Thursday 28 December, 2006

Wednesday 27 December, 2006

First Security Hole in Vista

First of the many holes in the Microsofts much hyped Secure Vista. Check this article published today

Vista security flaw blow to Microsoft

Hutch and Security

couple of months back, i needed to make a payment of hutch, and since i could not find any time to goto a hutch shop, i tried their online payment service at http://www.hutch.co.in, you can register your mobile number in the site and then using the options in their site you can make online payments. curiously i wanted to check how good their website is and how secure it was, i went to the viewbills section, which will allow you to view all the bills online, with information about the numbers you called , your address and amount etc. They had provided a great security feature in their page !!!, to stop people from seeing their highly secured HTML, they open their dialogs in a new window and disable the menu and right click so that people will not be able to view what they are doing.

it takes any tom a minute to see the http request going out from a webpage and i just opened the source of the information they are sending, to my Horror i saw them embedding a common username and password in the information they are sending and i could easily change some details in the Post request and Bingo !! i was seeing the details of other users !!!!!, unbelivable ?believe it, thats how secure these websites are.

I called up the hutch call centre immediatly and told them this problem and after trying 15 mins and listening to their "You and I song", finally it got connected, and a girl picked up and said how she can asssit me. I reported the problem i found and she cooly said "its not possible sir !!, and she then advised me that i may be doing something wrong !! and she wholeheartedly explained where to click properly !!, it took me 10 mins to make her understand the problem, when i started telling the details, it was over her head and she told me she will transfer to tech dept, so after 2 min one more guy came online and i explained him the problem, he didn't have the patience to listen to me and asked me to send a mail to customer support !!!!, well for all this time i thought i am doing a favour for them and know i knew its our problem if we are using their service !!. I left him my number to call if he want details and till date never heard back. I also sent a mail to their support explaining the problem and till date no replies.

Last month beforw coming to france, i happen to visit the hutch site again and just checked if they have corrected this issue !!, No no they thought may be sharing all the bills online is not a big issue !!, its democracy so everybody have right to information, is not it ?!.

After that while having coffee with one my system admin friends, i told this story to him and he happened to be working at Hutch previously and he didn't believed me, i showed him right in his machine and hew was surprised and he called few of his friends in Hutch and told them.

Next day i heard from him that the issue is corrected now. May be they have corrected now, i didn't check. The point i am trying to make here is, how service providers in india so careless about security ??. they think purchasing costly servers and installing few softwares and sending data will make their service secure (you can even see this big words in any website that their site is SSL 10000000 encrypted, when a software itself is fundamentally flawed, no technology will help you to make a secure service. I hope some higher manager from hutch read this and takes necessary action. even if they want to contact, my email is there and they are welcome to contact.

This is just one example, may be if i look really seriously into their site i can find lots of problems, and same applies to all other service providers. Please be careful with security in your sites, make security a priority, people trust you big companies and leave the information in your hands for granted. i am not trying to cram here about this not so big effort of mine in finding the problem, I am as worried as you people what if another guy is doing the same and accessing my account ?!.

Tuesday 26 December, 2006

Is C++ and COM still relevent

Most of the people who join as freshers in my company ask this question sometime or other. Most of the applications we develop nowadays is generally in .Net and when they start to learn the nuissances of this new platform, they want to know how best they can go about learning it. Most of the guidance they get is to catch hold of a famous authors book or to consult MSDN quick samples and to get started. well, i agree if you want to learn a concept in most primitive way and still able to create applications then it looks fine. But its like trying to be a Zidane in one month after starting football.

The only way you can master and understand any technologyis to go in depth into its basics. .Net platform was not a discovery done at one shot, it is the final culmination of 30 years of software progression and is built upon numerous technologies, so when you want to master it, it takes lots of effort and reading into these foundation elements. Its a pity to see programmers nowadays offfered with the comfort they have, day one they see the Visual studio environment which allows them to create a running application in 5 seconds, according to me this is a complete disaster for a programmer in his initial years, he starts to look into the API provided in the MSDN and goes about programming within a month, resulting in increasing productivities for his company, but in reality he is no better than an computer operator who is trained to do a particular job and when a new programming platform comes he starts this cycle once again.

For me if you want to be a real programmer, you should be first very strong in your basics,
Operating system working and atleast some knowledge of C++ programming and bit of knowledge about the hardware will not hurt. if you are writing any serious Component based applications then a small investment in the COM, DCOM and Corba is a Must. without knowing the shortcomings and forte of these technologies, you can never grasp any technolgies which are built on their learnings.

"You should know the Past, to Build the future !"

Coming back to the initial question of relevence of C++ and COM, YES !! they are still highly relevent to all of us, not because still 80-90% of the good software out there (atleast on MS platforms) are done using these, but these are the main foundation blocks on which new technolgies are built upon, go and dust off those old C++ and COM books and start reading today.

Here are few good COM links

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/com/html/a3b78086-0f02-4b3f-a856-46bfcf4457f4.asp

http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_ole.html


Recommended Books
----------------------

Essential COM, By DonBox


Inside COM, By Dale Rogerson

Some Good Artciles
---------------------

http://www.codeproject.com/script/articles/list_articles.asp?userid=24366
http://www.codeproject.com/com/comintro.asp

Programmers of 21st Century

There is an interview of Bjarne Stroustrup published in MIT website (if you don't know stroustrup stop reading further). He discusses the future of C++ and also his opinions about the modern day software and languages, very interesting reading, don't miss it.

Trouble with Programming
More Trouble with Programming

http://www.research.att.com/~bs/MIT-TR-original.pdf

Also there is a wealth of information at http://www.research.att.com/~bs/interviews.html check it out !!

Check also Stroustrups site at http://www.research.att.com/~bs/

Brittle Pot

Its 12:16 AM on the clock and i could not sleep, so plugging myself to net again and blogging about few of questions that causing me headaches from past 2 days.

1. Few months back few of my french friends were in Bangalore, while coming after finishing lunch from a restaurant, they asked me a question, what i feel about where India is heading, can indias future built upon software ??.

2. Saw one of my friend Aruns Site, he mentioned somewhere that few of his friends asked the question why he is creating a website and also he mentioned he was no good at maths when in college, allthough he is appreciating now !!, that when he applied it practically (Through concept of photography), is there something basically wrong here ??.

3. One of my friend working in IISC who is working on pure science on Fluid Mechanics, was telling the difficulty of getting himself a properly paid job.

4. if you do a survey of the resumes in any software company in india, you can see most of the engineers from science different than Computers !, and who are really good in their respective subjects. whats the great fun here, if you just want some people, who want to be software TypeWriters (read as Engineers !), remove these time consuming degrees and start some langauge training institues.

5. A guy who really doesn't know whats the difference between an OS Thread and Chinese Noodle is still paid a Bomb just to email and chat in companies, on other hand a pure mathematician ends up being an teacher for primary school ?!!.

6. you wake up every morning and think of what are you going to do that day and inside you feel suffocation and you can feel somebody inside you trying to get out, but could not due to the self articulated boundaries.

7. What exactly i am doing !?, am i really happy in the things i am doing ?

8. I always thought the things they teached in college and school, was nothing but some *%&*^W@#, after 4 years out of college i still feel the same, but the irony is the same system is praised everywhere, is it just me or the world has gone mad !??

9. A Physics Lecturer teaching about Atom, shouts at a student who asks a question on planetary motion. is he rightful in doing this ?

10. Ask 99% of the Software Engineers, why exactly they are in software, the answers range from undying love for technology and opportunities for creative thinking !!, well only one word comes to my mind about them, Bu*@#$!. So does it mean, other feilds are dead and superior than the computer science ??

11. Where we all went wrong and was there really any options ?? or is it too late to correct ??

12. Are we all cowards in accepting our helplessness and becoming slaves to the society, bound to moral values and relations and fear for survival, is there any way out ??!

13. When we say we think, are we really thinking !!??

14. Time for me to go to a Psychiatrist ?? for getting above questions in my mind !!.

you think the above questions are anywhere related ??? I will be happy to see some comments,

Friday 22 December, 2006

Some Flash Back

My Friend Arun has finally has his website up and running, check out at www.voidmain.in !!, but still needs to implement his feedback feature so am using this entry for that. today i had to take day off from office, since i had a bad headache and some eye problem, due to the temperature variations here in france, which is new to me. When i started to read his website all the flashback of my yester years started to runlike a 70 MM movie. How can i forget those years !!.

First i need to tell something about this guy, its rare to find nowadays people with as diverse interests as arun, i met around in 2002 when i joined my first company xxxx in mysore, i was just out of college then and i was looking for some job then (well my life itself can be a big novel, and one day i really want to share all those experiences). it was 2002 and it was a disaster year for all us fresh graduates to land up in a Job. but one of the companies in my home town was kind enough to offer me a job and that too with a salary !!, (my first salary was 4000 Rupees !! that was lots of money for me then). i reached office that day early in the morning and was waiting for joining formalities to complete when i saw this guy in his spectacles with a cotton bag on his shoulders with plain clothes walk in, he looked more like a poet trying to sell one of his books !, later i came to know, he had come for an interview for J2EE position in this company. that time for me it was really hard to understand when he told he left a good job in bangalore after working for 8 years !! and wanted to settle in mysore (and working for 2 years in bangalore, now i know why he did so). there are very few people working in this IT feild, for whom i have some respect left and Arun is one of them (personally he is very close friend of mine), he is one of the fellows who gives the respect the programming really deserves and enjoys it at the same time, currently he is happily working as software consultant in mysore.

Coming back to the website itself its as diverse as arun itself :), good to see plain o html website after a long time !!, quick to load with not much glibberish. you can find varied topics from art to technology there, but few of the topics really interested me, one being the chess controversies by my another chess friend vishwas and another one by arun, "learnig curve". regarding the former's article, since i am chess player myself, i have my share of comments to share on that , which i will be discussing soon in more than detail soon. Every time a olympic happens, everybody in india wonders, when small countries never heard of, can win so many medals why India, Country with one Billion Homosapiens cannot win some medals !!, i hope to provide some of the answers, atleast from chess perspective, in my next blog entry.

Now the main topic i wanted to write from long time. After arun mentioned in one of his articles on how he was involved in implementing object javascript, he left out one more thing there, they were also the first team to implement that application in AJAX which is the fancy name you can heard nowadays everywhere, we never heard of those fancy names in that time and the version of AJAX we implemented at that time was done inhouse by us.


i want to tell you all about a small interesting story here, when i decided to look for better opportunities and make a switch to bangalore during 2004, one of the companies i went for interview was WIPRO, at that time in my mind there was only 2 companies in the world one was WIPRO and another was INFOSYS, unfortunately the technologies i was working with GIS and OORDBMS were seldom heard of those days (atleast in the companies i went interview for), and there was not any fancy names for the technologies like Object based ECMAscript and asynchronous client scripting (now AJAX), the team lead in wipro who took my first round knew well i am almost a fresher in industry terms (i was 1 year experienced then), after asking initial CLR and namespace questions, he wanted to show his technical superiority on me and started asking do i know AOP (its aspect oriented programming), allthough i knew little bit, i thought it was safe to say no, now our lead had a bright shine on his face and asked do i know MDA !!, i said no sir, but you i do have worked with some good techniques on client side object based javascript and client side asynchronous programming and SVG!!, that guy never heard of these things (because still there was no fancy names given for this like MDA, SOA, SOAP ... and still no books avaailble), in another 5 mins my interview was over and i knew as soon as it finished that i will not get that job. b Now if any Wipro aspirants going for interview, don't be surprised if you encounter the same guy, trying to scare a fresher and stamp his authority asking some AJAX questions !!.


In short career span of 4.5 years i have worked in 6 companies, yes you read right !!, some due to job change and some due to acquisitions of small fish by big whales (read companies) and this has given me a chance into different work cultures and to meet different people ranging from Project managers to highend CEOs, its quite an experience to work with different kind of project managers and CEO in service modelled companies in India. I have been reading Dilbert comic by Scott Adams and some of the strips are really amazing, since i have experienced the same scenarios numerous times !!, i really want to go on discussing on each of those but it will be too long for a single blog entry, i will be just insert some of those strips for you to enjoy :). its 12:45 PM on my clock and time to catch some sleep :)













Tuesday 19 December, 2006

Best way of learning

Somebody asked me oneday, what is the best of learning, well i was lucky to have some friends from college, who were really good at this, the way of learning is not reading book after book, its the way of seeing things differently and questioning yourself at each point. don't take any information on its face value, simply because einstein has told e=mc2, doesn't mean we can take it for granted, you have to go indepth into a problem domain to appreciate the things. be it e=mc2 or any thing in programming for that matter. in the end keep in mind you are as good as you really know you are, and not in the way people think you are !, be ready at all times to accept your shortcomings, there is nothing wrong in accepting your weakness, but the strength lies in willingness to correct yourself and learn. and to conclude, no body can teach you things, they can guide you, you should be your own teacher. i really pity some people walking around assuming they know certain things, infact once you get the feeling that you know something, you are digging your own hole.

I have been leading some projects in last few years and people tell me i am a disaster as a lead, may be when it comes to people management, i am surely am. But i always tried to stop people from making same mistakes, what i did with my life, sooner or later people do realize that :) and appreciate, for others i can only opologize. leave a comment if you think i was wrong !.

Saturday 16 December, 2006

My Technical Blog

I will limit this blog to my experiece in Pacy and my phiolosphical Talk, for the technical side of me, you can check my site at www.abstractlabs.co.in, well not yet, still have to upload the site contents from my laptop to the site. well atleast for vishwas who keeps on reminding me about the site :).

After a long break (well i did right in deciding to take a break and slowing down past 2 months !!) i am now feeling the itch to get started again and in a big way :), the change of place and work has surely brought my firy spirits back !!.

Cross Roads

The week went very quickly, with work. The days feel very short here since it will be pretty late when we see the sun shining and also gets dark quickly in the evenings.

it was pretty cold today morning, with normandy recording a new low of -2 Centigrade and looks like it will continue its dip in the coming days. Have got fed up with the food at the restaurant, one week it was ok to try, but nowe i am really missing my food. our cargo has arrived in france, but it will take us another 2 weeks to get the cargo, since we still don't have a house here. we went around the town yesterday, with the help of a german lady in the marketing team and we visited few houses, but 1 was 2 small and another was ok, but was pretty bad in shape. we will be going on monday to see few more and hopefully we will get one or else we need to see houses in vernon or evreux which are 15 and 20 KM respectively from here, the former looks good bet, but the problem is transportation, since only few buses are there.

After long time in my life, i am spending time alone far away. This assignment is giving me lot to think about myself and my life ahead. for sure i know, i am at the cross roads in my journey of life and this is a important stop. the journey has his price, but its worth the price, since i am able to view and experience life from different perspective both personally and at work.

Now i know, what experience really means, its like a man trying to climb up the tower, at the bottom you don't have any fear, your feets are firm on the ground, but as you start climbing up the ladder, the surroundings grew larger and your vision broader, you will get to know how narrow your vision was before. After climbing few steps you will really notice, you don't have ground to support and you are on your own and the fear of height gets into you and here you need to decide you want to get down or continue. this is the critical stage and your ascendency depends on how strong you are in the next few steps and i am not talking about my career here !.

Wednesday 13 December, 2006

The French Factor

Its been 1-week now, since i am in pacy !!, time has went very quickly indeed. let me write about some of my experience with the people till now. this is not the first time i am interacting with the teams here, ofcourse i worked a lot with my teasm in Grenoble, but its been quite an experience working with them at the same physical location. well i would be wrong if i draw any final conclusions but, will present my feeling so far and also along let me clear some of the Myths people have in their mind about the people here, there is a big real change in the way of life and approach.


Myth-1: France is Paris, Fashion is the word.
Fact: I don't know still about paris, but the place where i am currently living is high with
cultural values as in India.

Myth-2: French spend long time during the lunch breaks !
Fact: May be few, but the lunch breaks are not really that long !!.

One important thing i noticed here is 90% of the time, when you pass by someone, you will hear the greeting Bonjour !, ooh, the respect people have for each other is really good to see. one more thing with people here is, they may seem like difficult people to get along with, but once you take them into your trust, they make you feel at home !!.


and finally in my first entry, i had written how indifferent i was, to come to this assigment, so what is my feeling about it after 1 week !!?, if i had made some correct decisions in life, this one rates at the top, not because i am paid in Euros, but i would have missed opprtunity to experience different way of life and work culture, the work culture itself is a true eye opener, well i reserve the latter for my next blog ;).


Well before ending this entry, here is my today's dinner snaps :)

Truite Meuniere Legumes Vapeur

More Photos !!

It was great to the mails from my friends on this blog :), they wanted some more photos of pacy, So here are the snaps i took yesterday while going to office. our town is getting ready for the christsmas and there are lights everywhere, but unfortunately ranout of battery for flash at night, will post them also soon.


Well believe it or not i took these photos at morning 8:50 !!!!



Tuesday 12 December, 2006

Rainnnnnnnn

Got up early today and it was a beautiful morning and still it was dark, took the camera with me office to take some snaps, will post them tomorrow. Bit hectic at office today, but day went quickly in meetings and people are lot closer now and more at ease, met lot of friends of philippe and christophe. when we started from office in the evening, rain was begining to start, but we thought we can make it to hotel quickly, that was a big mistake. it was chilling cold even with our jackets, our hands and head got frozed when we were half the way, the water drops were falling like ice cubes and by the time i reached hotel, my head was feeling like a freezer. no surprise if i get a cold tonight. The restaurant is closed today also, and need to be contained by bread tonight :).

Day-4, The weekend

Got up real late today, its 11:00 in the morning and its feels like 6:00 AM of india, the weather is getting cold day by day here, today myself and rajendra plan to go around pacy and have a look at shops. we went to superbazaar here which is 10 min walk from our place and purchased few food items, since the restaurant of our hotel will be closed tomorrow.

Saturday and sunday went in a breeze, we went pretty late for our dinner on sunday evening, all the shops here close by 8:00, but we were lucky to find a pizza shop and we got ourselves some burger and some french fries and some coke. we also visited a near by bar and helped ourselves to some wine and Rum, believe it was cold like hell and we really needed that. The old lady at the bar was really nice, and by seeing us she recognized as indians, since she later told us (not exactly in english !) that she has visited india 4 years back and she recognized us by the color of our skin :).

we just went around somemore around the city, discussing about the possibilities of staying at pacy only instead of next near town evreux, which is 20km from here. The problem being the transportation from evreux, as i mentioned there is only a single bux to pacy !!. by staying at pacy we could avoid this problem. we were shivering by now and quickly we got back to the hotel. watched tv for some time, there is only one english channel available here and that is CNN !!, watched it for few mins and soon was in deep sleep.

Monday 11 December, 2006

Day-3, Friday

Today, we had the medical checkup scheduled, one thing i forgot to mention is that there is only a single bus a day from pacy-sur-eure to Paris and no trains !!. so our company had booked a taxi for us today at 7:00 AM in the morning, the trainees from China also had the medical checkup scheduled with us, so they also joined us for Paris.

The Traffic today was mad !! on the way to paris, resembling that of bangalore, long and long chains of cars, this is since lot of people live outside paris and this was the time, they start for paris for work. it took us 2.5 hrs to reach our hospital. We finished our medical checkup in 1 hr and around 13:00, we started our trip back to Pacy.

Since we didn't have any breakfast from morning, we asked the driver to stop at a food joint. Rajendra suggested Mc Donalds, since i have never visited mc donalds before i agreed and we stopped at a Mc Donalds on the way. Believeme, the food they serve at mc donalds is real crap and not worth the euros we paid. We finished the food quickly and started again. The weather by now had changed to breezy winds combined with steady rain and there was no question of going to office in that weather and rain, so we asked the driver to drop us at hotel.

I have still 2 more days of my stay to cover, but the time now is allready 23:05 hours on clock, had to get up early. So will try to finish this story tomorrow evening, when i came back from office, until then bye :).

Day-2, Thursday.

My first real working day at office, i got up early in the morning at 6:00 AM, again with great difficulty, am a late nighter in india and used to goto office at my timing of 10:00 AM, but new place, new timings :). so took the bath in the hot shower and wore the sweater presented to my friends when i was leaving india :), and i was ready !!. The breakfast in the restaurant was served from 7:30 AM. The breakfast was a buffet with lots of cakes, some wheat preparations, Fruits, 3 types of corn flakes, milk and ofcourse bread !!. there was a small surprise for us while having our breakfast, we met 2 chinese who were from GTCC, China and they were too on Professional trainee assigment and they had arrived on same day as us and staying in the same hotel, one was a guy aged 25 years named Li xin who was a electronics engineer and another was a girl named Lilee, they knew bit of english, since we were getting late for office, after exchanging greetings quickly, we finshed our breakfast and started our journey to office. The office is just 2 Kms from our hotel and we started by walk, enjoying the cold mornig of Pacy.

It took us around 20 mins to reach the office building and after greeting the receptionist with Bonjour we asked for our manager patrick, who came and took us inside. My laptop was ready and configured, it was surprising to see howe quickly they have alloted the system (It takes us almost a week to get a hand on our workstations when joined at GTCI, i hope my IT people there are not reading and getting ready to hit me :) ). The laptop was brand new Latitude D620 with a powerful dual core 2Ghz processor with 1 GB of RAM.


















The rest of the day went uneventful with myself reading project documents and discussing with christophe and Phillippe and occasional coffee breaks together. and getting acquatined to telling bonjour to everyone i saw. The lunch break soon arrived and i went with philippe to had my lunch bit late, since he was waiting for another friend, this time i was very careful with what i took at the restaurant counter and got myself some salad, some fruits and a burger, i paid the bill of 3.65 Euro. the lunch break here is a pretty long one as i have heard, but surprisingly my teammates finished pretty quickly (reason being of some project deadline ;) ) and soon were back to work.

The day ended pretty quickly and i started for home at 18:00 hrs in evening, the weather outside was still chill and we started our walk home. on our way home we stopped at a electric shop to purchase an adaptor for my personal latop, that i carried from india, since the converters are totally different here (One more interesting thing i noted here is that there are no switches here along with the sockets !!, surprising indeed, check here on swaroop's blog on a detailed explanation on this :) Electricity, Automation and the Flip Side.

Soon it was 19:30 Hrs and it was dinner again, today i was in a adventorous mood since i had a good day at office and wanted to try out something exotic and exotic it was !!.

I ordered maincourse Assiette de Bulots mayonaisse (Large sea snail or buccin with Mayonaisse), assuming it will be some snail meat with some spices, and what i got was something entirely out of the world. In a Big glass platter, in the centre was a big mountain of icecubes and around it arranged in a perfect circle were 14 small snails, in a chain like manner, initially i was horrified thinking they might be alive, but fortunately they were not, the snails were steam baked along with the shells !! and served and it was not fully baked, this was to preserve the juice of the meat and the waitress provided a kind of fork, i have not seen till date to use. it took me some minutes to figure out how to really eat this thing !!. I was in mood for some adventure, but not this magnitude :). but since i allready had ordered, i had no option but to try it out. I will not go into the details of the procedure to eat it :).

Sunday 10 December, 2006

Pacy-Sur-Eure, Day-01

The Past 2 years i have spent in front of my computer working away on the code, has surely affected my english voculabrary, now i am feeling the pinch of it, this is the first time in atleast last 4 years that i am writing in this detail. Have to spend more time at reading and writing :).

Our company has arranged our stay at La Tape Hotel which is in centerville of Pacy, and this place exceeded my expectations, it was straight out of a studio set, as though somebody has setup the place for some studio shoot. I had seen the hotel in the photos shown by my friends who visited this place last month and its an 19th century hotel, beautifully constructed alongside the stream which flows through the centerville.


















There are only 3-4 hotels in pacy, the place itself is small but very scenic. The Stream along side gives the hotel artistic touch.



















We were greeted by pleasant weather of the afternoon (later i came to know from my colleagues at STIE and CNN, that this is the hottest in 400 years !!, there was a cool breeze flowing across and the temperature was around 10 degrees. we soon checked into our rooms and i crashed on the bed for few mins. it was about 10 mins, when the phone rang and our manager Patrick was on the line from STIE, after asking about our journey, he invited us for lunch. at 13:00 patrick came to the hotel to pick us up and he took us by surprise by telling we will be having our lunch at office restaurant. i was really taken by surprise, since was tired because of journey and was in no mood to start working on that day, but we agreed quietly. it was a 2 min drive to company from hotel, the campus of STIE was vast, and soon we entered reception and then into restaurant.

it was not a suprise by seeing the food served there and i was ready for it (well not totally :) ), i had some salad, Fruits, some bread and vegeatables and it was a great struggle to finish my plate full of raw vegetables. My mother always insisted me to raw vegetables, telling its good for health and i always turned deaf for those, but now here i am looking at a mountain of some 2o types of vegetables !!. with great difficulty i finished half of it. Soon Patrick took us around the campus showing us the drives assembling unit and different departments and finally he introduced me to my team there Jean-Marc and Christophe and Phillippe, Jean-Marc is the architect in my team and he was around 40+ and other 2 programmers were young Christophe at 31 and Phillipe at 24, it took us no time to get acquantined with eachother and soon christophe, myself and Philippe were off for coffee.

the rest of the day went uneventful, i just roamed around the facility. The system people said my Laptop will only be ready on the morrow, so we took early break from the facility so as to get some rest at hotel.

woke up at around 20:00 , don't exactly remember what time i dozed off, time for dinner, we went to the attached restaurant in the hotel. I was ready for my first dinner in France :), but there was big surprise waiting for us there. The Waiters greeted us with usual Bonjour and handed us a English Menu Card (well believe me, if it was a english menu card, then i had been speaking german all these days !. There were all kinds of exotic names in the list starting from Head of a fish to More exotic Snails !!. Well it was first day and i didn't wanted to land in any serious risk with my tummy, i could not quite understand the names of the dishes.

It was laidout like this

1. Starter
2. Main dish
3. Deserts

we had the option of selecting an item from each of the categrories, here is the menu :).























now the fun part started the waitress came waiting for our order, but unfortunately she didn't know french :), so we called up the lady who was the owner of the hotel who knew a bit of english (and bit means really a bit !!). and we started our research into the menu, in front of me i was seeing some really funny names for food. terrine, chives, mayonaisse, capers, cornichons, what the heck !!

after spending 15 mins into the menu, i really could not figure out a wee bit :(, so i started ordering the first items in each category, giving the feeling to the waitress, that i was sure what i was ordering.

here is my order

1. Mousse de poisson et sa creme de ciboulette (Hot fish terrine with chives cream).
Really thhought will be some kinda fish dish

2. Cuisse de canard confite, pommes paillasson (Leg of duck preserved in its own fat,
fried pancake of grated potatoes !!).

3. Now the deserts !!
Ile flottante, creme anglaise (Floating island, poached meringue floating in
creme anglaise).

with black coffee and half a litre of elvon mineral water.

finally finsihed ordering the menu, Rajendra was still researching his menu card, and his was more funnier than mine, well i will write in another post.

Vola !!, the waitress left taking the order and in 5 mins she brought a basket full of bread !!. Hmm what the hell the bread is for, we never ordered it !?, well later i came to know that their food is always accompanied by bread, be it their breakfast or lunch !. i didn't touch the bread, in india i always thought bread is for sick people :), well wait until tomorrow, till i tell the story of how i made that bread disappear in 2 mins !.

The First course was soon served and my dish was infront of me, neatly arranged in a glass platter was some kinda leaves, some cream in 4 corners of the plate stuffed with small peices of nuts, and in the center was a small icecream kinda thing, yellowish in color. hmm , i thougt may be this is kinda appetizer before they serve the fish, and the waitress left telling Bon 'apity (well the actual wording is different, just typing the word as i heard), I looked at that dish for a min, not knowing what to do, and took a small amount of the the yellowish thing in my mouth and EUREKA !!, i discovered the fish i was waiting was right infront of me, but in form of a thick yellow paste, now i knew why the waitress said Bon 'apity, it was real pity for me :)).
(well the actual wording is Bon Appetite, meaning have a nice meal).

With great struggle i finished the First Course, waiting for the next challenge, the Main meal. luckily no surprises here and it was a duck leg, allthough with no spices, it tasted good and i finished it without any trouble, only trouble being that i used only knife and fork in true french style ;), my first meal in my life where i have not used my hands while eating meat !!.

The desert arrived soon and it was a exotic mixture of varities of fruid mix and icecream, it was really surprising to see, at what detail the french prepare their food and they take care of even minute details like the positioning of the cream in the plate and what type of knife and spoon/fork to use for what dish !, and the humbleness with the people served their food here really was tocuhing, and whatever i had heard from some of the people compalining that they were forced to pay tips in france after their meal in restaurants, felt rubbish, with the kind of service they offered who could leave the table without paying a tip !!. finally i got my hot black coffee along with cream and nuts, forgetting the cream, i had the coffee and after paying the tip, i started for my room to crash in my bed, knowing i needed to wake early in the morning, since i needed to report at 8:30 AM and didn't want to get late on the first working day at STIE. The outside weather was getting real cold know, but we had heaters in the room and it was very comfortable, soon i was on my way sleeping, soon i was fast asleep because of the journey and the time difference of the flight.

Way to Pacy

soon we were in the street of Paris and again i was for a surprise, i had seen the paris only in the television and i expected city with big structures and monuments every where and i was disappointed to see only huge rush of cars and concrete buildings and signboards. most of the cars were Renault here, even the big vehicles and Lorries and i always thought Renault is only for sports vehicles :). and there were few bikes zipping past us at 15oKMph !!.

The Roads here are excellent even outside the city, very well maintained and you can race at 150KMPH without a whisker. Pacy-Sur-Eure is 70KM north of Paris and it took us further 45 Mins to get there, our driver knew only french and so through out the journey i just kept watching the scenic beauty outside the window. Houses here were built artistically and each one with its own uniqueness. We needed to stop at 2 junctions, to pay for the Road usage fees,
2 Euro, All the roads here seems to be privately maintained. soon enough we entered Pacy-Sur-Eure at 13:00 Hrs.

Some Indian Coffee Sir !!

Was dreaming and suddenly heard this voice, got up thinking was in dream and confirmed that am in my usual Indian hotel drinking a Tea, unfortunately no, Rajendra was sitting beside me and was still sleeping, the Monitor in front was showing time as 6:25 and the airhostess was serving the tea for the passengers with her french accented english and in one of the most beautiful tones i have heard, the wine i had early in the night had worked on to give some good sleep, even in the small space i had for sleep.

The Panel before me was playing some documentary about the Casablanca, the Lover of Venice and its history and soon in few minutes we were flying over venice. and the time was 7:00 AM and soon the breakfast was going to be served, and thought of washing up my teeth and getting fresh and if i thought i thought i needed to wait till france to get my first culture shock, i was for a surprise, i was greeted by the Toilet Papers !!!, i will censor the details here :).

The breakfast was served around 8:30 AM, and i was ready for another shock, and was really coming to terms that i am getting out of india now, the breakfast served was some Juice, Small bread and Jam and in the corner there were 3 puris of size of Panipuris and a pack of Fruit Yogurt !!!!!, with some onion preparation !!. with great difficultly i finished it and was waiting for coffee and thought atleast i will have some good coffee, well i was in for surprise, the airhostess asked if i want indian tea or the normal tea, i was afraid for the French made indian tea and thought normal tea sounds better and asked for it and tea i got, a cup of Black tea with ice cubes and a small pack with nestle label on it. and some french name on it, i didn't know what todo with that thing and kept is aside and had the black tea with sugar, later i came to know that micro packet was supposed to be some kind of milk !! and i suppose to mix that cold thing into my hot cup of tea !!. After the breakfast, i tried to sleep again and was unable to since all the passengers were awake now and moving around. Beside my seat one couple was sitting who were from india, and the women in here mid 30s, who decided that now she is not an indian and started discussing in some rubbish english accent with here husband. i really feel sick by seeing these kind of people on the front seat in front of them were a girl and boy from some software comapny. the girl was looking nervous and at the same time looked on top of the world on here trip :) and in my front was lady who was from bangalore with here child, who was with big eyes was enjoying the sky outside the window. I joined him in exploring the outside sky for few minutes, seeing the clouds hovering below the our flight like a big sea of white foam. Soon we heard the announcement from the pilot, telling that we will be soon landed in paris and wishing us all. We tied our seat belts asnd soon enough the landscape of France was visible.

The initial view was very surprising, miles and miles of green feilds with very few houses, i was expecting outside paris to be like full of big constructions, but i was for a surprise !!. Soon the flight got landed and after 10 mins wait, we were ready to get down. The Stairs were attached to the plane and we started climbing down and soon, i got the first taste of the cold weather there, it was not too cold, but kind of pleasant, and there was bus waiting outside for taking us to the Terminal and we boarded it and i saw the first Left driven vehicle. while going in the Bus, i had a look outside at the airport it was too huge !! and it took us more than 20 Mins to reach the terminal, the plane were parked like cars !! and Rajendra told me this was one of the biggest airports in the world. We soon reached the immigration counter and surprisingly it took us only few minutes to come out of the check in and reach the Baggage counter. Our luggage were safely there for us to collect and soon we started for the exit, hoping to find STIE sent driver and there he was standing with a board with our names on it, The driver was french, but luckily we didn't have to tell him the route :) , we soon boarded the car and soon we were on our way to Pacy.

In the Plane !!

So finally after all the checks, we boarded the flight and first time i saw how a plane looks on the inside. after a minute we found our seats and it was really struggle for me to understand the Seat of the plane, ooh how complex a seat can get, you have a LCD TV in front, press a button and you have a small table and beside the seat belt there is a detachable remote , and a cup holder ..... took me half an hour to muster the details of the Seat alone, leave the plane !!.

and soon the flight started moving, luckily we got the seats 32J and 32K which were just beside the wings of the plane, the Wings were enormous !! like wings of a Dragon and was really wondering how those huge wings are fitted !!. The flight started its run on the runway gradually increasing its speed from 0-300 in a matter of seconds and i saw the wings suddenly coming alive by opening up the middle section to allow the air to aid for lift off, i was seeing the science in action live in my front of my eyes, and soon the plane was in the air as though somebody pulled it from top, i could see in my front LCD the speed and altitude of the plane changing gradually and steadily and few seconds i could see the Bangalore in night full of lights, Well i got myself confirmed planes do fly !!. Soon we were at a altidue of 10000 and now i can see entire landscape, and funnythings was it was not feeling like we were moving now !!, since the relative distance from earth was increasing the movement become smaller downbelow, it was like the plane was suspended in the air !!. Soon we reached the full altitude now of 30000 Feet and in the display i can see the map along with the flight route updating and flying over the Indian Ocean. Well onething i forgot to mention here, all my friends were telling the flights will be full of beautiful Airhostess !!!!!!, well people i was disappointed i serached from corner to corner could not see anyone, has to tell Anup to change our next trip to some other airline :). The airhostess started serving the drinks and we thought to celebrate our trip with litlle wine and we asked her for it. I had a bottle of White Wine and Rajendra Redwine, and after saying cheers, i finsihed the small botel in 2 mins and I was really tired at this point and went into sleep, thinking about landing in Paris ... Last thing i saw on the display before going to sleep is it was showing 804KM Groundspeed and -42F Temperature !!.

The Story Till now ...

its 7:59 PM, just finished recreating the long deleted Orkut account and creating the blog. So let me recall my journey so far ....

It was really difficult last week for me leaving all my friends at GTCI and starting on this trip. Frankly telling i would not have been disoppointed even if this assigment was cancelled on the last day. I have always taken things in life as it comes on day to day , not thinking about tomorrow and enjoying the days as they come.

I will sure miss Bangalore and my friends especially Rajesh and Sophan who were always there when i was ready for my next cigarette :) . everyone was telling i would be excited since this is my first trip outside the country and that too on a long assigment !!, well frankly even at the last minute while boarding the flight i was cursing the flight time of 2:00 AM in the morning, it took away my sleep for that day, I Started my packing only on previous day of the flight hurriedly going to Shoppers Stop with Rama and purchasing clothes and shoes madly, Well finally i did got into the excitement, the teller told the bill is 9000 for 2 Jackets and couple of Shirts !!, well it didn't stop. My friend Shashi always used to tell me to use someother jeans than the torned one i use for use for office, well i usually stick with a pair of favourite clothes , well this time no options, am going to new place and culture, has to get rid of my habits :(.

Well the Purchase saga didn't stopped there, next we went to purchase some shoes add 4000 to that, then Marathhalli for clothes add 10000 and then the Bigbaazar 9000 !!.

Well well i really got excited now by thinking about the credit card statement for this month :)).

Finally the day arrived, My Family came to bangalore from kunigal to send me off, My grandmother was there too, Well till now as i said, i never thought going abroad is a big accomplishment as most of the people brag about as the next big thing !, add to that i was really getting frustrated from the past 2-3 months , blame it on the wait for this assignment which took forever to get complete or the amount of free time which i had last few months.

well, all the lethargy and frustration really went off, when i saw my entire family coming to see me off to Pacy, i could see real pride in the eyes of my mother, grand mother and my uncles, well friends i was really excited now by seeing them happy :), So finally i got mentally prepared for the new journey.

Finally after the packing we started for airport at 10:00 PM on Tuesday night, With my big room gang Rama, Shashi and Senthil and ofcourse Rajendra who will be working with me at pacy for next year and half. we reached airport at 10:45 and the flight was scheduled at 2:20 AM, Wednesday. and it was great seeing Chandru my childhood to see me off at the airport.
After saying final goodbye to everyone, finally we entered the airport.

Well this was my first trip anywhere outside and also first time i was flying !!, and i was do expecting a lot. First thing i noticed it was no better than Bus stop here, no place to sit before boarding the flight !!, all the places were accupied in the waiting lounge. Add to that the flight got delayed by half hour !.

We needed to kill the 1 hour time and we went to the duty free shops that were in the Lounge and i had my first spending with the Euros, Somebody told that we can carry only a carton of cigarettes along with us on the trip and so i had taken only a carton, but we came to know we could carry more without problems and hurriedly we bought few in the shops there.

Half an hour later, we heard the announcement for our flight and we went in the Queue and first time in my life i was seeing a Plane some 30 metres in front of me, i may sound like a child, but it was glorious peice of human achievement. Allthough i am a science student, i really wondered can this thing really fly !!!!!!!.

Blogged

So after a marathon 6 months of waiting, finally in Pacy-Sur-Eure !!. Have tried to maintain the blog in the past and was all the times lazy enough to write, but this time, thought will be good to capture my new journey in life.