How you doing?

"Hi, How you doing?" these are words I struggled hard all my life to say. Whenever someone visited our home, I would have a scheduled session followed by it from my parents. Because, I would not have uttered those comforting words to them. For the same reason, I restrained myself from attending phone calls to calling door. It was hard for me to greet someone whom I didn't know. Most of the time, I went through the sessions calmly and sometimes counter argued saying, "I see them in good health. Then, why should I ask them." Sometimes I went further and said, "These formalities look phony to me".

Once when I was in elevator, the door opened and someone just had entered. He just glimpsed at me and asked, "Hi, How you doing?". I was surprised and overwhelmed to see a stranger asking me that question. I was kind of taken back instead of responding instantly. When I was about to respond, I lost eye contact with that person. Again, I was in embarrassment of not answering at the right moment. Similar incidents of receiving greeting from strangers happened frequently. The harder I tried to respond, every time I missed the eye contact in milli, micro and nano seconds. It really took me very long time to understand that it was not about the question and it was definitely not about the answer. But, it was worth going through the embarrassment to break the invisible layer of ice between me and a stranger. I told myself, "why do a stranger always comfort me? why cant I comfort someone instead? May be thats how a person moves from 'unknown' to 'known' category.". I learned a valuable lesson. Though I didn't ask every soul passing by me, but at least I tried to ask when my eyes met someone. It was awkward moment. Still, it is for me. But when Joey Tribbiani says it effortlessly, "Hey, How...you...doing?" in a flirting sense. Oh yeah, it is worth that embarrassment.

I am just kidding, that is not part of the lesson.

Angels & Demons

Lately, my reading had shrunk to zero. So, I forcefully made an attempt to read something. I went to my apartment library to grab some bytes to bite. I am not sure whether it can be called as a 'library'. It is just half a shelf collection of books. I placed my hand in dark corner of the shelf to reach out for 'Angels & Demons'. I had heard about the book through my friends after the 'Da Vinci Code' hype. But, nothing much about the plot.

Even with few pages of reading, it was interesting to see juxtaposed facts from science, history and religion. I am always interested to know about latest things in science. Hence, my interest in knowing about plot was overshadowed by the curiosity to know the truth about anti-matter. I surfed and to my surprise CERN had put FAQs for things discussed in the book about anti-matter and CERN. I knew some bits about the anti-particle and annihilation concept. But, I never heard of using it to explain the Big Bang theory and importantly, that it can be used as Atom-bomb(no...precisely Particle Bomb). It was nice to go through the link and to re-iterate the rudimentary concepts in physics. It is possible to use anti-matter as atom bomb or a source of electricity. But, it is not possible create them as source of energy. How could I ever forget the law of conservation of energy 'Energy can not be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another'. I asserted to myself that the convoluted idea of using anti-matter as bomb or electricity was nothing but fiction and, pure fiction. Then, I continued with the plot peacefully.

Later, I thought about author's idea of fiction. He collected all the facts and then, stacked them one over another as a deck of cards. Finally, he removed a few cards from the deck at his convenience and presented the new deck. Nevertheless , it looked stunning than pure Sci-Fi.

Tidbits : Tom hanks is acting in the upcoming film based on this novel. I guess, this will be a very good story compared to 'Da Vinci code' for celluloid screen version.
And, to know more about the ambigram. You can visit the creator's home page.

CX310-090 Free downloads

"Should I go for the CX310-090 exam?" was a long pending transaction waiting to be committed or rolled back. Finally, I committed and completed the certification successfully. The CX310-090 is for EJB 2.0 component developer. The part of my dilemma was due to the new exam in market for EJB 3.0. But, I decided to go with EJB 2.0. Since I had had some hands on it.

The purpose of the blog is to consolidate some useful free links which I surfed across during the preparation. Since I could not find all the links in one place. Here it goes...

Link 1 - It is a very useful link from enthuware. They offer 4 full mock tests for free. Since they switched to a new model of testing.
Link 2 - This is again from enthuware. This one offers some 30 sample questions in the new model.
Link 3 - This one is from Whizlabs. It offers 16 questions and one mock test. But, with the trail version the test would not be evaluated.
Link 4 - It offers 30 Sample questions.
Link 5 - This one also offers 30 Sample questions.

All the best!!!