The Erlang Exchange

Thanks to Dennis Byrne, I got the opportunity to attend and present at The Erlang Exchange in London, on the 26th and 27th June.
I thoroughly enjoyed those two days at the conference - lots of interesting sessions, lots of erlang gurus and a lot of technology enthusiasts.
I got to speak to a so many new people in those couple of days and had lots of interesting conversations.
Here is my account of the event as I saw it.

Snow at Work

Probably the snow had taken off for the weekend. We knew that it was round the corner because of the clouds and the wind.

And promptly enough, on monday morning, just when we were having breakfast at the Hotel, it was back to work. It snowed and snowed, and continued to snow for hours together till afternoon. And what was left back was a whole new white picture of the place.

and promptly enough...

The old taxi driver says, "The sun'll come out soon and clean all this away". High hopes. But that that was just the beginning. For it again snowed after a couple of days, only heavier this time, accumulating more work for the sun. And also for a lot of people - people who clean the snow off the roads, the traffic police who'll have to be on the lookout for accidents, and so on.

It was just beautiful! The way the snow settles down on the ..on practically everything, is a sight to see.
With Christmas in the vicinity, all the trees and buildings are wonderfully decorated, and along with the snow adding to it, its all the more impressive. The festive mood strongly strikes one who walks through the streets.

By saturday, the snow again took a break and the sun started. It took more than two days to clear all the backlog and now the streets are back to their original colours.

hard work...

But I don't think its for long, though. The snow is just lurking behind somewhere and will soon be back I'm sure.

P.S.: Click on the image for actual size

Uniquely Singapore

My Diwali this time was spent in a unique way - in Singapore!!
Being my first visit outside India, it was a great experience.

To begin with, here are a few facts and comparisons (source):
Singapore, though has a very short history (of about 600 years), established its identity in the guild of nations of the world.
It is a very small country compared to India, being 699 sq.KMs(190th largest country) and having about 4 million people.
India is the 7th largest and has 3,287,590sq.KMs and more than a billion people (!!) (source)
But in terms of the GDP per capita, India(122nd place) is way behind Singapore(22nd place) (source)
Tourism is one of the largest industries of Singapore, with about 9 million tourists in 2005.

Singapore has a rich mixture of different cultures as it is mainly formed out of immigrants from Malay, Chinese, Indian, British among other places. From what I observed, the identity of singapore as a country has evolved as an amalgam of the different immigrants who have settled there.

The importance given to small details which may seem insignificant to us Indians, hit me right on the face. Be it the roads, or the cleanliness, or the infrastructure effort that has gone into the architecture and planning, especially with respect to the tourists, it is commendable.
The blend of art and technology is visible everywhere. Its indeed very difficult to get lost out there, with all the indicators and helpful people. The creativity with which the places are built makes it a pleasure for tourists to spend time.

Well, they do have their own set of problems, which I wont go into now, but on the whole, it is a beautiful country.My visit made me learn a lot about India too, along with, needless to say, Singapore.

I am not trying to compare two nations and rate them or anything of that sort. The few days that I have seen in singapore is very trivial to make any such comparison. And also, as obvious from the facts, the scale at which these countries operate is totally different.

It was definitely a good decision to visit Singapore. Thanks to my sister who pushed for it the most, we decided to go in the last moment. I'll upload a few snaps when I get some time.

Majulah Singapura!! (Malay:"Onward, Singapore")

Capitalized!

I had not blogged for quite sometime now. The reason is that I am now in Delhi (Gurgaon) for a week now and I was busy setting up stuff. We are put up in a hotel in gurgaon. We are here doing 'consulting' (whatever that means) for a client of ours.

This is my team standing in front of our office excepting one who is taking the snap. Will put up nicer snaps when I get the time to shoot. This project seems to be challenging in terms of client facing, communicating, convincing, etc. Lets see how it goes. But one sad thing is that I had to cancel my trip to Leh because of this project. But as long as there is something new to learn,I am for it.