Friday, January 10, 2014

100114 - A hectic day

This was written on 11th - "I was to publish this yesterday night. Now publishing it as it is." It didn't get published. Publishing now.

Friday is usually supposed to be a funday with people leaving early from office to enjoy the weekend. For me, today was not one of those thanks to the long todo list which grew this week due to multiple additions. Google (not the search) too helped in that and consumed most part of the first half today..

Second half was hecticer (copyright m@G ;-) ), with multiple on the air discussions adding fuel to the fire. A couple of mail chains going nowhere unnecessarily was way too much. Neverthless, the vada paav  helped closing one of them rather too quickly.

It followed by a precise estimation of traffic and time to reach back home by Google Now. Of course it got help from the  auto driver who could have drove past the signal while it was green but rather chose to go slow and stand near the signal pole.

The temperature today in Mumbai seems to be the least for this yr - much closer to the one I love. I couldn't stop myself from thinking about the Bangalore days! Things change so fast and so much.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

080114 - Mumbai traffic

This post is too quick to digest. Even I hadn't expected to write just the next day. Thanks to advancement in technology, I can simply jot down the points from my mind to my mobile, save it as a draft and edit it anytime. This post is a result of that. In this post I am going to write about my experience in the morning.

With consistent increase in population (and subsequent movement of people to places where there are 'more opportunities'), the traffic conditions in cities are continuously getting worse. Not only the quantity of vehicles are increasing exponentially but the discipline is also not showing any signs of  improvement. This has resulted into unpredictable journey time couples with unexpected delays and inefficiencies.

Today I boarded an auto at my usual time in the morning. Little did I expect that its going to be a wait at traffic signals rather than a travel to workplace. 4 km distance taking 40 minutes is equivalent to crawling at walking speed. The reason, mostly, was the huge number of vehicles plying simultaneously but somewhere the inefficiency of the (static) traffic signals comes into the picture to make things look pathetic.

There is a huge scope of technology coming into picture here to control signals based on the real time traffic data. I still remember my final year at NIT Calicut when I was not allowed to do a 'complex' (difficult) project on traffic signal control based on the density of vehicles on the connected roads. The technology product is very much required at this point of time. I hope someone (probably in some IIT) trying to address this problem atleast now. One can connect to me in case any help.is required, I'll be ready to share my expertise.

Another (difficult to implement) way is to have flexible road dividers. It came from the 'optimization' part of my mind. It seems to be long term solution as of now due to its own set of challenges which ranges from discipline to technological maintenance.

Who knows Google if comes up with very efficient and practically implementable 'flying cars' in the near future!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

070114 - After still longer time

The question hovering  in my mind is "Am I actually a blogger?"

A part of me says you are not, whereas the other part promptly smiles to contradict. This brings me to recollect the meaning of a blogger. According to thefreedictionary, blogger is a person who keeps and updates a blog; to blog is to maintain a weblog. The definition doesn't tell about the frequency of the update and hence I can assume that simply having a blog and updating it sometimes makes me a blogger! :)

Things have changed drastically in my life in the past two and a half months - The greatest of them is Love, followed by growing Prince, Eurotrip, Mobilox, brother's wedding, Note 2, Meru and Mumbai. A snapshot of the Eurotrip can be found here. Visiting 25 countries in a short span of less than three months was fun with +Vijay Kumar Ghule. Lyon was truly a home away from home and Geneva was the most visited place. The trip to Greece was memorable; Norway, Sweden and Finland were eventful; Czech-Hungary was explorative and Andorra was mind blowing. Germany and Switzerland were neighbors whereas Italy was a basket of mixed experience. Portugal (apart from UK) was something which we missed and others were a Visa away from us. The most memorable of all was my birthday at no-man's-land and the uncountable calls  from a special someone which couldn't reach me. Polish Police was ready to welcome me that day in their-own-land and the day finally turned out to be peaceful one.

End of Eurotrip was very sharply followed by the placement season at HeLL and the convocation followed almost as quickly. I moved to Mumbai to start the product division of Mobilox aiming to head it in a year's time. Things went smoothly for the first few months but my lack of research before joining led things to be out of sync with the controllers (or stakeholders to be precise). Nevertheless, when I finally decided to move on, I realized that it was too late and I had given enough chances to the situation. I had to move on to a place where I was reluctant initially. Meru Cabs has definitely given me a wider scope as far as the career is concerned and I have adapted to the system well. Now its time to fasten the seat belt and cruise into the future. (Out of context sentence: In the mean time, I did try Google site to have a website form myself. Checkout the Quatations by me which I have written based on my experience of the world around.)

In the mean time, my personal life has found the most amazing person of my life - my Love. It has been a very memorable journey with she being always around me (virtually). She has positively impacted my life and we are soon going to tie the knots to be officially called as married. Our love story has been very unique and I have always wanted to document it for future reference. Though, I haven't been able to do so yet, its soon going to change! My elder brother got married little over a month back to give me a precious gift in Boudi. Though I couldn't spend much time with her, I am sure we would be gelling very well. Family is something which needs no special mention but here it is special because I now have a new family - My in-laws are very supportive and helpful. This post cannot be complete without the mention of Chota Shaitan - The Prince. He has always been a smiling factor in every situation and seeing him grow day by day has given me an imense sense of happiness within.

Hope to keep this blog alive and come sooner next time. :)

~M@G