I was stopped by two officers asking me if I was carrying any alcohol. So I promptly showed them the bottle along with the permit. In spite of this officer told me to wait on the side and they continued to check other passenger bags. Unfortunately for them they didn’t find anyone else carrying any alcohol. Finally it was me and those 2 officers left on the platform. One of the officers told me that it is illegal to bring any alcohol in Mumbai and I will have to pay a fine of Rs. 3000, followed by a court case. I will also have to appoint a lawyer and fight my case. They also tried to threaten me with jail sentence of 6 months. To by bad luck on the permit instead of travel to “Mumbai” it was written “Daman”. One of the officers read that and became more furious and started to threaten me with bullshit like your engineering degree will be confiscated, they will send a report to my employer and I will be fired from my job etc. By this time I knew that this officers wanted bribe from me. Indirectly they were asking a bribe of Rs. 3000.

I knew I had made a mistake of taking the wrong permit, so I was willing to pay the fine and refused to pay any bribe in a polite manner. In the meantime, one of the officers was checking my mobile phone. He asked me to remove memory card from my phone which he then inserted in his mobile and ( I think ) copied a few songs to his mobile. I wonder if this was a part of his duty

I was then taken to another platform for further action. I quietly followed them. While we were walking, one of the officer was still convincing me to pay the bribe and advising me not to follow legal procedures. But I insisted on paying the fine if they could provide me correct receipt. Finally in about 30 min, I think they realized that I was not going to cave in and they told me to go. Before I left one of the officers said politely “Give us some money according to your convenience” to which I replied “no, thank you” and I walked away. I don’t know if it was a lucky day for me or unlucky day for those officers

To be frank I was a bit scared in the beginning, but then I made up my mind that I won’t give any bribe and was ready to face any consequences. I did my bit to decrease amount of corruption in our country, so say “NO” to bribery!!!

Originally Posted At: http://kurund.com/blog/2010/11/29/say-no-to-bribery/

We were divided into 4 teams: Konquerors, WA Invaders, Thunderbird, The Broncos..

Everyone had to play against each other and the top 2 teams would make it to the final. So after all the matches, the final was between my team “Thunderbird” and “WA Invaders”. Lack of fitness and no pior match practice made everyone very tired. I had cramps in both legs and could barely move but I had to push myself for the finals.

Unfortunately our team was no match to WA Invaders, they played really well and we lost

Inspite of that I am very happy with my team’s performance. They showed a great deal of dedication and determination to reach final. At the end of the day, it was sprit of the game that was true winner.

Originally Posted On: http://kurund.com/blog/2010/08/28/wa-campions-cup-2010/

Photos Courtesy: Laxman Mankala

Deepak was busy fixing upgrade issues. That’s one of the most complex things we need to provide users so that they don’t lose any of their existing data. This responsibility was with Deepak and his upgrade team. Our Joomla czar, Amit was helping Deepak with Joomla related upgrade issues and fixing/adding documentation for v2.0 to v2.1 upgrade procedure. Meanwhile Sunil and Shailesh were testing / fixing Drupal related upgrade issues. It was around 1.00pm (IST), I decided to have Team Meeting in Conference Room. I did quick status check with everyone and ensured everyone was on right track. We also discussed few doubts/issues with team and decided to release alpha around 7.00pm (IST).

Yashodha was our in-charge for v2.1 QA re-distribution task. Since I was working on some fixes, my QA issues were delegated to others . I must admit QA is not one of my favorite things. At around 3.00pm (IST), as usual Kiran came to me with some weird bug fix and wanted me to review his code. Kiran quickly implemented changes that we discussed and moved on to issue QA. I sometimes wonder how people are able to think about so many permutations and combinations while doing QA. I seriously admire a few of my team members for this. Especially Sunil and Shailesh, who always find somethings that amaze me and make me think a lot more before closing any issue. I guess everyone in team is developing a good habit of questioning before implementing any issue. I think in the long run this benefits both individual and quality of software.

At 6.30pm (IST), we were still not ready for release. Pankaj found yet another weird bug in CiviMail during QA process. He brilliantly fixed it quickly and moved to QA next issue. Junia was fixing wysiwyg editor issues and she also fixed few layout related problems. Just when we thought we were ready for alpha we found few more issues.

I simply don’t have any clue, why we find bugs in the end, just before the release. So while Shailesh and Yashodha were fixing bugs with CiviEvent, Kiran managed to close another CiviPledge related issue. Sunil and Deepak fixed few issues related to upgrade. Amit was having bad headache, so he had tied his handkerchief on this head like a bandit and was fighting bravely with Joomla issues.

So finally at around 9.45pm (IST), after everyone’s nod, Yashodha pulled the trigger and released CiviCRM v2.1. Job was not yet done. We quickly downloaded both Drupal and Joomla tarballs from sourceforge.net and started testing it. Everything seemed to be ok and after green signal from entire testing team, Yashodha announced to the world about CiviCRM v2.1 alpha1 release.

I sincerely thank my team for their effort, dedication, hardwork and teamwork that everyone showed during v2.1.

Personally I think v2.1 release is the most feature-filled release we ever did.
Great job everyone!!!
3 cheers to everyone …

Hip Hip.. Hurray!!!
Hip Hip.. Hurray!!!
Hip Hip.. Hurray!!!