Moving to India back from US

It feels weird starting blogging again in the new era of Tweets and LinkedIn/Medium posts.

The topic that I chose after all these years is something I have personally experienced and yet is not so common.

Me and my family recently relocated back to India from US. Wanted to share some insights around the key things that anyone should do before leaving the US. In fact most of the points below applies to people living in US as well.

There are tons of these to-do lists out there that tell you about more common stuff like, closing subscriptions, things to purchase etc. I am not going to go over the usual but will cover some of the not so common stuff which I realized a bit late.

1. Get a living trust done for your family. 
1. Add the right people as trustees and legal guardians for your kids.
2. Assign your assets to the trust where ever possible or add trust as beneficiary if applicable.
2. Get a term life insurance for 30 years to hedge against your home loan. This should usually add a premium of about a hundred or two hundred dollars to your monthly EMI. In the long term this extra few dollars will not amount to much but will give you the guarantee that your home will not need to be sold in case something happens to you. Bank will not transfer the loan to anyone else. They will require you to pay off the loan which your trustee can do with the term insurance.
3. Place credit freeze on all 3 credit bureaus for everyone in your family including any minor kids.
1. It will protect yourselves while you are out of the country and you can unfreeze it in seconds if needed.
2. Your kids can unfreeze the credit freeze themselves when they turn 18. Placing credit freeze for minor kids requires you to follow a different offline process for each credit bureau.

Survival Instinct: The act of acting without thinking

Today was our college reunion day (not the official one but just few of my college buddies only) and I had come all the way from Hyderabad to Bangalore for this and was so looking forward to meeting them all. The itinerary for the day was for all of us to meet at the Gopalan Arcade mall (which recently got opened near our alma mater) and then go to the nearby less known dam after lunch to catch a good natation.

You are wondering why I am telling you all this, well the important part of this story and the main theme of this post is what happened while we were there swimming.

The water was looking very inviting from the beginning and when we entered the water it was pretty warm and not as cold as we had expected it to be. We immediately started having fun and I started swimming in my usual coarse, uncouth style, splashing water everywhere as I swam. Inspite of that I was the still the second best swimmer in our group (Harsha being better than me because he could swim with backstroke and others not being able to swim at all :) ). Anyways, as I started swimming, with each yard I covered, I became more bold (not confident but bold because I was already confident that I could swim a little :) ). Now, after swimming for 1 or 2 laps and having assessed that the water level around the area where we were swimming wasn't too deep, I decided to swim for a longer distance. Please keep in mind that I was not aiming at swimming towards the center of the river but only in the horizontal direction i.e. along the shoreline. So, here I am swimming and swimming, continuously, full of confidence, with all eyes on me (inherently myself assuming that the depth is same as it was when I started) and then suddenly the unexpected happens.

I try to stop and I am not able to get a foot hold. My head goes inside the water as soon as I stop and I realise I am in a much deeper water than I had thought I was in.

It is difficult to explain everything that I felt at that moment but trying to just rethink that moment sends a chill up my spine. I think, at that moment my brain switched from the usual voluntary mode to the involuntary mode and there was no more logical thinking, no more planning or scolding... there was only one thing on my brain and that was to decide what needed to be done next to avoid the otherwise inevitable...

It was in the SURVIVAL INSTINCT mode.

All of a sudden, I have this the immense force from within which makes me swim (not tell me or ask me... because I have long stopped thinking, I am just acting now) with all my strength towards the shore.

"You are not thinking, you are just pushing and pushing with both your legs and arms, as fast as you can with as much force you can muster because you don't know... you don't know if you have crossed the danger zone or not. It is sheer panic that grips you."

I finally raise my head and realize that I am now close to the shore and decide to stop. When I do stop and get my feet on the ground, I... I just sit down, with my heart still thundering, my whole body vibrating, not having realised yet that what I had just faced was the fear of death.. and its consequent reaction from myside, the SURVIVAL INSTINCT.

PS: I was fine after 2 mins, calmed down and was back to swimming on the safer side of the river :).

Life at Microsoft

Hm... Its been long time since I blogged about anything after getting into Microsoft. There isn't going to be any technical stuff in this post, sorry about that ( maybe later.. :) ). When I started for this post I didn't have a topic to write about but all of a sudden I have so much to talk about that I think I can write a novel out of it.

Anyway, something I really wanted to say for a long time is that, moving to Hyderabad, getting to know all these people (both professionally and otherwise), making some of my best friends here, working with some of the best people (I mean people not minds, although they are still some of the best minds I have seen) has been by far one of the best things that has ever happened to me till date.

I feel like blogging about more things now, will update with more things happening here and also some technical stuff if I can get hold of any :).

I have this habit of typing "Thanks, Anand B" at the end of every message that I type nowadays, something that I have picked up with writing all those mails at Microsoft :)

Till then, sayonara friends.

Configuring linksys router with sify broadband or bsnl connection

I have chosen sify and bsnl because one is dsl and other adsl. So, you can follow similar steps if you have any other broadband connection.

For bsnl connection -

Prerequisites :

1. You need to have working bsnl connection with an adsl modem i.e. the connection will be something like this, PC <---> ADSL modem <---> BSNL connection.

Steps you need to take to configure the router :

1. First note your ip and default gateway address.
2. Next reset your ip and dns info ( in windows you can do this by selecting the option get ip address automatically, instead of manually entering the ip addresses ).
3. Now disconnect your pc from the adsl modem.
4. Connect your pc to the router i.e. one of the four lan ports ( not the blue port ) of the router.
5. now type http://192.168.1.1 in your browser. Goto setup and set the configuration of router to static ip ( you will have three options dhcp, static ip or pppoe ).
6. There you will have two parts, internet setup and network setup. Internet setup is the config between router and adsl modem, whereas the network setup is the config between router and pc. For your pc, router is the default gateway and for your router, adsl modem is the default gateway.
7. In the internet setup part, set the ip, subnet mask, default gateway and your dns addresses to the original configuration which you were using in your pc with only the adsl modem.
8. Now go to the network setup part and set your ip as some other subnet other than the internet ip you just set. In my case the internet ip is 192.168.1.38 and my local ip address is 192.168.2.1 - notice that they are in different subnets, since subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 - you will need to make changes accordingly. By default you will have your local ip address set to 192.168.1.1 but since your adsl modem has that as its address you can't set the same address to this and thus you need to change it to 192.168.2.1. Now your pc, phone or laptops will get the address of the form 192.168.2.xx
9. Now connect your router's blue port to your adsl modem.
10. Now enable dhcp in your router ( it usually will be enabled by default ). If you don't enable WEP, it will crib for the first time. So, configure it.
11. Thats it you have now setup a local lan. I am using my ip phone, my pc and my laptop simultaneously.

Sify Broadband -

Prerequisites :

1. You will need to have a working connection of sify ( the network cable ) given by them and the connection using the client should be working properly.

Steps to setup the router :

1. you will take the same steps as before i.e first note your ip, gateway, dns addresses.
2. next remove all your existing ip config of your pc.
3. Now connect your router to your pc.
4. All the steps are same, you select static ip and configure the network and internet parts. If the ip given to you by sify is of the form 10.xx.xx.xx then you don't need to change anything on the local ip address part of the router.
5. In the static ip configuration page of your router there will be an option called PPPoE passthrough. It will be disabled by default, you need to enable it.
6. Next connect the sify cable to the blue port of your router and pc to any one of the 4 lan ports.
7. Now run the sify client from the pc and connect to the internet. You are now up and running.
8. Wait forgot to tell you the main part, in sify they bind the username and password with your mac address, so you got to call your sify provider and tell him to change the mac address from your pc to that of your router.
9. If you login to your account using the client from your pc, you will be able to connect to internet without any hassles from other devices connected throught the router i.e. the ip phone, or laptops etc.

If you feel that anything more can be added to this please leave a comment. Hope this helps.

Quotes from the movie Kungfu Panda

Here are some of the best quotes from the movie,

1. There are no accidents.
2. One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it
3. Mind is like the water, when it is agitated it becomes difficult to see but if you allow it to settle the answer becomes clear...
4. There is just news, there is no good or bad news.
5. There is no secret ingredient, you only need to believe...
   
6. A real warrior never quits.
   

I liked the first two the most. Lots of meaning in them....

Live in the moment.....

I have heard that to see a change (from your normal mundane routine) in your life, something huge has to come your way. Well I have felt this urge to live my life to the fullest after what happened to me today and I would like to share my experience with you all.

Today was like just any other day and my friend Rakshitha calls up and tells me that we both and her friend shall go to college in her new car ( Alto - I think it was her birthday gift, anyway ) and collect the hall tickets. She was really excited to show her new car and I was skeptical at first but then thought what the heck and agreed to go to college with her.

Well... we go to college get the hall tickets, talk to few friends there and leave for back home and while coming back.... wait before you read ahead I need to tell you how we were seated in the car so that you get the whole picture. As you all know it is right side steering in cars sold in India, anyway rakshitha was driving and Rahul Bhuptani ( her project partner ) was seated beside her and I was seated exactly behind her in the back - the right rear door is just to my right and there is no one to my left. Now, where was I... ya, so we left college and as we neared Nayandhalli signal she tried going past a truck by overtaking from the left ( which is not legal by the way according to traffic rules here ) or maybe the truck was going to right, anyway as we went past the truck, the left front wheel of the truck came within inches of the rear right door of the car i.e. next to my window. I am sitting there looking at the mud guard (front left) of the truck and thinking... "should I wear the seat belts.... ?", well then thought that she knew what she was doing and thought otherwise and started enjoying the music. Later as we reached Vijayanagar she was trying to overtake some BCC truck and he kept on blocking her, so she tried to grab the first opportunity she got and she tried to overtake from the left but in the hurry she didn't notice the rear side of the car....

The main idea of this entry is for you to imagine what happened so I will paint you a much better picture. The truck is on the right side of the road and our car on the left side and she is trying to over take the truck from left side and change the track to the right side. She has crossed only half way and without realising started steering to the right. I am sitting there looking at the left front wheel ( actually it was the black mud guard ) coming really close to the door i.e. towards me. I am sitting there looking at the truck's wheel, thinking "should i tell her to move left" and before I could say anything she rams the car to the truck i.e. the door beside me. Man.... I have never seen or experienced anything like that in a long long... time. I am looking at the wheel and it jams straight at me ( car's rear right door ) and that is the not the end of it, she starts panicking and starts moving the car towards the truck instead of going away from it, well rahul took the wheel and pulled the car to left and parked it. We then went out to check the door - well the door was pumelled in and she had to take the car for replacing her door later on and luckily no one was hurt.

Well... this was the second time I have experienced anything like that and I don't want it to be ever forgotten and that is why I am writing it down here. Anyway the main idea of me blogging was to tell you about how I felt after this incident. Interestingly I wasn't scared or panicky but was really excited and happy. I was excited because it was something different from the mundane life and happy because I will never be able to have such a close experience and live to tell the story another day, not even if I want to have such an experience.

After that I have realized the meaning of the phrase "Live in the moment" i.e. you never know what is in store for you when you leave your home, so live your life as if there is no tomorrow :-)

I know it feels kind of cliche when you hear it but the realization behind it is something everyone has to have once in life and the sooner the better :).

Living in the future

I have been living in the future for a long time now. What I mean to say is that I have been living with my dreams for a long time. You know... everything like, learning to play guitar, learning how to swim, having a pet dog etc. Every time I come close to doing any of this, I just will postpone it for the future, so I have been living with the hope that one day in future, I will be able to do all this and more.

I have tried many times to make this work but I have never been able to make this future of mine to become the present but I will never give up, one day i will have a pet dog no matter what( maybe after I become a software engineer and have our own house etc etc ), one day I will learn to play a guitar and some day I will do all those crazy things that I have always wanted to do.

I think the reason why my future can't become my present is that I am making the wrong choices, taking decisions which only take me far off from my future. If I want all those things to become my present then I need to make time for them and that means prioritizing things. So, you see we came to the first point again and when we prioritize we start thinking of future ( of yours and your family ), your work, your life in the long run and have to give up some of the recreation and stuff in life and this means that all those dreams of mine will be dreams for ever.

The biggest question mark facing everyone is "life", so lets see where it will take me and how things will go for me.