Manoj's Weblog

After about 3 years with Sun Microsystems, I moved to work for Cluster Filesystems Inc. to port Lustre to Solaris. Half-way through the project, Sun decided to buy CFS. And that brings me back to Sun.

At Sun, they call this a boomerang.

It was Diwali. And I was brooding over an imagined slight. It was a little past 10 PM and I was walking along the SG Palaya main road - walking briskly, trying to work off the anger. Something I do quite often by the way.

It was a bit chilly; usual for this time of the year. That's when I noticed what looked like a ball of rags on the side of the road. It was actually a beggar woman sleeping with just her sari drawn over her head to protect her from the cold. I might not have recognized her, except for the fact that I had seen her a couple of times, sitting and begging at that very same spot. On both occasions, I had refused to give her money - something I always do.

I probably have passed by similar homeless folks dozens of times and not given it a second thought. Don't know why, maybe it was the way I was feeling then that made me think. Here I was, with a roof over my head, financially stable, lots of things going for me, yet brooding. And there is this lady, probably old enough to be my grand mother sleeping by the side of a road.

It was past the deadline set by the city police for bursting fire crackers. People paid no heed and were having fun all over that place. Money being burnt for fun and this lady had no place to sleep.

I could take her to my house; nothing stopping me from doing that. But I didn't. I just walked on. On my way back, I took this snap, trying to act like I was read a message on my mobile. I needing have bothered. There was no one watching...

The day after I found her begging and parted with a five rupee note. I knew I hadn't made her life better, hadn't changed a thing, and perhaps should have done better...

-Manoj

I am Manoj Paul Joseph. I am with the Sun Cluster development team. I work from Bangalore, India. I work with the Global Data and Devices (GDD) group. I work on DCS, PxFS and Sun Cluster SMF services... I work on all of that but my heart is with PxFS.

Before joining Sun, I had a short stint with Oracle and an even shorter one with iNautix Technologies.

That's me on the left.

That's all for now!

-Manoj