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How this Site was born?
This site was introduced to me by my good friend - Raman Adaikkalavan from Trichy and my college days. Raman used to be the mentor we used to look up to and still continue to do so, due to his thinking above the rest skill set.
Friends - My Asset and Pride Posession
I have been very fortunate to have very good friends around me. The best ever friend group has been my family. I have been blessed with a loving father, understanding mother and supportive sister and I am proud to be a part of the Jayaramans'. The earliest friend outside my family who I can remember is when I used to go to school in a rickshaw. The rickshaw driver even had a nickname for me. The rickshaw mates, Kannan, his younger sister, Srinivasan and his cousin Nithya, Ramkumar my class-mate is all I can faintly remember. When we shifted to Trichy, I met my first best friend, Venkatraman from Thillainagar. He was an introvert and he had the capacity, skill and intelligence to become whoever and whatever he wants to, but had to just believe in that thought. He had a wonderful family and a father who always used to talk to us like a friend. Venkat has always helped me with my studies, since he is an intellect and I am a guy who will understand things only with repeated discussions / explanations. Venkat has been very successful in his life especially after realizing his fathers' dream of finishing the PhD in states and getting employed in Schlumburger. While still in R.S.Krishnan school in BHEL campus of Trichy, I met a fantastic group of four - Balaji, Kirubaharan, Saravanan and Shanmugarajan. The four of us still share a wonderful bondage of friendship and we have had so much fun especially at Sara's place (Kuttai as we fondly call him) playing cricket most of the times and waiting to spot our likings and adrenaline rush in the crowd exiting Maris theatre. Shanmu always used to be the chill out and bold guy taking risks to have that extra fun. Kiruba is a big time talker and when it comes to doing what he had talked, he will become a magician by disappearing from the place. Kiruba is also an excellent athlete despite the chronical breathing problem which he had then. He was a last minute entrant in one of the School Sports Day and surprised everyone by winning the event defeating the leader who was leading the pack by more than half a round. Kuttai Sara was a calm, composed and shy person, but capable of doing anything when irked. Sara is now working in UK for software development. Shanmu has finished his PhD in Welding and had joined as a Scientist in DRDO. He has a team of young scientists reporting to him at Hyderabad. Kirubaharan was a Mainframe professional working on links at Caritor, Bangalore, is now in UK for an assignment. He is also the first in our group to get married and also have a kid. Balaji is the intellect and practical person amongst all of us and the most successful guy in his career from our group. He had a clear vision right from taking the Commerce group in his higher secondary studies, finished his CA and is now employed in Mumbai advising large companies on mergers and how to improve their business efficiency. A piece of advise for some young people - Have as much fun in college days, work life may not necessarily guarantee enough of same. I also had a host of friends with whom I shared a lots of my play time (read as football), Amalan and Satheesh are the ones I got to meet even after my school days. I joined the Shanmugha College of Engineering and made a lot of friends. The chain of friendship started at the stop where I board the bus to college, I met Raman and Thillai. Raman is an extrovert and hence mingled with me very early and easily. Thillai was a tough nut to crack, but the nut was interesting after the crux was breached. Thillai has the credit in our group for getting married to his love, surprising for an introvert, happy though. The other new friends who were introduced to me were Vasu, M.Karthi and Vallam Karthikeyan when I was put in the Electronics and Instrumentation department. Most of us used to commute from Trichy to our college and hence started to become close buddies due to the common time spent. As years progressed our shared interests went beyond studies / group discussions, to enjoying music - thanks to Ramu's room equipped with a cassette player (no CD business then) and association with Ramu's mate Palani. Palani had setup an audio recording retail shop and I was esp in awe, when he demonstrated his skills by mixing hindi and tamil versions of a same song into the left and right channels of the audio tape, so that it could be a one-stop shop for both versions of the song. We also used to play a lot, cricket expecially, Vijay used to be an exceptional cricketer. Myself and Vijay used to have interesting duels with he wielding the bat and me the ball. Vijay's brothers also used to play with us in his slim street. Vijay was also the brains in our team, we used to call him "PROFESSOR" due to the classes he used to take for us, he had a thirst for knowledge sharing and loved teaching. Most of my driving skills were learnt and honed on Vijay's bajaj, Ramu's bajaj, Karthi's TVS 50, Saravana's lucky LUNA, Tanjore Karthi's Vespa, Justin Anna's Splendor. I never got a chance to thank them enough for all these helps. I take this opportunity to say a "BIG THANK YOU". Nasru has still left a mark on the top floor of his house, by scribing "Fairoz" in the walls of his rof-top. We used to gather at Nasru's place especially for a feast, Nasru's mom cooks awesome food. I cannot forget the wonderful time we had at one of his Birthday's. When all of us arrived in blue coloured shirts, Ramu and myself went right into the kitchen, lured by the wonderful smell of the food. Ramu started helping her in preparing the food and I started to help by eating the prepared food, Nasru's mom had made more than 6 dishes that night for all of us, we were bowled out by the love, affection and food served that night. Nasru has still left a mark on the top floor of his house, by scribing "Fairoz" in the walls of his roof-top. Saravana's family used to be very accomodating, especially his sister joining us to support against Saravana. We have had so much laughs and fights that we have even almost broken a table at his home. Myself and Karthi have an exceptional chemistry in other matters but were not able to make any progress when in a group study at his house, reason is the distraction in the house opposite to him (more details can be fetched from him). In one of our eat-outs (thanks to my constant hunger for food), I had ordered Fried Rice and Karthi had ordered Schezwan fried rice, when both were served, the only difference we could make out was a garnish of Coriander, we laughed our hearts out on this, since Karthi was expecting something spectacular. He hence was called Schezwan Karthi and later on "Kona Kaana", I would leave the honour of explaining this to Saravana. <<<<<<<<I have more to write about Vasu, Karthi, Vallam Karthikeyan, Sridhar, Sreedharan, Prakash, Ramu's group - Aravinth and Vinayak. Would continue this shortly as soon as I find some time>>>>>>>>>>>> I got my first job in Mumbai with Aarkay Instruments Private Limited, thanks to my Uncle's efforts and respect in the field of Civil Engineering. This was my first venture out of my house, and started my career and my first earned salary. At 5000 INR per month, it was exhilarating to have my first salary and also made me distinguish necessity from pleasure. My first big lesson in life was learnt - The Value of Money, I used to a spendthrift earlier. I also got to meet very interesting personalities in this job. I cannot forget Aiyaz Shaikh who was an Instrument Technician, an extremely talented, intelligent and hard-working, respectable person. I also got to be with Dave Sir, my MD who saw the potential I had and gave me the opportunity to handle projects on my own. My managers were Rajeev and Chandran two contradicting personalities. Rajeev was a dashing and enterprising professional and Chandran can wield politics inside the organization to his advantage anytime. I got to learn what not to do from them. Mishra was a UP guy (Bhaiyya) and it was fun to have him around. Shaikh used to pull his leg a lot. I also got to meet Sathya from L&T who was a very skilled Engineer and who was leading a project at L&T Hazira with the help of Mr. Subramaniam and Nair and also visited the offshore at sea where we were erecting instruments to control Oil Extraction from the sea-bed. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I was from the Instrumentation and Control stream in Engineering and the specialization was in Process Control and Instruments. Sathya and Shaikh were my inspirations during this stint. Also Manoj Kumar Parida and Chottu were among the interesting personalities I came across. Six months at sea without getting to see land was starting to get frustrating and the risk of me not knowing swimming and phobia of heights, forced to look out for an alternative job. Back to office from Offshore I started to show my computer skills off, and I started to manage the IT infrastructure for my company. After going through the hardships at sea, I learnt that life is not a bed of roses (as it seemed so when I was living on my father's hard earned money). This is when my IT career kicked off real fast. My sister was already into IT then, seeing what IT can offer, she suggested me to do Cisco Certification. I quit my job and joined a training academy to study Cisco Switches and Routers. Cleared CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator) and two papers in CCNP before finishing the course. I cleared an additional paper towards CCNP certification after the course and before my next job. It struck me then what Mr.Sunny Therapan from Mangalore taught us in one of his inspiring and eye-opening sessions at our college - Do not think with limitations, there are endless possibilities if you come out of the limited container of thoughts. I then joined FutureCalls Technology, and an enthusiastic entrepreneur Mr. Jagannathan Thirumalachaari. He is a guru in networking and Enterprise Call / Contact centre setup and maintenance. I was the first Technical employee to join the startup apart from the other office executive Latha Srinivasan. I was exposed to the world of data and voice networking in this temple (FCTL) and also my salary was doubled from what I was asking for AIPL. I started to shape up as a professional in FCTL, since I was involved in almost all the projects and initiatives of FCTL. I was doing the proposals, did pre-sales, technical implementation and consulting, vendor liasoning for equipments / , maintenance of call / contact centers, acted as faculty for CCNA courses etc, did marketing of our co-branded headset product. I also did the initial web design and was a key member in arriving on the earlier logo of FCTL. The other great personality who I came across was T. Shivakumar, my Technical Manager. He is an absolute professional and was very proficient in Nortel products especially Meridian range of products. I joined the company as a Network Consultant and was soon promoted as the Senior Network Consultant as the company grew in proportion. I was sent for an implementation at Pune and was actually put to test by my Managing Director. I took it positively as a chance to prove my skills and horne unknown skills and as a recognition by my Managing Director. I learnt that with hardwork and sincere effort comes the breakthrough.This implementation also cut me across a range of accomplices. There was Gunjan Chag who acted as the CEO of Delta World Telesystems, who used to boss around and everybody used to talk ill behind his back. Aneesh Sir was one of the investors in Delta World who was respected a lot by everybody. Vikram Sir was yet another mentor I used to look up to. He runs a small development company (Kaizen Mindworks) by himself and was acting as a CTO for Delta world. He also started an iWay center in Rajkot and was one of the early implementors of technology. His analysis and management was always perfect and hence we used to look in awe at some of his actions or decisions, but all such actions or decisions always resulted in best result. I also came across Gurprashad Sharma - the liason officer (a typical Sardar, emotional and rude), Yogesh - the Accounts incharge (Respectable and Lovable Person), Suhas Bapat - The Civil manager (chaloo), Manoj - The office boy (shanaa and flirt) and Shailesh Jain - the HR Executive (Intelligent and Far Sighted). By some turn of events in FCTL, I came to realization - The short sighted management is happy with people who are "Yes" men and not the ones who question them and also believe in "Door Mat Syndrome". I started to look for other opportunities, since the new management of FCTL was choking and making the employees uncomfortable. Then I got a wonderful package with Infosys Technologies Limited in the Systems Integration Practice unit. I left for Bangalore to join my journey with Infosys and SI. I was offered more than double the salary of what I was drawing at FCTL. But I was in for a surprise.... Systems Integration practice had this concept of "BENCH" which I could not comprehend on coming from a start up company with 24*7 work. It took me more than three months to accomodate to the Infosys culture. I met some wonderful people - Chandramouli and Babu Gopalsamy. I also met someone with whom my company has had a past of healthy and sour relationship, to my surprise he was the first person to talk to in my SI practice. Mouli sir and myself were paired for my first assignment in Infosys - making of a presentation of Solaris to Linux application porting. With no knowledge on neither Solaris, nor Linux, nor application porting, we explored the magic of internet (read as Googling) to come up with a presentation, which to my knowledge was shelved for good. My next assignment was the most knowledge gaining one till date - Idenity Management. Pitted under knowledge stalwarts such as Somakumar Kolathur and Saritha Nilesh Auti, I learnt how important it is to know where the industry is going and how to evaluate external products without any knowledge of it by using the Analyst reports such as Gartner and Forrestor. My usage of "like" was corrected to "such as" by Soma. He is my true inspiration and mentor. I was given the assignment of exploring MIIS server 2003, I started by installing it and configuring connectors to known Microsoft sources to which it responded in builing a Meta Directory, then came the tough part of integrating with third party products such as Oracle and e-Directory from Novell. When I used to spend a lot of time in the SI lab, I came across other aspiring professionals such as Babu, Ritesh and others. Once the same was done, I was supporting Saritha in setting up a single sign on setup using RSA ClearTrust 5.5. This was the most jinxed productr I had ever seen then, since I never knew Java in which the errors were thrown, nor did I know weblogic server on which this was hosted on. Once this ordeal was over, I was inducted into SI-ACCL. <<More to come shortly>>
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