileged On-Call engineer. And depending upon the severity of the case s/he may have to work on it either from home or come to office and then take over the mantle. Look how that poor person has to manage if s/he already had a tough day in office. In my case I had no choice but to come to office.

And I was told that we don't get much calls for an On-call, and believing in the sanctity of the advice I was quite happy. But looks like everyday in my so called night hours (I work in US time zone although based in India) I get a ring for a critical (high severity and visible) case and the person on other line starts gabbling all the technical stuffs he damn cares to know about. And I am, brutally woken up from my deep slumber trying to recover at the earliest to make sense of what other person is speaking....It kind of, makes it amusing to me how fast I need to recover my senses (wherein few seconds back I was dreaming running around the trees in a state of bliss), to understand the technicalities of the phone conversation and get on with a bunch of people on the other line talking about how their server crashed like hell and how they saw their application getting into a hung state, or leaking memory etc. and what not. I understand their state (no one would like to work off hours in night or weekends out of choice after a hectic day unless a lot is on stake) and I try my best to empathize with their state and help them to the best of my abilities, meanwhile also knowing my own state at that point ;-)....well part of my job anyway.

In fact, these days I have started dreaming that my cell is ringing and when I wake up there is an utter silence, and I try to console myself that I will get a peaceful sleep today (I tell myself I won't get a call today for sure, let peace behold on me), which doesn't seem to be happening for the last few days.

I am happy that it won't last long, another few days to go :-) and then I can be a free bird enjoying my after-hours (beyond my shift) and then of course the weekends. You see there are a lot of plans one tend to make for weekends if their weekdays had a perilous impact on them. Just a kind of compensation I feel. One needs to find ways to freshen up. On a brighter note, I feel this stretch is really challenging and puts back hope in one's abilities (if you have lost one) to handle pressure and situation elsewhere too in other walks of life and shows how far one can stretch his/her own limits if required. I am an optimist at the end and knows ways to soothe myself.

Looking forward to an exciting weekend ahead....guess today is just the start of the week.

Cheers!

This is non-technical please!

Saurabh Singh — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:40:00 GMT

Recently I had a so called honor to receive my sister and brother-in-law at the airport.
Well it was a grueling moment for me when I came to know that their flight was delayed by an hour. My sis makes sure that she is late for any such occasion wherein i am at the receiving end...just kidding...I love my sis a lot and assume the same from her ;-)
I stood at the airport near the arrival section and watched people coming out and going in.
I thought why not let's make it a good productive session...so started noticing passengers more closely.
One thing that arose my curiosity was people....yes people. People of different ethnicity, different culture, different religion, different social habits and what not. I saw Indians (of course the airport I am referring to is in India), Caucasians, Filipinos, Africans, Arabs...I saw people who were Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and well there were some whose identity I could not really fathom. I feel I am good at gazing the demographic features of people by looking at them but well no one can be hundred percent correct and so am I. I saw some stewardesses barging in and out of the airport wearing awesome costumes as per their airline's directives. I was trying to guess the airlines they belonged to and voilà!, I was almost right most of the time.

To be honest I feel an Airport is like a class room for a person studying humans of different race, culture, ethinicty etc.
Airport is one of those places which makes one realize that this is a indeed a big world and we have so many things to learn from each other. You get to see so many people who never existed for you until then. Don't take me wrong...I am quite an interactive and social animal :-)
When I say learn, I mean understand the human behavior and the diversity that we have among us. It's truly an age of globalization. When you are stuck in your day to day work you don't get to meet a lot of outsiders...I mean people outside of your work domain and family. And to be honest I really enjoyed watching people...complete strangers...of course there were some nice babes in there....and I could have tried my luck...but then it was too short a time for me to try.

Next time if the plane is late I won't mind spending a couple of hours in the airport provided it's a weekend ahead. It's a good place to appreciate the richness of human diversity. After all how often do we try to get the best of things which we tend to ignore.

Signing off.

A quick walkthrough with myself...

Saurabh Singh — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:05:00 GMT

Hi there,

Well I am four blogs old now and am yet to introduce myself. Perhaps I had to muster enough strengths to let myself out here.

To start with, My name is Saurabh Singh. I am a Computer Engineer; completed my B.E. in 2002. I am currently working with Microsoft GTSC, India. My job involves helping our customers and partners (that includes Web Developers and Administrators) to resolve their painstakingly complex issues related to IIS, ASP and ASP.NET.

My interests range from diverse topics like Philosophy and Psychology to hardcore technical areas.

I read a lot, but not technical stuffs most of the time :-).

I am an avid fan of authors like Ayn Rand, Jeffrey Archer, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Ernest Hemingway. Movies which I would love to watch umpteen number of times include Forrest Gump, Pursuit of Happyness, Saving Private Ryan, Enemy at the gates, Gladiator and Notebook.

My off-job hours go mostly in outdoor activities like swimming, Gym, and of course reading under a tree in solitude.