The enlightenment of Evil - Short Story

"When people see some things as good, other things become bad."

What new can be said for the rivalry between the Good and the Evil? For, it has been there from the beginning of nowhere and it will always be to the end to nowhere. But there happens an uncertain-unrecorded time in the past or present or future, when there ensued a showdown between the manifestations of the two. 

The Evil, tired of so many fights, confronted the Good. "For eons, I have been fighting you. But you face my entire wrath with this composure igniting the flames of hatred in my heart for you even more. Every time when it appears that my nuisances are about to bear fruit of your defeat, you manage to turn the tables and win. But listen to me dear brother; I will come back for the last time not to defeat you but to finish you forever, for I am tired. I know you can never eradicate me for you portray yourself too noble to even think that but I promise to end this misery. I will, as always drink this poison of sin and eliminate you from everywhere. Not even a minuscule detail of your silly goodness will be left in the complete Universe". The Good melancholy replied, "If only you could understand, that is not possible".

img courtesy www.desktopnexus.com

From that day, Evil drowned himself to create the darkest of all curses that can destroy Good present anywhere. It took all his energy and power and the cosmos trembled while witnessing his hard labor. He toiled all through the days and nights and finally the powers had to bow down to acknowledge and bless his weapon. Thus, armored with his lethal gun the Evil called upon the Good. "Pray to me. Be like me and accept my greatness or I will vanquish you". "You can never destroy me", was the Good's reply. Evil gave a wicked laugh and bring forth his weapon shining like lightning. All the world stood still in horror for the impossible about to happen. Fear found a place on Good's face who stared at the weapon and before Evil could launch his attack, Good cried, "Just a last wish brother, please". Evil's happiness knew no bounds to see his impending victory on Good's fearful face. "Tell me". Good smiled mysteriously and asked, "For one last time, show me what all is getting eliminated because of me". Evil smirked on Good's foolish request and opened a channel with his weapon filled with images of all that had even a faintest of Good in it and thus, about to be executed. He gave a look at the channel and proceeded to finish the deed, when suddenly he stopped looking aghast. "How is that possible?" He opened the channel to confirm again. And lo behold! There in one corner it saw a flicker of good inside an image. An image he could not ignore. The Good answered pensively, "You see brother, even the act of allowing my last wish proves there is some kindness in you too, that is the reason neither of us can be finished." 

Hence, Evil realized there is no such thing as a complete victory. Neither of them could be finished, wherever Evil goes Good also percolates.

Nanny Hiring - A Short Guide

For all those parents out there who look for Nannies for their little hearts, here's my article on Nanny Hiring on Parentous. After having different kinds of experience both good and bad, I have come up with a list of 10 points which we should take into consideration while finalizing a person for this important job.

Here's a short snippet and I hope it will be helpful for you. For the complete guide please visit the link:
http://bit.ly/WjMpq1

Love in a Glass Bowl

It was the first month of my wedded life. After a hectic month of marriage celebrations in our hometown, I was in Bangalore. Mr. H had all the home setup from his bachelor life thanks to his mother. I had still not joined my office but Mr. H had resumed work after marriage vacation. 

As fate has it, as soon as I came to his house, all the previous domestic helps assumed that I would be an efficient house keeper and left the housekeeping jobs without informing. Before we could realize and get new helps, I was doing all the jobs. Mr. H felt really bad. But I was feeling super excited that I can manage everything. Finding it difficult to persuade me, he would often make some excuses to take me to dinners outside to best places. 

One day even the cooking gas gave up and I called Mr. H who declared that we will dine out. But my mind was scheming something else. I was sitting idle whole day when among the huge collection of Mr. H books, I had found Nita Mehta's microwave cooking booklet. 

At this point, I must reveal the other reason for Mr. H dinner requests. I was a terrible cook having no experience in cooking; being the youngest pampered one in my family. 

I quickly ran through the pages of the mini book and selected Microwave Veg Pulav. Among the other culinary adventures that day, it was the first time I was doing microwave cooking in my life and boy, I was really nervous of this experiment. I never used to like most of Mr. H's kitchenware as they were not maintained properly by the maids. But there was this glass Borosil bowl which was still in its pristine form.  It motivated me further to try. I followed each and every step of the recipe diligently. And I could also do other jobs meanwhile, one of the best advantages of microwave cooking.

It took just 30 minutes to prepare. There was no need to transfer the dish to another vessel as the colorful meal looked beautiful in the bowl.  The perfect transparency told a great culinary story of each grain of rice, draped in the colors of the spices along with the veggies & dry-fruits which retained the color and shape. The blend of rice, spices and everything else created a great concoction of colors and hues, only accentuated by the aroma which filled the house! I never had thought I could cook, let alone prepare delicacy as wonderful as the dish was looking! By the time it was done, I felt like being transported to a magical heaven. 

The bell rang, and I opened the door for Mr. H. Before I could say anything, Mr. H beamed up as he breathed in the whiff and headed straight towards kitchen to find the cuisine. He just said, 'How?' looking pleasantly surprised and I could see how proud he was feeling to marry me. I was elated with joy. But the real test still lingered. Is it only the aroma or the flavor too? Before I could serve him, he quickly got the camera to save the sight of my culinary achievement of lifetime.

We were really hungry by now. Looking at my concerned expressions Mr. H smiled to me and said, 'Don't you worry, dear, Pizza-hut is not far from here!' 

We both had a hearty laugh and commenced to relish our dinner. To this day, I remember it as my best culinary adventure and that charmed bowl, is still my favorite vessel. After all, I cooked with my heart and served my love in it!

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I cooked this post for My Beautiful Food contest in Indiblogger.

The Clark-Kents of IT world

"Why testing?", asked my interviewer. "Why not testing?", was my response to him. I was attending one of the interview calls when I was looking for a job after my yearlong maternity break. He was curious that given my academic record why I was a tester. My response surprised me more than my interviewer. For a software engineer who was initially reluctant to do any testing project as she preferred development, it was a major shift of opinion. I was suddenly defending testing.

I have been associated with direct-indirect testing for nearly 5 years. But let me make it clear - I am not a Tester neither a Developer. I started my career with programming, then manual testing, then development and again testing. I am a logical mind and I love building logic. So be it writing test scenarios or writing a program in any language, I don't mind unless I am not enjoying what I am doing. As for becoming an expert in any one language- I am more of a software connoisseur who loves exploring anything if given the opportunity.

Everybody knows the good side of programming. But few give testing its due importance. Statistically speaking, a study conducted by NIST in 2002 reports that software bugs cost the U.S. economy $59.5 billion annually. More than a third of this cost could be avoided if better software testing was performed.^[cited]

But here are some amazing reasons on why I believe anyone should be proud of being a tester:

1. Testing compliance means a satellite will not fail while launching. Just imagine years of hard work and money go waste just because a simple unnoticed bug proved fatal at last moment.

2. Saving Business: I have very innovative features in my website but in production it was painful to even browse the UI. Users left and went to other sites and my competitors hijacked my website's intelligent features. And now everybody call them pioneer in the technology. Well, it actually happened with one of the big client, I have worked in the past.

img courtesy http://cartoontester.blogspot.in

3. Testing is fun. The making, breaking, pulling and pushing a code written by a super-confident 'developer' becomes an enjoying experience if done with full interest. It’s like atonement.

4. Designing test scenarios can actually help the grey cells to be fit and healthy. It’s the SUDOKU of IT world. It helps retain the sanity of the human mind busy with machine interactions and coding complex solutions.

5. A tester is like superman who saves software life by ensuring its quality but he is happy to be known as a common man in the world where everyone else claims to be a hero. Simple living, high thinking :P

If you really want to enjoy the IT world, embrace both testing and programming as both are incomplete without each other. It will make you a super-coder, super-tester. While I believe that manual testing is a great activity but learning Test automation puts an icing on the cake. So, my advice to all manual testers is to have some nice experience in automation as well. It makes a tester complete. Now, Food for thought  - who will test the code for automation framework?? ;)