Category: the daily column

I’m home, at last.

Boy, does it feel good. I think I’ll just lay out on this bed right here and sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

See ya in the AM.

It’s been an exciting week here in London – the weather has turned ugly! Rain, wind, generic miserable London weather prevades, and pretty much all the other (i.e. non-IT) graduates are gone.

*sigh* I wanna go home… how nice is it there? The beeaaaaaaach! The beach awaits!

Something exciting really did happen last week, though, when my manager was on his annual trip to London. Y’see, one of the grads from NY supports the application I work on back in Sydney. What makes this at all exciting beyond the shared frustrations of two grads is that my company has a policy of mobility and rotations, with the prospect of international movement as well… very interesting.

Speaking to my manager about this idea, I have approval to, upon my return, persue the prospect of doing a rotation – roughly 6 months – in New York next year. The basic business idea behind this is that I bring more detailed knowledge about the app as I go to NY, and when I return I have an exposure of the support side and everything that entails.

I still have to build a business case and get approval from various managers all around the world, but they do seem open to the prospect. There’s no doubt I certainly am excited by the prospect of 6 months in NY (so long as that includes summer)… so, I have something further to look forward to next year, possibly. I talk this down because if it doesn’t come through, it’ll be a massive non-event. Then again, if it does………

eheheheh. I like multinational companies.

(title to be sung to the tune of “Rolling Rolling Rolling”)

The IT training has started in earnest, and it’s… just like being back at uni. Apart from of course the whole business clothes and rareified atmosphere of genuine concentration that many of the other people have. I obviously have much too much time on my hands, which is why I’m here, after all. We’re covering the basics of Unix, and I’m genuinely bored out of my mind. How do these people claim to be graduates of IT programs with zero exposure to operating systems beyond Windows? How do these people hope to work?!

Of course, being a gigantic organisation, we can take these people on our books because they’re hired as “Business Analysts”, where they take the requirements from the users and turn them into a design for an outsourced (or ‘smartsourced’, as my team is) programming team. However, for the project that we will be doing in the next month or so, I need to have more coders around me because fundamentally IT in the app-dev world comes down to some actual development. These people take a dim view of working at the code face, and from my perspective, that’s not the right perspective to have; you simply don’t understand the scale of the job if you’ve never done it hands-on.

Outside of the daily-grind training, I’m having about the most fun I’ve had in my life. I’ve got money to spend, I’m in a faraway location, and I have little responsibilities after 5 pm. No dinner to cook, no bathroom to clean, no anything really to take care of – should I choose to go home, I’d just be sitting in front of the TV spacing out… So what’s a guy to do? Well, to put it gently, my liver’s taken a hammering over the last week or so. But hey! That’s the European atmosphere for ya (“Water with dinner? Surely you mean beir, ja?” Ah, I love Germans when they’re drunk).

For anyone that missed it, my trip to Amsterdam was alright… if anything, overrated by everyone who’s told me to go there. I suppose I would enjoy it more had I gone with close friends, but from my experience of travel, if you can’t enjoy it alone then enjoying it with friends could just as easily have been acheived elsewhere. Much more to see and do yet, though, so hopefully I’ll get a better experience out of my later travels.

This is supposed to be “the big one”… but stuffed if I know why. 15, 18, 20, they felt big. This one…?

Well, I’m in London. I’m on an expenses-paid trip. It’s 5 o’clock. I have some great friends who want to take me out. It’s about as big as it will ever get, I’d suspect, and there’s more promised when I return.

It’s supposed to be big, but it doesn’t seem to be.

No regrets though! Smile & Enjoy!

(i could make my souvineers bill much cheaper by just bringing stuff for those who actually remembered, were I to be vindictive like that :P)

I’m well overdue for posting something here, but things have been, somewhat inevitably, hectic around here. I’m never able to be a comfortable packer – I always think I’m forgetting things that I take for granted, and as a reaction I end up packing more than I really need to. I’ve travelled enough times that it shouldn’t be such an issue, but I’m yet to get to the state of just knowing what I need to throw in my bag.

A couple of friends have been lucky enough to get grad positions, and to hear the uncertainty disappear from their voices is both amusing and pleasing. Even if right after that I drive in various stabbing implements by listing all those things that work brings along with it – like this morning, I was talking on the train to a friend who’s moving to Melbourne for work. I went back over my experience, and he looked fairly terrified at the prospect by the time we rolled into to Central. I sent him off with a hopefully-reassuring “… but you’ll do fine!”, but I might not put it past him to call them up and cancel =)

Still, seeing this process as someone who’s been through it reminds me of all the highs and lows of it. It’s a valuable experience to go through, regardless of whether you end up getting a job or not. I occasionally still have to pinch myself and remember this isn’t some temporary work placement, and that I won’t be returning to uni next week. The trip to London at the end of the week is sure to hammer it home – I’m very lucky with where I’ll be, I think (down the street from the Queen! ;D)

All in all, it’s a rush week in which too many things are happening in not enough time… ah, c’est la vie~

Ok so the hall is booked and all – the official, final date is November 17th (Friday). I’d have preferred to have had it on the Saturday, but it seems if you want that you have to think of these things 6 months ahead, nearly. Who thinks that far ahead?

That or the Hall business is a lucrative one.

I’m expecting most people I invite to turn up because it is a Friday night and because it’s after exams (more or less) and … well coz it’s also sort of a farewellish type thing. My family’s moving up here next year, and that will mean my trips to Melbourne will be cut down (but I guarantee 2 trips a year at least… I do miss you guys!).

What I need from you now though is addresses, for the official invites (& for postcards/letters from London). If I’ve been over to your house, or have sent you something in the past, chances are I’ve already got your address, but if not, please email me (karanj at gmail dawt com). I may contact you directly, too, if you can provide address for others =)

p.s. that should make the choice easy for ya, Zhi :P

India. the world’s largest democracy, turns 59 today! =) Also, Happy Birthday to my dad who’s 10 years younger.

I’d go into all sorts of social commentary about India, but I’d probably bore the pants off everyone. Suffice to say, India seems to have, in the last 5 years, really turned a corner on things and is running along quite stably. I hope that within the next 5 real change can be seen on the ground, but I suspect it will take longer than that for the benefits to filter down.

Tomorrow is officially Janamashtami, or Krishna’s Birthday, and as I was born on Janamashtami 21 years ago, it’s sort-of my 21st (by the Indian calendar). Gotta find some way to celebrate! :D

I’m torn, and you have until Thursday to help me decide which camera to buy. The options are entirely equivalent, except for the following:

Sony Cybershot W50	Canon IXUS 60
Cheaper (by $50) Sexier (in black) Better day shots Better battery life (390 shots vs. 160 shots)	Cheaper memory (SD) Better night shots Fancier functions (Colour Highlight, Colour Swap, Stitch Assist)
Sample Images	Sample Images
Specs & Image of Camera	Specs & Image of Camera
Side-by-side Specs

Choices, choices. I’m leaning towards the Sony because of the battery life and better day shots, as for really good night shots you’d need a tripod anyway. Buying the Canon would definitely mean buying a spare battery ($70), because 150 shots or so go fast with digital sightseeting.

Which would you pick?

I’ve slowly started to get up & around this city as time goes by, and I’ve found the complexion of the place is different in many unsubtle ways depending on whether you’re a school kid, a tourist or a “suit”. I’m sure there’s other categories, but that’s the ones I’ve been, so that’s how I look at it :)

As a kid, you got off at Town Hall because that’s where all the Fun Stuff was. The arcades, the movies, the southern, less serious end of the city, bordering on Chinatown and Darling Harbour. You knew vaguely there was a whole lot more to the city further north, but even Martin Place seemed a long way away. Life is simple – you find the places where you can have fun, and you stick to them with your friends.

As a tourist, you had two options – the north end, where the world-famous harbour is, or the south end, where Darling Harbour and the other touristy stuff abounds. The easiest way around would be to get off at Circular Quay, explore the “north end” with the Rocks and the Opera House, and then catch a ferry to Darling Harbour, seeing a bit of the harbour along the way and generally avoiding the bits of the city devoted to standard-issue office buildings found anywhere else in the world.

But… as a “suit”, someone who comes into the city daily, you look at things in a different light. Slowly, those “gorgeous cobblestone steps” out the front of your building aren’t so pretty, because on a rainy day, they’re as slick as a skating rink and you’d better watch your step before you break a rib or two. THe “business” part of the city is between the touristy spots to the north and the ‘fun’ spots to the south, though my work is virtually next to Circular Quay. During the day, it’s a hive of activity, but at night, it’s eerily quiet and deserted, the shops and streets that were filled with people disappearing at night. This duality would happen in any city around the world, but I suppose this is the first chance I’ve had to observe it up close, and the clear zoning of Sydney makes it all the more obvious.

I’ve totally forgotten the point of this, but it’d be a waste not to get these thoughts out. I’m still very much exploring the city, comparing & contrasting with the other cities I’ve been to. By the standards of Delhi or Tokyo, Sydney’s a very compact and centralised city. By the standards of New York, it’s just tiny. In many ways, I’ve explored throughly only 10%, the area around my work, and I’ve got a lot to go. So I set this challenge to myself, and any takers: discover a new part of your city every week. Get to know the place, like a local should.

Walking back from the station, pitch dark (except for the part where it’s a clear night and it’s a full moon). I’m walking though the darkest part, where there are no street lights and there’s a forest to my left, and the wind blows that much harder. I pull my scarf tighter around my neck…

Then, I think, “If I was going to mug me, I’d use the scarf to choke me until I passed out. It’s right there already, and it’d be so easy to grab…” I look around, suddenly concerned, and readjust the scarf to avoid choking hazard. Yes, that’d be the mugger lying in wait on a cold winter’s night for semi-trendy pretentious businessy types walking past in the middle of true suburbia thwarted.

My mind is a dangerous thing, occasionally.

p.s. don’t forget to fill out the census!