Party On!

Its a Saturday, and its the best day of the whole week, even better than Sunday.

And to top it off, today was party arranged by my mates who have managed to secure jobs after completing their CA.

To begin, the day started out as any typical Saturday would've, work till afternoon and a Subway Sub for lunch.

Post lunch, after rushing through a scheduled meeting I rushed off to Roche, hoping to be on time.

Today I had vowed to myself that I too would be taking part in the after party tradition of taking selfies and groupies.

And as promised, after a deafening 2 hours of DJ bellowing out senseless music, I suppressed my reflexes and took out my phone with the clear intention of using it for taking pictures.

*Click*
*Click*
*Click*
.....

Damn, my phone's battery is down. Oh the poor thing. It has never ever experienced such a thing before in its life.

But hey, It wasn't that bad, it was actually quite fun - taking shots, and sometimes even ruining the shots of others  (No I do not apologize for all the shots that I messed up :-D )

All in all, it was a great day.

Awesome times with awesome mates.

-Prabhjyot Singh

Very good [english] user

I woke up with a mission in sights: get to the body shop to sign the insurance claim papers.

On my way to the body shop, I realized that hey, today is June 12th - the day my IELTS result would be declared. So I checked their website (not while driving of course) and saw that the results weren't declared yet, damn I had to wait till noon.

After signing almost every paper in the huge stack of claim papers, I got a call from Bajri, while at the same time glancing at a wall clock. I rejected the call, fired up my mobile internet and checked my result.

I had secured an overall score of 8 bands (which translates to a very good language user)
Reading: 9 bands
Listening: 8.5 bands
Speaking: 8 bands
Writing: 6.5 bands

Hmm, writing didn't came as a shock to me, well my hand writings pretty awesome, even a supercomputer would freeze if it began rendering my font. :-D

Still I was kind of satisfied with the result.

The rest of the day was monotonous, same old PHP, meetings and the not so usual gym. 

Till next time.

-Prabhjyot Singh
Very good [english] user :-D
Source: ielts.org 

Accident :-O

Damn the traffic in Ludhiana. No one ever seems to follow the rules and what's even more is that they still have the guts to blame the other guy.

So I was returning back home after an hectic day at the office, it would've been somewhere around 8 PM and I had just reached Cheema Chowk, when I noticed a white Swift dancing wildly behind me, the driver was of course in some kind of unearthly emergency, so I gave him the space to move past me and he does so wildly and that too from the wrong side.

After which I indicated the direction I intended to turn at the roundabout, checked my mirrors and turned the wheel, when seemingly out of nowhere (his headlights were off) a motor bike tried rushing past me and again from the wrong side which was also the side I was turning to and slammed into my door. Fortunately for him, I was slow and managed to turn the wheel in the opposite direction, thus saving him from a fall, but as usual, the driver glared at me as if I had grown two heads and hurried along.

And here I was, left with a banged up door but thankful that the guy was still in one piece.

So first thing tomorrow, I'm gonna send my car to the body shop for a makeover, hopefully it doesn't burn a hole in my pocket.

-Prabhjyot Singh

Exam Time

After a brief yet annoying training for my IELTS classes, I've finally given the IELTS exam. To an outsider, the exam is supposed to be the epitome of management prowess.

I managed to count a faculty of at least 12 immaculate professionals (or so they thought) handling the written examination at Rivera Resorts.

The resort in itself is a place of beauty though far more welcoming in winters than in these unforgiving summer days. It easily managed to house a crowd of just over 400 test takers including me and Bajri. I was a bit annoyed at their reporting time of 11:30 AM even though the test was scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM, but taking a look at the queue for entry and registration, I quickly decided that it was a fine tactic.

The exam commenced at 1:06 PM, well six minutes after the scheduled time, but as the test progressed further, I noticed that there was a delay of around 20 minutes between each test module, and yet another delay of approx 30 minutes at the end of the test. Thus leaving me with a bewildered look on my face as I constantly stared at the face of the test manager.

After the exam ended, I made it my personal vendetta to complaint about the unusual delay in the whole process, for which I was responded back with petty excuses at first which later on turned to be guilty confessions of an egotistical management.

To top the day off, I had to sit through hours of torture so innocently named Gadaar, courtesy of Mr. Bajri.

But on the bright side, I was satisfied with my performance in the IELTS exam.

Hoping for a positive result on June 12th.

-Prabhjyot Singh

Fun-packed Sunday

May 17th

1:40 PM
Something keeps on buzzing in my ear. I just can't get it to stop or even get it out of my head. Is something wrong with me? Am I getting insane? I try to think but darkness envelops me.......

1:55 PM
That same buzzing noise, is someone drilling in my head? It seems to be shifting from my head to my chest. I try to rip it out, but..........

2:05 PM
The irritating and ominous noise, I can feel it, I can touch it. I hold that little pest in my hand and unlock it and answer a call from a client. Damn his France server is down and he wants me to look into it on a Sunday afternoon. I should charge these guys extra for working on a Sunday. I finally get up, grab my laptop from my bed side and shoot up my SSH client while at the same time getting a Good Morning look from my mother. I fix the guy's server, leave my laptop on my bed and check my mobile for other calls (Note to self, I have to stop putting my mobile on my bed, or one day I'm gonna wake up insane). Ah! A call from baba ji - Savi Arora. I call him back and he delightfully informs me to get ready by 4:00 PM as today is apparently the last CA Final Exam and my other mates would finally be released from hell (at least for 2-3 weeks if they are lucky).

5:10 PM
I'm standing outside CA Test Center with all my CA buddies, damn they look like hell but happy. We stand and talk nonsense for hours and hours and then go out for a snack or two before finally leaving for Sagar's (correction: CA Sagar's) new home in South City.

10:30 PM
I finally get home, fire up my laptop and revive another dead server (what is it with these servers? Women and computers it's hard to understand either of them. Okay, I went a little too far, computers are far easier to handle.). Finally, after getting free, I queue another Game Of Thrones episode and happily loose myself into the wild world of Westeros and the lovely Daenerys Targaryen.

Always great to meet my revived friends after all the CA horror. I really hope it ends real soon for them.

-Prabhjyot Singh

It's the Hard-Knock Life

Continuing to blog is proving difficult day by day, but I still remember my New Year resolution and intend to keep trying. After all we programmers live on the idea of "Try. Fail. Repeat".

Getting on with the happenings in my not so happening life, everything looks normal to an outsider but inside there has been a sea of change.

To begin with, I've finally scheduled my IELTS exam - May 30th, and have joined an afternoon class to prepare for it at MindMine (I'm always confusing it with MaxMind) which fortunately is fairly close to my office. Also, I've managed to finally complete the second thing out of the three things that are pending since 2010 - joining a gym. After a cut throat competition between the one at Radisson Blu and Gold Gym, I finally sided with Gold Gym for obvious reasons.

Furthermore, to pat myself on the back for at least living up to spirit of the promise that I made to my 1337 531F (see what I did there? Damn, I'm a nerd) I reconnected with two of my school friends and finally got closure with my school crush. Yeah! I know its been a long time - 5 years to be exact, but hey its never too late.

On professional side, everything's going smoothly with an occasional bump here and there, nothing interesting.

Here's something from Big Bang Theory (TV Series not the actual theory :-P) 

It's a hard-knock life for us!
It's a hard-knock life for us!

'Stead of treated,
We get tricked!
'Stead of kisses,
We get kicked!

Read more at: http://www.metrolyrics.com/its-the-hardknock-life-lyrics-annie.html

But who's complaining? I like this hard-knock life (except for the 'Stead of kisses and kicked part, that is.)

Enjoying student life once again (thanks to IELTS)
-Prabhjyot Singh
An excited student and CEO of teamOxio Technologies LLP (soon to be Pvt Ltd :-D)

Coffee date disaster

Guess what? GOT is back and I'm so on a boat ride to the city of Westeros. If I get a bunch of GOT nerds with me I'll definitely reenact the series at least on weekends. Who wouldn't want to sit on Iron Throne and send out hordes of riders just to prove your point or take a stroll in High Gardens with the lovely Margaery Tyrell?

Enough of the fantasy talk, getting back to reality. This past week I had the brilliant idea of asking a girl out on coffee, it wasn't like I really liked like her but it was just that "simple" feeling or rather an idea in my mind. I promised myself I'll do it before going to watch Avengers yesterday as the girl I was going to ask worked at PVR.

Thus came the day, I booked tickets for the show, ran up to the ticket counter and was just about to hand over my mobile with booking confirmation message to the girl at the counter when Bajri whispered to me that the girl at the counter was in fact the girl I had promised myself to ask out. Damn, I had forgotten all about that during my week and I kind of started pitying myself about it when the words "Puch, puch ohnu coffee le" brought me back to reality. I was already 15 minutes late for the movie and I wasn't going to miss out on Tony Stark or any of the Avengers even for one more minute. Hence, I told Bajri "Movie toh baad pak" and handed over my mobile whilst creating a mental note and cursing myself not to forget it again. Just as the girl finished printing our tickets she did and said something, something that I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams (and I mean GOT wild) and my whole fantasy came crumbling down, all I could do was stare open mouthed at the floor and Bajri who was proving to be the most annoying person in the world and had this huge - hubble telescope huge grin on his face.

Damn did that hurt, I just took the tickets and went inside the auditorium in an attempt to leave my broken fantasy behind, after all it was all in my head and was thankful in a weird way that all this happened before I had asked her out on what might've been a really awkward coffee date.

-Prabhjyot Singh