Shyam's Blog

Last night, I watched a documentary about North Korea and its relationships with the US and other countries. North Korea is a country where one has to sing in praise of the ruler. Else, he or she is punished. One such musician was jailed for 3 years after which she migrated to Seoul, South Korea. With such a strict rule, things had to be sorted out using a new approach. Music it was. One should read the article in Los Angeles Times here . Zarin Mehta (brother of Zubin Mehta), Director of New York Philharmonic Orchestra, along with 250-odd more performers was invited to perform to create a gesture of friendship. Seeing the magnanimity of the concert, critics from around the globe have lots of questions unanswered - 1) Was it a success? 2) Was it a gimmick by the North Korean Ruler, Kim Jong-il ? The concert started off with the National Anthem of North Korea, followed by, the National Anthem of the United States of America. Performers also played a famous Korean folk song. 1500 in the a...

DMVs in CA are a mess, I believe. It took me 3 hours to get registration transferred. It is just the people flocking in which creates full confusion in the whole 1/2 mile radius of the building. First, there is parking for 30 cars and 250 cars are to be parked at any given point. I drove to the nearest DMV, which is in Oceanside. I parked the car 1/2 a mile away and walked in to join the crowd. There is a "Start Here" board but, that has a big cryptic line to stand in. This is to get the ticket/token. OK, I stood in the Q after completing the "Vehicle Registration" form which I had downloaded from the website. Talking about website, there was a link "take online appointment" - I clicked there and it took 5 minutes for the page to appear. I tried to book an appointment and it gave me 15 days away from today. In the website, they mention, if we take online appointments, waiting time is 4 minutes, "non-appointments", waiting time is 1 hour 5 minutes...

Couple of days ago, I was watching the news which reported -"relief items arrive at last". This was for the 2005 Katrina hurricane which washed out New Orleans. Three trucks arrived arrived last week in New Orleans with coffee makers, pillows, blankets and other essentials! After seeing this, I was puzzled - 1) It took almost 3 years for relief items to arrive! 2) How is "coffee maker" termed as "essential" or "most essential" which needs to be distributed to relief victims? Just compare this with a cyclone in a developing country.

Last Thursday, we had a team meeting in our Burbank office. My boss and I drove from here at 6:00 am in the morning to reach Burbank at 8:30am. The day's meetings were good. In the evening, we finished dinner and started to drive back. Few miles we drove and all the lights on the dashboard started to blink. Suddenly, engine lost pulling power and we had to exit and drive to a gas station. First idea - Someone should help us 'jump-start' our car. One guy on pickup truck helped us do that. A minute later, the engine died. It was ticking 9:00pm. Just then, we made few calls and got some idea - replace the battery. Where do we get a battery at this hour? Only place which was open was Walmart. The nearest was 8 miles away and they close at 10pm. We took a cab and reached the store by 9:55pm. We had 2 minutes to checkout. We ran in and picked a low-end battery, checked out and got a cab to return back. It was 11pm now. We replaced the battery ourselves and started to drive back. ...

Why do people move from one place to another? Going back to history, we may conclude that wealth and power were the major causes for migration. Over the past centuries, these drifts of people/communities on this planet have made this place less and less diverse. Few decades ago, just imagine the Asian population in America/Europe. My idea drills down to the current day stories - a career like IT is such a geographic location centric that people can't make a living by being in such a career sitting in remote villages/towns. Not even every city is the hub for IT. But, careers like, Law, Business, Medicine, Management, etc have so much scope even in smaller levels of society - taluk, district level. These are the fields which really create roots for the people to settle and establish better. More on this later.

It has already been a week since we moved to SD area. The previous week was so quick - the orientation, first day at new office, home shipment arriving, arranging the home during weekend, etc. When it comes to moving to new places, this is not new to us (my brother and I as kids). Our parents moved from one place to another every other year. Packing and unpacking was a regular task. Making new friends and starting a new life had become common during our school days. But, one thing always came to our minds - Wherever we moved, in the first month, our impression of the place was, "Oh yeah. We are going to settle here. No more moving".

It has been a wonderful day at the new office. I was introduced to many Yahoo! Every employee in Yahoo! is called a Yahoo! For example, the CEO is the Chief Yahoo! and to coming to me, I am "Technical Yahoo!" which is the other name for "Software Engineer" here. Yesterday, it was a good day at the New Hire Induction Program in Burbank, CA. With lots of goodies to all the new hires (around 30 of them joining with me), we were all invited with a great Yodel. One thing to note is the word "Yahoo!", which stands for - Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. - The above post was written in Yahoo! 360. I could not resist coming back to my blogger.com and posting it here.