Orkuting

yeah I know It has been long since i blogged last. two reasons:
1. I spend more time on Orkut, orkuting wit my bunch of College friends and some communities of youngsters.
2. At home, I m too busy now wit my bro-in-law, always going out and doing something or the other that i dont find time to blog.

Been to Sultan Center couple of times shopping...... more later.. And in 2 hours my weekend starts again....

Life is a theatre..Invite Your Audience Carefully

Well this was a forward, but has got a good lesson in it. We dont think about these things. Whether we have the right people around us. Check it:

LIFE IS A THEATER

Invite Your Audience Carefully

Not everyone is healthy enough to have a front row seat in our lives.There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a DISTANCE.It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of, or at least minimize your time with, draining, negative, incompatible,not-going-anywhere relationships/friendships.Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention.Which ones lift and which ones lean?Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill?When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse?Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know or appreciate you? The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you...the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of Your Life."If you cannot change the people around you, CHANGE the people you are around."Remember that the people we hang with will have an impact on both our lives and our income. And so we must be careful to choose the people we hang out with, as well as the information with which we feed our minds. We should not share our dreams with negative people, Nor feed our dreams with negative thoughts.It's your choice and your life..... It's up to you who and what you let in it......

Badminton in Q8

Well yesterday I went to meet my friends in Mangaf during Magrib. And as it was not windy and hot after a week now. We decided to play Badminton. So from Magrib to Ishaa we showed are talent with the Racket and the shuttle. It was fun. I remembered my CyberTech days where I used to spend hours after office playing Badminton. So maybe I can get into this habit here too.....And now as I type this I realise why my hand is paining........the badminton after a long break..............

Custom Poll on Sharepoint

Well this is a technical blog item after a long break, I like to blog personal stuff more.

I had a requirement to get a Poll webpart on the portal Main page like you usually see on websites.

• A question, 3 options as a radio button list and a submit button.


• A user should be allowed to vote only once


• If user has voted show him the response

Out of your mind, U think of Survey on Sharepoint but it wont work like this, the way polls work on websites. SO I searched online and found some poll web part for $199. Big money. If the client buys it shame on me. Y not make my own Poll webpart. So folded my sleeves up started a web part project using C# made my Poll webpart soon. Tested and delivered upto satisfaction. Well now lets get to the technicality, what magic did my code do. Its pretty simple. U just need to take a pen n paper , think of all permutations, combinations possible and than make a good design and than start coding. usually people just fold their sleeves and start coding. Avoid it.


Solution:

1. Create a Custom list to save the Questions, with following fields Question, Answer1, Answer2, Answer3, Expiry Date


2. Create a Custom list to save the votes, with fields Question, Answer.
   It will by default have the created by Field indicating the Author
3. Create your webpart project.
   

Khallas means Thats It. u r done.

What does the webpart code to do:

1. Override the Createchildcontrols method.


2. Query the Questions List to check if any questions exist with expiry date greater than or equal to today. U will need CAML query


3. If No, create a label control stating "No Polls currently available"


4. If Yes, query the Votes list with the current User name and current question, if an record exists means User has voted else Not Voted.


5. If Voted, Query the Votes List get all the responses for the current Question and Response1, Question and response2, Question and Response3 . So the 3 queries count value gives u the number of votes for each option. make a Table to represent this information.


6. If Not Voted, Create a Label control for question. create 3 radio buttons for three responses, with radiobutton groupname same. So that they act as a Radio button list


7. Create a submit button and also a Onclick event for the button.


8. In the Onclick event you simply get the question and selected Radio button value and insert a new record in the Votes list and than repeat step 5 and hide the controls for submitting vote and also add a label "You voted successfully"


9. Refactoring comes here, create a separate function for step 5 accept a boolean value indicating whether it is step 5 or step 8 and accordingly to show or not to show the "Voted Successfully message"
   

Thats it so zimble, I meant simple. Leave a comment if u lost anywhere in between

Y water buy petrol instead!!

Well there is common sentence petrol is cheaper here than water.

I dont know the price of petrol yet. But yes water costs me Dinar for 12 bottles of 1.5 litres each when i buy a carton. N every1 drinks mineral water or soft drinks. The municipal water is desalined water, so I have not tried how it tastes.

All the wars in this world are going for nothing else but Oil. And here I am in a country with abundance of Oil but dont know the price. Maybe after I buy a car. You see lot of brands of cars here and only sports bikes that too only late evenings. bcos in the heat u cannot ride a bike ur Brain will become Bheja (brain) fried.

I was thinking of buying a car soon. But my Civil ID processing will atleast take 1-2 months more. Without civil ID/Residency I cant do anything not even subscribe for a mobile phone forget driving licence. So may not be for the next six months, lets c whats the situation than will decide maybe wait for a year and than buy a good car provided I stay more than that. Insha Allah, just wait n watch. No hurry. N I m not disclosing my long term plans here.

KD Metrics

R u aware of the KD Metrics. KD stands for Kuwaiti Dinar. When I came here it was 155 INR but thanks to my presence it has gone up to 158-160 INR. ;) And today I heard that the Emir of Kuwait is on a visit to India meeting our prime minister and president to discuss how blessed my visit to Kuwait was that it increased the currency value. Just kidding !!!

Well u should know the following KD Metrics:
Firstly 1 KD = 1000 Fils and not 100.

The biggest currency note available is of the denomination 20KD.

Dinar = 1 KD = 160 INR
Ruba Dinar = 250 Fils = 40 INR
Nus dinar = 500 Fils = 80 INR
Sabamiya Khamsin = 750 Fils = 120 INR
Khamsin = 50 fils = 8 INR


Telecommunication is very costly. Mobiles incoming is also charged.
International incoming = 40 Fils per minute
International SMS = 50 Fils per message
International Calling centres are available, some use Internet based phoned and are cheap.
Call US: 60 Fils per minute
Call India: 80 Fils per minute
Call UK: 100 Fils per minute

There r people who earn 2000 KD also and there r people who earn 30-40 KD a month also.

Encounter wit the Baladiya..

Well this was some time last week. I came to Q8, nothing more to do in the evenings but to roam in the market. I befriended a guy wit a shop there who was an Indian, specifically a Bori. and he thought I was a Bori from looks. So Arabs think I m arab. Boris think I Bori. I dunno who else I simulate???

So i used to spend some time in his shop. Trying to learn abt Q8 as he is here for around 2.5 years. So evenings i cud sit for an hour there. This fine day after Magrib I was sitting there. A arab came in showed his card, he was from Baladiya(Municpality) and asked this guy for his residency as he opened the wallet. he said give ur licence and took his driving licence and asked him for the Ijaazah that means the shop licence and this guy looked tense. I was sitting there wondering am I in a problem too. But I dont knw if the Baladiya saw me or not bcos he didnt converse wit me at all. I feel I was invisible to him although I was right there.

and than this guy took the Baladiya to the next shop to show the Ijaaza and I dont knw what happened next. Bcos as they moved out. i went to the restaurant bang opposite and sat there to drink something to chilll myself down.

back home if the Municipality wud come, I can tell them couple of names from the Municipality office and boast, but it was scary that i was in a foreign country.....So India is the best. :)

w.bloggar v4.00

Thanks to Baba (Vinil Menon) if you have not read about him earlier. My second blog post was about him. Check it out.
Baba had mentioned to me about this tool called w.bloggar which can be used to blog offline. And I made sure I downloaded it sometime last week and installed it on my laptop. and now I can blog sitting at my apartment over the weekend. And thats wat I m doing right now. Blogging on w.bloggar and will publish all the posts once I am online.

Download this tool if u wanna blog offline.

This world is soooo small!!!

Isnt it?

I dont know where to start this blog. I was in India, I met a tour operator who is pretty close to me. I told him that this weekend I am going to Kuwait. he gave me a name, that this person is a nice man out there. I am good relations with him. If you need anything contact him. I saved his name and forgot about it. Bcos there was no way in this whole country I was going to search for an individual although he is a manager in one of the banks out here. I thought that was the end of it.

I was in office, met a guy in office, realised we were both from the same regional location in India. It was nice of him to drop me home on his was back for couple of days although he stayed in an different locality. So now i used to meet him in office. This weekend I was trying to delete contatcs from my cell phone as I was planning to sell it. But didnt sell it yet. I saw this name of the person I had got from in India and realised the family was same as the guy in my office. I went to office checked in my outlook for this friends details n wat a coincidence he is the son of the person whose name i was referred in india...Ohhh I was like the world is so small.

Yesterday evening, i went late for the night prayers. I saw a Fair, bearded guy sitting there. I said salaams after prayers I waited to make sure that i meet him bcos he looked so familiar. I asked him if he was from Mumbai. The answer was in affirmative. And than I asked him his name. And he had the same family name as a friend of mine in Bombay and he looked very much like him too. I asked him do you know him (my friend). and there comes the reply, Yes he is my younger brother.

So I got too shots in the same day. N I was like ohh the world is so small..

I logged in orkut bcos my friends were like the World is on Orkut where r u. N as i had some free time being new to it. I just have my college friends in my Orkut network. I was searching for people in Kuwait on Orkut. And the profiles that I liked ;) were connected with just 2 or 3 people between us. The world is sooo small.

Enjoying

This was a busy week. I had lot of work, lot of samples, analysis ideas. And the best was I had to make a custom web part. So I had to write code for it. My First web part in kuwait. I will preserve it. And knowing that I love coding so much. I spent my afternoons at home after office working on it. And Alhamdulillah its working today meeting the requirements that I had.

So, Insha Allah I should keep myself busy with such coding jobs to keep myself happy. This makes me realise how much I like coding and why I used to sit late in office back home in India. I miss those late nites in office, but its better to code on ur Laptop at home than on ur desk in office.

I remember that day when Amby was in US, some delivery. I was done but Amby wanted me to be there till he did a full cycle check of the workflow. And till morning I was sitting on my desk with the phone on Speaker mode answering him as he tested. I was tired tht day.

I think I should start working out here. So that I get my muscles in shape else i will turn out into an obese human being. Gaining weight here for no reason bcos I m eating much less than in India. but maybe I am not stressing myself as much. No local trains here naa and that Bus ride upto Saki naka from station looks liek a nightmare now.

I wonder wat would happen if some Arabs would have to shift to India and work like us travelling in public transport. They have so much thanks to Almighty...They must be so thankful

Well 1 more hour and I will be in the weekend.