Infinite thoughts

Returning from a long hiatus... will that still be called a hiatus or was that a break or a sabbatical?.. Let's not worry about it. Happened to watch " Matka King " on Amazon Prime over the last few days. The story is based on a known-but-not-so-known person in 60's/70's Mumbai. I have no idea whether the story truly represents the original personality or not, and that is not the point of this blog. The series started with some catchy sequences and held the audience halfway through, about 4 to 5 episodes. Each one is almost an hour long, and it did hold a good story in those episodes. Brij Bhatti, the lead of the series, portrayed by Vijay Varma, working for Lalji Bhai (Gulshan Grover), decides to separate out and starts his own "honest" business of gambling via Matka. The USP was to be honest all the time. Open the cards in front of the people; in fact, have your players open the cards. This built the trust with the gamblers very quickly. The story goes...

Today was a special day. My son's results for 10th standard were announced today and he cleared the exam with flying colors. Three subjects with A* grade and remaining three with A grade, totaling about 87% of the score.  However, what makes this achievement special isn't just the marks themselves but the journey and other accomplishments he garnered along the way. If you have been following my posts on various other platforms, you probably already know that Mrunmay has participated in the Robotics competition - FTC - First Tech Challenge. This was a very competitive event where his team had to compete against some of the best teams in India and prove their mettle. The FTC is not only about robotics competition alone but is about a few other aspects of life as well.  This includes outreach, STEM-D promotion, fundraising etc. The team, comprising 15 children, was preparing for the competition the entire year and the competition was scheduled for the last week of January earlier...

I recently got started on Notion, primarily as part of my new project. I had seen the Notion used by one of my earlier customers but wasn't impressed by what I had seen. However, I had been hearing quite a few things about this on Twitter. And it constantly intrigued me as to why people are so ga ga over it.  I had been dabbling between Google Docs and MS OneNote for quite some time. Used docs when I had to write structured content, such as an idea, feature or some strategy. And when there was time to simply jot down some points or take notes from meetings or while reading books, I resorted to MS OneNote for its ability to create unstructured and structured content both. However, I was still feeling handicapped. The "organized" person in me was wanting more. So finally decided to learn more about "Notion". I took a different route this time. Instead of simply registering and starting using the app, I went through a couple of YouTube videos. And that was the best...

Songs have a huge role in our life. In childhood, the primary source of songs was Radio. It slowly expanded to TV, then dedicated music channels. Somewhere in between or in parallel to Radio and Television, there existed the parallel world of Cassettes (and then later CDs) which served the audience. Since then, we have evolved to on-demand, yet unlimited songs. Each of these phases has/had some peculiarities of its own.  When I was a regular listener of the radio, there was only a handful of channels - probably two or three. One channel was primarily for music where Hindi songs were dominant and the other was for general. I think they were named “ विविधभारती ”, “आकाशवाणी अ” and  “आकाशवाणी ब” etc. The beauty of the songs on the radio channel was the surprise element - you could get to listen to a song of your liking which would lift your mood automatically.  The television channels, specifically those dedicated to music stole the limelight that radio was enjoying. However,...

I am not that person who doesn’t believe in celebrating these days. I appreciate the fact that the western culture has carved out days to celebrate these special relations. In routine life, we forget about the power of gratitude; we forget to dedicate time to nurture the relationship; we may tend to start taking things for granted. Such days allow you to rethink your acts, give some time to that relation and overall improve the happiness quotient of people around you and people who matter to you.  I feel fortunate to be part of the internet revolution, specially last 10 years or so. I was part of Giftease for a good part of last decade, where it was our job to find out ways to coax the customers to send out gifts. This was the time when I really started following the “gifting calendar” per se. I was introduced to numerous occasions including women’s day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, entire valentine’s week, sibling day, daughter’s day and what not. I, automatically, started sending ...

As the internet penetration increased over the last 2 decades, it also gave rise to digital subscriptions. The internet users slowly started developing trust in internet-based payments and that too on recurring payments. It probably started with the tech community using the recurring payment systems and slowly spreading that faith to non-tech-savvy users. There was also a phase when I started using the credit card for online transactions but wasn't comfortable storing the card details with the merchant. I used to enter the details every single time. (That is how I still remember the CC number that was in use at that time) In the late 2000's I was introduced to Ecom website development and since then it has been part of my professional as well as personal life. Over the years, I learned about the  PCI-DSS standard , and the extent to which the Ecom companies make an effort to protect consumer data. There have been instances of a data breach across the globe, but alon...