“Hi, How are you? When is the next Bandth?”. This is not a para from a fiction but a normal Bangla talk these days. We had some 5 to 6 bandths during last 30 working days and expecting few more in the days to come. For all who do not know what is a bandth, “it is a call (for a statewide strike) from a political party (or parties) against a policy of the ruling party”. This is most general definition but can vary too.

I am not saying ruling party did not do it wrong and neither I am saying that the ruling party did not take the right step. But are bandths a solution to sort out things? For every notion there is a for and there is an against but can we then have 366 days off every year?

It is certainly bad for all, as Bengal is losing something in the global race. How can we ask the investors to invest few more millions in West Bengal, when we are not sure of its working? Our judicial system needs more power. Why can’t such deals be discussed before implementations. Why only an after-effect? West Bengal voters need to think and improve the overall system, its now or never time. What is your opinion?

Just got back after new year prayers, it was a great blessing to all of us. May God bless all of you this year. A very very happy new year to all. Pick of the day from my inbox (by Debapriyo Ganguly)

Heres wishing you a very happy and safe new year! As Oprah Winfrey said, “Cheers to the new year and another chance for us to get it right”.

You can feel Jealous, look at the pics, home made cakes :), specially made for the day (or night)

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

Some other images
After Heavy Lunch

Sunday Worship (Translating our dear Pastor’s Message to Hindi)

Once again,

Happy New year to all

I just came back from the Morning session and now going back for the farewell party for Mr 2006, followed with a fresher party for Mr 2007.

I will write more about the fresher party once I come back (may be morning 5 am). This is the time to thank many people who have helped me make 2006 a better a year.

I will like to thank God for everything He did in my life. As I keep saying that all you can do is “word hard” but then the result still has some more parameters. I count myself very lucky as there are many who pray for me daily (in thousands). Thanking my parents for everything, they care of all my pains and I keep enjoying the moments being away from all pains. I thank all my Church members, ICPF groups, CGPF groups and other youth ministries for their continuous support. I thanks everyone in Grmtech, where I spend almost half of my day. Its been a great year with Grmtech, taking many important decision, done some really helpful recruitments (people make the company and now we have the right team for that). I thank all my friends for being their at all moments. I know there are many whom I should thank and I do that with whole of my heart, may God bless you all abundantly.

I need to push back in another 10 mins else I will go late for the special dinner :). Saying farewell to

• Year 2006.
• Old office building.
• I will complete the list once I am back.

Bye Bye, Mr 2006.

We are busy with appraisal forms and policy changes, so not getting enough time for blog postings. These are some of my posts with a draft tag,

1. Lage Raho Aji Bhai (another HR post, one done for India Inc). Will cover my much awaited “personality vs character post”.
2. Website downloading speed and sales (stats, surveys and Progressive HTML Rendering examples).
3. Social networking – Flies attract more flies not honey.
4. Future of Television – A warning to Karan Joher and NDTV.
5. Some prediction for year 2007.
6. My presentation at Grmtech on Leadership.

I do not know when I will manage some good time for blogging. Sunday???? Sunday school at 8:00, Sunday worship at 9:00, CGPF meeting at 5:00 pm, …. “Oh God, Please add some hours a day”. God says, “there are many more hours added in a day you just need to find it”. I will try and if I am able to expect few posts tomorrow and till then enjoy.

I do not get enough time for blogging (What do people do in such cases?) so please let me know if you want me to blog about a specific topic. Please do not ask me to blog about viagra (I hate spammers). I will try to blog as per the ask.

If you have not introduced yourself to me and other blog visitors, please do. Put as much details as possible. It will be highly appreciated. (add it as a comment to this post)

Thanks,
Aji Issac

There was a security upgrade available (security fixes) for wordpress. I have upgraded it and given it a check. It is working great for me. Do let me know if you encounter any bug.

I could watch the second half of the final match where India defeated Pakistan 35-23 to retain the gold medal at the 15th Asian Games. It was a good match, even entertaining. When Indian cricket is struggling with its performance there are many to criticize them but when we are doing wonderfully at another field there is hardly anyone to appreciate. Let’s change it this time. Let’s congratulate the Indian team for winning it for the fifth time.

Rakesh kumar (also the vice captain) looked as impressive as MS Dhoni with long hair. Captain Dinesh is no lesser than Dravid. Pankaj Shirsat, Sachin of Indian Kabaddi. Naveen also played nice. Pakistan tried to deceive the umpire few times but Indian won with style.

We congratulate the complete quad who made us proud. Good work done and keep it up.

The squad: Dinesh Kumar (Capt., BSNL), Rakesh Kumar (Ind. Rlys, vice capt.), Navneet Gautam (Raj), Naveen Kumar, Vikas Kumar (Ser), Pankaj Sirsat, Gaurav Shetty (Mah), Manpreet Singh (Pun), Rajeev Kumar Singh (Bih), Suresh Kumar (Raj) and Sukhbeer Singh (Ser).
Coach: Balwan Singh; Asst. Coach: Uday Kumar; Manager: Muthu Swamy.

Do add a comment to congratulate Indian team. Subko acha lagega.

I get these mails quite often and I am really sorry for not blogging frequently. There are many things which are keeping me busy (some leaving heavy tensions as well) :-

• Office work: We need to go for a heavy recruitment drive as our new office is almost ready. Before going for the recruitment we want to clean up the house to give it a fresh start. We are working on overall policies, salaries and team configuration as a part of planning. HR manager is keeping me really busy with all puzzles, IQ tests and other exams (to set an expectation mark for new candidates). I can give you a hint (esp those who are appearing for “Grmtech try outs” :
  

  There are group of four animals which needs to cross a road. Each animal takes its own time to cross the road

  1) Lion takes 2 secs
  2) Tiger takes 1 secs
  3) Elephant takes 5 secs
  4) Tortoise takes 10 secs

  There are three conditions
  1) At a time only two animals can cross the road.
  2) They have one white flag (symbolizing peace) which must always be with the animal crossing the road at any time. So when tortoise and tiger is crossing the road then need to hold the white flag and when tiger returns alone to take the second animal it needs to hold the flag again.
  3) When 2 animals cross the bridge, they together take the time of the slower animal. For example, if tortoise and Tiger is crossing the road together then they take 10 secs.

  What is the minimum time required to cross the road? Bill Gates says that 17 sec is also a possibility, what do you say?

  I have rephrased the question so excuse me for the English. You can post your answer here or mail me.

• I am writing a book on “Future of Blogosphere” and doing a study on blogsphere. (some discussions at WMW as well).
  
  So you can expect a post on blogspot (Google may not like it).
• I am trying to generate few lakhs for Church building through some creative ways.
• United common convention is coming and we need to plan for it. Also the Christmas season is here so busy with cake making campaigns.
• Dental checkups

I like blogging and will try to post soon. I will post about

1. Personality and character (Which I promised a long time back). I recently had delivered a speech on spiritual character and personality at a youth meeting. I have learned few things about it. I will love to share it.
2. Why people leave a company? I have done some good studies and will write my observation. I have already termed it as “Battle of energy spheres” and also shared it with HR manager.
3. A big post on blogosphere and blog promotion.

Yes, I finally got a break tonight to update the blog. It’s been some really long and I missed it the most. I have so much to write. The things that kept me busy for last few weeks :-

1. New HR manager has joined so had to help her understand the complete incentive structure (two months back I tried to revamp the whole incentive structure). Also leave policies and other HR policies needed improvement. She is very much committed in making the best policies. I get more money through incentives than fixed salary.
2. Other projects kept me busy which included server updates. We updated from php 4.3.9 to php 5.0.3 (by then the most stable version under centosplus repo). Then we updated in to 5.1.6 which was under centos-testing repo. Today I saw that finally 5.1.6 is under centos plus repo and update four major servers (alpha, beta, prod, backup) for all projects. Also upgraded mysql to 5.x.x in alpha but beta and production is giving errors and is still at 4.1.20. Our developers did a good job of fixing bugs which got highlighted with the update. Updated the php editors and debuggers.
3. Took some interviews. Also new HR manager made me solve all the puzzles to prepare a comparison chart. Some of the puzzles I will put it in the next few posts.
4. Was listening to Tipping point audio book. I could relate our compagins which we were running for last few years. I could related and the co-relate some of the concepts like Market mavens and connectors. This is very interesting topic and I wish to write about it some time.
5. I was reading all the blogs regularly. I will write a post on some of the posts I liked.
6. Started some homeopathy for breathing trouble for a long term solution.
7. Google custom search engine and Google co-op in general.
8. WordPress plugins, I surfed across many sites to get an overview of existing plugins. I will adding few of it.
9. I got some of classmates from class VIII – X (I was in Jammu) through orkut. I thank orkut for it. I will start a thread in Hedir to thank orkut.
10. ICPF camps got over and now we are preparing for united common convention (combined worship with all the churches across kolkata).
11. Delivered a speech at Youth meeting last Sunday from Romans and Luke. I touched “Spiritual character vs Spiritual personality”. It was a difficult topic to cover by God helped me brief it. I wish to write about it.

There is more to write but lets get to work. I mean blogging :). Thanks for writing to me while I was away from blogging, such mails kept me motivated and forced me blog (pen) down few things for blog.