Dark is here...

A woman takes a lover home during the day, while her husband is at work. Unbeknownst to her, her 9 year old son was hiding in the closet. Her husband comes home unexpectedly, so she puts the lover in the closet with the little boy.

The little boy says, “Dark in here.”
The man says, “Yes it is.”
Boy- “I have a baseball.”
Man- “That’s nice.”
Boy- “Want to buy it?”
Man- “No, thanks.”
Boy- “My dad’s outside.”
Man- “OK, how much?”
Boy- “$250.”

In the next few weeks, it happens again that the boy and the mom’s lover are in the closet together.

Boy- “Dark in here.”
Man- “Yes, it is.”
Boy- “I have a baseball glove.”
The lover, remembering the last time, asks the boy, “How much?”
Boy- “$750.”
Man- “Fine.”

A few days later, the father says to the boy, “Grab your glove. Let’s go outside and toss the baseball back and forth.”
The boy says, “I can’t. I sold them.”
The father asks, “How much did you sell them for?”
The son says “$1,000.”
The father says, “That’s terrible to overcharge your friends like that. That is way more than those two things cost. I’m going to take you to church and make you confess.”

They go to church and the father makes the little boy sit in the confession booth and he closes the door.

The boy says, “Dark in here.”
The priest says, “Don’t start that sh*t again.”

The Woman in our lives…very well expressed…

Tomorrow you may get a working woman, but you should marry her with these facts as well.

Here is a girl, who is as much educated as you are;
Who is earning almost as much as you do;

One, who has dreams and aspirations just as
you have because she is as human as you are;

One, who has never entered the kitchen in her life just like you or your
Sister haven’t, as she was busy in studies and competing in a system
that gives no special concession to girls for their culinary achievements

One, who has lived and loved her parents & brothers & sisters, almost as
much as you do for 20-25 years of her life;

One, who has bravely agreed to leave behind all that, her home, people who love her, to adopt your home, your family, your ways and even your family ,name

One, who is somehow expected to be a master-chef from day #1, while you sleep oblivious to her predicament in her new circumstances, environment and that kitchen

One, who is expected to make the tea, first thing in the morning and cook
food at the end of the day, even if she is as tired as you are, maybe more,
and yet never ever expected to complain; to be a servant, a cook, a mother,
a wife, even if she doesn’t want to; and is learning just like you are as
to what you want from her; and is clumsy and sloppy at times and knows that you won’t like it if she is too demanding, or if she learns faster than you; 
One, who has her own set of friends, and that includes boys and even men at her workplace too, those, who she knows from school days and yet is willing to put all that on the back-burners to avoid your irrational jealousy, unnecessary competition and your inherent insecurities; 
Yes, she can drink and dance just as well as you can, but won’t, simply
Because you won’t like it, even though you say otherwise 
One, who can be late from work once in a while when deadlines, just like yours, are to be met; 
One, who is doing her level best and wants to make this most important,
relationship in her entire life a grand success, if you just help her some
and trust her; 
One, who just wants one thing from you, as you are the only one she knows in your entire house – your unstinted support, your sensitivities and most importantly – your understanding, or love, if you may call it. 
But not many guys understand this…… 
Please appreciate “HER”

The Brick!!

About ten years ago, a young and very successful executive named Josh was traveling down a Chicago neighborhood street. He was going a bit too fast in his sleek, black, 12-cylinder Jaguar XKE, which was only two months old. He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something. As his car passed, no child darted out, but a brick sailed out and — WHUMP! — it smashed into the Jag’s shiny black side door! SCREECH…!!!! Brakes slammed! Gears ground into reverse, and tires madly spun the Jaguar back to the spot from where the brick had been thrown.

Josh jumped out of the car, grabbed the kid and pushed him up against a parked car. He shouted at the kid, “What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing?!” Building up a head of steam, he went on. “That’s my new Jag, that brick you threw is gonna cost you a lot of money. Why did you throw it?”

“Please, mister, please…I’m sorry! I didn’t know what else to do!” pleaded the youngster. “I threw the brick because no one else would stop!”

Tears were dripping down the boy’s chin as he pointed around the parked car. “It’s my brother, Mister,” he said. “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can’t lift him up.” Sobbing, the boy asked the executive, “Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He’s hurt and he’s too heavy for me.”

Moved beyond words, the young executive tried desperately to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat.

Straining, he lifted the young man back into the wheelchair and took out his handkerchief and wiped the scrapes and cuts, checking to see that everything was going to be OK. He then watched the younger brother push him down the sidewalk toward their home. It was a long walk back to the sleek, black, shining, 12-cylinder Jaguar XKE – a long and slow walk.

Josh never did fix the side door of his Jaguar. He kept the dent to remind him not to go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at him to get his attention.

—- Nice na…!!!

At times in our lives, we tend to become so wrapped up in other things. We become focused on ourselves or our job we do not realize there are others around us that need our help.

We can react in a negative way to a situation without fully realizing or taking the time to look at the other persons situation. Or to take the time to find out the reason the other person has taken the action that they did.

Don’t let the bricks in life hit you,
be sensitive to those around you.

Little spark of love and humanity

 At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: ‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?’ The audience was stilled by the query. The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’ Then he told the following story: Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps. I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’ Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’ Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’ Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball, the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home. All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay’ Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third! Shay, run to third!’ As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team ‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’.

Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day! AND NOW A LITTLE FOOT NOTE TO THIS STORY: We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the ‘natural order of things.’ So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process? A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.

Why God allows Pain.....

This is one of the best explanations of why God allows pain and suffering that I have read…

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed.
As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation.
They talked about so many things and various subjects.
When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said:
“I don’t believe that God exists.”
“Why do you say that?” asked the customer. “Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn’t exist.
Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people?
Would there be abandoned children?

If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain.
I can’t imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things.”
The customer thought for a moment, but didn’t respond because he didn’t want to start an argument.
The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop.
Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard.
He looked dirty and unkempt. The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber:
“You know what? Barbers do not exist.”
“How can you say that?” asked the surprised barber.
“I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!”
“No!” the customer exclaimed. “Barbers don’t exist because
if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside.”
“Ah, but barbers DO exist! That’s what happens when people do not come to me.”
“Exactly!” affirmed the customer. “That’s the point! God, too, DOES exist!
That’s what happens when people do not go to Him and don’t look to Him for help.
That’s why there’s so much pain and suffering in the world.”

BE BLESSED & BE A BLESSING TO OTHERS!!!!!!!

Heart of The World

In the land of the shadows, there lived a man. Flying like an eagle, Soaring to the sun Like the flying Icarus, He went higher and higher. Something caught his eye, and he took a dive. A glitter of blue, a sparkle of red; it was a gem as large as dragon’s egg. Once down, he reached out to touch it, only to wake up and find he had dreamed it. The gem was in his mind, he needed to find it; the gem was for read, he needed to find it. He remembered the dream, It wasn’t so clear. He had seen a mine. Of that he was sure. He searched for the mines, and was guided to the dwarfs. Dwarfs were easy to find, but stubborn of the mind. With hearts that love stone, great treasures they hoard. The dwarfs were suspicious; they questioned him of his goodness. Telling them about his dream, He described the One Gem. He knew it was real, but it wasn’t, or so he was told. No gem is both blue and red, It was a dream, the dwarfs said. But and old dwarf told the man, the rainbow color stone was their star-gem. The gem of power, it made the laws, once he saw it, he knew what it was. It was the heart of the world. It was part of them all. It was the elixir of life, it kept the world alive. That was when the man got it right; His power was within him, right in his sight. The heart within him was the greatest; for it was his own, apart from the rest. The fire in him was the heart of the world; He flew with the fire, soaring like a bird. A glitter of blue, a sparkle of red.

Things to consider before you buy split AC

Hello Everyone,

Hyderabad weather was the biggest motivation for me to go for one more split AC, unlike last time, this time I wanted to put some emphasis on technical specifications and reviews posted for all the brands, rather than just going by the dealer’s reviews. Here is how I decided to go for “Hitachi” out of all the brands available in the market.

Split air conditioners have the evaporator inside and the rest of the machinery outside. They are best suited for the place where aesthetics are the prime concern or there is no exposed wall. Splits are a bit expensive, but they tend to save a lot in the long run. They don’t produce noise (though its brand dependent) . In splits inverter models are good which save 40%of power by decreasing the rate of compression of gas, and hence requiring less power than to switch the compressor on and off, as in conventional splits. 

 
Points to consider before buying splits- 

LENGTH OF CONNECTING PIPE- this should support up to 25mts.


SIZE OF THE OUTDOOR UNIT-though u may not find outdoor units on display anywhere in the market, it’s the main factor to consider. The lager the unit, the bigger the condenser coil, the better the cooling. 

CFM (AIRFLOW) - VERY IMPORTANT INCASE OF SPLITS, BECAUSE AS SUCH SPLITS HAVE LESS AIRFLOW.cfm more than 450 is desirable. 

POWER INPUT- ranges between as low as 1600 to 1900 watts. If more than this, look out for the other model. 

BTU (COOLING)

FOR 1.5 TR anything between 18000-20400 is good.20400 is for Hitachi. 

ANTI CORROSION TREATEMENT ON THE OUTDORR UNIT-should be preferable, as the life of the ac is dependent on the outdoor unit. 

NOISE LEVEL-since it’s a split, it should be taken into consideration.22db -39 db is good. 

This is what I finalized:-

http://www.hitachi-hli.com/pdfs/Hitachi-PDF/kaze-split-download-specification.pdf

It costed me around 35 !!

4 Long weeks

I am in a mood to write something tonight, after long 30 days, m back in Bangalore – crackers r bursting outside – of course not in my welcome – but because people still have Diwali hangover..

If I look back now, it seems as if it was yesterday when I was asked to go to Japan, there were few questions in my mind, how safe it is, it will gonna be really challenging, long working days/nights and food will be a challenge along with language – but somewhere had the confidence – ki sab ho jaayega…

& the journey started….

Reached Singapore, and I had 60 mins for next flight, I thought wow airport is cool, let’s explore it, I knew my flight is from next terminal, I thought I’ll be there in few minutes big deal!!

Wooo, it took me 15 mins in sky train (quite an experience) – to reach to next terminal and flight was from gate 51 odd….gosh!! took another 15 mins to be there….just managed in time!! – first lesson learnt – better be on time – come out of Indian time zone J

Air-hostesses were coolJ, polite – hot & humble…lolz. Suddenly all the faces in the airbus were so different and I already started getting a feeling of “welcome to japan” – 7 more hrs and we landed. Extremely well organized , strict adherence to queuing culture, I started hunting for information desk to get pointers to hotel…

Took the train – hopped around on another one mid-way and finally reached hotel, initially train map looked like some puzzle – lines of difference colors intersecting each other at every second point but after a close look of 5 mins – it seems to be really easy to understand – Lesson 2 :- Things aren’t that complicated as they are projected – keep your cool and things will fall in place J

Hotel:-

Nothing much to say about the size of the room, the bathroom in UK was bigger than the entire room, nevertheless I accepted it happily as I had no other choice but to do that J

Iron table, funny creation – I still don’t know – how to open that, TV which I never turned on, however it’s manual was full of porn stuff – dial this – for this girl, this for this show…blah blah blah…!  - comeon we aren’t in college – grow up hotel people – stop sharing this naughty stuff J

Office was around 20 mins walk from hotel, sometimes I walked, mostly I took bus – one thing which I still don’t understand is  dressing sense of girls…

Top – as tight as it can get

Skirt – as short as possible

Shoes – as long as it can get (it covers everything, what ideally skirt is supposed to do – may be perfect combo of team work)

Anyways, I always enjoyed my journey on the way to office (that’s the only time I could see some people, I generally use to come around 2am, 4am sometimes next day from work – so never had chance to see the crowd on the way back…

They have musical end to every word – and they do get surprised pretty easily - operating their ticket machine was quite an experience as everything was in Japanese. Had toughest of times while shopping in super market, nothing is written in english and to add to it – only 0.01% of entire stock will be pure-veg. If you are veggie like me – be prepared to loose few kg’s J - the prices are crazy, it’s so very expensive – you just can’t convert anything to INR. You need lots of cash to survive here.

Covering work related aspect quickly:-

Overall I am happy and satisfied with my contribution, couldn't have think of any better, lots of positives to take forward and felt nice as lots of big shots appreciated. 17hrs per day without break for 30 days was a bit too much (but I enjoyed every moment of it, and gave more than 100%). it was quite an experience meeting people from different parts of the world working towards one common objective.

Earth quakes:-

First one – I got bit scared, stood up – looked around – was waiting to copy whatever others are doing, guess what they did nothing – they just ignored it.!

Second one:- I remained seated, looked around with caution, no prize for guessing –everyone ignored it again.

Third one: - Guess what – even I ignored it this time!! - remained glued to my system!

One think I did pretty often, after 17/18hrs when I use to come back to hotel – first thing – go to the bath tub – lie down take a long hot water shower – cant express how much I loved it and find it really refreshing….

Breakfast:-

Out of 28 coupons, I still have 20 with me J - which means I had breakfast 8/28 times, reason – nothing to eat there for me, only juice and bread-butter and their special timings 6.30 to 7.30 (no way u can get up by 7, if u have slept at 4-5…)

I survived mostly on ready to eat, fruits, coke, lemon juice, curd & pizza.

Pizza ;- there is a small story about the famous Japanese pizza, I went to the supermarket and when I was 100% sure – it’s pure veg, I opted for it and while heating it in microwave there was a small sachet along with pizza, which I thought is topping (something stopped me from within) and I decided not to use it, I tasted a bit – it was yuck – I threw it in dustbin and next day I got to know – that was poison to keep the pizza fresh…..i was like What the f*$% – why in d world will someone put the poison next to pizza to keep it fresh, later I got to know – it’s pretty common, that day onwards – no experiment’s, stick to what you know and eat that only!!

After 22 days, I got a day off – for the first 2 hours – I kept wondering – what to do….and I was finding it hard – that I have entire day for my own self, I covered as much as one can think off, clicked hundreds of pictures and uploaded everything on fb, shopped a lot for everyone and it was great fun. Visit to traditional temple, went for the cruise for the first time in my life, followed by walk on lonely rainbow bridge, quite a romantic place, saw few couples doing naughty stuff ;) – nice to see this part of Japan.  I did got 4 calls from office, but no one asked me to come over  - so I ll still take it as an day off J

Same old life started from next day, and as the time of departure starting coming closer – work started piling up, I wanted to finish everything properly before I make my way back, I realized I still had lots of ready to eat packets left with me, so I hosted a lunch …authentic Indian lunch for my gang (people who were sitting around me) – they loved it, worked complete – compiled and it was the time to capture some bye-bye moments with people I worked with.…

Off to Singapore:-

I had 18 hrs of transit, and I had no idea, what will I be doing during those 18hrs, I was still hopeful I will get a visa (somehow) and will get to see some places, 4am in the morning, after 15 minutes of discussion with immigration office – I got the green signal and visa is done J - I should have waited for 3 hours as I realized moment you get out of immigration zone, there was no internet, no proper chairs n absolutely no facilities L , had to spend next 4 hrs in really difficult conditions, counter opened at 6 – I picked up all the maps – and was so happy to find information in english…

First train was at 7.30, I took ticket to last destination and started hopping in and out of their stations, covered quite a lot, more than my expectations and again clicked quite a lot. 1^st impression – it’s a copy of London…

Singapore flyer is ditto like London eye

Orchard street is subset of oxford street

Marina bay is like a bay on river Thames…

From there it was a journey to my friends place, met his family and had nice Indian lunch, off to airport and was all excited to board the flight to Bangalore. Out of all the flights I had taken till date, this was the first time a girl was sitting next to me, well I had not slept for 2 nights, so I really wanted to catch some sleep – all I remember Is she was from infy…slept! – When I woke up – I was in Bangalore.

Felt happy to be back – reached home around 2 and next morning at 9 – I was in office…

I am still having a bit of hangover of Japanese working style, I still get up at 4.30 in the mornings (3.5hrs delta between time zones),  I think I will take some time to get back into normal mode of working..

These days 90% of office is on vacation and m still working L, looking forward to 2^nd of nov when my mother will be back.

Overall – quite an experience – lots of learning’s – never felt so close to customer and never realized contributing that closely to end product…experienced a different side of culture – lots to learn from them – respect, care, concern, ready to help attitude even for a stranger, punctual and well mannered.

But along with this – sometimes it’s good to break rules and have fun – thodi masti bhi zarori hai yaar.. Never loved the Bangalore food so much before, everything tastes WOW now, I cherish lots of things now which I generally use to take for granted before J.

Really looking forward to my next match, it’s been almost 80 days since I played last- longest ever break in my career of 15 years…

I think it’s enough for today.

Signing off from my bed :)

Sahil

27.10.2011  11.00 pm

Life in Tokyo... :)

In next few minutes I am going to write whatever comes to my mind randomly about my experience of last 20days in a Tokyo.

Let’s start from Airport, well organized, everyone strictly follows queue culture and staff members are more than willing to help you but language does play a trick. I couldn’t even think about taking Taxi to Hotel as rates were crazy, 100$ from Airport to hotel was way too much, I explored other options and got a 10$ deal by train, which I had to change half way to catch another one, again rail system is well organized, well maintained and this country is extremely punctual. People are humble, polite and are always ready to help. They do have a bowing culture which they do to signify the respect towards other person. Once I reached hotel, I was amazed to see the size of the room, I remember bathroom in UK was bigger than the room in Japan. Anyways I had to spend 30 days in same room, so I happily accepted it. Just like any other hotel room there is a TV (which I never turned on for couple of reason – I never got time to even look at it and secondly It has all Japanese channels), then there is an iron table which doesn’t open or maybe I don’t know how to operate it. From the window of the room I can see the entire area, which always reminds me 'this city never sleeps, I repeat never'!

  I have come back from work sometimes at 3am, sometimes at 4, 5 and once even at 6am, I have always found people on road, having headphones on and busy in their own world. Coming to work – well I would say it’s really different, though I was quite prepared for it, before I started form Bangalore a special person had told me before you start any-work – be sure of what you are doing, set goals, ask questions and be very sure of what you do and then proceed further, I kept this mantra in mind and if I look back now after 20days, this is the thing which has helped me a lot more than anything else. It’s a different culture, different working ways, things sometimes that look so obvious – aren’t that obvious. Language is a big barrier and does play a trick. You need to stay calm, focus entirely on work – don’t get carried away by earthquake shocks or long working hours. On an average I work for 16hrs at office and then 1-2hrs from hotel, but there were many occasions where I stayed back for 22hrs and once I did crossed one cycle of clockJ. People here are really hardworking but there is something missing, “sometimes you do feel this is not the best way of doing this, it could have been done this way to save lot of time” – but here the culture is bit different, once if something is followed –its followed! – No questions after that unless it comes from top. After putting in such long hours, I did slept few times with shoes and specs on J and I don’t remember when was the last time I slept for 6 hours!!

Coming to food, if you are a vegetarian, this country is not meant for you, I have completely forgotten how a fresh cooked vegetarian food tastes, I am surviving on ready to eat, coke and fruits. Yes I did lost 3kgs already In less than 3wks and it’s so very expensive in the city, best is never try to compare when Indian currency just happily keep moving and spend. I could never take meals on time, and I did skipped lots of them (I know it’s not good but I could never really think about it, was so indulged with activities).

17^th day was special, after 16 long , really long days,I got half a day off,where I went with my colleague and roamed around whatever we could,if you have worked like this,you are bound to love everything you see, so we clicked a lot and uploaded everything.Life was same from next day but that break did refreshed a bit,but half a day suddenly disappeared in few mins.

With last few days to go I am planning to do as much as I can to bridge the gap which will help in future, and i am quite happy to receive a compliment from my colleague who was here for few days, he told something special about my work- which meant a lot to me. Coming to personal side, when I just want to purchase something for my mother, wonder when will i get a chance, may be on the last day I could visit some station (oh, I forgot to mention, here stations are huge and each station has big shopping complex of few floors, their marketing concept is maximum people commute by trains so it makes sense to have station cum mall kind of complex). So hopefully I will get something from station, generally whenever I go back to hotel I couldn’t find the shopping complex open(it closes at 11), and morning it opens at 9 and I generally leave every day before 9. But I will surely get something for her and something for my colleagues back in Bangalore – Japan special.

To summarize, well I would say I was fortunate to get this opportunity and I had a very different experience, learnt a new side of culture and different working aspects, had best week when my colleague from UK was here, learnt a lot from him and yes did made some new friends at work and I am sure it’s just the beginning of the journey!

I will pen down again, don’t know why, but I am not getting sleep today. I didn’t had anything else to do – so that’s how this write-up is created!


Proper blog will follow someday!!

Sahil Gupta

Kokubunju-Tokyo

Japan!

Kernel.org is hacked, what'z the impact??

All open source lovers got a shocker when they came to know that kernel.org is hacked, there was some panic and lots of questions started floating on open source forums, here is a compiled draft on the news and the progress so far, would like to share with the readers:-

As recently announced on www.kernel.org, the main kernel.org server (known as “hera”) was recently compromised by an unknown intruder. The hacker was able to gain “root” access, meaning they had the full run of the system. There is no need to worry about the integrity of the kernel source or of any other software hosted on the kernel.org systems.

Kernel.org is, of course, the home for the Linux kernel. Many other projects live there as well. On the face of it, that would make kernel.org a tempting target for an attack. What self-respecting cracker wouldn’t want an opportunity to place some special code into the Linux kernel? Such code would, over time, find its way into millions of machines worldwide. The injection of backdoors or other malware is a concern for any software maintainer - open source or otherwise - but it turns out that we are well protected against that sort of attack.

If kernel developers worked by shipping simple files of source code around, they might well be vulnerable to malware added by an intruder. But that is not how kernel development is done. The code for the kernel (and for many other projects) is managed with the “git” source code management system. And git does not allow the code to be modified by third parties without people knowing about it.

How git works?

A cryptographic “hashing function” is a mathematical formula which boils the contents of a file down to a small number. “Small” is relative; git’s hash function produces 160-bit numbers, which are quite big by normal standards - it is roughly equal to the number of atoms in the Earth. The key to the hash function is that, if the contents of the file change, the hash will change too. Creating any new file matching the hash of an existing file is not really possible; if you want that new file to look like the old one with the exception of a bit of hostile code, the challenge is even bigger. So an attacker would be unable to change a file without changing its hash as well. Git checks hashes regularly, so a simplistic attempt to corrupt a file would be flagged almost immediately.

The hashing does not stop there. For any given state of the kernel source tree, git calculates a hash based on:-

(1) The hashes of all the files contained within that tree, and

(2) The hashes of all of the previous states of the tree.

So, for example, the hash for the kernel at the 3.0 release is 02f8c6aee8df3cdc935e9bdd4f2d020306035dbe. There is no way to change any of the files within that release - or within any previous release - without changing that hash. If anybody (even the kernel.org repository) were to present a 3.0 kernel with a different hash, it would be immediately apparent that something was not right.

If an attacker were to corrupt the kernel.org repository, those other developers would notice the next time they updated their personal repositories - something that happens many times every day. If the attacker were to simply add new patches that had not gone through Linus Torvalds’s personal copy of the repository (which is not the copy on kernel.org), he would notice the next time he tried to make a change of his own. Git will see that the hash values are not what they should be and raise the alarm.

Kernel.org may seem like the place where kernel development is done, but it’s not; it’s really just a distribution point. The integrity of that distribution point is protected by the combination of clever software and thousands of copies of the repository distributed around the world.

It will be necessary to rebuild the kernel.org infrastructure and to figure out how the attacker got in. The integrity of those systems was lost; restoring it and protecting it into the future will take a considerable amount of work. But people running Linux need not worry about the integrity of their kernels; that is protected by defenses stronger than those of any single computer.

Also as announced by Linus “ entire repository of Linux Kernel gets hosted at Github”

Here is the official email by Linus:- https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/9/4/92

Let's see how things shape up in near future. But whoever is the hacker, he has done a smart job - getting root access is definitely not trivial, now we need to see what additional security measures will come in picture

Lot's to look forward to in coming days, let's follow the development closely.....

Linux - "Evaluate yourself"

In this article i would like to share some of  the tricky questions related to Linux, Let’s have a brain-storming session on Linux, for Linux enthusiasts am sure if you don’t know the answers, you would surely like to browse on these topics.

I will keep updating this article with more questions, here goes version 1 of my draft:- 

• Command to remove a file -file-name (name start with "-" )
• What is the -v flag for when using grep?
• What is the -h flag in rpm?
•  How would you direct stderr to stdout for a given command?
•  You type google.com into your preferred web browser - what happens? – how does DNS/squid/webserver comes into picture
•  Booting procedure of Linux?
•  What is initrd image?
•   How to restrict login to a server for maintenance
•   How to load a module in to the running kernel
•   How to unload a module from the running kernel.
•   How to boot in to single user mode.
•  What are the difference run levels in Linux

 Will add lot’s more in same article, consider this as first draft J 

Kernel Patch Management

Hello Readers,

Recently on open source mailing lists, there was a big discussion on patch related issues. I just thought of writing something on Linux “Patch management”

·         What is patch

·         How patch works

·         How to reverse the changes  

Patch: - The commands diff and patch form a powerful combination. They are widely used to get differences between original files and updated files in such a way that other people who only have the original files can turn them into the updated files with just a single patch file that contains only the differences. The patch program applies diff files to originals. The diff command is used to compare an original to a changed file. Diff lists the changes made to the file. A person who has the original file can then use the patch command with the diff file to add the changes to their original file (patching the file). Patch should be installed because it is a common way of upgrading applications.

If the patch file has extension gz or bz2, it need to be uncompressed before applying patch:-

·         gunzip patch-x.y.z.gz

·         bunzip2 patch-x.y.z.bz2

To apply a patch:-
patch -p1 </patch/to/file

Patches can be undone, or reversed, with the '-R' option:
patch -R </path/to/file

For complete details:-
man patch

Common errors and issues when applying patch:-

When a patch applies a patch file it verifies the sanity of the file in different ways

a.      Checking that the file looks like a valid patch file 

b.      Checking the code around the bits being modified matches the context 

provided in the patch 

If patch encounters something that doesn't look quite right it has two options:-

·         It can either refuse to apply the changes and abort

·         It can try to find a way to make the patch apply with a few minor changes.

Scenario 1:-

One example of something that's not 'quite right' that patch will attempt to fix 

if all the Context matches, the lines being changed match, but the 

line numbers are different. This can happen, for example if the patch 

makes a change in the middle of the file but for some reasons a few lines have 

been  added or  removed near the beginning of the file. In that case everything 

looks good it has just moved up or down  a bit, and patch will usually adjust the 

line  numbers  and apply the patch.

      Scenario 2:-

When patch encounters a change that it can't fix up with fuzz it rejects it outright 

and leaves  a file with a .rej extension (a reject file). You can 

read this file to  see exactly what change couldn't be 

applied, so you can  go fix it up manually.

      Scenario 3:- 

If patch stops and presents a "File to patch:" prompt, then patch could not find 

a  file to be  patched. Most likely you forgot to specify -p1 or you are in the wrong 

directory. Less often,  you'll find patches that need  to be applied with -p0 

instead  of -p1 (reading the patch file  should reveal if this is the case -- if 

so, then this is an error by the person who created the patch 

but it is not fatal).

     Scenario 4 :-

If you get "Hunk #2 succeeded at 1887 with fuzz 2 (offset 7 lines)." or a message 

similar  to that,  then it means that patch had to adjust the location 

of the change  (in this example it needed to move 7 lines from 

where it  expected to make the change  to make it fit). The resulting file may or 

may not be OK, depending on the reason the file was different 

than expected. This often happens if you try to apply a patch  that 

was generated against a different  kernel version than the one you are trying 

to patch.

Scenario 5 :-

If you get a message like "Hunk #3 FAILED at 2387.", then it means that the patch 

could not  be applied correctly and the patch program was unable 

to fuzz its way through. This will generate  a .rej file with the      

change that caused the patch to fail and also a .orig file showing you the  original 

content that couldn't be  changed. 

Scenario 6 :-

 If you get "Reversed (or previously applied) patch detected!  Assume -R? [n]" then 

patch detected that the change contained in the patch seems to have already been 

made. If you actually did apply this patch previously and you just 

re-applied it in error, then just say [n]o and abort this patch. 

If you applied this  patch previously and actually intended to revert it, but forgot 

to specify -R, then you can say [y]es here to make patch revert it for 

you. This can also happen if the creator of the  patch reversed 

the source and  destination directories when creating the patch, and in that  case 

reverting the patch will in fact apply it.

       Patch Work project: - http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/
       

       Hope you like this article; Feel free to share your feedback.