Sudeep D'Souza

It was almost 12 years ago that I visited Ooty as a student from college staying in rustic run down dormitories for a couple of days and doing the regular sights that had to be seen by every tourists visiting this wonderful hill station. It was so different this time - we stayed in 3 different resorts in different parts of Ooty. It all started with taking the flight from Hyderabad to Coimbatore and then the lovely drive up the hills that took about 3 hours to do with 34 hair pin bends that brought nausea to the strongest of stomachs. But at the end of the drive we arrived at Kingscliff to the most wonderful view of Ooty from high up in the hill. We then had lunch in the award winning restaurant at Kings Cliff called Earl's Secret. A beautiful restaurant serving fine dining that makes everyone feel special. After some trekking around the hotel and some shopping at Charring Cross it was time for drinks and dinner which was served in the Bar Room of this resort with a real crack...

We just celebrated Earth Day and Earth Hour . I am for these two concepts to try and save the environment. A lot of organizations are going green and i had an opportunity to see first hand how one organization is going green and the double standards within that organization in implementing this. Let me recount my experience. There were no paper/plastic cups at the coffee/tea/cold drink/water dispensers. When i looked around i found coffee mugs and then realised that we had to use those to drink anything. A very noble idea to save paper and the environment - but what about water. In a city like Hyderabad where water is a problem i was observing that each time someone drank from those mugs they would wash it and then again wash it after it has been drunk from. Now you might wonder why was it washed twice - the reason is the person who used the mug washed it because he used it. The person who was going to drink from that mug washed it because he did not know if the person who last used...

It was great to be back at the Indiblogger meet after more than 2 years. The meet was held at the Fortune Select Manohar hotel near the Begumpet Airport and it was great to meet some old friends that i got acquainted with in the last meet and it was nice catching up with them after so long. I also got to meet a lot of new friends and learnt about their interesting blogs that I am sure to be busy reading over the next few days. The meet started off on time with some entertaining videos on a mystery blogger who wanted to come all the way from Germany to attend the blogger meet - the Indiblogger ice breaker spoof is always very entertaining. After that it was the 30 seconds of fame where each participant in the bloggers meet could introduce themselves and their blog. There were a lot of interesting bloggers with a mixture of the young and the old, the quirky funny bloggers to the serious bloggers. There were bloggers who blog about stories, dreams, inner voices and a...

There are a lot of universities that have made their courses online which usually involve a  professor taking a class and the class is recorded and published on the internet. These are usually complex courses that are long and very involving and it takes time and patience to complete them. On the other hand there are courses for school children which are usually custom paid programs that cost quite a bit. These programs are delivered via custom programs for children to watch and learn. I came across The Khan Academy  which has videos for teaching children Math and Science and has a lot of videos related to banking, finance, investing, venture capital funding and so on. All these videos are done by a single person Salman using paint as a whiteboard and with him explaining the concept. The wonderful part is the simplicity of the whole delivery mechanism and the effectiveness in using this delivery mechanism to teach a concept. All the videos are free and are available on y...

Over the last few days I have been having interesting discussions with my friends on being passionate in what we do versus having focus on the money aspect while doing things. Here are my thoughts on the same. I belive that one needs to be passionate about what one does. There should be an excitement while thinking about what one is doing. What this does to the person is that it makes them enjoy what they are doing and it also ensures that they feel responsible for what they are doing. This automatically leads to a better product and a more caring service. This all sounds so wonderful but there is a downside to this just having passion and doing things may not result in short term monetary rewards but almost always there are long term monetary rewards if the person sticks to their passion right through the ups and the downs. Also during this time the person is enjoying what they are doing and this keeps them motivated and happy. On the other hand if a person is doing a job ...

I believe learning can never ever stop. Everyday there is something new to learn and there are times when you are forced into a situation that drives you to learn even faster. These situations are crisis situations - during this time you always learn at lightning speed and you feel it is the hardest time in your life but the important thing is to stick in there ride out the crisis, do your best and you end up coming out of it a more knowledgeable individual. No amount of make believe scenarios and training can give you the kind of learning a crisis situation gives. Having significant experience in Software Development and having worked on more than one large project one feels that they have seen pretty much everything. Over the last 15 days I have been through two crisis situations that have made me realise that I have not experienced it all yet. The first situation involved our servers that were on a public IP located at a data center that hosted our website http://yourschool.in/ . I ...

I was reading a very deep and touching post today on Subroto Bagchi's blog which is about a young girls life changing in a momment for no fault of hers. Its a very touching story that can happen to any one of us. There have been 2 devastating earthquakes in the last 1 month one in Peurto Rico and the other in Chile. In just a matter of a minute the lives of millions of people changed. Again something that can happen at any time to anyone. Life can change in a momment for any one of us and it is important that we enjoy and have fun with every momment that we have.There is no point in thinking about the missed opportunities in life or what life could be if only we did something - you are wasting precious time that can be spent just enjoying life.