17
Feb 09

New Delhi Musings Part -III

Please read the first and second part of this story before continuing here:
 New Delhi Musings Part – I
 New Delhi Musings Part – II

Fast Forwards 2009 February 1 12:30 AM, I landed in New Delhi Station with an exciting idea and a vogue plan. This time my idea was to start my own Company in India. Yes, you heard it right; the same guy who could not land up a job in same place back in 2005 is now here to start his own venture. Might sound herculean task to some but for me its piece of cake. I already have an office running in my home with around 3 people working full time for me and here I am looking forward to add few more. If you don’t know what my company or venture is called then here it is: It’s Profermics.com – Domain Development Simplified. This is it. My story from 2005 to now. More will be updated later when life  progresses ahead.

I thank you a lot if you have read all three parts of this story and have come down till here. My life never had such ups and downs since start. It only started when I started to dream big. After facing all these situations all I can say is that , Believe in Yourself – Have Faith in God – And Move ahead.


17
Feb 09

New Delhi Musings Part -II

Please read the first part of this story before continuing here:
 New Delhi Musings Part – I

Fast Forward June 2005. I came back to New Delhi for a second attempt to get success. This time I didn’t focus on getting admission anywhere. Though I gave entrance exam for BCA (Hons.) in JMI but I didn’t cared about it. I had a different plan this time.

This time my plan was to get a job in New Delhi. Fascinated by the Call centers and BPO in India, I started by giving interviews in all possible call centers and BPOs I could.  I even gave an interview in Convergys which is probably one of the biggest BPO in World. As usual after giving around 35 interviews in 15 days I got only one answer from everyone. “You are an undergrad, we can’t take you.” WTF! This is why I tell my two friends Salik and Deelip that you guys are way luckier, that you got a job in Delhi despite being an undergrad.  

Harassed by the situation I again got back to Lucknow which had become like a basecamp for me. A safe landing place. The returning journey back to Lucknow from New Delhi was kind of amusing. Since I could not afford a reservation ticket so traveled in a general ticket and had to sit on the pathway of the train because the whole train was jam-packed. Imagine sitting right on the door of a train traveling with a speed of 80 miles per hr. Awesome experience! I sure will never do that again.

After returning to Lucknow I got back to Data entry job working for measly Rs. 100 per day work. Around December 2005 I got another job of search engine optimizer in a small company based in Lucknow. That paid me Rs. 4000 per month. Not huge by any standards but still was a great relief for me since I no longer had to do data entry work. My work there was to build links for websites. I loved it but six months after the job the owner of the company fired all three people along with me whom he had hired for the SEO job since he could not benefit from our work. Disgraced by the situation I finally decided to start my online venture. I worked doing some small jobs online during that time but that didn’t payed since I had no way to cash my online funds.  I left India at this point of time.

Returned back to Butwal with plans to move to Kathmandu. Story of Kathmandu is also interesting and a lot painful for me but that will be posted sometime later when I will have guts to write down memories of those scary days and experience of living in an alley.

Continued in New Delhi Musings Part III


17
Feb 09

New Delhi Musings Part – I

Time passes faster than you think. It’s only been around 4 years I came here looking for a job and now in 2009 I am back here with a completely different motive that most people of my age in this part of the world will dare not think about.

Back in 2005 in the month of May when I came here for the first time I had only Rs. 1500 (approx. $33) and I had to spend around 1 week with that money. Well, you may think that was a crazy idea but that was my bitter reality back then. I didn’t had a job, had to ask money from my parents and friends. 1500 bucks that I had back then was the total sum I had accumulated doing some data entry work and getting paid Rs. 100 ($1.5) each day for punching 100*8 pages long forms in to computers. Ahh.  Those days!!! That was hectic job but still I enjoyed it. I always wanted to forget those days considering a bad nightmare but they were reality and I know it won’t go back easily.

Though I have been blogging since mid 2004 but if you dig into my blog for earlier post you won’t find a single post about those days, which was because I never thought to document those memories. But last month before leaving my home I had a thought somewhere to write a post about those days.

So, here is my story of becoming a boy of nowhere to so called rockstar. (rockstar courtesy Deelipk) :) .

“It all started in 2004 when my 12 standard exams ended and in spite of taking the normal route I followed advice of one of my friend to move to India.  His plan was to move to New Delhi but due to family reasons I stayed in Lucknow. It was a big city compared to Butwal where I belonged but after few months I found that it didn’t meet my expectation. After settling in Lucknow I joined Jetking to study MCSE ( Microsoft Certified System Engineer). Though that that dream is still not complete but at least I got the MCP certificate which meant I was Microsoft Certified Professional. That certification landed me in Hutch House UPE (currently Vodafone) as a trainee network engineer or whatever they called. It was a short term job for only around 15 days but it showed me the face of a corporate world or in a sense it made me addicted to work in a corporate lifestyle. That job and those fifteen days changed everything. My initial plan in Lucknow was to study BCA (Bachelors of Computer Application) but I dumped it and went around looking for job. Well, naturally I didn’t get a job anywhere but it landed me to a small data entry job which I happily took as it gave me some money and you won’t belive how much I was paid there. Re. 1 per form entered in their system and each form had around 8 pages. So, that was a huge task but paid very little, but as usual I was satisfied with it as I with my fast fingers and could rake in around 100 bucks each day. I did that job for like 3 months then.

Fast forward May 2005. Unsatisfied with my job and having no money to save and due to some major personal crisis I decided to move to New Delhi. My first intention in Delhi was to get admission either in DU or in Jamia Milia Islamia but as usual I didn’t get admission anywhere. This was first time I came to New Delhi. There is a saying in Hindi which many people in Lucknow said me “ Delhi me gum ho jaoge akele” which means You will be lost in Delhi alone. But that was me, I didn’t get lost, there was no one to help me, no godfather, no relatives, no friends. But still I all on my own managed to do everything. I stayed with one of my cousin who had a good job in New Delhi, but even he didn’t help me in anyway. That was the day I decided whatever I have to do in this world. I will do it all alone. I don’t need anyone supporting me. If I fail, I will rise again and move but won’t take any help.

My first stay in Delhi ended in less than 1 week. I had to go back to Lucknow since I had spent all my saved money (Rs. 1500). I got back and directly went to Butwal, where I planned again to get back to New Delhi in 1 month’s time. This time with more money and more courage. 

Continued in New Delhi Musings Part II


17
Feb 09

Change has come to America.. umm and also to this blog

I finally changed the theme of this blog. Well, this is not going to be the final theme as I am working on to develop a new theme, complete unique for this blog and yeah I have a created a initial draft somewhere in mind, I just need to sketch that on Photoshop and anyone who knows me personally will understand how long it’s going to take for me to portray the theme from my mind to CSS ;-) . So, enjoy this lively theme for some time now.


08
Dec 08

Why Myrepublica.com wasn’t as good as I thought?

Initially I was quiet excited to hear the launch of new English daily in Nepal called “Republica”. It is a new publication that was separated from the Mighty Kantipur Publication. The name Republica itself seems to be quiet trendy and being a web designer myself I thought they might just come up with a trendy website that will change the whole online media of Nepal.

I also heard from some insider source that Republica was going to focus heavily on online media but unfortunately my hopes were shattered seeing their website quality. Just see the screenshot of Myrepublica.com on its launch day .

First thing I would like to ask the folks at Republica. Who made this website? If it’s someone in-house then you better fire him because he or she doesn’t even know rats about the modern web design trends. Secondly, if it was outsourced then you better tell the name of that company cause this kind of web design is pathetic by any standard,

What’s really wrong? Everything is wrong.

Technical Part
Just go to W3C Markup Validator and check the website. There are freaking 258 Errors, 68 warning(s) alone for homepage. Some of the biggest errors are:

Validator was unable to determine Parse Method which means the Validator could not find in which language really the site was made. Is it HTML, XHTML or XML? It gave up searching it.

No DOCTYPE found!
Character encoding mismatch!

OK these are some technical terms that a professional web designer will easily understand but I don’t think the guy who made this website have any idea about them.

Now come to the General Opinion about the site’s look and displays:
Who really made the graphics for the site? The whole blueish color of the sites is just too lame for any viewer. It reminds me of some shanty websites made in era of Geocities.com. The logo is cool but everything apart that just is too lame for me.

Sidebars are misplaced and there are a lot of white spaces between the title and the content. In the inner body part I guess the designer forgot to add margins around the image. Content and image are so attached to each other which make me feel that the site was made in too hurry.

The top slideshow of featured stories is probably copied from some free JavaScript code site and pasted as is without any change. It does not look part of the site from anywhere.

The search box on top right hand side of homepage too seems out of place.

I can go on and on detailing everything that is wrong in this site but lets stop with this much. I hope the administration of Dhumbarahi Media Pvt Ltd and editor – in – chief reads my review of Myrepublica.com and takes some action.

Only thing that is good about the websites is that they actually made it in first place. Secondly, there is a line on top of the page which says “BETA VERSION” (This website is still being fine-tuned)”. I hope they change the site’s layout before taking it out of BETA VERSION.

Lastly, I was also wondered seeing the site that why wasn’t it made on Wordpress. There are lots of people in Republica who are pioneer bloggers of country and in my opinion they must have knowledge of what Wordpress can do. Below I have added some links of free Magazine style Wordpress theme which are free to use and can be used to make a much more good looking news site on Wordpress than the site’s condition is now.

http://www.visual-blast.com/wordpress/10-free-magazine-style-wordpress-themes-to-choose-from/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/02/09/83-beautiful-wordpress-themes-you-probably-havent-seen/

If you really want to see what a good news site might look like then see following sites:
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.sfgate.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

I know these are US based sites and companies in Nepal cannot hire US based web design firm to make sites for them, but FYI there are tons of high quality web designers in Nepal who are actually making these kinds of sites and they would be more than happy to make a website for Myrepublica.com too that will stand out in comparison to these above listed US based sites

I didn’t see dainikee.com as I was sure it too is going to be a clone of Myrepublica.com

God Bless Myrepublica.com

P.S. I am not affiliated to Kantipur Publication or any other Media House of Nepal. I am a web designer from Nepal and I feel shame of the quality of designs that are made in my country.


22
Nov 08

bewildered in the heat

Well, its been long since i posted any post in my blog. Since then lots of things have changed and some are in process to change. If you are following my blog regurlarly then you will see more exciting things from this place in very near future.

Till then enjoy,

Tajim


15
Oct 08

Blog Action Day 2008

poverty-1[1]

Today is Blog Action Day 2008, and this year’s topic is Poverty. Leaving in a third world country called Nepal, i know very well what poverty means and how it effect once life.There are poor’s all around and you can see poverty creating a toil on them. There has been lots of talk on this issue but most of them end making resolution but don’t transform into any discret solution. Today on the Blog Action Day 2008 i urge everyone to do something for this issue. Donating money, doing fund raising is not long term solution.. What we need to do is actually eradicate the poverty from our society. I would like to quote a saying over here:

Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will eat forever

 

Blog Action Day has also posted a list of thing you can do help in its cause:

 88 Ways to DO Something About Poverty Right Now


28
Sep 08

monday musings

Sometimes life can take you aback from what it gives to you. I have been working online since last 2 years and September has been the month which i can really say has turned the things for me. I started Profermics on 23rd August and after two days of its launch i was smashed by tons of projects. Well, this really made my life more happier but even brought in loads of work. Till last month i used to work till 2 AM but now i normally go to sleep at around 4-5 AM. Well this does not seem much of difference but ask me it really has created some kind of raze within myself. After such a growth i can finally pay some of due that i owe to my freinds. Well, its not much considering what i earn but still it sometime pisses me off that i pissed him with it. ;-)

Coming to work, i am planning to open up my second office in Kathmandu very soon. I searched hard for good designer over in my place but when i saw no luck i decided to move to Kathmandu. Well, i won’t move there permanently but will keep moving in between places ( hmm, that’s gonna be lots of fun). I will probably be partnering with one of my long time friend with whom i started working online in 2006 since then we have collaborated on most of things that we do.

Till then, Eid Mubarak and Happy Dashain

Tajim


30
Aug 08

Rock On !!

ktm

25
Aug 08

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty

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