To tell you the truth, I never intended to guide people in becoming entrepreneurs. Far from it. It just happens that three people pinged me on facebook to tell me that they thought my blog was good.

I believe in science. And I believe that science says that when you have the same observation thrice, it's about time for deduction. Which in this case has lead to an attempt to bring my dead blog back to life.

Before you start, to prevent you from getting any false ideas about me, I would like to clarify the following.

• I come from a family where they have never been any entrepreneurs/businessmen. In short, no one I am related to has ever made a "profit".

• My family does not believe in entrepreneurship. In short, everyone I am related to tries to explain why the whole idea of entrepreneurship is not a very smart one.

If you still want to learn from me, I would gladly feel sorry for you. Here goes the list of do's and don'ts.

• Don't start deciding the name first. We spent the first two months doing nothing except working on the name!! And what we finally agreed on (and have stuck to), in our college lingo means 'idiot'.

• If it's an internet/software startup, forget about getting a server. We wasted the next two months thinking about the advantages we would have with a dedicated server. When we finally worked on the disadvantages list, it turned out to be so long that today we host our website on a free webspace.

• If you haven't already, do not watch the movie "The Social Network". Not that it isn't an awesome movie, but they day my partner watched it (I recommended it to him), he started talking about how much each of us own and how we should always inform the other before every decision taken. *wink*

• This one is very important. Never, and I mean never ever announce a product before you have it completely ready. The following things could happen:

- Out of the blue your day job may start demanding hectic hours and you won't get any more time to work on the product.

- You may start getting bored with working on the same thing for a long time.

- You start getting the feeling that the product is useless. This is usually the most common.

• Well this one is a revelation. You have your website up and running which tries to tell people what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. Simple enough. You post the link somewhere (a little bragging never hurt anyone), and next thing you know is you start getting the following type of messages on Facebook -
  
  
  "Awesome work man! Btw what are we supposed to do on the site?"
  
  
  You are not supposed to do anything dumbo! All you are supposed to do is to look at it and tell us if you think it's good/bad.

• If you are a group of one/two/three etc people, you must understand that you can't be one/two/three for the rest of your life. So you need to bring in new people. How? Don't ask me, we are still two.

• This one is a secret. Odd jobs never hurt anyone. I suspect that all entrepreneurs have done some at some point. For example, I sometimes do assignments for grad students in US/Europe to keep my paypal account ticking. *wink*

• You always live in the morbid fear that you are getting accustomed to (and maybe even interested in) your day job. Trust me, it's not true. After spending an uncomfortable more than a year, I finally realized this. "All day jobs suck and have always sucked".

• Try not to tell everyone you know that you are the proud owner of a company without a product. I understand that at it's really difficult, but atleast try.

Well, I suppose that almost sums up my knowledge of becoming an entrepreneur. If you are a lonely reader who happened to wander to this dead blog, post a comment if you feel like.

On a bright sunny morning in April, 2010, a bus dropped us at Haldwani, Uttarakhand. We were en-route to Chowkori, a little hill station in Uttarakhand when my stomach declared trouble.

We neither had the time nor the intention to book a room or something, so armed with a paper-soap, I walked into a place called "HI-TEC toilet". Needless to say, after an overnight bus journey, I was under immense pressure.

After I had settled down, and everything had settled back to perspective (If you have ever faced a similar situation, you know what I mean), I noticed a tiny little piece of graphiti amidst all of the porno that is so characteristic to an Indian public toilet.

It said, "Maaza aaya??".

I so wanted to write "Yes" a thousand times over :-).

Does this happen to you too?

I was eating loads of street food, when someone commented that on the hygenic aspect of street food. In response I told everyone how I had a pretty robust digestive system ( Which I still maintain that I do), so that I could loads of everything and anything that I wanted. The next morning, everyone else is fine, while I keep shuttling between the room and the loo.

I tell someone how I efficiently wrap up my work on time, so much so that I never need to stay back late or go to work on weekends. All through that week, I do 11+ hours and also work from home over the weekend.

I tell my folks how popular I am in college (again I still maintain that I am still a recognized face in my campus, even though I am out of it now), and the next day they meet someone who has never heard of me before. The day I had told someone that I was good with mechanics, the graphics lab prof told me that teaching me graphics had been a complete waste of his and my time.

It's not a crime to brag once in a while, is it??

When the chips are down and the stakes are high,
When the match is tied and you bowl a bye.

When the bills are high and the cash is low,
When the Man-Hole was open and down you go.

When you get a dud after expecting a beauty,
When you see that idiot flaunting a cutie.

When a bird shits on you when you pass under a tree,
When you gotta go to office and the loo ain't free.

When you work on weekends while your friends go booze,
When you brush your teeth and you want to snooze.

When you sweat in office while your Manager has fun,
When you write a code and it does not run.

When the appraisals are out and your ratings are down,
When everyone seems smiling while you wear a frown.

When the Day is Valentine, and you haven't got a date,
When she rejected your proposal but the chocolates she ate.

When your present is boring and your future looks bleak,
When you are avoided coz you complain like a freak.

When the shoes are worn and the road is rough,
When you feel so squashed but the going feels tough.

When everyone you know would kick your bum,
Just hang on Buddy, for your time will come!! :-))

I had once started this post long back when I had just joined office, but I had felt it wasn't turning out good enough to be posted. I had once heard people's taste in my profession degrade over time, and that, as I have started to believe recently, is very true. The end result is me digging out this post and pasting it on my blog. The rest is for you to decide.

I'll be honest. I picked up this idea from someone. But my blog is almost dying, thanks to my job and lack of a personal computer. I had never realized before how significant the word "personal" in a Personal Computer is.

This basically is a collection of a few things I did as a child. To be truthful (again, the second time), I can't recollect most of these memories; I have only heard stories about them. That way this isn't exactly a personal experience (The word "personal", again!)

Some of these stories involve two other characters - my sister and the housemaid. The housemaid loved to sleep and as you would have guessed, in most of the stories, she was in the snoring state.

• I once tried to crawl down the stairs while mom and dad were off to work and the maid was snoring. My sister who was barely a year and a half elder clung to me at the top. Before her strength ran out, mom arrived on the scene and saved the day. The incident is narrated to this day in my family as an example of how caring my sister was. *wink*

• This was before the maid had onboarded in the family. My mom had to leave for work, and there were people around who could look after me but could not attend full time. So my mom would loosely tie my legs to a window beside my camp bed. She had calculated that if I pee-ed it would trickle down and the bed could be washed perhaps. But one day I pooped, and my mom returned to find that I had played body lotion with it. Some of it, had also been taken for mouthwash!!

• After I had barely learnt to walk, I managed to sneak out one day. I saw a cow on the way and challenged him head on with a little straw I had picked up somewhere. He took it seriously and pushed me to the ground. He then raised his foreleg to stamp me and that was the closest I have been to near death, dear GOD. But then he decided otherwise and left me alone. My Dad watched the whole show from a distance, too stunned to move.

I do have a personal computer now, and now that I have it, I respect it all the more. That would be all, I guess.