Rajul days

I am back to blogging again. Now I will post blog every week here on my site. Also I am changing the look of the site to a different template and begining to bring some interesting stuff to the site.

It was very cold and windy today. When I arrived at Tim Hortons for my usual morning coffee, I noticed a cafe mocha” on the menu, and my head immediately took me back to Zurich airport where Garima and I had cafe mocha and chocolate croissants in airport launge. It turns out that Tim Hortons has a rather different way of making a cafe mocha:

Step 1. Pour half a cup of regular Tim Hortons coffee into a cup.
Step 2. Fill the rest of the cup up with hot chocolate from the hot chocolate machine.
Step 3. Add soft cream on the top of the cup and chocolate sprinkles.

Here is the original text of the e-mail that Pavan sent me originally.
As district Collector he raided the house of a liquor baron who had defaulted Rupees 11 crores payment to government and carried out
revenue recovery. A Minister directly telephoned him and ordered to return the forfeited articles to the house of the liquor baron. Narayanswamy
politely replied that it is difficult. The minister replied that Narayanaswamy will suffer.



In his district it was a practice to collect crores of rupees for earthen bunds meant for poor farmers,but which were never constructed. A bill for rupees 8 crores came up before Narayanaswamy. He inspected the bund. He found it very weak and said that he will pass the bill after the rainy season to ensure that the bund served the purpose. As expected the earthen bund was too weak to stand the rain and it disappeared in the rain. But he created a lot of enemies for saving 8 crores public money.



The net result of all such unholy activities was that he was asked to go on leave by the government. Later such an illustrious officer was posted as "State Co-Ordinator, Quality Improvement Programme for Schools".
This is what the politician will do to a honest officer with backbone - post him in the most powerless position to teach him a lesson. Since he found that nothing can be achieved for the people if he continued with the State Service he opted for central service. But that too was denied on some technical ground. What will you do when you have a brilliant computer career anywhere in the world you choose with the backing of several advanced technical papers too published in international journals to your credit? When you are powerless to do anything for the people,
why should you waste your life as the Co-Ordinator for a Schools
Programme?



Mr. Narayanaswamy is on the verge of leaving IAS to go to Paris to take up a well paid United Nations assignment. The politicians can laugh thinking another obstacle has been removed. But it is the helpless people of this country who will lose - not Narayanaswamy. But you have the power to support capable and honest bureaucrats like Narayaswamy,G.R.Khairnar and Alphons Kannamthanam who have suffered a lot under self
seeking politicians who rule us. You have even the power to replace such politicians with these kind of people dedicated to the country. The question is will you do the little you can do NOW? At least a vote or word in support of such personalities?

Please convey this mail as much as possible

I just passed my PMI exam and now I can write PMP designation after my name. Depending on my industry and the company I work for, PMP designation may bring recognition.

Cost and time frame: I registered for the exam on May 03, 2005 and paid CA$556.37 as exam fee. Later I bought a book for $100 from amazon.com, so roughly I can say that it was around CA$650 for this certification plus a lot of hours of study. All the study that I did was during evening hours and I did not take any vacation for this exam, but I spent at two Saturdays in hot july without playing with Esha.

Easy Exam: Exam is pretty straight forward and easy. On the scale of 0 to10; 10 being CISA, I will rate the difficulty level of this exam as 4. I had the PASS confidence one week before the exam date. I scanned through the PMBOK and read the book that I purchased from amazon.com twice. I also did lots of exam questions from Rita Mulcahy CD which I found too difficult to concentrate on. Anxiety of the uncertainty of the outcome of exam and long hours of computerized exam are two keys to exam success. When I came out of the examination room, I was not able to see at long distance effectively.

CGI Benefit: CGI like most other companies does not generally care about your professional qualification or knowledge.

Why Certification: I had to do it because of fear of expected enhanced level of difficulty of 2005 exam. Yes! PMI is changing the format of the exam beginning September 2005 and I thought it would require me to practice other methodology to make myself familiar with the new project management approach. For most of my old projects I followed the PMI recommended approach.

Pass it on: BJ is next in line to write this exam. I have given all my books and exam notes to him. Lets see how quickly does he passes. My estimation is end of september.

Mark has resigned from job today and his last day is going to be July 08. He is moving on to his mission to help community through restorative justice.

Rajul,

It was an inward urge which grew into a conviction.
That could not be resisted.
Which only in obeying could I find joy and purpose.
Hence, when the opportunity arose a leap was taken.
A decision was made to fulfill this urge.

Rubyn has been informed and I move on.


More than CGI my friend I would miss you. At the risk of you thinking I am crazy " which I know you do".
I want you to know that I believe that our paths crossing was no coincident. It was a providential arrangement.
My pray is that you would in time come know and accept the reason for it.

Shall catch up with you later.

Blessings

Mark

Finally I have been confirmed the CISA designation. It has been a long journey to become CISA. I passed the exam in June 2004 and I have been looking to acquire as much IT Audit skills as possible. The opportunity finally arrived with PROVANCE audit that I have been involved with. With all my previous experience, Rubyn Marcusohn [my current manager] recommended ISACA to confer me CISA designation. This is like end of one big project that I had undertaken earlier last year. Now I should dedicate my services into the industry to help establish COBIT framework. Lets see how my life changes with this designation.

Last evening I purchased a new pair of dress shoes. Good quality all leather shoes. Look very elegant and suite my body weight and structure. Unfortunately they are not very comfortable and my toes are cramped.

I am told that it takes few days before your foot expands the leather of the shoes to make shoes comfortable, but few days are too far.

Feeling foot pain is distracting me from thinking about anything else. All I am thinking now is my shoes and my aching feet. I can not even walk faster now. I am sure that I am going to wear my old shoes from now onwards and will never try to buy any more dress shoes. Dress shoes are not for me.