Getting a passport in India, my experience in NCR, suggestions

There was a time when for getting just a simple bank account open in even National capital, I tried almost each bank I could see around but failed to get one opened for months despite of being son of an existing bank official itself because I didn’t had a proper Delhi address proof.

Let’s face it, when it comes to get something from Govt offices, things get messy for professional despite of knowing the process and their own rights to get the work done. The old age slow system forcing you to get leaves from your job not once but multiple times. Random charges for which you don’t find any rationales and random excuses for delaying or denying your work. Majority of us might have gone though similar time to time.

No wonder, professional earning well even if don’t wish so, resort to easier route to engage a tout to get through the hassles of even simplest of jobs, be it getting a PAN card, getting a driving license or getting a passport.

It wasn’t the case that I wouldn’t have taken one of the above way, but after seeing my ex-roomie gone through the process in past in honest manner, after completing more than an year of AADHAR CARD in my name (thanks to Govt putting camps inside the various pvt offices even and my office was one of them) and new perceptions post the regime change, one fine day due to persistent demands of wife, I thought to get my ass up for the job while observing the common steps and my small suggestions to improve it.

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Three more sketches

In an attempt to make sketches of all nephews, I added few more.

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The above was of Anishk, post which I tried to make one of Addhya..

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Which I don’t think that went that well.. so I had to give it another try from scratch.

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One more sketch: This time with fast motion video of process

After the last attempt, I thought to give it one more try and this time thought to make a video of entire sketching but sadly the camera positioning wasn’t proper and rather than the sketch, it was focused over my dirty hairs alone Sad smile

Yet sharing the video and the end results

Here goes the sketch after the video

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After some further minor corrections later on

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Sketching still alive in me, even if little

It must be a long time when I did sketching of this kind last time. I used to sketch during the low points of life when I felt much low or engrossed in heavy thoughts not letting me think straight.

Sketching usually takes certain level of concentration over the piece of paper leaving all those inner and external thoughts away from your mind momentarily even if not completely. Trust me, even if just few moments, it helps your soul and many a times gives a straight thinking to move ahead with fresh commitment yet again.

Engaging office life, typical limited resource management and then at home kiddo as full time attention, sketching is sure not an easy thing to do. Yesterday night once we were done with dinner and kiddo was showing me that how she can draw some alphabets even if with some help and has started getting settled with school life, the idea to try sketching once again hit me.

Took a broken HB pencil of kiddo, sharpened it, managed to get a small piece of eraser left in the box and started it on the art book gifted to me by my younger bro don’t know which year.

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The timestamp of this picture was 2208 hrs, I might have started one or two mins before this point. I always prefer to start with eyes as for me, eyes always been the focus point in any face.

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For me, the complicating part in the face always been the nose and luckily this time, I was through that point by 2215 hrs and basic outlines of the face were ready.

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Now it was time to make a rough outline and limiting myself to the portion of the picture as per available size of sheet. Time was 2224 hrs.

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By 2238 hrs around, the sketch was almost done and it was time to take some photos and cross check if anything additional needs to be done.

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Here goes the original base over which I was making the sketch.

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And the final product…..

Timestamps of the images taken in between

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After one year, Delhi to Manali, A Monsoon drive, A night drive

I might have written more than 5-6 travelogues over social media and blog, but the one particular blog post which might have given most comments, calls, emails, was Delhi to Manali trip. Even when it wasn’t a satisfying one considering the fact that we skipped Solang Valley, didn’t spend much time over Rohtang and didn’t even stopped for Kullu or Naggar Castle. This must give you an idea that how much Delhi wishes to conquer upon those Himalaya hills in comparison to nearby destinations like Nainital, Mussoorie etc. but the distance of 600km+ deters majority of them as skeptics.

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Answered a number of queries on the particular Manali trip from 2014 to readers, while I was asking from self that when I am gonna makeup for the mistakes of last trip by driving the same destination yet again. There were four hill trips in last year, but this particular year 2015 wasn’t going very lucky about that. I did took a small trip to Rishikesh, but that was nowhere close to be even counted properly in hill trips. So, there was on hill trip on the card before July starts (got shifted to end of July later on) and brings along wife’s job, my job and kiddo’s school etc..

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Two new books on Zabbix: Common Questions, Detailed setup

Technology moves with a rapid pace, 5 years in IT field is enough to change a lot of things.

Five years back, when I wrote a post on Zabbix Implementation, then there weren’t many books on the topic and forums or posts like mine were the kind of only ways forward for getting help on issues related to zabbix. Then in March 2010, possibly one of the few excellent books on Zabbix was introduced to me. Fast forward to 2015 and now we have many of them. I came across two of them in recent.

1. Zabbix Network Monitoring Essentials

2. Zabbix Cookbook

While the first one covers in details about how to go around setting up a Distributed Zabbix Monitoring solution for your enterprise and various options available for the same, the second book focuses on basics to start from a scratch, covering things from definition level to make it easy for a new comer. Both the books do a great job considering the short page count because admit it, despite of our curiosity to learn new things, the kind of life we IT guys live, it doesn’t leave much of the room for reading lengthy books.