What would I have done if Music wasn't there in my life ?

Living in this world is not at all easy, especially when you do not meet the expectations of people around you. We can clearly see different people with variety lifestyles. Here I would like to mention some of the lifestyles I have witnessed.
I belong to somewhat to a middle class family. Such are families that dream upper class and live low class. Damn funny. Well I was born in such a family and there is no hiding. Similar like other middle class families, there has been ups and downs. I hate the downs coz they are peace killing instances. I have always dreamed big, quite becoz am ambitious and it is very difficult to keep dreaming big when you do not find it ever happening in reality.
But now I truly realize that God has really blessed me in many ways. I faced this reality when I fell in a conversation with one of my colleagues. It was never easy for me to believe that I was blessed and many a times I cried and whispered to my own mind that I am a loser. Today I have buried that deep below my thoughts, I crushed it and the pieces remains inside, maybe they may come up again tomorrow or the next moment. Now why did I pose a question "What would I have done if Music wasn't there in my life ?" You may not find the answer to this question fitting my written context but gladly it does....
As I said when felt the downs, it really used to hurt me. I have felt that I am weak and alone. Why this all happened is because I kept dreaming big and ideally they were worldly things that used to pull me and make me fight for what was not all relevant and necessary. I somehow discovered that the best to keep myself away from getting myself drown in useless thoughts was to deviate my mind and keep it busy. Dream starts with your imagination and imagination starts with your thoughts and all that thought needs is your five senses.
I found music as the only thing that could keep my imagination away from the undesired thoughts. Music took me to a different world and you know what, it is real fun.
I am a person who loves good music, I do not go for the lyrics most of the times. It is the tune that swings our mind at different thought frequencies. Omg! I sound so crazy. One who listens to all kinds of music can know better what I mean to say.
I dance, I cry, I sleep and I live the music. It is a different world there, far better than what is around me.

Solving problems using 5 WHY technique

The technique was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda and was later used within Toyota Motor Corporation.

The 5 WHY is a technique where we get to the root of a problem when we have asked 5 questions in a chained manner.
   For example, suppose a student faces an issue "I reach school daily very lately". Now if the student wants to analyse why this happens. The first question can be "Why I reach late?" , to which the answer would be "Because I depart from home late."
The next question to this would be "Why I depart from late?" . The answer to this now varies. "Because I get up late" or "Because I take a lot of time in getting dressed" or "Because I execute some activity in morning before departure".
So in this way one can continue questioning the evolving answers and is believed that by the fifth question is asked, one gets to the real cause of the problem. It is not necessary that five questions have to be asked. It can be lesser than that also. If you are unable to get questions  or are not able to reach the root cause then it simply means you aren't giving the right answer to the earlier asked question or you aren't asking the right questions to the evolving answers.

This technique can be applied any where or any environment where an individual or group is stuck with problem or blocker. I have also felt that through the course of questioning one can create or obtain newer ways of doing things.
I have not started applying this to big problems but I have rather started exercising this in smaller issues so that I can really understand how to create the right questions.

Time 4 Muzik ---- Part 2

This article is on my view about sound/ audio/ music. For us people who can hear, we are surrounded by sounds. We use the term noise in physics for sound that is impure. So in reality, we are most of the time surrounded by noises because noise is more often unpredictable. We are bound to hear these noises until we close our ears with hands or cotton stuffed. Before going into details, I would like to mention something on the five senses we have.


Our five senses, we are aware, are vision, smell, taste, hear and touch.

• We can block vision if we close our eyes or place something opaque very close to eyes.
• We can block smelling if we cover our nose or stop breathing (of course for few moments until you don’t suffocate to death  )
• We do not taste unless we can place the stuff on our tongue.
• We can block hearing, as mentioned before, if we close our ears.
• Finally, we cannot feel anything if we do not come in contact with the object or entity.

What I tried to mention here is that we at least one or another way of blocking the senses. When it comes to audibility we are bound to hear noises or sounds all the time we are awake.

Some people love to dance but helplessly don’t have the talent, some love to sing but there also lack the talent to sing in the right tune or chord. Even though every person do not like to see dance, every person does like to hear music and this music will be of individual taste. You understood what I meant. I am very sure there will be a music which would be liked by everyone because there might be a tune which strikes the brain chords.

Onam at EY --2011

These are few pics I took from my new Cam... Njoi...

Thinking out of the box-----PART 1

Many a times have we heard this phrase "Thinking out of the box..." . Literally this phrase means to think differently. The notion of something outside a perceived "box" is related to a traditional topographical puzzle called the nine dots puzzle.

The Nine dots puzzle >>
The puzzle proposed an intellectual challenge—to connect the dots by drawing four straight, continuous lines that pass through each of the nine dots, and never lifting the pencil from the paper.


The phrase "thinking outside the box" is a restatement of the solution strategy. The puzzle only seems difficult because we imagine a boundary around the edge of the dot array. Hence the solution is provided in the comments.
For a Tester: The job of a tester is to think about every possible outcome of a software to every possible input to it. By thinking out of the box, a tester can perform better and discover more number of defects either in the requirement review stage (static testing) or during testing the software (dynamic testing).
Before going into much depth, I would like to share with you few amazing facts about our human brain that most of us are yet unaware of, after all that is where we start thinking.




· Every time you recall a memory or have a new thought, you are creating a new connection in your brain.
· Laughing at a joke at is no simple task as it requires activity in five different areas of the brain
· The average number of thoughts that humans are believed to experience each day is 70,000
· Juggling has shown to change the brain in as little as seven days. The study indicates that learning new things helps the brain to change very quickly.
· Yawns wake up the brain- Yawning expands our pharynx and larynx, allowing large amounts of air to pass into our lungs; oxygen then enters our blood, making us more alert.
· Music lessons have shown to considerably boost brain organization and ability in both children and adults.
· Your brain comes out to play at night: You’d think that your brain is more active during the day, when the rest of your body is. But it’s not. Your brain is more active when you sleep.
· Your brain can store everything: Technically, your brain has the capacity to store everything you experience, see, read or hear. However, the real issue is recall — whether you can access that information.
· Read aloud. Parents and teachers who read aloud and talk often to young children are promoting brain development
Don’t you feel now more confident knowing that your brain functions so powerful? These are common facts about human brain. Initially when you read through the article, a question might have provoked in your brain “How can I think out of the box?” Well I have the answer to your questions and we shall see that in Part-2.

Life giving moments

It is Monday(11th of July) and I check my watch. It is 1530 hours already and I am in a hospital sitting at a place waiting for my turn for more than 3 hours. I am supposed to be in my office where my work awaits me. Well I am in hospital for a reason. It is not because I am sick or in pain but for someone, whom even I do not know, who is already admitted there and is struggling for his life.

The call of help comes last week Friday (8th of July) when I was planning to enjoy my weekends with my sister who would be at home for couple of days. The person who calls me is Anil who is the cousin brother of the patient. He talks with me over the phone and deliberately asks about my willingness. I go for it.

The patient is undergoing a 6 hour long open-heart surgery and needs up to 8 bottles of fresh blood. Well right now I am more nervous than the patient's parents and siblings. It is because this is my first time I am donating blood. I am just very cautious about the aftermath.
6 bottles have been transferred to the operation theatre and now the doctor calls for the next two. Oh yes! It is my turn. I walk my way towards the blood bank unit of the hospital. I cross the place where the patient's wife carrying a baby in her arms looks at me. Her eyes spoke everything which I could imagine. I am accompanied with another person towards the blood bank who unlike me has donated blood several times. Finally after 10-15 minutes it is over and I come out. The relatives thank me and I depart returning back a smile.

The same day at around 1830 hours, Anil calls me up and happily thank me again and says that the operation has been successful. Hearing this I also feel really good. I could really understand the seriousness of this experience and I would also like to share my knowledge and awareness on this life giving moments.

My blood group is A-ve. It is not so common like other groups.
For donating blood, the donor needs to have at least 50 kgs of weight and one can donate blood in every 3 to 6 months.
After donating blood, the quantity of blood which is in the body gets replaced with fresh one within an hour so it is always healthy to take rest for at least 10 minutes and drink lots of water.
Persons with diseases like Hepatitis, Cancer, Tuberculosis and HIV should really avoid blood donation.
There is a general screening process prior to blood donation which is done at the time of donation.
Last of all, your blood should match the recipient's blood. :-D

So if you find yourself safe in all the options, please go ahead and donate blood. Who knows when and where someone must be in desperate need of blood and struggling between the edges of Life and Death.

Today...

Everyday I ask myself "Have i done something valuable and different?". This is mandatory that I keep asking myself before I go to bed. The answer will tell me whether 'Today' was different from the earlier days or not.

I am happy today because even in my laziness God has brought before me an opportunity to act different and give something good to the world. It is from a social team called as 'MAD'. They are otherwise known as "Make A Difference".
If you wish to visit or have a look then try the site www.makeadiff.in or check their blog "http://makeadiff.in/blog/".

I am looking forward to this opportunity and this time I will make sure that I contribute something as much as I can on my part because this is a place for youths to make a difference. If I say I am different then I gotta be different and definitely make a "Difference" :)

A few more experiences..

Its the month of June and after another month I will be completing one year of professional experience in Software testing.
Gosh!! Look at my blog, where was I all these days? This is my first article after the month of October...huh... Well even though I was away from my blogging activities, I always found myself thinking on something about Testing. Apart from hours when I was working, all the other time I was asking myself "Where have I reached now?" Perhaps this is the question that we all are meant to ask to oneself. It’s probably the best question to assess oneself (hehe)...
Right from my school days I have always crazed for computers and technology. Even though a profession such as testing has not really put me deep into using my innovation and flexibility, I still do feel that my team does really need a contribution from my part.
Ok, now I guess anyone who does not belong to IT world would not really understand what the heck I am talking about. Well everyone does really know about software that they are developed and then used by various people for various purposes. Going deeper into the technical aspect of software, these are designed, developed and then tested. The development of software takes around its requirements. Every software is based on requirements and every software serves purpose. In order for a software to be defect free and of good quality, it must be tested. Software testing is in itself a very effective and necessary process during software development. I assure you that I will very soon write an article on software testing and post my own thoughts and findings, if any, in the article.
So where were we? Oh yeah, my team and profession. So as I said I am into software testing. I have seen in my organization that we as testers do only one thing. ‘Test the software and discover or detect defects’. I am not satisfied up to this. I believe, as software testers we can give much more to our profession and work. In my organization what I generally see is that we test software and detect uncovered defects. We can say that a defect occurs when the user requirement says one and the software behaves or provides another.
We as testers can do something different in addition to this. We as testers can bring in new additional value to the product by suggesting ideas or features within the product that can make the product really user friendly and unique from its competing products.
Ah! Not again! the same question comes back ," What ideas? How do I get these ideas? When should I come up with such ideas?" Now this is entirely my next topic I am going to post here on my blog. When we talk about 'Ideas', it is related to one thing and it is 'Mind'. So I will be back again with my thoughts and study about Ideas and its implementation in my profession.