Category: experiences

  • So I completed 10 Years working

    So I completed 10 Years working

    Life always comes a full circle

    The line above is not just a trope. It happens more often than one might believe. On August 10th, 2018 I completed 10 years working. I joined my first job on August 11th, 2008 thinking it would be a part-time thing for a couple of months. But it extended for 15 months thanks to the economic debacle of that year. That happened because I lost 2 job offers I had earned in my college campus. I had earned those 2 offers after quite a struggle after failing to crack various rounds in 4-5 companies. Not that I wasn’t good, it was just not working out due to one reason or the other. One of the reason was honesty, another was ego, and one was a just plain failure in some aptitude tests. But then both of the 2 job offers which had been buried already came back and I took one of them after 21 months. I had lost my patience after a year of working as the job I was doing was not very satisfying, to me. Anyways, I have written a huge lot of text on this blog about Recession and things. Read the bonus section below for the full circle part.

    Basically, I have a decade of Work Experience now. Being a not-so-much-of-a-risk-taking-computer-engineer (that is leaving my job and becoming a full-time graphic designer, starting a company, a writer, a blogger, and a traveler), I’ve mostly been working in the Information Technology companies. A part of the first ever job was also being an artist as well but it was primarily a menial Photoshop HTML job. Since 2010, it has been pretty much similar sort of experience but fortunately, I have got the opportunity to work on a variety of software, some new technologies and came across a variety of people.

    If I were to summarize these 10 years, I would do this through the following few points:

    Time Flies

    It does. I have grown 10 years older in no time. I still feel that 90s were a decade ago while they aren’t. When you work for a full day and days are almost the same, you cease to remember the details. I vividly remember last days of college but I only faintly remember last days of companies in which I had worked.

    People are generally nice

    Surprisingly yes. And may be it depends on how nice you are to them yourself. Have there been bad experiences? Yes but rarely. I have been fortunate enough to always work with people who have been good to me. Thank You people!

    Not everyone puts their best efforts

    When we complain about how less we are getting paid, we never tell how less or more we have worked for it. Of course, the rate at which our expenses grow, our salary doesn’t. Should I be earning a lot more than what I am doing? Hell yes! But do I always give my best, at everything I do? Not all the time. I try my best but I have not really reached the peak of my productivity yet. So haven’t you so stop complaining and start doing.

    Some risks should have been taken

    Any regrets? Who has time for regrets? Just move on and continue doing the work. Keep learning and continue acting on it. Were there some risks I should have taken? Like becoming a professional designers? I don’t know. I could have known only after doing it. But that would have mean not being responsible for some people. Taking a financial risk is always difficult than advising someone to do so. But I haven’t stopped earning from the designing work I did in the past, yet. Which means, if one has a hobby and one cannot risk their jobs for that, one still has time to pursue it.

    I hope we will have more posts like this after 5, 10 and so on years later.

    Bonus Section

    Before I started studying Computer Science, I had appeared for an Engineering Entrance Exam for a relatively popular engineering college. I didn’t clear that exam though. That was sometime back in 2004. 14 years later and after a decade of working, I got an opportunity to go to the same engineering college and recruit students from there. This was my first time interviewing anyone. I should write about this in detail soon. Till then, it was a small victory, I guess. *punching-air-emoji*

    Thoughts after 5 years of working here.

    Photos by 

  • Half Time 2018

    Half Time 2018

    We have just crossed the mid-way of the year 2018 and are in the proverbial Half-Time period. I thought of pausing and reflecting on the journey so far in the year 2018, so the following in an effort at that.

    As it is pretty clear, I didn’t live up to the promise of writing a blog post every day. I had totally intended to write at least something every day but even on the free-er days, I didn’t. So, I am going to write, in simple points on how do I feel about things after the first half of 2018 getting over in this post itself.

    Good Habits are difficult to sustain

    I tried a lot of things from the beginning of this year to date. Some of them and their outcomes follows:

    1. Blogging Daily – I couldn’t do it. Reasons and excuses are many but they are not important. Can I do it? Certainly yes. Will I try again? Of course.
    2. Bullet Journaling – Actually achievable and makes your life better. There is nothing new about journaling and planning your days ahead by writing them down but Ryder Carroll actual made it a lot systematic and formal, yet totally customizable. I started off by jotting out 5-6 things I wanted to accomplish every day before leaving for office. This was not done on an app, but I sat down and wrote them in a small notebook which could be carried without any hassle. Once I got through the planned activities, I could strike them off or if I couldn’t, I could postpone them to next day or any other suitable day. This is a good way of planning and executing. Believe me, writing things on paper and then striking them off gives you a sense of calm and helps build confidence which apps cannot. I did stop doing this when few things happened in life. But I can restart any day. And let Any day = Today. Restarting it right away! See, pausing and reflecting helps!
    3. Toastmasters – I finished my Advanced Communication Bronze module in this May. This means I delivered 7 advanced communication speeches in 5 months this year. I learned a lot of Storytelling and Speaking to Inform and it helped build my confidence in Public Speaking further. I am now going to try to new educational program called Pathways. I haven’t set a goal yet but I do see myself finishing at least till Level 3 of this. Oh, and I made my club win the Best Social Media presence award this year out of 200 odd clubs. IFTTT rocks.
    4. Health – I think right now I am the fattest I ever have been. My weight has been consistent since last 2 years but this time I felt the fat. So, I stopped eating sugar a few weeks back and now even after starting it again in last 2 weeks, but in lesser quantities, I don’t feel the fat. The bottom line is, I need to do more about this and continue to cut the sugar out of life.
    5. Reading Books – When one habit derails, all the other good habits around that also derail. My Book Reading spree came to a halt but all is not lost. Let’s begin again, shall we?

    All of the above also helped me end my Social Media stint. It is easy if you try.

    Life is fragile

    And you must handle it with care. People generally overlook problematic things in life and take everything for granted. We have limited time and it should be told to everyone every day. This year, I have been through some experiences which were the 1st time for me. To be very precise and not melodramatic, it can be summed up in 2 points.

    1. I sat in an Ambulance for the first time for a relative who was being rushed to the hospital after collapsing suddenly. I delivered the news of the person in the ambulance passing away to the kin by myself. The passing away part happened in seconds, right before my eyes, without me even realizing it that it had happened. It happened so fast that I couldn’t even gather any thoughts about it before or after. It just taught me one thing that the transition between being alive and being dead is so small that if understood, a lot of us unnecessary efforts about unnecessary things can be avoided.
    2. I had to experience a very close family member being diagnosed with cancer. All I could do is to motivate and instill all the positiveness I could. The family member is still fighting the battle and I hope and I wish the battle is won.

    The above 2 points are so contradictory and ironical that I don’t have any conclusion about the dilemma that should we worry about death or should we let it be?

    New Chapter in Life

    Just a handful of days ago, I entered my 4th chapter in life if we divide life into a group of years for simplicity’s sake. Considering, we live first 0-13 years as kids and then things change. We live next 10 years i.e. 14-23 towards really jumping on to the career-building education bandwagon and then eventually crafting our careers and setting the tone for the life ahead. After 24 or 25, we reach a position where we do have a faint idea what of what we can accomplish and what we cannot (I know some people are more determined than others, and some don’t know what they want till they’re 60 too. So, I am just presenting my way of looking at age). After 30 or 32 years of life, you actually think that you know a lot and now you could give life-advises to people. Like this blog post. So, I am in that zone now. Sigh.

    Alright, Half-Time Up! The 2nd half has started already and time is running out. We have some goals left in 2018 to be attempted. All the best to all those who have goals!

    Featured Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash

  • What’s Your Password?

    What’s Your Password?

    It doesn’t matter how long it is. What matters is how powerful it is. Is it a weak one, moderate one or so strong that it is almost unbreakable?

    I am talking about passwords, of course. Here’s a short story about it:

    Location: Basement of a friend’s house.

    Date: Sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s, when not everyone had a personal computer or a phone. So yes, long ago!

    So, I was in school and one of my friends had just bought a new shiny personal computer. A couple of more friends and I had come to witness the beauty. Although, it was not like we weren’t familiar with computers. I am not a Dinosaur but it was still a good thing to have one for personal use. And to show off.

    We were happily enjoying it and randomly surfing the applications and The Internet (using Dial-up connection so anything which opened was a bonus). Then, the friend who owned the computer got a call from his mother. So, he locked the computer and went away. He told us not to try passwords else it would get locked after few failed attempts. Yada, yada, yada and he went upstairs.

    Once he went away, we thought of trying the available attempts. We ran our minds to guess what the password could have been! One friend suggested the house’s fixed line number, another suggested his nickname. I just typed in few letters and voila! It had got unlocked. I didn’t do anything special of course as I had just typed in the name of his suspected crush. Poor fellow, now this had got doubly confirmed. He returned and saw us chuckling and giggling. He then blasted us for this mischief but couldn’t do much as we were already into splits and we ended up laughing our guts out for next 30 minutes or so. (We were still in school then and young boys as you know, are idiots).

    Moral of the story is that almost everyone had a password which could be socially engineered out of them if you knew about the person a bit. I can recall one more instance when I asked a friend about some name and could log into his account by using the forgot password option. Easily! But, don’t worry, I am not that evil and I didn’t do anything bad after logging in as I was such a saint that I told the friend that it was a cakewalk to hack your account. Better up your passwords game. He didn’t talk to me for few days though.

    Nothing much has changed since then. People still use easy words as their passwords. Moreover, due to the exponential increase in applications we use, the number of passwords to remember has also gone really high and difficult to manage. There are surely many good password manager tools but then someone has to set master password eventually. And if that’s done, again you are doomed. With growing worries about UID and possibility of data being sold/hacked or compromised, we should ideally be more concerned about our privacy, than we are right now.

    I remember one instance when there was a conference call happening with screens being shared. One of the participants had to share the screen. Before the person could switch on to the application to display, a notepad app was visible by chance. It had all the passwords for all the things one could imagine, written down and visible for over 2 minutes.

    Fact is, however strong your password is, if you cannot remember it and depend on writing it down somewhere, the cause is lost. If we move towards biometrics completely, there will still be some scope of hacking. Rather, if you remember the passwords properly and they are really random, nobody can hack it or it becomes very difficult. Unless they kidnap you and you have to tell it at a gunpoint.

    So, what’s your password? Still your crush’s name? C’mon both of you have already got married, to separate people. Change it to something better people!!

    If you want my personal opinion, change your password to some name of the person you hate and add your date of birth to it in random fashion and then add a character which you think is of no use being on the keyboard.

    Here are two comics from XKCD about passwords for your enjoyment.

    https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png
    To anyone who understands information theory and security and is in an infuriating argument with someone who does not (possibly involving mixed case), I sincerely apologize.
    https://www.xkcd.com/792/
    It’ll be hilarious the first few times this happens.

    Featured Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash

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  • Blog Speed Breaker Update

    Blog Speed Breaker Update

    When I blogged/ declared/shouted from the mountaintop, that I was going to blog every single day this year, I was pretty sure that I won’t be able to do that.  *Wink* Life is too smart you know! Still, I wanted to try. So, barring few weekend breaks for leisure and life, I posted last on Jan 18th and disappeared.

    The first reason was that I wasn’t well. I had gone to Goa for 4 days and the change of weather from Goa to Bengaluru did nothing good to my sensitive nose and vulnerable throat. Secondly, I had some visitors at my home (The ILs) so I couldn’t blog at night. Thirdly, everything one does in life, has a very serious correlation with the mood one is in. Mood again is directly dependent on the health and well being of oneself and one who cares about. To summarise, some of my loved ones weren’t well. Moreover, I wasn’t even equipped in any way that I could do something about them. So, I did nothing about continuing with writing as I could do nothing about other’s health issues.

    But now everything has come back on track or as they say, I’ve understood that this is how it is going to be. People are eventually going to get better and life will move on.

    In short, I will try my best to continue with keeping writing alive. This blog post is just a means to get fingers acclimatize to the process again.

    We will return to regular programming soon. See you all (millions and millions of you readers) shortly.

  • Last Presidential Address

    Last Presidential Address

    The script for my last presidential address at my Toastmasters Club. I didn’t deliver it exactly as the script but you can still read it for free:

    Today is my last Presidential Address. Please don’t cry at the end of the speech. For the last 25 odd Toastmasters Meetings, I used to prepare something for each week.

    How many of you read the December 2017 edition of the Toastmasters Magazine? (How many of you know that there is a Toastmasters Magazine published monthly?)

    On the very first page, there’s a line by International President DTM Balraj Arunasalam, where he is quoting Mark Twain,

    “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read”

    In the same way, he says that

    “A Toastmaster who won’t lead has no advantage over one who can’t lead”

    It means that if you have an opportunity to lead a group of people, for your and their betterment, you must grab that opportunity with both hands. As Robin Williams said in ‘Dead Poets Society’,

    “Carpe diem”

    First of all, I would like to state that Trailblazers Toastmasters Club is not my baby as in I wasn’t a charter member or part of the executive committee until January 2017. But, when I had joined it in June 2016, soon I did adopt it as my baby. I saw it as a place which had huge potential for me to grow as a person. It was a place where I could meet new people and develop my communication skills. I tried my best to capture the moments I had in the club. Over the course of last one and a half years, I have seen this club grow from a novice club to a sophisticated club now. We now have proper standards, practices, procedures, and processes to run the club. In the recently held elections, we not only got the 7 officers elected on time, 3 more people stood up and took the responsibility of Associate Officers.

    During my time as acting VP-Education, VP-Membership and then as President, with the help of the executive committee, we tried to do whatever I could to make the club beneficial to everyone. I hope that our efforts were useful to all the members. I said this in my Presidential Acceptance speech 6 months ago and I will say it again that if we take our role in Toastmasters a tad bit seriously and see it as an opportunity to help others, we can do wonders. I will share a small story about helping others which I had read in a book some time ago. I hope you see some lesson in it:

    In 1892, at Stanford University in the US, there were 2 poor students who were not able to pay their college fee. So they approached a pianist Paderewski to perform in their college. Paderewski was quite the superstar at those times. They thought that they would raise enough money from the tickets that they would be able to pay the pianist as well as pay their fee. They asked him to perform for $2000. He agreed and performed.

    But, they could raise only $1600 from the concert. With their heads hanging in shame, they went to the pianist and said that they will give the rest of $400 later when they will be able to pay for it. Currently, they said that they were not even able to pay tuition fees. So, they gave him a cheque for $400 and requested him to encash it later. Instead of shouting and scolding them, to their surprise, Paderewski told them that they don’t need to worry. He will not only deduct his fee for this concert but also agreed to pay their tuition fee for them.

    Years passed. It was the time for the First World War. The pianist Paderewski had now become the Prime Minister of Poland. Poland was ravaged due to the war and was in dire needs of food and ammunition. He approached the United States to help them. US President Hoover quickly sent food supplies and helped Poland during the war. When Paderewski went on to thank President Hoover, Hoover said that he needn’t thank him. He was just returning the favor. He said he was one of the 2 students whom Paderewski had helped a few years ago to pay their tuition fee.

    Think of your Toastmaster role as a role of not self-improvement but helping others. Improvement will happen automatically if you come to the meetings. By helping others, by doing small things, can have a huge impact on others lives. Like taking up roles in a Toastmasters meeting. Your role as Ah-Counter can help someone stutter less and become a better speaker. I could go on and on.

    Before I sign off as the president, I would just request all of you, the new officers and the members to try to help each other. I am always there to help. You just need to be proactive and ask for help. You just need to capture the moment before it is too late. You can take my adopted baby now and help it grow more into an awesome person in the future.

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  • Saying Thanks

    Saying Thanks

    This question might sound rhetorical but please tell me how many of you buy things online?

    Have you read the order confirmation email when you receive it? Doesn’t it sound so automated and without any emotion right?

    There was/is a company which used to sell CDs online. When someone used to order CDs, they used to send the confirmation email like this:

    Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

    Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow. A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing. Our world-renowned packing specialist lit a local artisan candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day.

    We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

    Thank you, thank you, thank you!

    Sigh…

    We miss you already. We’ll be right here at store.cdbaby.com patiently awaiting your return.

    Noticed the difference? See in whatever way you connect with people, it might change their perception of you and vice versa. I had read this in Tools of Titans in the profile of Derek Sivers. I thought this email confirmation story might have been then in the past but apparently, it is still on.

    How many times have today you said Thank You to someone with honesty? When was the last time, you were said thank you by someone else which was genuinely heartfelt? The thank you which genuinely moved you?

    Thank you are just 2 small words which, if said genuinely, mean a whole lot to someone.

    In my email signature, it always used to be ‘Warm regards’ or ‘Thanks’. But I saw one colleague of mine who had the longest 2 words ever: ‘Thank You’ for his signature. If you read it a couple of times, it would genuinely appear better than our usual stock replies.

    I changed mine to ‘Thank You’ as well. When I am actually not thankful, I make it back to post-millennial ‘ty’.

    Featured Photo on Visual Hunt

  • Day 1 Year 2018

    Day 1 Year 2018

    Happy New Year Dear Readers! (Yes, the 2-3 of you)

    So, as I had promised, I did go to the office today. As expected, there was as much silence as there is silence in a curfew laden area.

    When I opened my mailbox and saw a flurry of Working from Home emails, my sarcasm meter went haywire and I sent ‘Working from Office’ mail to many. Sarcasm getting charged up early in the morning is a good sign. Right?

    Few good things happened though.

    • Even when the colleagues weren’t there, there were no abstainers from the helpers and pantry workers. That shows how much these celebrations meant to those who don’t have the privilege like us to skip work. (You may argue that you have earned this but do you think that time would stay the same.)
    • Someone came to my desk and wished me a happy new year. Who does that nowadays?
    • I bought hosting space for my domain. After much pain, it is finally live now at abhinavbhatt.com

    What did the new year bring for you?

  • Importance of not taking holiday on January 1, 2018

    Importance of not taking holiday on January 1, 2018

    There’s a common joke that if you do something on the first day of the year, you do that activity throughout the year. That’s not only highly improbable but also stupid, to be frank.

    All the past years, my workplace had a holiday on January 1. But this year, because of the ‘policy’ of at max 10 holidays per year, we have no holiday tomorrow. Although most people will extend their leaves until January 2, I have decided to wake up early tomorrow and go to the office. Bring it on!

    Why you ask.

    There are some things which are tough to do. There are some things which are uncomfortable. There are some things which might make you look like a fool to others. But when you accomplish those things, there’s a beautiful jet stream of dopamine release. That release is much more genuine than that one which you get from Likes and stuff.

    So I am going to try that this year. Apart from learning something new every day and 1000 other resolutions, one more resolution is going to be Not Hitting Snooze button. And not caring about what others think of you.

    You may still enjoy some more sleep. Or you can do something uncomfortable early tomorrow and get a good chunk of dopamine released into your system.

    If you are reading this before Jan 1, you have a really good chance to do the latter. Try.

  • Let’s talk about Postcards

    Let’s talk about Postcards

    Recently, I heard a beautiful little speech from a fellow Toastmaster Sivaranjani about Postcards and Pen Pals. She talked about how, as a kid, she used to send out postcards from her family to the relatives. She went on to tell about her meeting with one of the pen friends she had made during the time when it was cool to have pen friends. The speech was reminiscent of the time without Internet which now seems like ages ago. She ended her speech with a beautiful gesture of handing out actual postcards to the members of the audience.

    One of the important points she raised about Postcards was the analogy with the social media of today’s time. She said that Postcards are like Tweets: One has to deliver the message on a limited space for writing. Also, Postcards are also like the infamous Open Letters which you intend that the original recipient would read. Although, except that person, everyone else reads that.

    In a rather personal plus fictional story combination book by a friend titled ‘And we remained’, a major chunk of the story is told via the email-exchanges between 4 friends. One could read this book if you want to go back to your nostalgic college days, first crush feelings and the time when sending emails to and fro used to exist. Anyways, point being, communication recently has taken a weird turn.

    I have not sent or received postcards or even a letter since last 15 years or so minimum. I did use to make greeting cards during school time which I used to give away to friends and teachers before summer vacation or winter holiday breaks. But that practice diminished as I grew up. I also haven’t received/sent a proper email from/to anyone in at least last 3 years in which we could have just shared information about each other’s well being. The only letters I receive are actually cardboard containers from Amazon. I did receive few physical Greeting Cards from my wife when she was away. (I felt pretty awkward initially as I didn’t expect that people would still be dealing with Greeting Cards. But that was a wonderful gesture, so thank you R if you are reading this. Sorry that I didn’t reply back with another greeting card of my own. I am a bit tech-savvy that way.). Obviously, ego gets in the way of communication nowadays. Despite being so closely connected, we hardly talk to people. I had even written a satire piece a few days ago about replying to Whatsapp/Email has become optional. You may read that here.

    Whining about this isn’t the solution. The solution would be to reopen the communication channel with old friends in some way. One can still send out postcards. One can write emails. Even a Poke on Facebook might help in rekindling the friendship, who knows! Wish someone new year in an original manner and not HNY! Of course, I am not suggesting to you that pick up the phone and call that person. Who would do that!

    I got this postcard by the way after that speech:

    Recommended Sites, in case you are interested:

    • People who used to use blogpost.com would remember about lettersofnote.com. If not, you can still go ahead and check this site. They publish postcards, letters, telegrams from the past. Soon, they should also start posting emails from the early days of the Internet. That would be fascinating to read.
    • I found this website which does this amazing thing even today: postcrossing.com. I am copy pasting their stats from the site below:

    P.S. A picture of Postbox with address if you want to send someone a postcard from Bengaluru

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BO9r2CAj_4q

    This, I saw at MG Road Boulevard, Bengaluru. It is a bit sad that the caption I put in the second comment on the picture there was ‘#historical’.

  • The Stinking Attack of Nostalgia

    The Stinking Attack of Nostalgia

    It was Saturday morning. I was in a Cab traveling to a distant part of the city. The Driver had put the radio On and it was playing songs in Kannada in very low volume. By now, I have developed a mental system of phasing out sounds on the road which I cannot easily comprehend out of my mind. Then the advertisements started, which are sometimes in English which I understand, sometimes in Kannada which I try to understand and sometimes in Hindi which is my mother tongue. And sometimes they’re in a combination of all the 3 languages, which nobody understands.

    Then came a public service announcement commercial about Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (Cleanliness Mission by Government of India) which was as ignored as we ignore the heaps of garbage on the road. But the advertisement ended with a small jingle in Hindi. I will put the link to the song at the end of this post.

    And that hit me. Let me give some context first:

    Back at home, in North India, and I assume it happens everywhere there, we get a garbage truck in the morning. The peculiar thing about this truck is that instead of knocking people’s door and asking them if they have any garbage to dispose of, the truck plays this song in a continuous loop. So, when you are at your home relaxing nonchalantly in the morning, first you hear a faint sound of this song. That hints us to keep relaxing but stay prepared for the truck, as it would be coming towards your house soon. Thanks to Doppler Uncle, this sound keeps increasing as it approaches nearer and nearer. Only when it is 100-200 m from your house, you actually get to hear the words of the song. And only then you need to get up, collect the bins and hand over to the municipal people your precious garbage which you held dear for the whole night. Then the truck goes over to the next street and the song becomes fainter and fainter and eventually diminishes. This has been happening since last 2-3 times of my home visit. So it had become a daily ritual of hearing that song and dumping the garbage till I was home. (At least this much I can do at home, right?)

    garbage truck

    After coming back down to South India, I forgot this song. Days passed. Months passed. This song went into the recycle bin of my mind. And then yesterday, I heard it again. Even though, I heard only a line. But it hit me. The stinking nostalgia of days at home hit me. Sigh. Weird, but true.

    What is the most weird thing that makes you think of your home?

    The human mind is an amazing thing of beauty. It creates filters to push irrelevant things out. But it leaves some holes, wide enough to bring your memories of the past back when you least expect. We all have senses which crave the sounds, smells, and colors of our home. Of course, no one wants to remember stinking garbage trucks for that. For me, it was the jingle rather.

    Here’s the song by the way: