How to Hammer your Stammer?

Well, why this topic all of a sudden? No, I am not into medical research now. Was in a mood to write something tonight. Kept my pen and diary aside and opened the blog for a change. It was starving desperately without articles. So, why not have a go about Stammering, one of the uphill battles some of us face?

What is Stammering?

It’s a mode of speech where an individual gives the pause and repeats the words without his/her liking. Every child goes through the stammering phase when it starts speaking 2-3 letter words. A child’s innocence is often liked due to this phase. Stammering vanishes gradually as the child reaches 5-7 years of age. Wait, not always. NOT ALWAYS.

Stammering can make both physical and mental impacts on a person. Many unwanted incidents may have to be faced. Your confidence may be torn apart. Have a look at some of the real incidents faced :

• The classmates, relatives and friends (??) make fun of the way you speak.
• You may not be able to answer the questions your teacher asks in spite of knowing what it is. You may be sent out of the class for the same reason J
• You may not be able to even answer the attendance.
• You may not openly speak to people, which makes them brand you as arrogant.
• Your stammering may make people think that you are actually mimicking them initially!
• You may start hating your own words. You may end up saying something which you really didn’t mean. Brain knows what to say but tongue stops. You may not be allowed to complete your words or people may not be interested in listening to you. These things can frustrate anyone.

Hammer it !!

First thing the person should do is to stop caring about what others think. Remember, you and only you can come out of this. Fun makers can only make you more determined. Choose the best people around you who are sensible enough not to discourage you (who better than parents and sisters?) Keep speaking with these people about everything under sun! Do not stop. Keep speaking , go on speaking J

Meditate, control your emotions and use shorter words/sentences. Close the door and read the complete newspaper aloud. Do not take a break, read it aloud and keep doing this like mad!!

Speak less to people initially. Do not speak when you are angry or too happy. Avoid using the letters or words which you think are complicated. Develop a good body language which can divert the people’s attention from your stuttering words to your actions and ideas. Be positive, be confident. That is all you need to do.

Taking this as a defect, feeling isolated and comparing yourself to others can only demoralize you. Do not waste time on those. There are many more things to be conquered in life J

And all the others who do not stammer, it is just another way of speaking. Stammering is something a person can not consciously control. So, asking anyone to stop stammering or suggesting to think before speaking doesn’t help. Just leave the person to himself and give enough time for the person to communicate. The way you listen can definitely make the person comfortable.

Finally, if you think your stammering may stop you from being successful, here is the link which lists the famous people who succeeded in life in spite of stammering. They are the ones who hammered the stammer. Now it’s your turn J

http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster/famous/famouspws.html

Where do I stand now??!!

Yes, back after quite a gap. Yet another post for my blog which has been starving these days. No electrifying situations or PJ’s this time. Am I getting serious? Don’t know.

Not every time do I think more, especially about life. I still don’t think I can explore myself. No chance. But when you look back or start understanding your own do’s and don’t’s, knowingly or unknowingly you will tend to assess yourself. You will try to find an evolution in you which may actually not exist at all. You will try to compare your lifestyles at various stages. If you are a dreamer, you will even start finding the probable way ahead, be it clumsy or vague. I feel it’s always good to have one such self assessment every now and then.

One such thing happened to me. Sitting in the cab on a rainy Monday morning, after looking at the calendar scratching my head what to do next, I managed to peep out of the window. Saw a group of college boys, holding each other under an umbrella, moving towards the bus stop. My memory rolled back to college days. 4 of us used to go under 1 umbrella, holding each other and chase the bus to college. May be, we as well helped some other person sitting in an unknown cab missing his friends, revert back to his old memories :)

18 months since then. Some changes. We have started chasing our dreams. Our priorities may have changed. We now know how much we get, how much we save. We can calculate tax; we can think independent and what not? But then, is this all? I used to enjoy the small budget food with friends at a chats shop near college rather than the expensive meals which I never even thought that I would have some day. I used to manage with a small currency balance for the whole month, but still in touch with friends. Now, the case is bit different. But fortunately most of the best friends are still in touch. Time spent and frequency may be less, but the intensity still remains. In the same way, we used to talk, laugh and enjoy even when travelling on the foot board of BMTC. Now, people hardly open their mouth even when they sit next to you in cabs.

Certain things don’t change. Pocket may be heavier now, but the way of spending money has been the same, then and now. And yes, this will be the same even in the future. Same thing holds good for professionalism, Time sense and discipline. These terms have been the black box for me. Home food is still the top priority. Last minute slog still happens during the release time. Just like the last exams, Friday evenings now bring smile on my face.

Now looking at the more positive changes, yes there are a few. Responsibility – I understand the term quite well now. The hunger to be more responsible and hard working is more. My anger is still the biggest weakness. But it is no longer “rip the opposition apart” kind now. It is more controlled and channelized. One more significant change is the ability to apologize and admit mistakes. My ego would never allow me to do this before. Yes, mistakes are made and many lessons are learnt. I am now more sensitive and more attached to family than ever before. There was a myth that corporate world does not allow you to make good friends. But surprisingly, I could make some very good friends here as well.

So all in all, evolution is bound to happen, sooner or later. But we don’t have to worry about it as far as it is positive. Yes, it is difficult to pick between the two lifestyles. We just need to enjoy, find new means of happiness as and when they come and keep getting better with time. THE SHOW MUST GO ON :)

One such miserable day - continued . . . .

Recap: Power cut, lots of pranks, phone calls and music followed in the chronological order. Although nothing much was done for the project, A was confident of making it up just as he does for other exams. They went out for dinner. Even H looked tired after all this. He waited for the power to be back. But why on earth would A care for all these? He set an alarm for 4am, convinced H that their project is going to rock at 9am the next day. He glanced at Lex and Yacc programs for 35 minutes and slept peacefully. H frowned and challenged A that he would add lot more features and study the back-end of the code and sleep only after finishing that. A wished him luck and slept :)

Few hours went by. A heard someone giggling and he woke up fresh. The sunshine was bright, birds were chirping and the air was warm. Next to A’s cot was standing H’s room mate with his watch pointing towards A’s face. A gave him a smile, and looked at the watch. The minute hand didn’t surprise him. It pointed towards 4. But he was straight away on his knees when he saw the hours hand. It had just crossed 9. Effectively, it was 9.20 AM !! They were just 320 minutes late in getting up!!

When A got up quickly, he realized that H was sleeping on his lap till then and he was thrown down to floor. He got up yelling at A and saw the time. He was equally shocked. In fact, more shocked. He muted himself for 2 minutes. With eyes red and full of tears, he started showing his mastery in using “kind” words. He threw everything available in the room over A (don’t know why). A was as confused as.. err.. Well, nothing would be as confused as he was at that moment!! The theory which he believed in all those days had just slapped him :)

H had fallen asleep soon after A did the previous night. He consoled himself. He looked as though he had made up his mind for something. Few minutes of silence and then he declared. It would be the last day he would speak to A and he never wants to be friends with such a casual, lazy and the most irresponsible person. He decided to make a call to his home that night and apologise for his mistake. A remained silent. Time - 9.45.

Room mate suggested them to give a try. He asked them to convince and take it up with 11am to 2pm batch. A felt it was worth giving a try. H didn’t disagree. He went to get ready asking A to copy the project into the cd. A did it and both were ready. Time – 10.15. They sat on different seats in the bus, although it was not crowded. They never spoke or looked at each other. Ohh yeah, H gave a wicked look at A when a girl sat next to A in the bus ;)

They decided what to speak, how to plead and what to do for the next 3 hours at the college gate. Time – 11.25. H rushed into office to take help from the office staff he knew. On the way, he saw the notice board and smiled. A rushed to him to see what was written there. Their exam was actually at 11 am and effectively they were just 30 minutes late. Fortune favours the brave !! A was already accustomed to such 30 min delays in theory exams (which was a strategic time out according to him..lol)

They entered lab. Heard few comments from examiners. Some smiles from batch mates. But they were too excited to listen to anyone. A got an easy lex program. H seemed to be happy with his chit as well. A showed the output by 12.10 pm. He was asked to get the project copied into the system. He winked at H and raised his thumbs. H followed him at 12.20. But both of them were on floor the very next moment. A had copied an older version of the Text Editor in the cd – the one which was demonstrated during lab internals !! Aaah, all the changes made after that were vanished and H seemed to be crying :)

They told the examiner that the system has virus and they need to run the virus scan. Examiner agreed and these two started it all over again. Everything was re-done except “Search and Replace”. They couldnt remember where to change. The examiner came and had a look at the features. She then asked them to go through the code, which they did. She then saw the “About” part. It flashed with bright colors –****Rohit Editor ****!! :)

She immediately took out their project reports and neither of their names was Rohit. Before she could ask, A came forward and told that Rohit was his nephew. He was born on the day they started the project. Hence, the project was named after the baby :) H winked and nodded.

The "Search and Replace" was still present at the main menu. Upon asking, the two said that they had developed the Editor from scratch and couldn’t find enough time to implement this feature. Examiner looked surprisingly happy. She then suggested them to work on it further and told that the project was excellent :) They both shook hands. They came out of lab by 1.10 pm. Both burst out of laughter. H told he would love to work further with A in the remaining projects and treated him with some chats and Maaza at MTR:)

Such was the terrible 5^th sem project experience we had, Huthesh and me. Thanks to his patience and tolerating capacity.

PS Juniors : None of the actions mentioned here must be imitated in your student life!!

--------------------- The End ---------------------------

One such miserable day - continued . . . .

Sorry for the delayed sequel. I know how badly you were all waiting for this ;) When I met H recently, he cribbed at me for portraying him to be very serious, studious and a good person. Lemme tell you, he is not :) :)

Recap:

Less than 2 days were left for the project practical exam. As advised by H, A got prepared unwillingly for all the Lex and Yacc programs in the syllabus book and came down to stay in H's hostel for the next 2 days. Everything went according to schedule till now. Both A and H were not aware of what terrible day was in store for them, 2 days from then.

Continued. . . .

As soon as A reached the hostel, he was all charged up to make a mark. He was determined not to receive anymore “words” from H. H flew out of the room to finish breakfast and A was happy since H took bath as well (amidst preparations for theory exams I mean, lol) They both sat together and started modifying the front end of the Text editor. The first thing they did was to change the name of the editor and the "About" part which included the details of the owner of the project. The original name was Rohit-editor, named after Rohit – A’s friend and senior. Or was it also flicked from somewhere by Rohit?? Can't deny this possibility :)

A thought that the UI was horrible. So they decided to change the menu options from horizontal to vertical.They also added the option of allowing the user to change the outline of the editor with different colors [These features were flicked from other editors which A had ;) ] They were fans of their “own” editor by now. Started admiring each other and felt good about each other’s skills. H looked happy and A did not dislike it either.

By then, A started feeling that he had done enough to make the editor look good. He wanted to do something else whereas our H was still breaking his head to induce a new feature. A dragged H out of the room for dinner (lunch was already skipped, mind you !!). When they returned, nothing much progressed. A jumped on to bed while H slept after watching Yakshagaana for an hour.

After a nice sleep, they started bit late next day. H thanked A for being co-operative till then and spurred him to continue the good work (was he sarcastic??). A wished to have a look at the back-end of the code. But H wanted to add features. They argued for a while. The best part was, they never disliked each other in spite of being sooooo different in their approach. They finally sat down to add a new feature “Search and Replace” (A compromised). Since the Search option was already available, H thought it was quite simple to implement Replace. But it took a bit more time. This was enough for A to erupt. He was bugged by the time the feature was fully implemented.

At the same time, a cricket match started between India and Sri Lanka (Dravid’s 1^st match as captain I suppose). This was enough for A to relish. He sat before the TV with other friends from same hostel. After a while, he also felt like playing. Immediately, he was in action with the bat and ball !!

When he came back to room by about 7pm, H was busy with some books (preparing for theory exams) He was upset. But such care-freeness was always expected from A. So he didn’t mind (or did he??)

Power cut, lots of pranks, phone calls and music followed in the chronological order. Although nothing much was done for the project, A was confident of making it up just as he does for other exams. They went out for dinner. Even H looked tired after all this. He waited for the power to be back. But why on earth would A care for all these? He set an alarm for 4am, convinced H that their project is going to rock at 9am the next day. He glanced at Lex and Yacc programs for 35 minutes and slept peacefully. H frowned and challenged A that he would add lot more features and study the back-end of the code and sleep only after finishing that. A wished him luck and slept :)

To be continued . . . . . .

One such miserable day . . . . .

Well, after being accused of posting serious and rather thought-provoking blogs which is quite not my way, I have decided to write a not-so-intellectual article. This is one of the thousands of unforgettable incidents in my student life. Let me narrate this story as an outsider.

P.S - All the characters and incidents here are truly realistic. Any resemblance to living objects are not co incidential. Read On :)

In order to believe or associate with this story, you need to know about 2 characters. Mr.A and Mr.H. 

A - the day dreamer from Bangalore who over estimated his memory power and intelligence and under estimated the importance of marks in Engineering life. After having tons of marks in 12th, A was still in the hang over of being a class act himself.

H - the chatter box from Udupi who believed that nothing was more important than marks in student life. With few courses already in his kitty before joining B.E, H was also warned not to mingle much with the boys of Bangalore city before he left his native!!

 Coming back to the story. Situations made our A and H to get closer in the course of time. The very incident that made the two know about each other was quite funny and cannot be disclosed here due to family filters :)

Although A was gradually realising the importance of hard work, he was not ready to accept the fact. Why would he? He was already a brand ambassador in the class for laziness  and was well appreciated for scoring quite well in spite of all odds (call it by-fluke or luck or who knows, he could be right !!)

Meanwhile H was also realising the importance of having friends and being outspoken as a result of which the wavelength and frequencies of A and H came into a resonance by the end of 2nd year of B.E. 

Then came the 5th semester, the project time. As expected, A and H chose to do their first ever project of B.E together. Text editor was their obvious choice since A, being more far sighted for a change, had collected text editors of all colors and designs from his seniors. It was only a matter of selecting the most good- looking project that passed all the tests for him. He even called this process  "Swayamvara" !! H was apprehensive to start with. But with the magical convincing capacity of A, he too agreed but on the condition of enhancing the editor with new features. It was time for A to compromise(??!!) and agree.

After Swayamvara, one editor was short listed and A thought that the job is almost done. He got busy with his cricket and other refreshments for the whole sem. Meanwhile, H started with his preparations for upcoming campus interviews. Although, our A wanted to be with H for more time; the puzzles, C/C++ books around H did not allow him to do so. They spoke everything on earth except the short-listed project.

As time passed, the lab internal was over. Due to the last moment absence of A for the lab internals, H somehow managed to convince the lecturers just explaining the features of the editor without bothering much about the code. It got over even without a detailed demonstration. A joined him after finishing his do or die third internals of Advanced Microprocessors and promised him of being more responsible in the future. As usual, our H agreed, hoping against hope :)

Days went in a hush and less than 2 days were left for the project practical exam. As adviced by H, A got prepared unwillingly for all the Lex and Yacc programs in the syllabus book and came down to stay in H's hostel for the next 2 days. Everything went according to schedule till now. Both A and H were not aware of what terrible day was in store for them, 2 days from then. 

To be continued..........

Trial Rooms - Beware !!

It was quite a gap. I was busier than what I thought :)  Usually, the topic of the blog is decided just few minutes before I post it. But this time, the topic was decided once I heard about this matter. This was told by one of my friends regarding the experience her friend faced recently. She was shopping at Brigade Road during the last weekend (1st of May I suppose) when she thought of buying some good outfits. She went to a shop near by and started digging out few dresses. Being a female, quite naturally she was confused which one to buy :) So she decided to have a trial and buy the one that looks best on her.  When she went into a trial room, she switched on the lights and looked around to keep the fan running. To her astonishment, she saw something behind the wrappers that was glowing under the light. Yes, it was CAMERA !! She went to the shopkeeper and protested this publicly. She also reported about this to the police station (No action being taken till now, as expected). As soon as I heard about this, I googled out to find similar incidents happening in Kanpur last year. So, now we know how MMS is generated and circulated. I suggest you all to be careful while using the trial rooms. Don't hesitate to fight against such shameless forces. Social awareness is necessary to stop such nuisance from disturbing us. Please let your dear ones know about such things. Have a great week ahead. Even I hope to have the same :)

Cost Cutting - can we see some positives out of it??

Please don't judge me crazy just by the title I use!! Allow me to read you through my lines :)

If there is something that fumes a Software professional instantly these days, it is the Recession and the terms associated to it. One such term is Cost Cutting and I need not explain you what it is. We have been hearing or experiencing this from August 2008 or even earlier. It is polymorphic and dynamic (unfortunately so). Be it reducing the salary, decreasing the provisions, freeze on hikes and promotions or whatever, it has hurt us a big deal. 

I will leave aside the cause for this. Since it has happened already, let us think about the consequences and how well we can adapt ourselves to withstand this tough economic climate and may be draw some positives out of this as well.

Firstly, we need to follow Cost cutting measures at the grass root level. Here I list some of them which are very much followable. Have a nice morning walk to buy your newspaper (or anything) instead of using your 2 wheeler. Use public transport wherever possible. Do yourself all possible household jobs up to maximum extent instead of hiring others. Spend time at home with family during alternate weekends at least. Have delicious and nutritious home-made food instead of spending on restaurants. Go back to literature and educative articles whenever you find time instead of partying every time. Use Desi products over "Royal" imported products. 

These measures may seem boring or even impossible to some of us. But it surely brings about some discipline in our lives. If you observe, these measures help improve our health, our family bonding, our knowledge and surely the weight of our wallets :)

But my only concern is, why did we wait for a recession to tighten our boots? Couldn't we have reduced some of these unnecessary costs to avoid this in advance? I hear many mouths around me blaming the company for implementing some strict measures. But I believe it is time for us to join hands with our respective companies to counter this tough period. It is high time for us to wake up and be more hungry and aggressive with our work. Hope this economic turn down leaves us soon making us more disciplined, stronger, sensible and alert. This is what I mean by drawing positives. I hope you all agree with me now at least :)

Lastly, thanks for your messages, Emails, calls and comments on my first "official" blog. I would like to have an extended support to all my upcoming blogs. See you next week :)