Singapore!

This post is seeing some activity after a very long time now.
As much as I think of posting sometimes, it never materializes.

Maybe thats why this article got through as it was originally designed as an email to my close friends.
For the background Information,
I am currently working in TCS posted in Singapore.
My Client is Singapore Airlines, the airlines which has been wining the bet airline in the whole world for more than 6 years in a row! (followed by emirates)


Well, here is what I wrote today ........................




I am in the middle of history creation here!
but unfortunately this will be an infamous incident.

All S'pore Airlines Systems are going down one by one.
It started with a few systems and some connection problems and is slowly becoming unstoppable...

Being at the client side I am able to realize the full potential and the gravity of the situation, which I am sure I would not have felt sitting in TCS office offshore.

The place I sit in is called the Computer Center Building(CCB), which is the backbone of all computer applications of SIA. In short if it is in computers and related to SIA, CCB is responsible.
And this entire building is in chaos since afternoon!

TCS alone maintains some 300 applications of SIA 80% of which are down. Add to this fact that here I sit with people from 3 other different IT companies like emphasis etc. all reeling under the issue.

Many of these are critical systems, which have severity 1 systems, and currently all applications are on max alert and severity 1 levels.
DBA's and Coverage people are afraid to breathe I think.
Lucky my application can have only sev. 3 tickets max!

Applications like SIA's online ticket booking through website is down since morning.
Just to give you a simple idea, every hour this receives more than 100 ticket bookings through users booking online.
Its already bout 6 hours down and calculating the loss due to this comes out to be huge.

But then, this is just one application, things like cargo's, refunds, a vivid array of critical and revenue generating app's are down. Even trying to calculate the loss which S. Airlines will face due to this massive outage fails my maths.

Sometimes we hear in the news, some company faced millions in losses due to some crash or virus attack...
Well this is it...and I am sitting in the calm eye in the middle!

Talking bout news, you will people will probably hear all this in the news tomorrow ie if nothing can be done tonight.

Actually IBM provides us the support for the technical backbone, and last I heard, no one was sitting in the entire IBM floor above us.

Another Goliath in the making is data corruption.
On average here every application is connected to 4 more applications and if production data for one goes into corruption, the relational matrix tells me the whole SIA world will be thrown into a tizzy.
Secondary people have started the maths and logic for things to be done in case of corruption which is very likely in some applications in case of a network failure such as this.

Everywhere people are huddled and discussing the implications of this.
It may seem some people are having fun and enjoying...No system no support right?
People are advised to go home! Why? So that they can come back as soon as there is any good news to work out the repercussions.

Systems should be coming up one by one starting today midnight(The date change is important I gathered.) and people will be called in one by one from their beds. (By the way I don't have a coverage mobile too!!!)

For next 2-3 days people will be on 24/7 support. People on coverage and sev 1 tickets are saying things like no sleep for the next 48 hours or so.

I am not much involved as I am only responsible for the UAT server and that is still up !
(I take a lot of pride in saying this although it is not up because of me! Its simply on a different server.)

But still, I am witnessing something great which hasn't before (not of this scale anyway) and hopefully wont happen again.
(If they don't let go of me that is!!!)

LOVE - II

A very dear friend of mine wrote this.

Wrote this when she was feeling down, when she was feeling frustated.

A beautiful piece, and a must read for all single people in the world.

Please go through patiently. . . .

"

I hv written this yesterday,I was feeling frustrated n very depressed....So pls bear with this...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
kaash koi hota..jiske kaandhe par sir rakh ke hum rote
kaash koi hota..jisse dil ki har baat karte
kaash koi hota..jiske saath har khushi bantte
kaash koi hota..jisko dil ki baat kah ke dil ko halka karte
kaash koi hota..jo humse baat karne ke liye wait karta
kaash koi hota..jisse hum baat karne ke liye wait karte..hum tadapte
kaash koi hota..jiske chehre pe khusi dekh hum khush hote
kaash koi hota..jo humare chehre pe khushi lata
kaash koi hota..jiske saare dukh hum le lete
kaash koi hota..jisko yeh dil hum de dete
kaash
kaash

kaash koi hota..jo humein yeh sab likhne ka mauka hi nahi deta
kaash kaash koi toh hota

Aaj dil mein ek kasak hai..jo aaj tak kabhi nahi hui...ki
kaash humse bhi bhi koi pyaar karta
kaash hum bhi kisi se pyaar karte aur
kaash jisse pyaar karte usse bol paate

Aaj dil ro raha hai...ki kaash KOI TOH HATA..

Hum itne bhi bure nahi ki koi humse pyaar naa kare
Hum itne bhi bure nahi ki koi bhi humein aake dukh de jaye aur hum sochte hi rah jaayein ki abb humne kya kiya

Hum bhi insaan hain..humein bhi dukh hota hai...humein bhi dard hota hai...
Hum bhi pyaar karna chahate hain..aur chahate hain ki koi humse pyaar kare..
Hum bhi kisi ke dost banna chahate hain..kisi ko dost banana chahate hain...

Par...shayad hum uske kaabil nahi...
Shayad isiliye aaj tak kabhi bhi kisi ne humein uss nazar se nahi dekha
Hamesha ek doori bana ke rakhi..dosti ke rishtey mein bhi ek doori bana ke rakhi
Shayad aaj tabhi hum unko yaad karte hain par woh humein nahi

Shayad kisi ko yeh baatein hum bol nahi sakte
Shayad isiliye iss tarah likh ke apne dil ka dard batla rahe hain

Shayad koi isse padhe..aur humein samjhe
Shayad koi humein dost banaye..isiliye nahi ki hum akele hain...
Parrr.
Shayad isiliye ki unhein hum dosti ke kaabil lagen


Aaj dil dukhi hai...ro raha hai..rona chahata hai...aur koi hai nahi jisse yeh sabb kuch bol saken
Har koi samajhta hai ki hum unhein aisi baatein bataa ke emotionally blackmail karte hain
Par hum unhein kaise samjhaye...ki agar hum unhein yeh batate hain..toh woh humari zindagi mein kya mayne rakhte hain


Zindagi mein shayad aaj bahut din baad yeh khayal aayaa hai ki....
God..ek baar bass life mein koi aisa dena...jo mujhe phir aisa kuch likhne naa de...aur mujhe itna hasaye ki main rona bhool jaoon..
aur agar aankhon mein aansoon hon bhi toh..khushi ke hon...
Aur mujhe iss kabil banao ki main kabhi bhi kisi ko dukh naa doon..bass har kisi ke chehre pe ek muskurahat laaoon...



- ****

08 July,2007(11:35 PM)

LOVE

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying

-Dorothy Parker, "Unfortunate Coincidence"

Age

Since many years my only real contact with the word has been the AGE of Empires, Conquerors Expansion Pack II.

For the mental people, its a game, an era in the gaming world. Still loved and played by many, myself and Niranjan included. . .(R my hostel mates reading?)

Anyway coming back to the word, AGE is a small three letter word, hardly capable of inspiring any second thought or emotions. As a question, all it warrants is a short reply 'So and So years'.

Yesterday, as usual after handling the daily vagaries of the job of a software engineer, I was returning home, lost somewhere in between code. My research on the nuances of a hashtable and vectormap was brought to earth without much fanfare by the guy sitting in front of me. I was traveling by a local bus, and in spite of the traffic which I didn't mind much, coz of the 10 bucks I was saving by not taking a cab, I managed to get a window seat (Trust me, when you are just a fresher, saving 10 bucks is something! You can have a glass of chilled Cold Coffee instead of giving it to the auto wallah :-) )

Back to the guy, if you can call him a guy that is. He was the conductor of the bus, and sitting right opposite to me.

Age has to 70+

With a torn shirt, a tattered bag containing tickets and money, thick heavy glasses over his eyes and a generally forlorn look, this specimen was sitting on only half a seat (coz the other half was torn!)

What interested me were his antiques. Someone somewhere has said, that after 50, your age starts decreasing, and you become a child once more. . .

This 'uncle' was restless,
glancing everywhere in and out of the bus, hands shaking, legs shaking. . .
You get the picture right? In short horribly old.

He was doing everything twice, like hold the bar above his head for support,
leave it and then hold it again. . .
Look into his bag, find nothing, close it then repeat. . .
Look somewhere, glance away, and then stare at the same spot again. .


I was getting amused, and was quick to dismiss him as a 'MadMan', as we all so often do when we see someone sleeping on the road, or running about naked. I am sure you all must have encountered numerous such 'occasions' and passed away smiling.

I was pretty much about to do the same, and was beginning to stare out of the bus for some hot chick on the road. . . ;-)

I was pondering why was he even allowed on a bus, rest given the responsibility of a TC.

What caught my eye was him working...



As soon as a passenger got up and went to him with a request for a ticket, he went into overdrive. . .literally.

His shaking hands, went still as rocks, as he accepted the money, calculated the charge based on the destination he said, took out a ticket of the correct denomination from a bunch of hundreds, opened his bag and tendered him the correct change.

I don't think the task could be done by anyone more quicklier or with more sincerity.

This hardly took a few seconds, and he probably didn't even have to think.
However this was enough for me to give him from 'MadMan' the more respectable title of 'Senile'.

(To be contd...)

AGE II

The rest half hour of the journey was spent in studying this curious creature.
Thinking things like...
How his family must be...
Does he have a son? Is he working?
Does he have a daughter? unmarried (God forbid) ?
Why is he even allowed to work at this age?
Have his children abandoned him?
Does he earn enough to feed all his family?
Does he earn even half the amount he carries in his (ever getting heavier) bag daily,
back and forth, again and again, on and on?

His eyes, behind those scratched lenses, were really something,
His watery, dreamy eyes, suddenly cleared up whenever a passenger arrived,
He used to do a kind of survey of the bus after every stop, and give a reprimanding look to all those who didn't buy a ticket...


By this time, you are probably thinking I am the one senile, the one who needs to be urgently taken to a psychiatrist in that same god damn bus. :-)

Senile or not, I was filled with these questions, as I returned home that day. . .

What will happen to that guy?
Will he ever stop working?
Will he just cut his last ticket one day, never to return?
Would anybody notice that he is gone for ever?

And then, on a more serious note...

Do all men end up like this?
Why don't we hear of women going senile?
Why cant people just die, instead of having to go through this 'senile' phase at the end of their lives?
Do they understand others people and what others think of them, when their own brain cells are dying on them?

And then sometime, somewhere in the future. . .

Will I have the patience of handling such a guy?
What happens when someone in my close relation turns (God forbid) Alzheimeric or some other such crap?
Will I share the same fate some day?
Why cant I just say farewell and get on with my journey to heaven?
(very less chances though!)

********************************************************************************