The Inside View

Sun Customer Engineering Conference was in Las Vegas this year. The sin city was swarmed by 4000 Sun engineers and partners. Its said that "everything that happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas". Not this time though. I will cherish the memories of CEC 2007 for long time to come. Especially because it was my first CEC. Every experience, hearing great minds live, breakout sessions, atmosphere and meeting new people, was great. I was also co-speaker for one of the sessions in the conference with my colleague from Germany, Olaf Schnapauff. We spoke about how India has become a Red Shifting nation and compared the Indian telecom with that of more established markets like Europe. It was a good seesion but we could have done better in terms of adding more technological factors for the two markets. My friend Ashish, who lives in Indianpolis, joined me at Vegas after the conference. Me, Ashish and my colleague Malhar, drove to Grand Canyon. We first went to the Western rim of the Can...

My younger daughter is now 13 Months old. She started walking when she was 11 months old. It has taken me 2 months to post this video here. Why this long? I don't have any excuses...

Well, I'm finally back after my London trip and it took some days to settle in. I was back on 18th July and next day morning I had to travel to Aamby Valley City for annual kick off of my company. My family joined me there a day later. It was quite an eventful trip and very hectic. We reached London on 28th June and my friend was at the airport to pick us up. We reached his home and within 4 hours time we were at the Golf course. In fact he had setup the game two other friend of ours. Although I was tired I played reasonably well. I finished with 5 over for 10 holes with couple of birdies. Next day onwards I started tour of London with my wife and daughters. It was very tiring as you have to walk a lot in London and I had to carry the little one for most of the time. The reason for that was she refused to sit in the stroller as she is not habituated. In India we don't use the stroller much because the roads and footpaths are not designed for that! It took us 5 days to finish th...

Remember I had mentioned that I have been selected as one of the top 8 golfer, for the tournament calendar year of July 06 to June 07, to play the round robin tournament. It happens like that each tournament carries points and you earn these point based on your performance in the tournament. I played only four tournaments for the calendar but did well enough in all four to earn enough points to finish 3rd on the points systems. Then Top 8 golfers play round robin against each other in matchplay format. So every one of them play 7 matches. I won 6 and lost 1, so had 6 points and I'm the winner. It was very tight till the last match which happened today. There are 3 golfers tied at 5 points for the second place. They will play sudden death playoff to decide the runner up. I will get my trophy in the year end ceremony on 2th June. This time it will be a winners trophy and much bigger than the last one. I will post the photograph after the ceremony.

I have a savings account in one of the largest private bank of India. They were the first bank to pioneer online banking in India. To enhance the online security they have introduced a new kind of Debit Card which was sent free of cost to all their customers. Since my communication address with the bank is my residence address the card got returned two times as they would not handover it to anybody else. I was asked to go to the branch and collect the same. I went to the branch, collected the service token and waited for my turn. The customer service representative asked my account number. I had the debit card with me but account number was not on that and I did not remember the account number. I asked the guy to find out my account number from the information on the debit card. This guy said it is not possible to find out the account number!! I did not know how to react to this. I told him I don't believe it that I'm standing in the branch where my account is, I have the debit...

First time I broke 80 on a golf course by shooting 75. One of the most memorable day of my life. Now I have confidence that I can achieve the target of becoming a single digit handicap golfer by July this year. Click on the image above to have a look at the score card!

My wife has threatened me that she will use an astrological mantra to control me. The mantra is - "Om namo maharyakshaya Mam Pati me Vashya kuru kuru Swaha " Obviously, this is in Sanskrit and it translates to - Oh the greatest saviour of all, please give control of my husband to me. But the good news is, its not easy and she will have to recite it at least 100,000 (Yes Hundred thousand times) to have the effect. I have no idea why she feels that I have gone out of her control. I think I'm totally in her control!! I hope she was joking. I can't miss my golf on weekends!!

Just now got a call from my club (Bangalore Golf Club) that I have been selected to play the Round-Robin tournament. This is by virtue of playing well in the last tournament, where I played 2 over my handicap (13) in two rounds of strokeplay. This is an extremely good news. In this tournament I will be brushing my shoulders with top players of Bangalore Golf Club. I Better get some practice before the tournament!

As I mentioned earlier, I hope to play one more round with my friend from Singapore before he heads back. We did manage to play a round at Bombay Presidency Golf Club on the day he was leaving. I shot 86, which is 16 over par 70 for the course. Its was OK round considering I was playing only for the second time on this course. There were two positives I could take from the round. First I shot 3 birdies, which I have never done before and second I was driving really really well. I had two triple bogeys and two double bogeys also. That means I have to improve on my approach shots and short game if I have to get to the handicap single digit. I must mention that we were joined by a young (Only 18 Years old) professional golfer of Indian Golf tour, Raghav Wahi , for our round. It was a pleasure playing with him and watching him. He was practicing for the upcoming professional tournament " Crompton Greaves Open". All the best Raghav for the tournament! My friend played very ba...

This is a never ending debate going on between my six year old daughter and me. Who is more powerful Krrish or Amitabh Bachhan! For those who don't know these guys. Krrish is an Indian super hero enacted by actor Hrithik Roshan in the move of the same name. In this movie his father was given supernatural power by an alien called Jaadoo, which has passed on to Krrish. She has seen this movie at least 50 times, yes at least 50 times and remembers it frame by frame. Amitabh Bachhan is the superstar of Hindi cinema of my generation and still is one of the biggest stars of Hindi films. The debate started around couple of weeks back when me and my daughter were returning from Bangalore Golf Club after her practice and my round. She told me Krrish is the most powerful person in the world. Just to be a little nag, I said I think Amitabh Bachhan is more powerful than Krrish. God..Hell broke loose after that and she started..... Can Amitabh Bachhan save someone hanging from the tree? I said ...

I think yesterday I have finally found out what, of many, is the biggest problem in my swing. Its the balance. I struggle to maintain balance in my front swing and have a tendency to fall in front. Its results into the slice and shank that I hit sometimes with my short irons. I desperately need to fix that as soon as possible. Me and two friends of mine started playing Golf around the same time in the Fall of 2003. We played many many rounds together until career and other priorities did us apart. One is based in Singapore and the other is based in London now. It is beyond explanation how much I miss playing with them. We keep sharing news about our game, good & bad score regularly. The good news is that the buddy in Singapore will be travelling to India next week and we will play a round together, probably 2 rounds together. This is the best news that I have got since long. Since our game really becomes competitive, I should better visit Driving Range couple times before he com...