[Apologies for posting this at a later date. Guess punctuality is one bad habit I haven’t picked up]

If you thought what happened in Christmas Eve was interesting, you have missed the most interesting bit. Midnight. Yes the moment Christ was born. Kate suggested that in the true spirit of the celebration, we might as well join a mid-night mass. I loved the idea. Kate’s mom joined us though they haven’t been doing so for a long time now. I haven’t visited many churches, the ones I have were mostly for marriages. But this was a very small and elegant church. By the time we arrived, the sonorous chimes filled the chilly air and people were quietly moving in. Thanks to the pamphlets and the hymnbook, I could sing along in karaoke pretty well (not particularly distinctively, but still). Kate, despite all the years, sang pretty well. The church singers also did a fine job. The sermon was not particularly interesting. At the stroke of midnight, chimes were sounded again. In the end, we walked towards the altar for blessings from the priest. Later, he did a quick job of finishing the 2 goblets of wine left ;)

I’m sure most of us in the house had very little sleep last night. Some of us were too excited wondering what was hidden inside those lovely colourful packing. There were so many of them stashed in so many places. Some had shapes that would easily give away. So they were not taken out. Some of the elderly amongst us were busy being Santa. Tiptoeing close to the Christmas tree he/she was swiftly filling all the stockings. In spite of all this, next to the tree was someone who was dead as a log. Yep, that’s me. Totally oblivious, as usual, once the lights go off (even if it’s back on ;)).

I quickly wake up early morning thinking… So early? A Christmas miracle?? After a healthy breakfast, we all gathered in the living room. Presents were to be sorted into piles based on the recipient. I opened my giftbox and I gasped. That’s because in my last minute shopping in Pune I had bought everything available to beat the cold, including caps, extra jacket, thermal wear etc. But they managed to get me what I missed. I was truly surprised to find a beautiful pair of hand gloves and a muffler. There were gifts of every conceivable type: sweets, clothes, durables etc. Everyone meticulous wrote down the names of the sender so that later they could send thank you letters. Check the pictures here

Christmas day is a day of feasting. I’m personally a great fan of snacking. Almost every 2 hours, my natural hunger cycle peaks. But Penny kept on bringing mince pies, chocolates and cakes at such regular intervals that I was virtually exhausted. As a nice diversion, we played a lot of traditional games like scrabble and pictionary. Shelly got a nice thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. We thought it would be a cool time pass. Trust me it was huge.

Cut to Christmas dinner. Of all the delicious treats in the table, obviously, turkey stole the show. Made in 2 different delicious stuffings, it takes hours to be cooked in an oven. Finally, we broke crackers (the harmless Christmas variety) and shared the trivia/jokes we found inside them. We got hooked on to tabletop air-hockey till we were tired of it. Looking back, I’m sure it would one of the best christmas I’ve ever had.

Q. What do I have in common with a Superhero? Ans. We get to do things only in the last minute. ;) As soon as I called up Kate’s dad, John, that I would be arriving at a certain time, the hands of my watch were on steroids. Counting out everything else, I had planned a quick packing in the last minute. Beep! Big Mistake. It was time for Murphy, not Santa to peek into my home at this Christmas Eve. I opened my apartment to find pitch darkness. Yes, we had forgotten to recharge our electricity. I knew I had to pack quickly as I was running out of time and luck. My bag nearly exploded with my (well, that’s what I thought) essential belongings.

I’m blazing into the Euston Station as my predetermined train mercilessly chugs away. Ah! I’m so relaxed. All I have to do now is to inform them that I’m late. I call up Kate’s Mom, Penny, to tell her that and also give a rough description of myself. She kindly accepted my apologies and said Kate might be as well do a bit more shopping meanwhile. As I sit in my first long distance train (in UK), I notice it looks slightly more homely than the underground (local) trains. I guess it must be due to the general Christmas attire and heavy bags overflowing with cakes and presents of my co-passengers. Fifty minutes later at Milton Keynes station, Kate and John were right at the entrance. John while driving through the countryside gave me an impressive historical background of the area. I remember wondering that he must be wonderfully well read. My doubts were soon to be confirmed.

Once home, I met Penny, Kate’s younger sister, Rebecca and her cousin Shelly. I also met Doe and Ben, their mom’s elderly relatives, whom they affectionately call Granny and Grandpa. Their immense warmth of reception put me at ease. Now with my adrenalin at normal levels, I proceeded to join the family in the Christmas preparations. I joined in the tradition of decorating holly leaves (the ones I remember seeing only in Christmas cards) all over the interiors. My height came in handy here (I knew it would, some day). It’s a bit bristly but beautiful especially with cherries.

As I look around I realize that I had underestimated John, finding shelves of books neatly stacked to their capacities in almost every room. Soon enough the other members of the household started coyly appearing and nearly taking away my breath. We are talking about the light brown tomcat, Oliver and his dark female counterpart, Buttons. These cats had a personality of their own. They would ignore a stranger like me and yet love to be cuddled by family members.

Its dinnertime and a wonderful fish-in-vegetable delicacy is wafting its aroma in the air. Like most cusines. English cusine is quite suitable for the cold weather and quite healthy too. Jane, Kate’s aunt, joined us soon after. Professionally a psychologist, she visits India frequently. After a fair bit of chitchat, I proceeded to sleep. Tomorrow definitely looks promising!

Friday, our project manager sent a congratulatory mail describing everyone in our project to very Important ™ people. I suggested the subject line, it was ‘We Made it Happen!’ It will be an ego-boosting exercise to describe what was written about others or myself and hence I shall resist the temptation. It led me to think a few things about projects done using offshoring. I shall return to the topic a bit later.

Srini, one of the key members in our project was leaving, so we thought we would plan a night out and see ‘Swades’. In short, it is one Hindi movie I would be proud of showing off to the rest of the world. Every scene shines through with an ‘Ashutosh Gowariker’’ touch that those who watch Lagaan would be able to relate to. Unlike being an idealistic story about an NRI’s nostalgia, it brought out several complex and interconnected issues connected with it. Yet it had a simple and down to earth message. Shah Rukh Khan has been, thankfully, considerably mellowed down for this role and the lead actress Gayatri Joshi delivers a tad stoic yet commendable performance. It doesn’t end there. Every single person in the cast gives you a thoroughly impressive performance.

One cannot help but compare Swades to the social awareness movies of the past. But there is a silent, subtle and yet moving characteristic of the movie that makes it contemporary. The harsh Indian landscape never looked more beautiful when captured by the wide angled lenses of Mahesh Aney. It sometimes reminded you of the Vande Mataram videos by Bharatbala productions commemorating 50 years of independence. The shallow depth of focus in the living room scenes was very dramatic but annoying as well. A R Rehman’s music complements the film very well and is an aural treat.

Certain scenes and dialogues are very quite engaging and memorable. While certain others tend to be more like a sermon. Well, in conclusion, the movie does make its point. Unfortunately, it doesn’t climax in the epic proportions as Lagaan does, but it is a different movie isn’t it?

I’ve shifted to a new apartment in Ilford. The owner, Manjeet, is an interesting guy. He is a lawyer with a Punjabi accent peppered with British intonations. Today I will give a long and hard look to the empty kitchen stove because we have to know each other rather well in the future. This is how I intend to start my tryst with cooking. I expect it to look burnt, tattered and spilt over in the future but now its all clean and shiny. Ilford has a tremendous influx of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. As a result rows and rows of shops selling Indian merchandise. This comes as a mixed blessing, the downside being a lot of cultural inbreeded, which I strongly despise.

Ok time to talk about Offshoring. Everywhere one comes across this is new four-letter word that has about 6 extra letters. Now that I’ve seen an entire project end-to-end, I feel it’s a good time to sit down and analyse. Offshoring is like a reality show based pop band having a lot of talented people but doing mediocre stuff and making a big hit out of it. Offshoring is like a radio DJ who has a peppy and colourful audio personality but might be a complete shocker in appearance. But seriously, offshoring a trade-off between actual work and constant communication. I feel at the end of the day, software development is not like manufacturing. You cannot clearly delineate roles or exactly estimate processes. Offshoring needs to come out of its manufacturing world past in to this intellectual domain. Time has come that we (as in, Indian software industry as a whole) consider improving the offshoring techniques and infrastructure rather than assuming that all is well and run after the next big thing. We cannot afford to loose what has come to become our USP.

Adapting to Western lifestyle is something I’m having to do consciously these days. From using the toilets to eating food the so-called unnatural way of doing such simple chores is surprising. On the one hand London is a multicultural city with almost everyone continuing to follow their customs and wear their ethnic attire. I’m sure it hardly stands out anymore to see an Sardarji or an Afro-American. But there is somewhat a default environment around you which you must remould to make your own. For eg: Indian food here is slightly expensive than fast food. Surprisingly though the premium is not quite high. In other instances it is a minor irritant, like the UK keyboard which seems to have mixed up the punctuations and other symbols horribly. Having been used to the US keyboard, this takes a lot of unlearning. The office vending machines are a treat (rather feast). From the basic tea/coffee in a variety of flavours, you get to have different juices and flavoured milk for free. Commercial vending machines are omnipresent and multipurpose. There seems to be one for newspapers, chocolates, chips, train tickets, parking tickets, condoms and what have you. Hardly surprising as the basic wages are quite high here. I’ve also noticed that the weather here is very erratic. It was the coldest weather (2-3 degrees) in several months when I landed here this Sunday. But the temperatures are steadily dipping and it sometimes drizzles. The cloud cover is present throughout and even noontime looks like a typical evening. Vapour clouds come out sometimes as you breathe. I need to wear four layers of clothing everyday. Talking about clothing, an average Englishman wears a choice of colours - ranging from black to white :). There are occasions while in the train when I would be the only person wearing a jacket with a faint hint of blue while everyone else is wearing black. It must a reflection of the weather I presume, but its quite opposite in India. For eg: people from Rajasthan desert wear colourful clothes and vice versa in vividly coloured Kerala. There are good discussions which happen in routine meetings in the office. Perhaps my timing was good (we are now in Knowledge Transfer stage), I get to learn a lot everyday. Its amazing that such a complicated software solution becomes clearer and clearer with each passing day. Now I appreciate it much better. Television channels over here seem to be fairly well regulated. Adult programmes appear only after ten and only in certain channels. Contrast this to the present Indian channels wherein potentially suggestive ads or movie scenes could be spotted in any channel. The news is very localized and from the UK point of view. Hence I have to depend on websites. Interestingly there is a free tabloid newspaper in the underground railways i.e. the Tube. It is reasonably good.

Most Amazing Discovery of the day is Arun is a district in UK! Sounds Interesting ;)

There seems to be quite a few Indian bloggers abroad on ecelectic collection of topics from Bhopal to Indiatimes or egocentric.

“I’m sprouting wings”, that’s how I described my onsite opportunity to UK to my friends in my mail yesterday. There were a hundred forms to fill, a million tiny things to buy (gloves?) and a gazillion things to remember before I could say “I’m done!”. When nearly (95%) of my 6 page checklist was crossed off that I wore my jacket and boarded my taxi.

The taxi driver was a spiritual seeker in disguise. When our discussion meandered into yoga, he knew even the Sanskrit terms for every chakra in the body (there are seven for those who don’t know). No amount of information provided by the ‘Travel Kit’ prepared me for the labyrinth called the Airport. Of course the old trick of “Uncle, uncle can you tell me…” works. But the simplicity of the answer dumbs you down at each attempt.

It’s actually simple. You reach the airport and wait for Check in. Check in is necessary for the non-cabin luggage (usu. 2 pieces) but starts 3 hours before departure (a term not very confusing till you meet its alter-ego ‘Arrival’!) Check in is the first time you would see your luggage being X-ray screened. Then a tag is bound around each piece. Then you move towards your airline’s boarding counter. A female wearing heavy makeup (ok a PYT) gives you a plastic card called boarding pass and a boarding pass by the Indian govt. at this point your luggage is weighted and your check-in luggage crawls out of your view into a cave curtained by leather strips.

Whew! No more luggages to trolley around. The next counter you’ll see is the immigration. Produce your Work Permit, Boarding Pass & Passport. Now begins your long wait for the security check because it’s done only half an hour from departure. Don’t fret, what I did was use up all my remaining coins (you don’t need them anymore) in the Local call and STD booths. Securities check does a body scan and cabin luggage scan. I realized quite late that you cannot carry scissors or knifes in your cabin luggage. Sadly, I surrendered two shaving scissors at this stage. Finally you get to board the aircraft.

My co-passenger was another guy from Infy called Sameer. The Swiss airhostesses are as expected - stunners. I greeted one of them in German, which really struck a cord. Next time she conversed in German and with a bit of struggle I replied. The window seat afforded a absolutely stunning aerial view of Bombay. Trust me with all those yellow streetlights and buildings at night, Bombay looks scintillating. I was quite impressed by the in-flight entertainment system, and finally got to see the flick “Cat Woman”. It was not very impressive or gripping. But somehow I like the anime-like qualities in such movies and hence enjoy them. As a result, I slept very little.

It has been a long, long time since I coded anything in C++. It was bound to happen, I kept telling myself. For one I was building Agony, a multiplayer game with 3D graphics. Like the slog overs in a cricket match, my project was also crawling. So today morning when my fingers started itching, I knew that time is ripe for… Agony. Here are the (low-coloured) screenshots for your amusement:

An army of stationary bots with sphere-like weapon (aka a pointed triangle ;)) [1 hrs]

Bots are scattered, but turning and moving! [3 hrs]

The hero has arrived! Arrow keys work [5 hrs]

Well, incase you would like to play this incomplete game you can download it from this link

Agony.zip [137 Kb] (link disabled)

Regarding life, I’m moving out of my guest house tomorrow. It has been 3 months so far. The longest stint in any transfer I’ve ever had in any place. A huge vaccum is being felt. A window of this screen is the most special place in my world, now. I see few words of taunts or liberating rants which my near and dear have to tell me in a box within this 14 inch frame.

No I’m not missing home, but something more. I need to feel achievement pulsing in my blood stream again. I guess I’m addicted to it. :(

A big colourful cloud filled with happiness and energy. That’s how that last ten days felt like. Being a prisoner of monotony of work, this break was my parole. Just enough to breathe life into my dying creative thoughts.

Four extremely long bus journeys which afford sleep in semi-recliner position gave me enough time to mull over my pet project. I realized that the MMORPG is just an approximate term for something I have in mind. Role-Playing be it text based or graphical is only as interesting as the environment. The environment I have in mind is hardly original – Ancient India. Carrying the tradition of RPGs we could invent (or rather discover) races such as Rishis (similar to wizards), Devas (no analogy, except say Elves) or Asuras (say Orcs?). I really don’t know if this would appeal to our audience. This concept is helpful to differentiate participants by trying to identify them with a sub-culture. We, Indians, I daresay already co-exist with different sub-cultures. It’s a debatable question. On a more practical note it tends to provide repeat playability.

I would like to clarify that my pet project named Agony will essentially involve sub-plots and multi-linear gameplay. In my personal opinion, purely immersive playing with infinitesimal pathways can get quickly boring. This would also mean that we get to make a universe with its own physics/economic laws and a decent storyline. And lest do I forget, engaging 3D graphics (no we are not recreating “The Matrix” here ;) ). The biggest giveaway would be the “creator” mode in which you can perform level editing. Not having played a single MMORPG myself, I do not know if any game server supports this. But to me, game servers are nothing but persistent finite state machines. This makes them suitable for rapid prototyping of user-made levels. This is one experiment which I would definitely try out.

Regular readers of my blog would notice that my research is slowly creeping into my regular blogs. This is was not forced and it seems it is far more common than I had imagined.

Time to switch to other more worldly matters. The organization in which I did my NGO project Janaseva Sisubhavan (designed by me :) ) is getting greater media attention than ever. NGO project is basically a part of my MBA programme in TAPMI involving social work. It must be one of the most important organizations in social work in Kerala. I promise to add more pictures of Kerala in my gallery soon.

Wow, its finally happening. I’m going home for Diwali! A major inauguration happened yesterday, the Phase 2 of Pune DC was inaugurated. Everyone came in ethnic wear. There was a competition for best dressed male and female. It seemed there were too many contenders. Thankfully, we were in the food court all the while, where it was being staged. It was sometimes hilarious with patriotic and clichéd Miss World style one-liners.

I’m writing this from Mangalore all the while thinking about my game project ‘Agony’. Past few days I’ve been reading a lot about MMORPGs. My proverbial fears have turned true. There is deep relationship between EAI and MMORPGs. There is a concept of rules and facts and rule engines here. More than that, making an MMORPG required exhaustive knowledge of many social sciences like history, geography, phsycology etc. Amazing! And how many MBAs are actually making one. Very, very few. Why? Because of the immense depth of knowlegde that can be conveyed by the medium of the game. For e.g. many bright guys (no sarcasm here) in my MBA batch tried to make a financial simulation, but they had very cumbersome tools like Excel spreadsheets. As a result the game was very linear and turn-based (as opposed to real-time). In fact one of our profs tried using a game called MarkStrat (a commercial product nothing close to an MMORPG in terms of UI but a multiplayer simulation nonetheless) and it was a big hit. Many described as the single most important course in Marketing that mattered. So I’m pondering to get behind the camera of a multiplayer game. Lets see how crazy this project gets ;) On a unrelated note, it needs a more telling name, like ‘SimDesh’ or something.

Mumbai. The city of dreams, of glamour and of opportunities. The film capital of India. No wonder that a movie buff like me felt getting excited as I prepared to visit this city for the first time. As expected, the city was abuzz with activity despite the odd hour of 10 pm when we entered the city. As the bus snaked through the brightly lit roads, an army of autos could be seen waiting impatiently at each traffic signal. Life never stops here in this vast concrete jungle. Nonetheless every nook and corner seemed familiar. Perhaps, Bollywood has subliminally immortalized this city. Parag (my project mate) sitting beside me gave a concise yet highly useful guide to the city’s topography. Mumbai is essentially a narrow elongated strip of land. Local trains are its lifeline (yes, once they declared a holiday when it got disrupted).

Click here for the snaps

Finding Suneja’s place was quite easy. A road sprinkled with his landmarks, all restaurants :). The apartment, a cozy place nested up in the tenth floor. Big enough for Crisil people: Anshu, Yogi and Ashwinder and my TAPMI roomate Suraj (who works in UTI). The next day we (Me and Suneja rather) hit the road. We settled for a movie at NOrbit with Rachana. One of Asia’s largest malls I’m told and it was really, really big. Later that evening, we met Sethi and DP. Sethi left off soon, but we visited an amusing pub, “Toto’s”, which was decorated like a garage. In fact the drinks are served under a suspended Beetle. The music was awesome with most of the numbers beings ‘ol TAPMI favourites. Later, we got hungry and came across a Punjabi dhaba which amusingly enough called itself ‘Papa Pancho’ (no jokes)!! Nevertheless, the food was simply out of this world. I stayed over at Anvesh’s place that night.

Sunday, we (everyone at Suneja’s) simply took a walk down the breezy Mumbai sea coast near Band stand. We soon realised that his place has far too many exotic dogs. And exquisite women too ;). Early next morning it was time to return to the drudgery of reality. Slowing cruising into the highway, as the light of dawn was softly breaking in, I wondered - when will I return to this city of dreams again…

Click here for the snaps

How much of homework is necessary to purchase a piece of latest gadgetry? For my camera it took about 2 months. The process was simple: Aim at the best (means expensive) and keep watching the market. Read every possible review/testimonial you can lay your mouse cursor on ;). As the old saying goes, “Premature optimisation is the root of all evil”

For me the result was sweet, today I became a proud owner of a 5 Mpx Canon Powershot A95. It is my creative device before graduating to a Digital SLR. My groundwork tells me that nothing can beat Canon in terms of sheer functionality and features. My so-called amateur model can keep me busy for many, many weeks exploring various permutations and combinations in the nook and corner of the device. Canon has even passed down the features like macro shooting (extreme closeup) or manual focus option from its higher end models such as EOS 300D. This trend is now visible even in mobiles.

I got the piece for Rs. 17, 500 compared to Rs. 28, 500 official prices. I stumbled across this lead after a lot unsuccessful attempts. But as luck would have it, things feel into place in time (my target was Dec 30th, 2004).

My immediate learnings could be quickly summarised as

• An LCD is difficult to see at odd angles, so a swivel LCD is tremendously useful
• Buy memory cards with their sealed and unbroken packages
• Keep more than 1 camera in mind. You might change your mind after the touch & feel experience

So good luck to everyone at Still Photography!