Book Review: The Old Man and the Sea

This was left unfinished in July. Now completing it.

Few Months back, I was watching television and saw Sushma Swaraj blessing travelers of Kailash Mansarovar Yatra. I felt a sort of pinch and questioned myself about "Why did I miss it?". Even now the desire to visit Kailash Mansarovar has not died. Though earlier purpose was religious but now it would be toned with philosophy, adventure, exploration and appreciation of natural beauty.

I finished reading "The Old Man and The Sea" by Ernst Hemingway. The book describes the struggle of an old man to earn his livelihood by catching fish in the sea. Author elaborates struggle of protagonist Santiago against big fish and sharks for 3 days despite having cramps, cuts and bruises all over the body.

The book gives numerous lessons. One can draw his own conclusion depending on perspective one holds of human life.
It teaches the lesson of endurance in life. Santiago endures for 3 days with strong determination to capture the biggest fish among his community members. He succeed in his goal but as happens in life, success breeds enemy, same happens to him. His prize possession of big fish is eyed and envied Sharks in the sea. And the struggle continues.

It also teaches lesson of futility of striving madly in life to achieve something. Santiago fought for 3 days against hunger, fear, frustration, loneliness, deadly Sharks and luck. In the end, he reached the shore with a useless skeleton of big fish. The whole flesh of his capture was eaten by Sharks. The same happens to good people in contemporary corrupt society. The fruits of your honest hard work are devoured by powerful in the society. In life we keep running behind certain things or ego-enhancing goals but in the end "it does not even matter".

However, When community member look at the skeleton of big fish, Santiago's pride which was lost due to 84 day dry run, is restored and his respect in the community increases. This explains the psychology behind passionately following certain goal. Though one may end up only with a skeleton in the end but respect one earns and pride one gathers through the process is immensely self fulfilling. Nitzsche aptly puts it "whatever does not kill you makes you stronger".

Another observation one could draw is "When bad time comes, It doesn't just rain, it pours". Life is like a ship. Ships are not made for standing at shore. They are built to sail in the sea and explore the unchartered territories of human world. A still life is not worth living.

Anyway, the book is a classic of English literature. It is a good motivational read. Hemingway has described events with artistic details and incisive precision. A reader not aware of boat design or art of fishing may find it difficult to follow the jargon or visualise the details. Otherwise author has infused life into the character with his use of literature. This book reminds me of the movie "Life of a Pie".

Book Review: English, August by Upmanyu Chaterjee

Its been long time. I have been writing here and there in scattered fashion but blog is totally overlooked. Anyway, finished reading English, August so thought of putting a book review for it.

Book is fictional account of a young elite class metro kid who lands into civil services through IAS examination. He recounts his experience of first on-the-job training in hinterlands of Madna.

The bengali boy with sanskritized name Augustya, born to hybrid culture of Goanese mother and Bengali father finds it difficult to adjust to small town life of officialdom and hierarchy. He meets interesting people each characterizing the mundanness of civil services.

The book is full of dark humor, sarcasm interlaced with cheap yet frank sexual fantasies. It describes the restlessness and frenzy of thoughts in the mind of convent educated, sexually deprived, drug addicted young and able officer who is struggling with job-person misfit. His experience with office etiquette and rules, interaction with seniors and colleagues, and secret life of officer is described beautifully with wit and sarcasm. The book is sort of a rebels account of services lampooning it as inefficient and waste of time.

The author used his literary skills to capture the randomness and flippant nature of young officers. It was more like a daily diary of field training days. The officer class culture of 2 meals a day, IAS vs the rest , junior-senior bonding are explained in detail.

This is a manageable read for fiction loving convent educated civil services candidate who have never seen a village or never traveled in buses. It can help correcting the misplaced expectations of Lal-batti aspiring individuals. One may read it for the love of literature as well.However, It would be waste of time for people who are discretely aware of differences between a 3rd tier and metro city and who knows the ground reality of the country.

Unnecessary files getting checked in GIT

https://premaseem.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/git-status-shows-files-as-changed-even-though-contents-are-the-same/

good use of git rm and git reset command to remove unnecessarily checked out files.

Post from September.. :)

The days are so happening now days. There are many new things happening everyday. Most of them positive and some negative developments.
I wish I could garner enough strength to write on a daily basis. But some times sharing my inner thoughts on blog does not seem a good idea given that I have a common blog for my tech related posts and general posts. However, I feel inspired by my Mausi Ji who writes so much everyday despite having a grueling schedule of Job, household chores, Palmistry etc.

Anyway, I am enjoying joyful, insightful company of Anup, Shekhar and Srini. Our kitchen is cursed for cooks. Every new cook end up facing some or other tragedy. Earlier Basant, the cook came but soon cyclone in Odisha washed away his house. Later his father also died. So he left. The next, also from Odisha, met similar fate. His Mother died so he also left. Sad. Some times I wonder, how painful or cruel are these moments in comparison to not clearing a exam or not meeting a deadline.
Anyway, My flatmates and me have spotted an opportunity in this. I have explored number of food joints in Bangalore in last 3 months. Recently we visited La Kasa. It had variety of things. I had American dish, Shekhar and Srini had TIbetan while Anup had mexican dish. Sorry, I do not remember names of dishes we had. One afternoon we visited BBQ Square(Turkish food). Before that Napoli, Espresso Cafe, Whats in the Name, Big Brewsky, AAngan, Bakasur, GoldKonda Chimney, Maxmuller, Ant cafe, Tomatino, Luhoan, Earth Planet, Calvins, and few others... Some times I wonder on the rich and lavish life style people live. Most of the time, my gaze is observational. I pity the difference inside and outside the restaurant.
But at other times, I think these are the economic conduits from where money of rich, fortunate and extravagant flow into the economy and reach to the poor.

Apart from food and fun, what makes the company of Anup, Shekhar and Srini more interesting and joyful is their vast knowledge and world view. It is tough to find similar breadth of knowledge in people outside civil services arena. Thus discussions are more rationale, liberal, critical and deep in nature. Anup has good food taste and has traveled a lot. Srini has great command over trivia and general start up related discussion. He is a live walking linkedin. Shekhar is avid book reader and movies lover. Just listening to their conversation is some times so enthralling that it ignite my craving for books and movies.

Start up experience is also good but it is not as great as I expect it to be. This is probably because we do not have strong technology team so learning does not get multiplied. Its like you slog, you search and you find the solution. But some times, having a senior mentor or other colleagues helps in breaking seeming unsolvable problem of technology.
Schedule is not going great. Deadlines have spoiled my schedule. I have to take some serious tough decisions. May be making schedule as my first priority than start up. My flatmates are also not very inspiring in this regard.

Sometimes, I feel really confused about my career choice of making IT as my primary career and Civil Services teaching as fun, hobby and time pass activity. Lot of doubts clutter my mind. Loads of money, good network in Civil Services coaching is great thing. But some how Civil Services teaching does not seem very futuristic. It seems mundane. Technology is more transformational in nature.

Anyway will write further on this later. Need to separate my blogs too.

Loading contact details of person in Android

Very helpful android code snippet
http://www.higherpass.com/android/tutorials/working-with-android-contacts/2/

Loading my small java code on servlet start up

I was confused about how to execute my java code automatically when servlet container is started. Found a quick solution on this
http://crunchify.com/how-to-run-java-program-automatically-on-tomcat-startup/

Here init method of any servlet could be used to run or load some code.

Working with GIT

As the number of files and number of team members increase, It becomes essential to move to some standard code repository management system. We have number of options like Perforce, Svn, ClearCase etc. We decided to move ahead with git for couple of reasons. Firstly, open source nature of product and secondly, available android and eclipse plugin for the same.

However, Due to my lack of knowledge about Git and time constraint, I am still confused about smooth merging of files and branching in git. I found following document very useful in this regard.

http://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/

Recently, some one made a mistake in git repository using my user name (I am still not sure if I made those deletes). Thus a lot of work had to be repeated. Thankfully I had some back up files so things worked out for me.

Anyway, Done. Will continue writing about my daily learning. Of all the things, taking up laptop and writing is most difficult to put into routine. Anyway, I am sure it is just matter of starting on a regular basis. Things will be simplified.