The kind stranger on a crowded bus

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that for the past month I've been traveling a lot by public buses. I don't have a direct bus from my house to my workplace, so I have to take a bus to the central bus station and change buses there. As I leave during the rush hour, I rarely get a seat and end up standing in the bus the entire distance. It is a tiring journey and a little act of kindness in such situations can go a long way in making one's day better.

Yesterday, there was a huge jam at the Central Bus station. The entire bus station was blocked and none of the buses were moving.I had to wait for almost an hour to get a bus. Finally, when I got a bus, I was lucky enough to get a seat! I settled down, plugged in my earphones, chose a song that I like and turned up the volume. I really needed some music to relax my mind. Just then, two old women got onto the bus. All the other seats had been filled up and a few people were standing. The two ladies were really old and I had to give my seat to them. A little sad that I had to stand with my heavy bag, I stood up. One of them took the seat and thanked me. Just then, another lady who had been sitting in the seat behind me immediately offered to hold my bag! People do offer to hold other peoples' bags in crowded buses, but not very willingly. And that was not the end of her kindness.
A few stops later, one girl who had been sitting, stood up to get off the bus. I hadn't noticed it and the lady who was holding my bag quickly pointed towards the seat and told me to go and sit and said that she would pass my bag after I got the seat. There were people standing and I wouldn't have been able to get the seat if I had tried to make my way to the seat with my bag. The lady made sure that I got the seat before giving back my bag. If I hadn't got the seat, she would have had to sit for a longer while with my bag. The fact that she tried to help me even if it meant more discomfort for her, touched me. This may sound very trivial. But the fact that a total stranger cared for another stranger's comfort restored my faith in humanity. I know it sounds like I'm over-exaggerating; but the gratitude I felt towards the lady that day was real.
Have you experienced such random acts of kindness lately? Do let me know in the comments.
Until next time,
Bye! :) 

Cryptic Talk

Hello Everyone!
I'm so excited to publish this post. This is the post that I've been talking about for a while now.
Last semester we had a subject called Cryptography and Network Security. It involved use of a variety of ciphers to encrypt and decrypt text. It is a very interesting subject and I loved it. I thought I could use this knowledge to implement a simple cipher that people could use for fun.
This led me to develop 'Cryptic Text'. It is a very simple widget that I've designed and added to this blog. It implements a variation of the 'Pigpen Cipher'.

Using it is really simple. The Encrypt part takes a piece of text and returns the encrypted text. The Decrypt part takes the encrypted text and gives the decrypted text.

You can use this to share secret messages with your friends. Get the encrypted message, send it to your friend along with this link. Your friend can decrypt it and get back your message!

Sounds cool? Try it out now!

Do leave your opinion in the comments. If you have any issues, let me know and I'll try to fix them!
Bye :)

P.S I've added it as a page to my blog to make it easy to access.

Announcement

Hello everyone!
My next post is going to be about 'Cryptic Talk' a fun widget that I've designed to share secret messages with your friends.
P.S This is my 13th post of 2015. I didn't want 'Cryptic Talk' to be my 13th post. So I'm posting it as the next post.
Watch this space! :D

Happy Valentine's Day

Hello Everyone,
I'm sorry I've been irregular with my posts. Since today is a Saturday, I finally had time to write a new post.
 I don't really believe in Valentine's day so this post is going to be very short. I'm not against celebrating Valentine's day... but I don't endorse it either. Ideally, if you really love someone, you don't need a special day just to show them that you care. But practically speaking, in today's busy life, we barely have time to talk to people we care about. I think by setting apart a day, we try to make time at least on that day to show our loved ones that we care.
I think it is important to take some time off in our busy schedules to re-evaluate our relationships and think about others in our lives who really matter to us. It is hard to do this on any random day. Having days like Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day etc, helps us do so, and we can make sure that we spend some quality time with loved ones at least a few times each year.
I don't know if this post made much sense. Do let me know what you think of celebrating Valentine's Day in the comments.

P.S. I have something very interesting planned for my next post which I hope to release on Tuesday (Feb 17th). Stay tuned! :D

My first week at work - Part 2

Hi all,
Today I will write about my third and fourth day at work. Since I started work on Tuesday, my first week consisted of only 4 days. If you haven't read my first two days, you can do so here.

Day 3:
Today my dad said that he would drop me off at my office, so I didn't have to wake up as early as yesterday or day before. I left home at 8:30 am and reached my office at 9:30 am. My manager had already come. He gave me an overview of the exact project that I would be working on. He used a lot of jargon that I didn't understand exactly, but I got quite a good idea of the problem and the proposed solution. He gave me certain modules that were already ready and told me my part. It was around 11:00 am by then. I had to take my laptop to the IT division to get some initial setup done. It was a 15 minute process but I had to wait for a while as my friend was also getting it done at the same time. We all met at lunch at 1:30. On one floor there is one table that is a little secluded. We had lunch there and talked about our teams and work we had been assigned etc. I'm starting to get the hang of the project I've been assigned and I'm beginning to like it. I finished my work and left by 6:30 pm. The first bus was extremely crowded and I had to manage with two super heavy bags (my regular bag and my laptop bag). The second bus was comparatively less crowded... I got a seat. Reached home at 8:30 pm. That was my day.

Day 4:
Today is a Friday... last day of the week! My dad dropped me off in the morning. My manager had already looked at my work that I had mailed yesterday. There were a few updates and changes that I had to make. Finished them by 11 am. I was done with a major part of the work assigned to me for today by 1 pm. Since it was the weekend, most people were talking, taking long breaks. I met my friends for lunch at the same table as yesterday. We took a longer lunch break than usual. There was some network problem because of which some people could not continue with their work. My manager left at around 3 pm because of the network issue. I had very little work remaining and I completed it by about 4 pm. By then, one of my friends said that our badges were ready. We spent another hour there and finally got our badges. I thought I'd wait for my friend as I'm still not comfortable with the route. I just blogged a little and wasted sometime. I was home by about 7:30 pm. Tomorrow is a holiday! 

So that was my first week at work. I'd love to read about how your first day at work was! Do let me know in the comments.

Bye! :)

My first week at work- Part 1

Hello People!
So much has changed since I last blogged. I started to work from Tuesday at a major Tech firm. These past four days have been very hectic and tiring... but really exciting too! I am still an intern but I don't think it is very different from being an employee.

Day 1:
The first day we were asked to report to the head office which is at a different location from where we've been posted. I had to wake up really early as we were asked to report by 9 am and the place was far from where I live. I woke up around 6 am. I've never been a morning person and waking up at 6 seemed to me an impossible task. However, I woke up even before the alarm went off as hadn't been able to sleep well. We had been asked to complete multiple forms, print them, and carry multiple documents. I had arranged them, and had packed my bag the previous night. I left home at around 7 am. Four of us had decided go together and we had to take two buses to reach our destination. We reached the place just in time. There was a long queue of new joiners at the reception. Most people looked much older than us.We got out visitor badges and proceeded to the Training room allotted to us. There were 96 people starting that day! Since we were joining as interns, we had fewer formalities to be completed so we sat around doing nothing for most part of the day. Around noon they asked us to create a bank account and so we went to the bank and had to fill a series of forms. We were asked to sign a million different forms. I have no idea what all I signed  on! I think I signed on at least 50 pages! An hour later we all had our own accounts, cards etc. Then we had lunch at the cafeteria. It was quite expensive but they had given us coupons so it didn't matter. We went back to the Training room to finish the remaining formalities. We were done by 5pm. We hadn't been told the location of the office where we had been posted till then. They told us to call our respective managers and inquire about where and when to report the next day. All of us had been posted at the same location (Phew!). After that we came out and got a bus quite easily. Two hours later I was back home. I had to leave home by 7am next morning.

Day 2:
I woke up at 6:30am and left home by 7:30. I met my friends at the bus stop. Since we had to report to a new office, we had to look around a little to see which bus would go there. Our reporting time was 10 am and we reached by 9:45. We were given temporary badges but had to wait for our managers to escort us inside the office as we hadn't been given access yet. Our team starts early so, the office was practically empty. I was given my cubicle and laptop. My manager introduced me to the rest of the team. There were too many names and faces and I forgot most names. The person who had interviewed me used to sit behind me in the same cubicle! (I've been shifted to a different cubicle now... next to the person whom I work with). I had to get a lot of initial set up done so spent half the day doing that. I met my friends at lunch. After lunch my manger gave me an overview of the project and what my role would be. She said that most of my work for this month would be associated with one person in the team. He had to leave early that day so I couldn't get much information about what I actually had to do. He told me to install some software and read about certain topics. I did that till about 6:30 pm. All but two of my friends (who live close to my place) left at 6:30. I decided to wait for them as I wasn't comfortable with the route. Their work proceeded till 7:30! It was dark by the time we left. We walked a very long way and didn't notice a bus stop that was close by. I reached home by 9:30 pm and was very tired. I didn't do much after coming back... just had dinner and slept. 

My third and fourth days  (i.e yesterday and today) have been better than the first two days, but I'll post them in the next post as this post is getting too long. Today was my fourth day. Tomorrow is a Saturday so I'll post Day 3 and 4 tomorrow. Stay tuned! :) 

How was your first day at work? Do let me know in the comments!