Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Sudoku

Cellular phones & ipods may be the fastest selling commodities in many countries but if you ask me something that took the world by storm in 2005 I would opine it was Sudoku. It has become a craze among commoners that the print media wasted no time to cash in on the opportunity. I am not sure which newspaper became the trendsetter in India but now even newspapers (including reginal ones) that seemed content with semi nude poses of Anna Kournikova & Angelina Jolie now feature sudoku as part of the daily compilation to lure more readers. So what makes it click?

Sudoku relies purely on logic unlike the traditional word based crosswords. While crosswords require a good vocabulary, Sudoku does not need any prerequisites (but for some brains of course!!). Learning to play the Sudoku is quite easy. Different levels of difficulty are present in Sudoku and hence it facilitates people to start from the basic to learn the art of solving it. By the time we do close to 20 – 25 puzzles, we would have learnt more than 90% of the tricks involved in solving it. From here on your previous experience doesn’t matter much… you don’t need to remember things unlike a crossword. Every puzzle is a fresh experience.

The classical sudoku has a 9 * 9 grid divided into 9 grids of 3 * 3. We have to fill numbers from 1 to 9 in each 3 * 3 grid also taking care that the number is unique across the particular row and column. There are also tougher variants with 12 * 12 (numbers from 1 – 9 and alphabets A – C) and 16 * 16 (1 – 9 & A – F). More info on Sudoku can be obtained here.

Walking past… 2005

No… going by the title I am not going to walk past 2005, rather I am going to fly past some events in my life that happened in 2005. Staring at an incipient 2006, I am writing (rather typing!!) whatever I remember so that I can remember 2005 forever.If you think this will be similar to “Best and Worst moments of 2005” seen in Rediff or Sify or other portals… I am sorry mate… this will be more of a 2005 from my life.

1st Jan 2005, I and my friends decided that we would celebrate the year differently. We took a couple of cars and visited few villages affected by Tsunami. We distributed bread and biscuits to many affected people… a very satisfying day indeed. At work, my project work was at its peak. Nighouts had become a routine reflecting on my family’s routine. I still remember spending my birthday night in office along with some colleagues. That’s when I started thinking about a shift. First week of Feb, I got a call from SAP labs in Bangalore. I had a telephonic interview following which I was asked to come down to Bangalore. I was determined to take this on and prepared to an extent in the 2-3 days time I had. I have to admit I was kind of flummoxed… the interview was on Java, Java and only that… an area where I had done well more often than not. The following day I gave my resignation @ Cognizant. Even as Valentine’s Day was just another day in my life (as has always been!!), end of Feb saw me bidding an adieu to Chennai.

March 1st, a new job, a new place and a new environment beckoned. Introduction, induction, ID cards, bank account etc happened over the next few days. My ABAP training started in a couple of days and it was to have me occupied for two full months!! Being from a Java environment I felt that ABAP is a primitive language. But as we proceeded to advanced concepts, I started enjoying ABAP but then fate was not without irony. End of March, I met my team for the first time as we gathered to have dinner at Taj West End. India was playing Pakistan in Bangalore and I met (rather saw) Irfan Pathan n Kaif dining there. We took photos with them and the evening was coming to an end when my manager called me and said “U had worked on Java in your previous organization right? Why don’t u join the team tomorrow?” And thus my training was cut short and I never ventured into ABAP again. Phew!! End of financial year 2005 meant that whether India’s GDP grew or not, my pocket got a bit heavier.

April 1st and all those who joined in March were invited for the freshers’ party @ SAP. Music, dance and beer glasses broke the silence of the serene night. Soon after EJBs, web services, Net weaver and footer (a game of football played with ur hands) et al started falling into a routine. This continued for April and May. End of May our team was shifted to another office known as GR Tech Park. Not that it made a difference to my work, but then footer was kicked off from my routine from then on. Back home, we bought a new gas stove and there started some exciting adventures i.e. cooking. I used to leave office @ 6 to experiment with the sambhar and the curry.

June 10 it was and me n my friends decided on a team lunch. But the funny part was we did not invite any of the leads or manager… it was strictly meant for people at my level only. We had hot pizzas and chicken stuff from pizza hut n kfc @ itpl only to come under speculation back in office. Even as the high level design was in progress, my team’s enthusiasms never plummeted and end of June we went to Club Cabana, a resort on the outskirts of Bangalore. Bowling, pool n snooker marked the day as the first half of the year drew to a close.

July… one of my roommates got admitted in US university for MS. We had a rousing party coconut grove. From then on we were only two in our house. In the workplace, the designs and architecture reviews continued. The architects visited from Germany, not that I had lot of interactions with them, except that their presence was the very reason that we had another team party @ palm meadows. August, September, October and November were probably the time when a minute had only 10 seconds. Now I realize the truth in what Einstein had said “When u sit on a hot stove a minute seems like an hour but when u sit near a pretty girl and hour seems like a minute… that’s relativity”.1000, 2000, 3000… the never ending lines of code put an end to my cooking abilities. I had a long weekend for Diwali and even though most of my friends left for their native, I held back for reasons unknown to me.

By first week of December, integration was on full flow. Now that I dint have much work, I picked up a new trade from one of my colleagues. It was a game called “Collapse”, a game from the yahoo network. I was mastering the game even as our release date approached. After lot of integration and testing, the project was released on 23rd of Dec. The day before, on 22nd, we had an extravagant party @ Leela Palace.So 2005 had been kind to me, I must say. Hope I have many more pages like this in the book called life…