10 memories of 2012

I had written a similar blog about 3 years back. As this happening year comes to an eventful end, i take this opportunity to jot down the 10 indelible memories of this year.

1. Feb 12, 8:08 AM. Gurgaon: A little angel came to our life, weighing 2.8 kgs and a total length of 47 cm. We named her "Annysa". This pic is one of her first pic with her mom and my personal favorite. 
2. My visit to Dhabeleshwar in the month of April. It remains as one of my favorite places. I had written a travelogue on it way back in 2009.
3. Back to Blogging: After an hiatus of 2 years, i made an attempt to blog again "frequently". The trilogy of stories written had the maximum views in my blog. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. The number of views increased by manifold from less than 1000 in the year beginning to more than 7000 and still continuing.
4. Back to school: This year i had the opportunity to avail the online course on "In Memory Data Management" offered by HPI. I did a course after 10 long years!!!.  And it definitely felt good to pass with 84% :)
5. Trip to Tripura: I visited the calm and serene Matabari temple at Udaipur, Tripura.
6. Cheering for Odisha team at Women National games held at Gurgaon
7. Conducting Bollywood Quiz at Gurgaon which was well  received by the audience. At least, that's what they told me :)
8. Starting and quitting Tobacco again. Lets hope its the final quit from my end.
9. Visit to Old Delhi during the holy month of Ramazan. You can find one of earlier blogs on Old Delhi here.
10. Zipping again at Neemrana - The rain made it more dangerous and exciting. This is a pic with my brother, Ankur.

Again re-iterating what i had written 3 years ago - Hope 2013 is more eventful and i see more good movies, visit new places and learn/ experience new things. And I spend a lot of time with my little one as she grows up.

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2013

This week, a decade ago

My placement had just finished. The  recession due to the dotcom bubble burst ensured that 100% placement of our institute was not achieved. Out of 120 students, 80 were placed, which was a very good record considering other contemporary management colleges.

Ah, definitely it gives me a smile to think about that Nervous Subhankar of that time. Now looking back on this week, it is nothing sort of a comedy of errors. But, 10 years ago, it was a never ending melancholic week.

It was my first interview which happened on the second day of the placement seasons. The first day was sacrosanct  for the top graders and the difficult group discussion topics sealed my advance to the second rounds. Typical of a engineer, i was confident all the IT companies will come to my rescue on the second day.

One of my dream company was X, one of the largest IT services companies of that time. Being the nerd i was (rather i am), first round was a cakewalk and got me selected for the interview. I was nervous to the hilt. There were very few job offers made on the first day, which made the competition tough as top graders had also joined the fray. The interview started well. Couple of initial tough questions were either well answered or well left. Still, the thought of top graders vying for this job was playing on my mind. Suddenly, one member asked me about my favorite IT company and why. In my enthusiasm, i blurted out the name of company Y, which happened to be the competitor of X. Everyone in the panel stated laughing as if i had done an act of blasphemy. The way they wished me luck made me confident of not getting that offer. To me, it was the biggest set back. This was one company which took people in hordes and i had missed it.

Such was the aftershock that i failed in all of the 5-6 other placement interviews. It was as if i was having a bad nightmare. The confidence was down and skepticism grew towards all the good advises and pep talks rendered by my fellow batch mates  The world seem to have ended for me - to not to have got a job in the placement week.

On those trying times, one of my senior  told me something which i cherish till date. In his exact word "subhankar, campus week is just the trailer. The main movie starts once you are in the corporate life". How true. All 120 people got placed once we were out of the college and everyone is doing excellent. To my count, only 10 out of 80 are still with their job offered during campus.

Still, when i remember this week, a decade ago, definitely brings a smile. The way all my batch mates rallied behind each other and cheered us up during the difficult time was the biggest learning i could have ever had. This week was the week which i feel proud to experience it. And now to bring some smiles, my sucked up pose of the placement days with the ever cheerful and amazing Sukhmaya and Nepak Bhai, the person whose recommendation got me my first job.

One thing Mama taught me

Who is Mama ?

Mama is the center forward of the women's handball team of Orissa. Orissa team was participating in the recently concluded National Women National Games. I had the privildege of watching her play in a match against Kerala girls. Even though, Kerela emerged the winner by a whisker (14-12), the crowd was cheering for the  Orissa girls and especially Mama for the valiant fight that they put in.

Her father is a poor fisherman in a small village near Cuttack. She was spotted early in her fifth class by the local school teacher and her name was proposed to the district level SAI authority. She devoted more time for her games without hampering her studies. Slowly, she rose from the district level ranks to play for Orissa. With proper coaching, her skills can be accentuated to push her to the national levels. Now she is in her eighth standard and is supporting her family from the stipend that she gets by playing.

Learnings from Mama

I strongly believe that Sports has a great parallels to the way we lead our  life. We can learn a lot from watching a sports person. Often, we resort to studying the greats to imbibe their good qualities. We talk of how Sachin was very fastidious, Dravid , more disciplined and Laxman more gifted.

And here i am writing this piece on  a lesser known emerging player and that too on a sport that has hardly any following in India. One thing which i took from watching her play was her ability to put team above than individual.

There were many instances where i could see her modifying her game to suit the convenience of other team mates. Handball is a fast game. She sometimes had to reduce her running speed so that other team mates can catch up and work in tandem. Even though couple of chances which were created by her hard work were squandered by her other team mates, she was took it sportingly.

What impressed me  was that when one of her team mate was injured and required a pain reliever spray during the half time, she ran to the near by market to purchase one. She herself volunteered for the same in absence of the any support staff for the team as she knew she could run faster.

This is a picture which i took of the entire team after the match. I am not identifying who Mama was. For me, each team member was special , they played against all adversaries with a smile and unfettered determination.

Odisha Women Handball Team

Wishing them all the successes and glory for future !!!!

Post on SCN

Posted the second blog on SCN.
http://scn.sap.com/community/hana-in-memory/blog/2012/11/01/busting-two-myths-on-in-memory-management

There has been surge in the demand of system computing ability as more people have access to the applications with advent of smart phones and tablets. Data needs to be both real time and fast. In Memory Data management is one approach where we achieve the aforesaid objectives. But, the general question which everyone asks about In Memory is whether it is just a technology fad and whether it has been any applicability to the modern day Enterprises.

1. In Memory Data Management is just a technology fad

Fact: It is the need of the hour

Data is growing exponentially. With more automation, more structured data is being captured in our organizations. Also, with the widespread adoption of social media, views ,expressions and opinions are getting captured in Face book status messages, twitter tweets, Instagram’s pictures etc. which are categorized as unstructured data. The explosion of data can be summarized with the fact that the humans have doubled the amount of data that they produced in the last century in the last decade.

Nimble Organization analyzes information at faster speed to stay ahead of their competitors. For Example, Smart organizations are capturing their success of their product releases by analyzing the tweets and messages of its products real time and even making necessay course corrections. To make smart and faster analysis of the dataset so large and complex (which have been named Big Data for their sheer volume), having a faster system performance has become a basic hygiene factor of any system.

Disk Scan speed has only become faster by 10 times over the last 30 odd years. Compared to the data growth, it is not adequate and will add to more scan time. There is a requirement to remove the redundancy involved in scanning and moving the data from disk to CPU for processing. In Memory Data Management removes two time consuming processes to make the processing faster – Scanning the data from Disk and moving it to the main memory (DRAM). As the CPU have direct access to DRAM, the processing power is enhanced exponentially resulting in desired output.

2. In Memory Data Management Concepts are not applicable in Enterprises

Fact: In Memory Data Management concepts have evolved over the years to serve enterprises

Typical Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) stores the data in convient way so that Data can be easily writted on it but scanning these records is time consuming. Also, RDBMS cannot be compressed easily, a basic requirement, to load more data in DRAM. Using Columnar Database makes scan faster and enables more compression but with additional drawback of write back to Database overhead. Due to extensive encoding used for compression, it is expensive to insert, update and delete records in columnar database.

Enterprises end up using both the databases - RDBMS system to write to the database (OLTP Systems) and Columnar DB to scan the DB for analytics (OLAP systems). Data movement across the database apart not only adds overhead to the system but also makes data dated.

In Memory Data Management has evolved to cater to the Enterprise Needs. For Example, HANA, the In Memory Data Management Platform, has the columnar feature but performs only insert operations and avoids the time consuming update and delete operations. It segregates the data into passive data (data which have infrequent use) and active data ( regular/ recent data) for storage and operation optimization. Similarly, small modifications are done in the In Memory Data base to make it optimal for enterprise usage.

In Memory Data Management is the answers to today’s enterprise growing data computing demands. If optimized well, as seen in HANA, it can be deliver amazing results which can analyze a F1 race to de-codifying the genome project. Also falling memory prices and more processing power make In Memory data the most suitable technology to invest for future. Would love to listen to your comments on this article. Please put in your comments.

First blog on SCN

http://scn.sap.com/community/about/blog/2012/10/27/blog-it-forward-subhankar-pattanayak

My Colleague and Social Media Mentor, Mark Marcus asked me to start writing a blog and take part in the "Blog It forward" initiative. It is one of a innovative way to learn about the blogging process on SCN.

I am currently part of Value Engineering, Best Practice Center (India) and learning to leverage Social Media to reach out to my customers.

Here are the few questions he asked me to answer.

What was your Dream Job as a Kid ?

As a kid, I always wanted to be Magician. I was always fascinated by a magician named P C Sarkar and would never skip his shows whenever he performed in our town, Bhubaneswar. Then i came across P C (Personal Computers)and it was the great magician i would have even seen. It would solve complex problems within seconds. P C has shrunk over the time and has become graspable. Still I am amazed as during my childhood days about its capabilities.

What is your favorite place in the world?

My favorite place would be a river isle called Dhabelshwar, which is near to my home town. You have to cross a hanging bridge to reach the place. It has a calm and serene temple. The place is a lazy village with picturesque surrounding. The place is around 30 minute drive from my home town, Bhubaneswar. You can get more details and pictures about the place in one of my earlier personal blog.

What was the most fun project you ever participated in and why?

The most fun project i was involved would be the launch of SAP Value Management Center. It was a good team camaraderie where each team member worked towards a specific objective of meeting the launch date target. There were many creative solutions to the various bottlenecks and it came from each and every team member. We started out as team members but ended the project as life long friends.

In keeping the BIF going, I am asking the following questions:

1. What was your dream job as a kid?
2. What is your favorite place in the world?
3. What was the most fun project you ever participated in and why?

Bollywood Quiz at GGN - Final

Here are the questions used for final rounds of 6 teams. The media files have been removed.

Do post your answers in the comments sections.

Click here for the quiz

Bollywood Quiz at GGN - Prelims

This is the prelims questions prepared for the SAP Bollywood quiz at gurgaon. The media files will not work. In case you want the source files, please drop an comment and i ll get back to you...

A MORE BETTER VIEW.

And you can put the answers in the comments sections
Click on Prelims on the left bar to get started.

Prelims

Bollywood quiz

Do give your answers in the comments section. Do also refer my earlier quizzes which are there at http://www.slideshare.net/Subhankar42 http://subuwrites.blogspot.in/2010/06/new-quiz-url.html

More Confusion

PART 1: BRIDE HUNTING PART 2: RENDEZVOUS

The telephone rang.

Everything in this world is forced to a formal ending. Same had to be the case of this failed tryst. Nothing worked out as per the plan, the meeting supposedly failed like a pack of cards. So it was decided by the parents, of course, that the boy and the girl should have telephonic conversation to see if things can be worked out again.

After continuous pestering and cajoling, I agreed. I was confident that the girl would have also undergone the same fate. Now the key question was who will call whom. Before i could ask my father that the girls family should be calling, he had dialed in the number and handed me the handset. The girl was on the other end. After one minute of cold silence, a flurry of questions followed about what made me think that it was not working.

For the first time, i confessed up the first and the only reservation i had for this marriage. The girl was about five years younger to me and that was playing on my mind. She quipped that girls generally go for Mature Minds.Knowing myself well, i replied back that she might be making a mistake as "age does not guarantee maturity". That somewhat cleared the air for me but did manage to put some doubt in her mind. Now she wanted to think again and get back to me whether she is ready for this relationship. Genuinely cursing my tongue for making this stupid quip, i shared my mobile number on which she would be electronically messaging me the result of her thought process. She did not share her number.

I flied back to Bangalore. Two days passed by. It felt like ages to me as i was eagerly waiting for that coveted SMS. May be my killer statement would have made her look for guys closer to age group. Almost made up my mind for this failed attempt - after all she was a kid. She must be in school when i would have entered the engineering course. Still at some remote corner, some hope for the SMS was there. With this heavy heart, i went to a sports pub for the football quarter final match between my favorite team Argentina and Germany - it was 2006 football world cup. Argentina was putting up a great play and the match was down to the wire - the penalty shoot out.

Just before the penalties, I got an SMS from an unknown number - " I am sending this for the second time, why didn’t you call me back". Argentina lost and i was feeling ecstatic. Suddenly another contrary thought, one sms and your fave team lost - will it be the case going forward. I stayed with the positive thought. In my utter excitement, i called her back immediately without realizing that it was past 11 o'clock night. May be the intoxication of beer contributed to it. She hesitantly took the call with an warning that it will not entertained in days to come. Later on,my burgeoning telephone bills negated the same warning.

Apparently, she had sent a formal SMS that she was Ok with the relationship the next day itself and i should have called her to confirm that i was still interested. As i did not receive the SMS and did not reply, she took that i was not proceeding for the relationship. It was at the behest of one of her close friends that she sent the second SMS as a final good bye message.

I still think about what would have happened had her friend not asked her to message again. Maybe it was destined like that as we got married and we have been blessed with a little angel. I am writing this for the little one so that when she grows up, she can read all this.

And there are more stories in store for the new one. Some in person and some in writing.

Raunak-e-Ramazaan

Gate No.1 at Jama Masjid - The Trail Begins

Jama Masjid

On 17th August, we were invited by Itihaas, an NGO, to experience the celebration and festivities of Ramzan amongst the people of bustling Old Delhi. The walk conducted was very informative and was weaved around various stories of Mughal era. The rich insight offered by the stories highlighted the rich vision of our culture.

The Red Fort forming the Tip of the arrow

We started our tour at Jama Masjid where our walk directors described the city of Sahajahanabad (which is now known as Old Delhi). The city was built by visionary Shah Jahan, the mogul emperor – taking inspiration from the Hindu “shastra“and architected like a bow. The river Yamuna formed the string of the bow and the central Chandni Chowk was the road which formed the arrow.

Celebration Begins

It was quite fascinating to observe the fellow devotees breaking their daily fast. It was a celebration inside the Jama Masjid. The sight of ocean of People greeting, hugging and sharing food amongst each other was heartwarming. The most touching moment was when one of the families shared their food with us as if we were part of their family. These were some moments which has been permanently etched in my mind.

The Shops

After the exhilarating Jama Masjid experience, we were taken through the tour of crowded and buzzing alleys of the Old Delhi. It was an experience only to be felt. It was festivities all around. The smoke and scent of the delicacies of the street side food, the color filled decorated small shops, greeting people, smiling faces, running children in the narrow gullies are something to be experienced and not written.

Kala Masjid

Our next destination was Kala Masjid, Tuglaq era mosque (built around 14^th century) for more stories. We were told interesting facts around the historical events to depict the logical significance of rituals, design and festivities held during Mogul era and still continued in same vigor even today.

At Razia Sultan Grave

Our walk through the narrow lane continued where we were given briefings about the culture and societies as it existed three centuries ago. Our final stop was the Grave of Razia Sultan, one of the two female ruler in Islamic Era (Benazir Bhutto was the other one), situated at the interior parts of the city.

At Itihaas School

After the insightful journey, we were treated with a delicious dinner at the premises of the school run by Itihaas. The mouth watering succulent Kebabs, aroma filled Biryani and sweet dishes were prepared by one of renowned chef of Old Delhi.

As the evening came to an end, I was left with rich memories which I will be proudly carrying forward. Definitely , celebrating Ramzan in Old city of Delhi was an event in my life and I look forward to attending more of it going forward.

Team SAP - The Trail Ends

Rendezvous

PART 1: BRIDE HUNTING

Thanks to my wife Priyanka, i am not pronoucing it ren-dez-vus....

Where were we......Flash back - I got a call to BBSR....acronym from Bhubaneswar.

MBA had taught me many things. Doing an ROI analysis was one of them. Flight tickets would have cost me a bomb and that factored with the marriage not happening would have made this trip useless. So the minimum investment of 2

Reached Home - I was sure that no temple would have been left untouched by my mom in her act to plead god to make everything fall in place. Before i could settle down, i was given an entire checklist by her of behaviour competencies to be put on display for attaining the perfect result. Could definitely get the generation gap between transistors era and "transformers" era.

For the formal invitation, father of the prospective bride came to invite for us the morning hours. It was a simple invitation to visit their places where both the parents will meet and we will get to see the "insurance agent" - the name given by one my friend on knowing that the prospective bride is working for a insurance company. My father had out rightly rejected my innovative proposal to meet in person ALONE with the prospective bride alone in at a newly opened coffee joint at BBSR. Even though he considered it blasphemous, but to showcase his modern day thinking he tossed up this idea. In order to outdo each other, my father in law proposed that we should be talking to each other alone in a single room and we can lock ourselves to maintain our privacy. Before this discussion could go any further, I agreed to go their house with everyone and meet up with bride without any innovate meeting engineering.

Evening time, before i could reach my prospective bride's house, there was a plethora of  "Congratulations", "All the best" and "It happens" wishes from my colleagues on my newly acquired mobile phone. My sister was given the charge to pinch me in case i go on a binge on the good food that will be served. Last time, she was not there and i ended asking for an extra samosa. We were ceremoniously ushered to the meeting room. Then followed the deluge of hygiene questions -  Job, work, hobby and habits. I could imagine myself as the neo of matrix evading the bullets by bending my back to extreme - How long will it take them to uncover that i had worst possible combination of all the asked criteria. May be they were a family of doctors and hence were not aware of what an IT professional does. Then came the bride with water. Hope they don't ask her to sing - It may result in somebody asking to return the favor which could have opened a new feat in ripley's believe it or not.

As promised by my father in law, we were asked to go to a room and chat. As a precaution, i asked my sister accompany me and promised myself that i should not give any such ideas to my dad in future to be tweaked like this. Then the second round of rendezvous - I heard ladies were chatter box and i was seeing it now. All the things were covered under this half an hour - Career aspirations, boss bitching, good insurance plans and Rang de basanti were some of the items covered. No marriage talks and i was again lamenting about the return flight ticket investment. One more miss.

My mother was the worst casualty. She had just dreamt of her 10th castle and it crashed. My Dad started giving me Pep talk. He should have been the hockey coach of the recent Indian Hockey Team. I was supposed to fly the other day. Evening was spent talking to all my friends about another missed opportunity. I called my friend in Bangalore that nothing is happening and spread the news across everyone so that nobody "congratulates" me on reaching Bangalore.

Next morning, the telephone rang.

PART 3: MORE CONFUSION

Bride Hunting

Migrating some blogs from other sites...

Bride Hunting

Saturday, January 2, 2010 8:22:11 AM

story, marriage, subhankar

This is the series of stories

It was the middle of Hot summer June of 2006. It was a regular day with its regular set of activities. I came to office late and was preparing myself for my daily coffee. I was about to press the "CTRL ALT DEL" button, i got an yahoo notification that i have received a mail from my Dad with subject as Photo. It was his regular monthly update. Oh. Let me clarify.

The photo mails were the mails which my dad sent for the prospective bride. He had been religiously sending me these mails from Jan 2005. I really admired his perseverance and punctuality. After carefully avoiding initial photo mails, it took a crying session from my mom to look into the June edition. As i opened the mail, the office internet speed also accentuated my eagerness to have a look at the prospective bride photo.

My system hung which was a common phenomenon. As i rebooted, i went to the cafeteria with Vikas my colleague to fetch a cup of warm coffee. We broke into a conversation about office politics as usual. But i was incessantly thinking about the PC, whether it has properly been booted or did it die once again. My eagerness was quite obvious to my colleague who generously asked me to go back and carry on with any urgent deliverable my mind was occupied with. I took the opportunity and immediately went back to find that the machine has properly booted and was waiting for me to open the explorer again to log in to my mail account. I again went through the log in rituals and opened the new mail sent by Dad. The content read as " Priyanka Mohanty, MBA, Bajaj Insurance , Delhi. using my cognitive ability i could decipher that the name of the prospective bride was priyanka, she has done her MBA, and she works with Bajaj insurance in Delhi. Quite impressive profile for me being a typical Oriya nerd. Now came the important part - Opening the attachment. As i saved the attachment and opened it , i saw a simple girl standing in a smiling position. Before i could observe her facial features, i was disturbed by boss who was standing behind me.
He always considered himself the most intelligent person ever to walk on this earth. On seeing the picture in my computer, with his typical smile he quipped that " your sister looks a lot like you. Are you looking out for a prospective groom for her". He knew i had a sister.

I clarified to him that it was not my sisters picture and told him the entire story. He was very happy. To show how happy he was, he shouted to every one in my department who were sitting around me to come and see the pic of the girl to whom i was getting married too!!!!. Everyone came and congratulated me. And i spent the entire clarifying the exact story to everyone that it was "prospective" bride and nothing has been been fixed.

Later that day , my Dad had called me to come to Bhubaneswar sometime later that month as my prospective bride would also be coming during that tenure. The day later he confirmed the exact dates and instructed me to book the tickets accordingly. The day i left for Bhubaneswar my mail box was flooded with " All the best wishes" from everyone from my office. How come they did they know that i needed that the most. Premonition....

to be continued..........

PART 2: RENDEZVOUS

PART 3: MORE CONFUSION

Technology Blog

for Long, i wanted to have a separate a blog for technology blog, where i can post all the technology related thoughts....its a start and will strive to replenish this at regular intervals


www.Techierambling.blogspot.com

Do give in your valuable comments/ ideas.