Sanjay Goel resides on goelsanjay.com

Its been quite some time since I registered domain http://www.goelsanjay.com. And even though moving blogger to your custom domain is only a 10 mins job, I have been lazy enough to not spare those 10 mins.
Anyways, here is my first post on the new domain. All the existing posts gets redirected automatically and the rss feed works too.
Great.

One small poll. Which domain is better?

• goelsanjay.com or 
• sanjaygoel.name

I have registered both. Please mark your preference in the comments.

The next step would be to actually write a post, something I haven't done in 3 months. Its high time to do so, expect a post soon.

Wedding, Honeymoon ... and back to Business

The long vacation is over. It actually got over some 12 days ago, but getting back to the business keeps you busy enough to stay away from blog.


Ankita is now an integral part of Goel Family. And I thank everyone who was there to witness it. You can find few selected pics of our wedding here.

Keeping in line with the message of mustseeindia.com, We went to Kashmir for our honeymoon. I would find some time later on to write a full post on how great a place it was and how much fun we had. For now, I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

Gulmarg

The remaining photos are here.

With all these sweet memories, now I am back to Bangalore. And as Ankita joins me here tomorrow, we look forward to starting a new life together. Thank you all who have always been there for us. Let the good times keep on rolling.

Busy busy ... and MSI's new look

There has been times before when I couldn't blog for more than a month. However, I doubt there has been a more busier period in my almost 7 years of professional life.

It has been partly because of the 3 weeks vacation I took to get Engaged and to go on my last bachelor trip, a trip to the North East. I would hopefully get some time next month to write about my experiences there.

The other important reason which has kept all of us here at Must See India busy is the new look of mustseeindia.com. Our earlier theme had been around for some 8 months and we thought it was about time to get something new. We now have an orange theme throughout the site, which looks pretty pleasing to my eye. Also, the pages are much better organized now with one click access to all our new features - flight, train, bus and hotel search.

Please do comment with your valuable feedback for the same.

That is all the time I can spend on this blog right now. You can catch me on twitter for more frequent updates. And tomorrow is an important day in my fiancee's life, so I better get prepared for that ;-)

Losing Status

This is that part of the life which everyone knows is coming and no one knows why. Well I did have some sadistic reasons to people who asked me why in the past, but now I would need permission to publish them. So much for freedom of speech :D

I have lost my bachelor status, as I am now officially engaged to Ankita.

Engagement Pics

Bobby, PK, Lapy, Mama, Lalka, Sid A, Karan, Gaurav, Aman and Priyanka - thanks for coming. You are the best. Hope you all and everyone else would be there for the moral support on D-Day.

25 Random Things about me

I recently wrote a list of 25 things about me on facebook. Reproducing the same here:

• I would be surprised if I am able to write 25 things about myself.
  
• My college nickname Shakti went on to become my alter ego.
  
• I am not a geek in the true sense. I am an entrepreneurial geek. And I know less than most people think I know.
  
• I have reverse aged. Most things that people do in college, I did after it. And I still feel around 5 years older than I actually am.
  
• I am one of the earliest adopters of most web 2.0 services you see today. Gmail, Orkut, delicious, flickr etc
  
• I started blogging in 2004 out of boredom at work. It is one of the best things I have done and continuing.
  
• I discovered my fascination for amateur photography during my Kashmir trip.
  
• I started my first entrepreneur venture mustseeindia.com last year.
  
• I am a risk taker in general and I love adventure sports. I have done rafting, skiing, paragliding. I wish to do sky diving.
  
• I am one hell of a procrastinator.
  
• I am a good teacher. I wish to teach a class just for fun.
  
• I love snow and the Himalayas.
  
• My first kiss was on my bday. My first breakup was on my bday too.
  
• I changed so much during college that a college senior who saw me after 2 years couldn't recognize me.
  
• Quite a few of my friends take my advice in their personal matters.
  
• Biggest compliment I ever got was - It would be really difficult to find a guy who would say bad things about Sanjay.
  
• My only ever purchase of Internet services (except for web hosting for my company) is buying storage on Picasa for storing photos.
  
• Given enough time, I am a good judge of people. I used to do MBTI personality test on willing friends.
  
• I used to have serious aversion to girls till end of college. Now, few of my best friends are girls.
  
• I love gadgets. I used to be a mobile phone freak too until I bought the iPhone. I have become totally uninterested in other phones ever since.
  
• I love music (even though that seems like a cliche). I own a pair of bose headphones for the same.
  
• I am a bad bad singer but I really like to sing. That made me the most popular cacophonist during college.
  
• I have been decent in sports. My biggest achievement in sports is winning a silver medal for my hostel in Volleyball.
  
• I was the surprise Carrom Champion in my final year at college. It was incidently my debut at the championship. I also loved the Munnabhai MBBS carrom sequence, the only place ever where carrom has been glorified.
  
• I have surprised myself. Wrote 25 items and still can think of a few more to write.
  

6 years of software engineering

This is probably going to be the shortest review so far. I have already talked about my new venture a while back. Life has not been the same ever since. I always thought of life as a series of challenges. You solve one, you get another. The level keeps on increasing. Its almost like playing a game. I am pretty satisfied with the way I completed the previous level, and what gives me extra satisfaction is the 2 statements my previous company's GM made when I was about to leave:

• You have very high professional ethics, and such people succeed in the long run.
• You have followed one of the most complete career paths in this company.

That level is over, and its time to play up the highest professional challenge.

On the personal side, life continues to be a roller coaster. I remember that long long time ago (before I even started this blog), I took an EQ (Emotional Quotient) test. In the results, they said that I fell into the same category as Albert Einstein did. Before I could feel proud, I read the next line which said - Albert Einstein had 3 broken marriages.

Three weeks in US

I am going back to India after 3 weeks of stay here. It has been a lot different than what it was last year when I first visited US..

I have too many mixed feelings this time around. I don't know whether coming here was a good idea or bad. Going back today, I don't know whether am happy or sad. And overall I still am not sure whether I would call it a good trip.

I have this firm belief that whatever happens, happens for good, and am gonna stick to that.

So bye bye US, you are pretty cool, but India is where I belong, India is what I love, and am looking forward to meet all my friends and start a new phase of life.

Losing Friends again

I don't understand. Is my life designed like that?
Why does it happen that all my friends suddenly go away from me. I understand that this fast pace life is cursed for friendship. But why does it never happens that one of my friend goes away. It is always almost everyone around.

I have always been a great fan of God's sense of humor. Now I see that he is pretty good at optimization as well. PreparedStatement.executeBatch() performs better than PreparedStatement.execute() :-D

Permanent Age

Read this article by Scott Adams (Dilbert fame) quite some time back.

Ever since I have been thinking over my permanent age. I am a preacher. I have enthusiasm for new things, but it is combined with a sense of cautiousness. I am a good mentor. I know that certain things in life I would never do (like biking to Ladakh).

I feel that my permanent age is in early thirties. Like a fast bowler who has slowed down in favour of accuracy. Though that doesn't mean I've found that accuracy yet.

P.S. My actual age is 26.

5 years of software engineering

Time for the yearly review. This got delayed this time around as I went on to a vacation to Ladakh.

As a college fresher, I was always fascinated by desktop products. A small tool that would just make one small task easier. I always wanted to create such products myself. A little thing but it could make someone's day.
Then I went into Enterprise Java, because thats what most of the Indian software industry is into. And farther and farther away I went from such tools as desktop java was pretty much hopeless and I had no industry experience in C etc.
However, with the onset of Web 2.0, I see a possibility. I see how web based products can be equally, if not more, effective at solving problems and create value for users.

While the Indian software industry has already proved its worth in software services, it is still pretty nascent in software development. And I firmly believe that india is not just a service provider, it is also a huge market. Its high time that indian software companies exploit this market and provide services to its own consumers, rather than focusing only on US.

I am still continuing in software product development, and working in this industry has given me a lot of insight in web products. There has also been lots of insight two most successful revenue models for web products - Ad generated revenue and Lead Generated Revenue. Going forward, its pretty important for us software professionals to think on how we can address this indian market and provide services to our own people.

On the personal side, Lots of good things there as well. I had lots of trips and loads of fun with friends. However, as time is passing by, it is becoming increasing difficult to keep in touch with all friends.
As a perfect example of fast paced life we live in, there was a time when I had more than 10 friends in noida, and within 3 months of that, each one of them left for their individual reasons. I always dreaded the thought of living alone, but sometimes life doesn't give you a choice. Looking back the past 6 months, things haven't been bad. However, this had made my friends even more important in my life.

Friendship is the only real earning that I have after all these years, and I thank my friends for being "my friends". Wherever you are, however busy you are, just keep in touch.

Blog backup service and an error

I just found out that I haven't completed 100 posts yet. The error came in because my Blogger dashboard currently shows "103 posts", while actually its 99 posts and 4 drafts.

So this is the official 100th post. For the record, I have also wrote 9 posts on Technical Advice.

I discovered this error when I was checking out this new service for backing up blogs. BlogBackupOnline looks pretty promising, and it backed up this blog in a breeze. It showed only 99 posts backed up, and thats what gave me the clue.
Check out its review by download squad here.

A century of posting

The last post was my 100th post. That coming in 3 years of blogging with an average of 2-3 posts a month isn't too much of a record to be proud of.

However, blogging has been a great experience and I am happy that I got inspired, started and went on.

There have been certain good posts, and if I choose a few, Fanaah, Being Vulnerable and more recently, Problem with Emotions have been close to my heart.

I am satisfied for being consistently able to write, no matter how small the frequency might be.
And I hope to continue to do so in future.

My First Vehicle

Zen Estilo

4 years of software engineering

Its that time of the year again when I do a self evaluation on my professional and personal achievements and make goals for ahead. I have been doing it since I completed my 2 years in software engineering.

Last year, I had just landed up in a job where I felt I could get better aligned with the professional goals I have set for myself. Leaving behind the dreaded typical Indian Software Services industry, which I could never thrive on, I went into a product development company, which I always felt was more appropriate for a techy/geeky guy like me.

This year saw a reaffirmation of my beliefs and I have beginning to believe that a complete technical career is possible in India as well if you work for the right company. Which is a good sign as its a must if Indian software industry wants to get out of its coolie valley tag. Also, it gives me a much more clear insight of how I would like to go ahead.

Personally, its been a relatively better year than last one. I have been able to slightly come out of the rat race and able to see things with a broader perspective. That puts me into better control of my life. But trouble with life is that you never get clear insights.

Hence I'll go for a "Not a bad job at all", just need to keep moving ahead.

Winning Attitude

I recently was telling someone that when I used to play carom in college, I played it only to win. The obvious response I got was - "So what's new. Who doesn't".

I don't. I don't do things for winning in general. There are only specific instances, like the carom example, when I really want to win. And I used to win pretty frequently at it too because of that.

Even in life, I am content with the loser tag. And its not just that I am okay with losing, I am actually happy losing out. A not so exact but similar example might be that if I am with a group of friends who are pulling my leg just for enjoyment, I might actually give them more fodder for that. I may as well make a complete fool of myself deliberately so that the gang enjoys it and I enjoy alongwith.

As most people I see are ones who need to be taught how to handle failures, I wonder whether there are many people like me.

It might be a good thing as it makes me more content internally than those who always try to achieve everything and get frustated in the process. Or it might be a bad thing as a challenges to win typically make u perform better and hence it is pretty difficult for someone else to make me perform if I don't want too.

Chronic Downloader

Check out this article at downloadsquad. Despite the length of the article, I associate with almost every line of it. Yes, I am a chronic downloader. I also have better names for the same thing - "Freeware Tools Guru" for one ;-)

The Ganga Rafting Trip

Last weekend we went for a company trip to Rishikesh for rafting on Ganga river. And what a trip it was. I have been to lots of places in the country, but most of those were sight seeing/small trekking trips. This one, on the contrary, was a truely adventure trip and I enjoyed it to the fullest. The scariest part of the trip was diving from a 25 ft cliff into water. I did it twice, but believe me, I was scared as hell. I have dropped all my bungee jumping plans for now.

If there is a trip I would recommend to everyone atleast once in a lifetime, this is it.

Playing with the sand.

Your majestic

A game of beach volleyball

Raring to go

Trying to be cool

After Rappelling moments

Kayaking in peaceful times.

Some narcissism

Its been a long time since I uploaded my pic in my profile. Hence I uploaded pics of myself for each of last 4 years. I changed a lot between 2002 to 2004, no more changes these days.

2001/2002 - Final Year in College	2003 - In Bangalore
2004 - In Noida	2005 - Still in Noida

I am using the latest one as my pic in the profile. It was shot using my Nokia 6255 mobile camera.

3 years of software engineering

ok I am pretty late. Its 3 years and 11 days now :-). Seems only yesterday when I wrote this post.
Professionally, this year has been an excellent one and I have been able to achieve a few things that I had planned at the start of my career but seemed distant last year.
Personally, a different story. But let me tell that some other day.

Good Trip, New Place

The vacations are over. It had been a long time since I last went for an outing. These have been pretty good vacations in that respect.

Its seriously amazing to see the what all people can do for religion here. 12 km uphill and another 12 km back, >24hrs continuous, no sleep and people > 60 yrs doing all this stuff that even young trekkers will think once before stepping into. Anyways, it was lot of fun with beautiful landscapes to view enroute and full satisfaction of getting mata's darshan.

To complete the change, I joined the new office today. Its pretty interesting working in a place like this, with employees number in single digit. Its a completely different experience and I feel that life is going to change a lot in next few months.