Deepanjan Nag's Magnum Opus

I've had to spend the usual £30+ to needlessly come to office today as my home Internet connection broke yet again yesterday. Loving the solitude though.

Hopped in and out of 9 trains today. A record!

10 Downing Street Sorry, no photos were allowed inside.

This just blew me away. Thanks, Anonymous, for unearthing this asset!

View Larger Map I hop in and out of this station every weekday. It’s a picturesque setting.

T he International Association of Outsourcing Professionals has announced the world's best outsourcing service providers in 2008. Following are the top 10 global outsourcing companies, excluding the Indian firms in the list: The Top 10 global outsourcing companies Accenture (Rank 1) IBM (Rank 2) Sodexo (Rank 4) Capgemini (Rank 5) Hewlett Packard (Rank 8) EDS (Rank 12) ACS (Rank 13) CGI group (Rank 14) SPi (Rank 17) Colliers International (Rank 18)

Don’t ask me why!

Going by the fireworks and holiday for companies like IBM, Wipro and Infosys, it’s today. Going by what some folks are saying, Mozilla and holiday for some other companies, it’s tomorrow. Going by the holiday in our company, it’s day after tomorrow. Our office was virtually vacant today. Traffic too was minimal.

A few days back, we set a new record of travelling office to home in 50 minutes. We set a new record today as well, though at the other end of the spectrum. We took 150 minutes to traverse the same distance!

  Tried it. Liked it. And my money goes to people in need. If only Amul had the marketing clout of Pepsi or Coca-Cola. Buy here .

I hate the blue lights in our new office. The ambience is thoroughly ruined.

Today was Swapna’s last day in our Hyderabad office. I drafted an on-demand farewell mail for her.

I composed the following mail in a fit of rage. Hi,    I had tried to call your center at some listed contact numbers (including XXXX XXX XXXX). Not once have I been able to get through. Some numbers seem to be defunct while others sweetly ring forever. I wonder if this is the norm in TTK or I'm being meted out ad hoc treatment.    At the risk of never being responded to (as has happened previously), I'm falling back on the humble email as a means of reaching out to you. I hope history won't be repeated and I won't need to constantly prod for a response.    I had staked a claim on my mother's medical expenses incurred a few months ago on account of her hospitalization. The claim was made on the 7th of July while the processing began on the 24th of the same month.     It's been a long while but I haven't received any intimation regarding the status of the claim and why the inordinate delay in reimbursing the claimed amoun...

My beloved office shuttle has been replaced by a new one that’s really a pain. The seats are 2*3, very firm, non-reclining and the fronts have a very unergonomic ‘bump’ that's immensely uncomfortable. The bus has very poor suspension and the windows aren’t tinted. Though my interest in life has considerably dwindled on account of this change, there’s still a visual feast that continues to linger while enduring the commute. The cynosure happens to be two female co-passengers. The first is a stunningly curvaceous redhead with a fantastic dressing sense. She should be walking the ramp in Paris instead of writing code in an unassuming cubicle! The second is a diminutive kid who seems straight out of school. Someone should adopt the cutie pie and put her through junior college! Monsoon has made a revelation: my recently-bought umbrella has an atlas-&-axis defect. Each time it’s pressed into service, it keeps collapsing every 5 minutes. Why have I chosen the strange title for t...

15th August proved lucky for my roommate!

The pizza that’s inevitable ordered a few hours later to placate my howling tummy does more harm than good!

Why are some people under the impression that answering an email isn’t obligatory? Is it because emails aren’t disruptive and you can use your own sweet will to completely ignore them without feeling a twang of guilt? Is it because drag-&-drop is a lot easier than typing a response? Is it because we simply don’t feel for others? Or is it because doing nothing comes by default! I think it’s a mix of all of the above and a lot more. I’ve time and again realized emails generally don’t elicit the response they deserve. Even official mails often go unanswered. The retaliatory mail I sent to the office finance section today has a rich antecedence in having the desired effect. I had sent a query last week about the status of a package. I received a response from finance asking me to directly email someone in the same section! Couldn’t they simply forward the query to the person concerned? Anyway, I redirected my query last Thursday. No response until today. I resent the query yet ag...

The day may gradually slip into irrelevance, but it's significant nevertheless. Earth has steadfastly stayed on course and completed 3 revolutions around the Sun since I joined the present company. Kudos, Earth! I celebrated the momentous occasion by surreptitiously devouring 4 chocolate bars. If sharing is caring, I prefer being careless! Today also confirmed a suspicion I always had: not all 34" are the same size, some are really 36" or even 38". Thanks to my newly altered jeans making me look anorexic, I'll now buy trousers only after trying them. Form 16 was resent to my inbox after a high-voltage mail exhorted the hastening. Shuttle #33 witnessed a miracle during the return trip: the AC was turned on for the first time since I started using the bus in April-2007! I couldn't believe my good fortune as the AC roared into life at the outset. I allowed a steady stream of cool air to pamper me till my destination. 'Mr.Roving Eyes' was hell-ben...

The travel-tattered office bag I had been carrying for the past 3 years was finally replaced today. Here’s what it has in common with my DELL Vostro, Nokia N72 and Apple iPod: they’re all in black!