Applied FOSS :)
So I was mostly absent from IRC and blogosphere for a while. And the reason was the wedding of my one and only kid sister. It was pleasing, hectic and experience. But I happen to notice a few things while all the preparations were on and some how it occurred to me how things are often ``foss-y" in real life even. And things just fall in places even just the way it happens in a successful FOSS project like KDE.
The issue was that the guys family decided that ``ok, we would like to have the wedding on Akshaya Tritiya - *the* most Auspicious day in Hindu Calendar." And we had hardly 3 months or less to arrange everything. And my Dad's job is to keep roaming around the country ( where ever our fave organisation - ``The GoI" tells him to go ) and build gas pipelines or petroleum plants and some such thingies meant that we had to do a lot of work separately and lots of coordination was needed among all involved. So roughly geographical locations were - Grand Dad, Mom, Sis and yours truly in a village called Panvel near BOM. Dad either Ujjain ( mostly in recent times ) or Indore - and even in Kota, Sawaimadhavpur, Manmad, Chembur etc. Our relatives/*very* old friends were based in West Bengal or in Kanpur/Lucknow. Abhijit - the dude whom my sister married and his elder bro were located in Pune while his parents were in Jalgaon ( some where deep in Maharstra, takes 10+ hours by bus to reach Panvel from there. ).
So here we were, *everything* to be done in some 2-3 months. Shopping, painting the house, getting invitations done, send out the invitations, hiring caterers, photographers, transport and more more stuff and concerned parties all scattered all across the country.
Work was distributed from the day 1. Painting work at home started after Dad visited us briefly. After that it was Mom, Sis and Me. Dad came back and saw through the completion of painting work. Between all this my Sister submitted her Masters thesis even. Shopping was done before and after that. Since we couldn't really do the shopping together, we went separately - well at least I did, I went alone with my buddy and bought cart loads of Kurtas :). The invitations were done in 3 languages - Bengali, Marathi ( Because the dude is a Maharashtrian ) and English. Bengali for our relatives and close Bengali friends, these were done in Krishnonogor ( somewhere deep in WB and was take care of by my Mama ( Mom's bro ) ), Marathi for guys family and alike ( were done in Jalgaon by their family ) and English ones for everybody ( were done by my Dad in Ujjain ). So do you see l10n somewhere in there ;) ? Somehow I do :).
Another thing that Dad did was to distribute work to people who were good at it. Since we don't really have many relatives in Panvel, very close family friends were the people on whom we relied on. One guy took care of all kinds of arrangements that was needed for the "hall decoration" and flowers etc while another family friend took care of catering stuff ( and even to take care of guests wrt their food on the wedding day ). I did the scouting for people who rented vehicles, photographers and such since I am the local dude and could get tips from my local Panvelites and school buddies. So basically each module had its own lead dev or some such. We even arranged for a cook at our place for a week because we expected like 30 people (relatives and friends) at our place on the wedding day and day before.
The day before the wedding- there were many rituals according to Bengali customs - ``Nanni Mukh", "Gaaye Holud" and "Ayie Buro Bhaat". Before all those rituals, we even had a "Satya Narayan Pujo" at our place even. And the ladies ( Mashis and Kaakis ) present there for some reason put a lot of turmeric paste on my face even.
On the day of wedding, it appeared more foss-y than ever. It was the ``release day" after all. We were up early and ready to go to the wedding hall before the "``Baaraat" reached Panvel. They apparently came in a Bus from Jalgaon. So I went there to see if the tea/coffee and breakfast stuff was ready or not. Dad and a family friend directed the group to the venue. Another guy was taking care of the flowers and decoration etc. Among other things I attended the guests and made sure they had breakfast properly since they were traveling since 6PM last evening. They guests got ready soonish. I changed to a brand new silk Kurta and Payejaamas and a Nehru jacket even :P.
The wedding was supposed to happen Maharashtrian style. For some reason, the guy's Dad said that he was interested in wearing Bengali "Dhuti ( koncha-ala dhuti ) and Panjabi (kurta)" because he saw someone wearing it some where. And so did Abhijit. So after the some rituals which included ``Introduction to each others family", "Aarshivaad" etc, Abhijit changed to traditional Bengali kurta and dhuti. My sister and Abhijit both wore their respective ``Topors" ( funny head gear / caps that Bengalis wear for their wedding ). The wedding rituals proceeded according to Maharashtrian customs. And some Bengali customs happened in between as well. So what do you call this? ``Collaboration" or whatever between different projects to arrive at common standards or some goal. You know like the freedesktop.org where KDE, GNOME etc collaborate with a common goal or some such.
The wedding ceremony got over and thus my Sis got ``tagged" as Mrs Paromita Apte ( from Ms Paromita Bhattacharya ). Lunch followed by some rest. In the evening we had a nice reception party. Call it the ``after release party". This time we had many more guests. By 10/10:30 PM most guest had left. Only people present were the Baraatis, and people whom we knew from last 15-30 years or more even maybe. The whole Baraath group left finally at around 11:00 PM along with my sister and one of her friend. Thus happened the ``release".
During the whole event that lasted two days and was being worked upon for few months, I was insanely making calls and some such, nagging people - driver(s)/vehicle contractor/owners, photographer dude, caterers ( on the wedding day ). Another thing I did and happy about is - often I found that something was needed to be done and telling somebody to do it would have just delayed it or whatever, so I calculated if I could do it or not and did it if possible instead of telling somebody else. Another thing was - invariably there were situations which needed ``hacks" or immediate solution because of an sudden issue. One such example was - when I went to invite my very old friend and his parents. This dude is recovering from Jaundice and 40 days of hospitalisation. So basically he would eat only fruits and nothing else. And there was no way he was going to go without eating from the party. Made sure that we bought ample fruits. The dude turned up at the reception and it all worked fine. His Mom was very impressed with my ``hack" :). But I can't really take credit for this hack, I just applied ( in my own way ) what my parents did for someone very important who due to some customs won't eat anything at all if it had onions, garlic and non-veg. So they made sure that food was cooked separately for that person before the other food. Thankfully their ``hack" was GPLed and I could use the source and modify it and distribute it even :). Anyways, for all such hacks and constant nagging other ``contributors" to make sure we made it to release date just fine, I think I was the ``maintainer" for the wedding while my parents and Abhijit's parents were ``core / original developers" since they started the project. :)
If the wedding would have been an application or some such, it would have a ``About" box or ``AUTHORS" file in which I would like thank all the devs, contributors, guests and everybody involved. Some people just stand out - my Dad and Mom for arranging such a lovely wedding in such a short period of time. I am sure most of us know how important it is to keeps things as close to perfect as possible in daughters wedding. To Abhjit's family for being really nice. My Mama - who is always the dude and my ( Mejo ) Mashi ( Mom's sister and everybody's favourite Mashi :). To three close families from Panvel without whom neither the hall, nor the flowers nor the caterers and not even the guests and the wedding in general would have been such a smooth affiar.
I would love to thank even the guests, friends and family who came to the wedding or even send in their good wishes even. Every little bit helped it to be successful affair.
The issue was that the guys family decided that ``ok, we would like to have the wedding on Akshaya Tritiya - *the* most Auspicious day in Hindu Calendar." And we had hardly 3 months or less to arrange everything. And my Dad's job is to keep roaming around the country ( where ever our fave organisation - ``The GoI" tells him to go ) and build gas pipelines or petroleum plants and some such thingies meant that we had to do a lot of work separately and lots of coordination was needed among all involved. So roughly geographical locations were - Grand Dad, Mom, Sis and yours truly in a village called Panvel near BOM. Dad either Ujjain ( mostly in recent times ) or Indore - and even in Kota, Sawaimadhavpur, Manmad, Chembur etc. Our relatives/*very* old friends were based in West Bengal or in Kanpur/Lucknow. Abhijit - the dude whom my sister married and his elder bro were located in Pune while his parents were in Jalgaon ( some where deep in Maharstra, takes 10+ hours by bus to reach Panvel from there. ).
So here we were, *everything* to be done in some 2-3 months. Shopping, painting the house, getting invitations done, send out the invitations, hiring caterers, photographers, transport and more more stuff and concerned parties all scattered all across the country.
Work was distributed from the day 1. Painting work at home started after Dad visited us briefly. After that it was Mom, Sis and Me. Dad came back and saw through the completion of painting work. Between all this my Sister submitted her Masters thesis even. Shopping was done before and after that. Since we couldn't really do the shopping together, we went separately - well at least I did, I went alone with my buddy and bought cart loads of Kurtas :). The invitations were done in 3 languages - Bengali, Marathi ( Because the dude is a Maharashtrian ) and English. Bengali for our relatives and close Bengali friends, these were done in Krishnonogor ( somewhere deep in WB and was take care of by my Mama ( Mom's bro ) ), Marathi for guys family and alike ( were done in Jalgaon by their family ) and English ones for everybody ( were done by my Dad in Ujjain ). So do you see l10n somewhere in there ;) ? Somehow I do :).
Another thing that Dad did was to distribute work to people who were good at it. Since we don't really have many relatives in Panvel, very close family friends were the people on whom we relied on. One guy took care of all kinds of arrangements that was needed for the "hall decoration" and flowers etc while another family friend took care of catering stuff ( and even to take care of guests wrt their food on the wedding day ). I did the scouting for people who rented vehicles, photographers and such since I am the local dude and could get tips from my local Panvelites and school buddies. So basically each module had its own lead dev or some such. We even arranged for a cook at our place for a week because we expected like 30 people (relatives and friends) at our place on the wedding day and day before.
The day before the wedding- there were many rituals according to Bengali customs - ``Nanni Mukh", "Gaaye Holud" and "Ayie Buro Bhaat". Before all those rituals, we even had a "Satya Narayan Pujo" at our place even. And the ladies ( Mashis and Kaakis ) present there for some reason put a lot of turmeric paste on my face even.
On the day of wedding, it appeared more foss-y than ever. It was the ``release day" after all. We were up early and ready to go to the wedding hall before the "``Baaraat" reached Panvel. They apparently came in a Bus from Jalgaon. So I went there to see if the tea/coffee and breakfast stuff was ready or not. Dad and a family friend directed the group to the venue. Another guy was taking care of the flowers and decoration etc. Among other things I attended the guests and made sure they had breakfast properly since they were traveling since 6PM last evening. They guests got ready soonish. I changed to a brand new silk Kurta and Payejaamas and a Nehru jacket even :P.
The wedding was supposed to happen Maharashtrian style. For some reason, the guy's Dad said that he was interested in wearing Bengali "Dhuti ( koncha-ala dhuti ) and Panjabi (kurta)" because he saw someone wearing it some where. And so did Abhijit. So after the some rituals which included ``Introduction to each others family", "Aarshivaad" etc, Abhijit changed to traditional Bengali kurta and dhuti. My sister and Abhijit both wore their respective ``Topors" ( funny head gear / caps that Bengalis wear for their wedding ). The wedding rituals proceeded according to Maharashtrian customs. And some Bengali customs happened in between as well. So what do you call this? ``Collaboration" or whatever between different projects to arrive at common standards or some goal. You know like the freedesktop.org where KDE, GNOME etc collaborate with a common goal or some such.
The wedding ceremony got over and thus my Sis got ``tagged" as Mrs Paromita Apte ( from Ms Paromita Bhattacharya ). Lunch followed by some rest. In the evening we had a nice reception party. Call it the ``after release party". This time we had many more guests. By 10/10:30 PM most guest had left. Only people present were the Baraatis, and people whom we knew from last 15-30 years or more even maybe. The whole Baraath group left finally at around 11:00 PM along with my sister and one of her friend. Thus happened the ``release".
During the whole event that lasted two days and was being worked upon for few months, I was insanely making calls and some such, nagging people - driver(s)/vehicle contractor/owners, photographer dude, caterers ( on the wedding day ). Another thing I did and happy about is - often I found that something was needed to be done and telling somebody to do it would have just delayed it or whatever, so I calculated if I could do it or not and did it if possible instead of telling somebody else. Another thing was - invariably there were situations which needed ``hacks" or immediate solution because of an sudden issue. One such example was - when I went to invite my very old friend and his parents. This dude is recovering from Jaundice and 40 days of hospitalisation. So basically he would eat only fruits and nothing else. And there was no way he was going to go without eating from the party. Made sure that we bought ample fruits. The dude turned up at the reception and it all worked fine. His Mom was very impressed with my ``hack" :). But I can't really take credit for this hack, I just applied ( in my own way ) what my parents did for someone very important who due to some customs won't eat anything at all if it had onions, garlic and non-veg. So they made sure that food was cooked separately for that person before the other food. Thankfully their ``hack" was GPLed and I could use the source and modify it and distribute it even :). Anyways, for all such hacks and constant nagging other ``contributors" to make sure we made it to release date just fine, I think I was the ``maintainer" for the wedding while my parents and Abhijit's parents were ``core / original developers" since they started the project. :)
If the wedding would have been an application or some such, it would have a ``About" box or ``AUTHORS" file in which I would like thank all the devs, contributors, guests and everybody involved. Some people just stand out - my Dad and Mom for arranging such a lovely wedding in such a short period of time. I am sure most of us know how important it is to keeps things as close to perfect as possible in daughters wedding. To Abhjit's family for being really nice. My Mama - who is always the dude and my ( Mejo ) Mashi ( Mom's sister and everybody's favourite Mashi :). To three close families from Panvel without whom neither the hall, nor the flowers nor the caterers and not even the guests and the wedding in general would have been such a smooth affiar.
I would love to thank even the guests, friends and family who came to the wedding or even send in their good wishes even. Every little bit helped it to be successful affair.