Yes, I am back to farming.

I left my farm high and dry a few months ago, and now I'm back with a vengeance. Most of my waking hours are spent thinking of ways to make my farm better; at least I have no control over what I dream about, so at night thankfully Farmville leaves me alone.

Tending to my livestock, rounding up baby animals, adopting lost ones, sheltering homeless calves, ugly ducklings, and Llamas take the most part of my busy day. I have to admit I have no clue on earth what kind of an animal is the Llama; the closest I've come to knowing a Llama is the Dalai Lama ;-). This doesn't stop me from tending to the animal with great fervour, asking my friends to help if I come across a lost Llama in my farm, et al.

Oh, and yes, I am the proud owner of a library, a school, a couple of greenhouses, cottages with picket fences, a complete forest with every type of tree imaginable - cherry, passion fruit, durian, olive, magnolia, yeah well, you get the idea.

How can I forget the whole business of growing plants?! It is a painstaking process indeed - plow the field, plant seeds, wait for them to grow, harvest them on time, and repeat the damn process all over again. God forbid if you forgot the harvest timing! A bunch of withered crops are not the right way to start the day - they make your heart beat funny and you are subdued for quite some time, without even realizing why.

This experience made me realize how, if I am saddened by a bunch of withered virtual crops that don't even exist, farmers who toil day and night on their farms, waiting patiently for the rains to come on time, would feel if at the end of the day their crops are destroyed by a freak thunderstorm. Heartbreaking, to say the least.

For all you people who loathe Farmville and who make fun of us virtual farmers - please don't. I don't know if I can ever own a library in real life, or if I'll ever have a pretty cottage with white picket fences. I cannot explain it, but when I tend to my farm I feel happy. I feel happpy when I pet my animals and they jump a little, and tiny red hearts come floating out of them. I feel happy when I see my crops ready to be harvested, and I feel happy when I harvest a perfect bunch of red tulips.

Okay, I just realized this post has become too long - enough about farming, now! Will greet you with an entirely different post very shortly :-)

Facebook in Hyderabad! Woohoo!

Ah well, good news for Facebook fans around here - FB is launching in Hyderabad!

The internet is agog with this news, and is also flooded with comments - apparently, this revelation hasn't gone well with folks from other cities. People, people, if you are so mighty jealous of this fact, why don't you just move to Hyderabad here, eh? ;-) I am sure the team of Facebook had good reasons for having their first office here; obviously, they must've given the matter a LOT more thought than we do, and must've thought of a lot more reasons for having it's office here, than we can even possibly think of.

FB's main competition in India, Orkut has been around since quite a few years, and been ruling the roost for some time - but off late, there has been a change in trend, maybe largely owing to the tons of applications Facebook has to provide, and, of course, Twitter. Personally speaking, around two years back I was so addicted to Orkut that rarely a day passed without me doing some activity on it; now, it's come down to maybe once a month, and that is just to be active on the Blogger forums I'm a part of. Twitter is still catching on, in the sense that it doesn't offer much in terms of what we office people call "time-pass", catering mainly to the business person.

Whatever the facts might be, and however popular Facebook might turn out to be, it's team is going to have a challenge on their hands, and I guess they'll have to venture forward with caution.

It's the Online Sales and Operations team who's going to get recruited first - inside news is that the FB team in the US have contacted Adecco India, Hyderabad branch, to start the process of hiring. So buckle up all you sales people, and update your resumes!

And to the Facebook team, here's wishing you best of luck!