And the award goes to...

Just finished watching Film fare award distributions. As usual, there were awards for categories - best debut actor male, best debut actor female critics, best film, best director and lots more. There was a round of applause for every award winner, nothing unusual about it but there were also occasions in between when someone walked onto stage and complete audience stood up to listen & clap in respect. It is "these occasions" that kept me thinking and brought me to look back at one of the experiences I had shared few years ago.

I recalled the quote that was recently and earlier heard, "Some demand respect but some command respect". It felt nice to see how everyone stood up for these living (with or without body) legends. I wondered how much effort and time they would have put to make people stand for them. Remarkable!

As it usually happen, a thought follows by another and by another...

One more similar incident happened when we were signing a send-off greeting for Stefan. After we came back to our desks after signing cards, Nav and I started to discuss his card which was full of wishes from colleagues. Literally there was no space left for more people to put their wishes. Nav very rightfully at that moment commented, " When you have it in you, people would like to put words for you..". I understood what he meant by that. Stefan's work - Remarkable and more remarkable was his conduct full of sweetness and kindness. Years have passed since we last worked together but it is always pleasure to look back and remember those projects.

Since we are talking of projects, Stefan and awards - I recall at end of some project together, there were nominations opened for few categories (mostly comic but one). This category was called "Most popular person by virtue of need award". Needless to say Stefan was one of the winners for this award.

On one side it seems little odd to live for appreciation - rather one should focus on improvisation without worrying about how others appreciate it. But for the moment, when it comes to making a contribution, making an impact, giving efforts - one cannot rest until efforts are that will make others stand. There needs to be effort for excellence. Equally important is also to realize and accept what field is for you to excel. 

Excellence should drive you (and me)!!

I know what happened

Work has been really hectic these days, late evenings and weekend working - days seem to be running so fast. All I hear is - defects, retesting, scripts, execution. 

On one such day, we were working till late evening waiting for a fix to arrive for retesting. Since everyone in the team was so tired, I offered for them to leave for home while I alone stay back to retest the fix. It wasn't that I wasn't tired but I didn't mind staying back a little late. Everyone but one more friend left for the day. 

In some minutes, fix arrived and we began to retest. During that piece of retesting, I noticed something else broken. I didn't believe at first look because that bit seemed to be working during the day - and fix was no way related to the now broken area. Chances of these two issues being related were so low - I tested again but same results. So I raised a new defect and called it a day.

After reaching home, the mind got little relaxed and I started to think about the new defect. Suddenly it clicked that I perhaps might have used wrong data and hence the wrong results. May be there was no defect at all. I texted a friend that perhaps in hurry and tiredness, I hadn't analyzed the issue properly and by mistake have raised new defect. I couldn't be sure of the data, but somehow became uncomfortable with the thought that next day everyone would come blaming that I had made silly mistake and impacted timelines. Build team would reject the defect next day - this looked more obvious, and my friend too instead of comforting said something on those lines that I felt more guilty. 

I got really upset on how things had turned - and in those thoughts, for a moment I did ask for God to intervene and somehow correct things.  As time passed, I convinced myself to face the outcome next day. 

Next morning when I opened the defect - it was indeed rejected as I had expected. But what I hadn't expected was that Build saying they hadn't delivered the functionality for testing - therefore we shouldn't be testing that area.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I re-read what they were saying - the functionality was working last morning and now they were saying it was never delivered.

Although defect was still rejected but there was no blame game - everyone's attention drew towards the fact that certain functionality was never delivered. Whole day meetings went on - but to talk why was code not delivered?

And btw - next day I also checked what data I had used. That also seemed to be correct  - perhaps I was worrying for no reason at all. 

After a week since this incident - yesterday I got a chance to speak to build team members about same defect, where they requested to retest again and also said that the functionality should have been delivered - and perhaps they had by mistake put comments that functionality was never delivered. There was something wrong which they didn't understand - they were really confused over how things had turned up. 

As we continued to talk on that defect, I couldn't resist thinking about the rescue operation that God had done for me. I was worried about the mocking that people would do, and here same people were making apologies for putting wrong comments.

These days at work, whenever the same defect is talked of - everyone is surprised on what actually happened but I smile because I know what happened. 

Thankyou Huzur!