About Me
Good evening Fellow Toastmasters. I am here to present my first project today.
The dictionary meaning of a bookmark is ‘A marker (a piece of paper or ribbon) placed between the pages of a book to mark the reader's place’.
My project today is titled MyBookmarks.
Like an actual bookmark, these are certain moments in time.
Some bittersweet moments frozen forever in time because of their significance.
Some of these have been picked up today to entertain you for the next 5 minutes.
BOOKMARK 1.) Singapore
I consider it as a great opportunity to be working for a client that is considered to be the best in class in what in does. Not many people get such a chance in their very first project in their very first job.
Ladies and Gentlemen: I work for Singapore Airlines, voted best airline of the year in 2008. Well, you may ask, why 2008, why not 2009? SIA, as it is affectionately called, has actually dropped to spot no. 2 this year.
I sware that this has nothing to do with me. I am not responsible for this.
Yes, I have taken on a new project this year but that is merely a coincidence.
BOOKMARK 2.) System.exit
Going back a couple of years in time, to Chennai, RTSC office.
Imagine, a fresher with a freshly minted Engineering Certificate sitting in the library. Waiting for a chance to go back to the MATC again from where he had just been booted out an hour back.
Lady luck smiled and he was picked up into the Airline Domain and into the SIA project.
For the next couple of months, he worked vigorously and diligently exploring all possibilities of sametime and Lotus Notes. Things like, how many chat windows can you open at one time and what is the maximum permitted size of re-forwarding an already forwarded mail and then which project did all the people from his batch end up in…specially the girls etc
These became his area of expertise for the next couple of months.
Then work arrived one day and he started coding for all he was worth. Day & night, code code code code code. He started spending less time in the canteen looking at girls and even lesser time on sametime. He had found meaning in his life like Hrithik Roshan in Lakshya.
Then one day his world came crashing down, when he crashed his first server.
To put in very simple words, his task was to create a job that ran at a particular time, do a particular activity and then stop. Create a job he did. The job even started at the right time and by some weird stroke of luck, it even completed the task perfectly. The only small problem was when it stopped; it brought down the entire server and all other users with it.
Sweet mails started flowing around like butterflies between his onsite coordinator, his PL and PM. The guy finally realized that he should have gone for that MBA.
A few days later he was called into the GL’s cabin.
He thought this is it. The moment of truth, the final face down between the mouse and the lion.
He had never seen his GL smile in his life and he new that the exit was near or rather that there was no exit.
And as it turned out, it actually was an exit for him… kind of.
His system.exit(0) had exited him from offshore and earned him a visa and ticket to Singapore. To this day, the guy fails to realise if this was a punishment or a reward.
Well that guy was me!
BOOKMARK 3.) Visiting Card
I am sure the first time you receive your I received my visiting card, I stared at it for a while.
The Name, the designation, the Logo.
The next time I met my dad, I presented him with my card and he in turn gave me one of his.
That was another historic moment. Nothing short of the president of 2 countries exchanging notes on a world platform. Only thing missing were the reporters and photographers.
I guess my time is almost up. I wish to leave you today with one thought. This is something I have always believed in and without which I wouldn’t be here before you.
‘Stay Hungry Stay Foolish’
Thank you all very much.
